Memories

Quantum World

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If you want to use Tora, or any of my other characters, PM me.

Akira was in agony. And then, somehow, through the blackness, she suddenly saw. Not in the faded, untrue way she always had seen. But the truth. And she moved her hand with the tiniest of flicks, gently pushing on this new world that was opened up to her. The response was instantaneous, automatic screams from the man and boy. Another twist and she manipulated the gluons for the first time, breaking down the atoms in the ties that held her to hydrogen.

"Thank you."

What else could she say? If they hadn't taken her eyes, she'd have never seen.

"I understand now. Reality is a lie. Classical mechanics are false. There is only the quantum world. Everything else is a lie."

Even her other senses were false. Solid was a lie. Almost everything was space. But she could still get an idea of what she would have seen, if of course, what she had been seeing for all these years was true. She even could tell to the exact microhertz what the frequency of the colour of their clothes were.

"Humanity cannot comprehend this. It is so much more that what we think…"

She used the light from overhead, shifted the frequency down, increasing the wavelength to create a barrier of searing heat around her. Infrared radiation, a bubble a metre thick. She took a few nervous steps forward. Soon she realised could use concentrations of gluons and the movements of W- and Z-bosons allowed her to guess with startling clarity where objects that her body would consider physical were. She slowly walked forward. The slight electromagnetic hum of human bodies seemed rather nervous about coming too close to her.

She walked and kept on walking. Some guards tried to shoot her but it was a simple matter to deflect the bullets so they lodged in the ceiling and wouldn't hurt anyone. When they tried to get too close, they reached the first warning layer of heat and quickly backed away. Then she felt something running towards her, something that should be bright and pure but was somehow broken, with the molecules… wrong. The chemical compounds weren't right.

Alien neurobiology wasn't Akira's area of specialism. But she was very good at telling where something was wrong. So she made a couple of quick changes, broke and reformed bonds, shuffled some stuff around and then…

"I'm sorry. Are you…? Oh, your eyes!"

"Excuse me? Who are you?"

"My name is Broo. I was a student at the Jean Grey-"

"Me too. I'm Akira. How do I get out?"

Broo paused.

"This way."

Something slid into Akira's hand and the pair shot off down the corridor. Then Broo said something in an alien language which didn't sound very polite.

"Azazel's here."

Akira couldn't get a complete fix on him. There was something around him, almost warping. And then he vanished from where he was but there was a shifting in the photons just there and…

Phoenix yelped.

"Stop it! I can't keep this up!"

"Oh, is da ickle Phoenix having problems with looking at things on an itsy-bitsy scale? How sad?"

"Just because you're an obsessive-compulsive who spent a whole millennia going round just looking at things on a quantum scale to "see what it's like" doesn't mean the rest of us are that sad!"

"She does have a point, Phoenix. We're cosmic beings. Observing the quantum level shouldn't be a hassle for us."

"Shut up, Death!"

Azazel yelped as he appeared to find himself enclosed in what appeared to be very, very cold ice. The girl was walking towards him, her empty eye sockets still dripping with blood.

"You will take us to the Jean Grey Institute or I'll… I'll have to tighten the nitrogen you're encased in and it's very, very cold. 63.15 Kelvin. Or −195.79 °C. Or −320.33 °F. It depends on your standard scale. Strictly speaking, we should all use Kelvin. It's the SI unit and I'm sorry I'm gabbling but I'm not feeling very safe so I apologise, but can you please take me and my companion back to our school? It's just that if I'm not back in half an hour I'll miss Dr Banner's talk that Mr Logan managed to persuade him to do on gamma radiation and given the circumstances, I suddenly have a much clearer understanding of wave-particle duality and I want to see if Dr Banner agrees with my hypothesis."

She paused and then went "Ow." Then she went "Oohh!" as if she had discovered something interesting.

"Hey, Broo! I can control the electro-photons to prevent the pain from my injuries from registering, without permanent nerve damage! I think I've been doing it since I really got an idea of…"

In a desperate attempt to escape the gabbling girl and her pet alien, Azazel teleported them all to the Jean Grey School and was about to teleport away when someone rugby-tackled him and started punching him in the mouth.

"HOW DARE YOU TAKE AKIRA!? HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY FRIEND!? I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU!"

He opened his eyes, saw a perfect replica of his wayward granddaughter from when she had been a teenager and had kept out of his way and that was just one thing too much for him and he teleported away, silently swearing to sever all ties with the Hellfire Academy. If they were going to end up facing the gabbling powerhouse who hadn't even noticed her eyes had been gouged out and his granddaughter reborn, well, he was going to go back to La Isla des Demonas.

Etana had definitely inherited her maternal grandmother's temperament. And that was not good. Not good at all. Why on earth had he ever had Akela with her?

"Who was Etana's maternal grandmother? I don't think she ever said."

"Etana didn't know. But I think Zillah was rather astonished when she turned up."

A.N. I haven't got a clue what happened with this chapter. It was meant to be very serious. Very dark. And far too like the other stuff I've been writing for the last few chapters.

And then Akira opened her mouth.

That's when I was struck by the sudden realisation that Akira is probably the truest representation of me you'll see in Memories. Geeky, not the most socially aware and when under any form of stress, tends to gabble Physics to keep herself sane. Writing her little speech took barely any time at all, just a few cross-checks on facts. That's not to say I'm Akira. I'm definitely not a genius, and I certainly don't understand quantum mechanics beyond the basics that I've mentioned. For that reason, don't expect too many bits from Akira's perspective. No one can write in the terms of someone who sees the world the way Akira does. Maybe one day...

Also, you weren't going to get this chapter for another day or so, but I got unconditional offers to two of my choices, so I want to spread the happiness! YAY!