Bering and Wells (Warehouse 13)
Set in season 2
[A bit of a rumination on quantum mechanics, with flirting. Because this fandom is so wonderful I felt the need to contribute something, and also because I didn't want to study for my quantum chem exam. Customary disclaimer that I don't own anything etc. etc. and also that all of my knowledge of the physics discussed comes from my quantum chem course so it may not be entirely accurate, but I did try to not be too blatantly wrong.]
Helena was an inventor. Or at least she had always thought of herself as one, despite the fact that the intricacies of engineering that accompanied invention had never particularly interested her. Her desire to invent, a desire that arose from the same base impulse to create that drove her to write, had always been motivated more by a need to bring about a better future, than by any particular enjoyment of the process of optimizing design variables or evaluating signal waveforms.
While she was rather ambivalent towards the engineering principles involved in her work, she had always enjoyed the underlying physics that brought her inventions to life. There was something so very satisfying about the elegance with which a handful of equations could allow her to predict exactly how much weight her grappler could hold, or the precise amount of current needed to power her time machine.
The study of physics had never been more than a hobby for her, but whenever research for a novel or her latest project for the Warehouse required more than a free body diagram or a simple voltage calculation, she would take pleasure in the challenge of deriving the proper equations and the satisfaction that came with a clearer understanding of how the world worked when she finally had the correct answer in hand.
As it turned out, science was one of the few ways in which this future she found herself in had held up to her, admittedly very high, expectations. The science of this day and age was beyond her wildest imaginings, which she thought was rather impressive, as she had practically single-handedly created science fiction.
And now she often found herself picking up one of the many books in the Warehouse library about all of the discoveries she had missed to while away the long restless nights at the B&B when sleep eluded her. Claudia had suggested that she start with Einstein, but frankly, she found him rather dull. Special relativity had been an interesting thought experiment, but general relativity bored her to tears. Claudia assured her that general relativity was why GPS devices worked, but more of it she read, the less she found herself caring about the particulars of GPS devices or gravity or general relativity at all really.
With this is mind, she skipped the rest of the astrophysicists, and preceded to delve into the works of the men who had probed the deepest levels of creation with the help of the misleadingly titled Brief Introduction to Quantum Physics, a four hundred page tome full of equations with more Greek letters than was entirely reasonable. Einstein had managed to redeem himself somewhat in her eyes with his work on the photoelectric effect, and Bohr's atom was elegant, if somewhat limited, but it wasn't until she got to Schrödinger that she really fell in love with quantum physics in the same way that she had loved classical physics, more than a century before, when she had first encountered Mr. Maxwell's equations.
Schrödinger's equation was deceptively simple, only three terms, but if Helena had learned anything in this century it was that the things that appeared the most simple and straightforward were often the most confoundingly complex. Within H = E was all of the possible information about the system it described; all of the work of the men who came before, Einstein and DeBroglie and Planck and Bohr and all of the other giants whose shoulders Schrödinger was standing on; all of their genius was packaged into one simple equation. It was beautiful. And terrifying.
Because Helena knew better than most the power of ideas, and of obsession. The sheer intellectual force it must have taken to write down these seemingly insane equations that could hardly be conceptualized in non-mathematical terms reminded her, almost viscerally, of the nights and days she had spend consumed by her own insane theories, culminating in 22 hours and 19 minutes in which she had been unable to save that which was most precious to her. An obsession that had yet to completely fade.
"I thought I might find you down here." The soft voice startled Helena from her reverie. She blinked up at Myka, standing in the doorway to the B&B's living room, and she felt a smile pull at her lips.
"Am I really so predictable?" she asked as she allowed herself to enjoy the fact that Myka slept only in a thin tank top and boxers. Helena was eternally amazed by the taller woman's ability to look absolutely stunning at the most unlikely of times.
"I got up to use the bathroom and I saw the light was on. You left your bedroom door open, so I figured it was you down here." Myka crossed over to join her on the couch where the inventor had curled herself around her book, and sat down next to her, gently pulling the book from Helena's hands. "A Brief Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. Talk about a little light reading…" She ran her hands along the cover, tracing the words of the title in the way that only someone with a deep appreciation for books does, and then proceeded to flip through it, pausing occasionally to scan pages that caught her eye.
Helena scoffed at the sarcasm in Myka's voice. "Well I mustn't let myself get too far behind the times, mustn't I? Anyways, Schrödinger is really quite captivating if you can get past just how dull discussions of mathematical operators are." She wasn't quite sure why she felt the need to justify herself to Myka, but then again, the younger woman seemed to be having many unexpected effects on the inventor these days. Effects that Helena really could afford at the moment, as events had already been set in motion.
"You know, I think we have the original Schrödinger's cat somewhere in the Warehouse," Myka replied without looking up from the page she was reading. "It makes whoever opens the box and looks at it completely doubt their entire existence. Something about uncertainty…"
"There's a cat? The book didn't mention a cat," Helena asked somewhat incredulously. "In that case, I may have to reconsider my opinion of Mr. Schrödinger."
Myka laughed softly at that, looking up from the book and meeting the older woman's somewhat bemused gaze. "It really doesn't talk about Schrödinger's cat?" Helena shook her head, prompting the other woman to explain. "Weird. The cat was a, sort of, thought experiment that Schrödinger used to explain some principle of Quantum Mechanics…the superposition of states, I think?" She looked questioningly at the inventor, who nodded, signally that the brunette was not crazy, and had indeed said something relevant to the topic at hand.
"Anyways, the idea was that if you put a cat in a box with some poison, and there was no way to know at any one time whether the poison had been released or not, then the cat had equal probability of being dead or alive at any given time. So until you opened the box and checked, the cat was both dead and alive at the same time." Helena took a moment to appreciate the slightly unfocused look Myka got when she was explaining something, like she was looking at something only visible to her.
"How morbid. But I guess that it's not all that bad an allegory. The math is more elegant however." Myka raised her eyebrows and shook her head slightly at the dismissal in the older woman's voice, but a smiled crept across her face nonetheless.
"Of course you would say that."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Helena feigned indignation at the sarcasm in the other woman's tone.
"Just that you would think that the math was more elegant. I mean, you practically worship calculus." Helena opened her mouth to reply, but Myka cut her off before she could protest. "No, don't give me that look, it's true. Remember that time you told me that anyone who couldn't do calculus or read Shakespeare was, quote 'an imbecile not deserving of your respect'?"
"Well it's true." Helena could tell that Myka wasn't buying her haughty tone, as she just rolled her eyes at the older woman, stifling a yawn at the same time, and Helena couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculous face that resulted.
For a while they just sat, enjoying one another's presence; Helena watching the younger woman page through the book, occasionally stopping to reading something particularly interesting or to examine a diagram or equation, until Myka's yawning got the better of her and she closed the book.
"As intellectually stimulating as this has been, it's three am, and I should get back to bed." Myka handed back the book, her hand lingering on Helena's, sending a buzzing, tingling warmth up the inventor's arm. Green eyes met brown ones and Myka gently squeezed Helena's hand, a soft smile on her lips. "You should probably try to get some sleep too. All these late nights can't be good for you."
Helena smiled ruefully back at her as Myka released her hand and stood up. "I will."
Myka just shook her head and crossed the room, pausing when she got to the stairs to look back at the other woman, still seated on the couch.
"Goodnight, Helena." Myka climbed the stairs, disappearing from the inventor's sight before she could respond, leaving her wondering how the taller woman had stolen her heart without her realizing. But that was a question best left for another time, when she didn't have to worry about secret plans and broken hearts, when maybe she could be whole again.
With that, Helena opened to book once again, curling back into herself to ponder the great questions of the universe and wonder just how Mr. Schrödinger's cat fit into this ever-stranger vision of reality.