King of All I Survey
Chapter 88: Schrödinger’s Tree Trunk

Chapter 88: Schrödinger’s Tree Trunk

A serving tray floated over to Mom/ Maribel with another glass of pisco. She scooped it off the tray with a deft wave of her hand.

"I think Hernandez is just looking out for his country. Nobody wants a fight with the CIA after all," Dad said.

Maribel Mom laughed, "Oh, he’s afraid all right. He’d be more afraid of us if he knew we could just materialize a LITV around him anytime, anyplace and pop him into a prison cell on our private island or drop him into an active volcano." She took a long sip of pisco.

Dad intercepted the glass and placed it on a serving tray that he had summoned. "We should restore your normal personality. You need some recovery time as yourself after so long undercover."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Back to boring Susan," Maribel complained.

"Boring Susan?" Dad asked. "I don’t think you should talk about her like that."

"Yeah, what are you going to do about it, tough guy?" She challenged, punching him in the arm.

"Hey! Ow! Stop that. Joe, now please!"

Mom’s face blanked for a second, then her expression changed, and her face was more recognizable as her old self. She looked at Dad, "Um, sorry. I didn’t mean that. I love you both, and I wouldn’t trade this life for anything."

Dad smiled, "I know. Unless you can be Batman, then, of course, you should be Batman."

"Of course," Mom said smiling.

"So, listen," I said, "I asked Joe to make a nice picnic dinner for you two."

"That’s sweet, but it’s dark and raining," Mom said.

"Actually, it’s about two hours before sunset," I countered.

"No, it’s almost ten o’clock..." Mom tilted her head and looked at me as if I were crazy.

"Oh, I should mention," I said with a huge smile, "I asked him to prepare you a picnic dinner... on a deserted beach in Fiji. Have fun!"

I had just enough time to see the surprise on their faces, before Joe, acting on my pre-arranged signal, transported them both to a tropical paradise to enjoy a picnic dinner on the beach at sunset. I sighed. "Well, Joe, what good is being king of the world if you can’t do nice things for good people?"

"Right," Joe agreed.

"But back to business. Joe, could you move the entire Super-Secret Planetary Leadership Headquarters Treehouse Fortress?" I asked.

"Move it? I’ll need more detail. What exactly is it you want to do?"

"Well, at some point, somebody’s going to find out our identities. Like Dad said, that’s going to lead to people finding our house and then keeping the headquarters super-secret might be a problem. If you could move it now, and set us up somewhere else, then it wouldn’t matter so much if people swarmed over our yard or set up aerial surveillance to see us disappear when we entered the building."

"I see," Joe answered, "Yes, I could move it. I’d need to make some slight alterations. As a treehouse, there’s actually a tree running through the middle of it right now."

"What? I don’t see any tree. I thought the treetop above was an illusion or something. There’s no sign of a tree trunk in here." I looked around just to be sure.

"Apparently, you didn’t think through the implications of the physics I taught you." Joe said. "The loquaciously named headquarters building exists in the same space as the tree trunk in four dimensions only. In the rest of the dimensions in this particular time-space continuum, or this universe if you will, it does not share the same space."

"So, multiple physical objects can occupy the same ’perceived’ space at once?" I asked, trying to run calculations in my head.

"Not exactly," Joe explained, "Well, sort of. It depends upon how you define perceived. You can’t perceive the tree trunk, even if you walked through it. I can because my sensory inputs can interact with non-physical spatial dimensions. In essence, the tree, or any object, exists in multiple quantum states at the same time, but those states can be influenced by direct intervention."

"So, I think you’re saying that the tree trunk has been rendered completely massless so it doesn’t fully interact with the bits of the universe that I can see and touch."

"Close, it also doesn’t interact with forces that you can’t perceive like gravity and the electromagnetic force."

"Joe, do you know what that means?" I asked with growing excitement.

"Yes, I am in fact explaining it to you even now." Joe said.

"No, I mean... Ok, can you bring the tree back into physical space at any time?"

"Like in the Pleistocene? No. I can only bring it back within the current timeline."

I shook my head. "I don’t know if that’s your attempt at a Dad joke or if you’re being serious, but what I mean is, if I asked you to make the tree solid again right now, could you?"

"Yes. Because I exist as a multidimensional quantum presence, I can interact with particles that otherwise don’t react with your perceived universe. That means I can change their... there’s not a word in human languages, let’s say their attunement to move them dimensionally. Local Interdimensional Travel Vehicles work on this principle, as does interstellar travel. Without Interdimensional Quantum Computing Artificial Intelligences, those things can’t be controlled."

Suddenly, another work-around for defeating the Galactic Union’s war machine struck me, but I didn’t want to derail my original train of thought, "Oh, stick a pin in that little gem for later! You should have told me!"

"I did teach you the physics, it should be obvious..." Joe scolded.

"Whatever. Let me paint a hypothetical picture, Joe."

"That’s not how it works, maybe you don’t understand the physics after all..."

"That has to be a Dad joke, it’s almost, but not quite funny. As if the funniness were not perceivable in the known universe." I said getting way off topic. "Anyway, what I mean is, imagine a fully shielded warship. It’s shields are mostly impenetrable by normal objects or energy weapons unless they have immense power, like high powered nukes or something. But if you take a small missile out of the physical universe and then bring it back once it’s past the shields. Ka-blooey! No more warship. Is that right?"

"I cannot answer that." Joe said.

I had never seen Joe stumped by a question, especially one about theoretical physics. "Think about it, though, would it work?"

"I mean, I am forbidden to answer that." Joe replied.

A light bulb went off in my head. "That’s how the Galactic Union can so easily destroy our shielded installations, isn’t it?"