The Quantum Dynamics of Unrequited Love

The meeting was destined to go skew-whiff when the mechanical shark showed up. He floundered in, teeth and innards exposed, his kelpy stench piquing and pickling my muzzles something rotten, his vulcanised rubber belly squeaking against the hall’s parquet floor. The shark embodied the downtrodden demeanour of assured helplessness: the border between lost and found.

Punxsutawney Phil beckoned the shark to join us. “Hey there friend, welcome to our group for Animals Exploited by Scientists Or Performers. AESOP for short. But this ain’t no fable to us, right folks?”

“No fables,” the rest of us chanted. Except Schrödinger's Cat. She did her own thing. When she turned up at all.

The shark attempted to back away but was too cumbersome to rotate and made little progress.

“Oh no you don’t, mister.” Phil chuckled, his glossy cheeks twitching. “Come right over. We ain’t gonna bite.”

Ham the Astrochimp hoo-haaed and flapped his elastic limbs. “Yeah right, but who's gonna stop him from biting us?”

“Ham, please. You know the score. Every stranger’s a friend we haven’t hugged yet.” Phil’s ears quivered and he snuffled through his welcome spiel before opening the floor. “Introductions, please. Let’s start with…” He raised his bushy brows at me.

“Hi, I’m Arleekin,” I said, trying to sound welcoming, trying to mask the nausea the shark’s stance was invoking.

“Hi Arleekin,” everyone said.

“I’m Arleekin,” I said again, because folks forget real quick. “And I’ve been exploited by scientists. One scientist in particular.” The rage, the fear, the memories gurgled in my guts and threatened to spill onto the hall floor. “He caged us, starved us, rang that wretched bell all day long, cut my fu—”

“Thank you, Arleekin. It’s okay. You’re safe,” Phil said, paws motioning calmness.

I breathed – slow-slow-sloooow – as Phil’d taught us.

“Who’s next?” Phil looked, nodded.

“I’ll go. I’m Laika,” she whispered.

“Hi Laika,” we said.

“And I have been exploited by scientists. And it burns.” Her eyes flickered and rolled back, lids aquiver. Poor Laika. Seen it all from up on high and left to find her own way down.

“Laika, thank you.” Phil’s eyes glinted with compassion. “We’re with you.”

Laika barked. Phil gestured to the next in our circle.

“Name’s Tiger,” the Catalan sheepdog yapped. “I’ve been exploited by scientists and performers. Sure miss my ol’ pal with the frizzle-topped head-coat. Einie, he called me. Haven’t seen him for who knows how long. Ain’t got a clock tower's chime what year we’re in.”

“We hear you, Tiger.” Stoic Phil, reassuring Phil.

The others followed: Ham the Astrochimp, the cloned Dollys, Schrödinger's Cat (“I exploited the scientists.”), and Jimmy the Crow (“I’m actually a raven, don’t you know?”).

Phil held out his squirrel-puff paws to the newcomer. “Bruce, will you share with us?” He smiled, nodded. “You got this, friend.”

“Hello. I’m Bruce.”

“Hi Bruce,” we said.

“And I’m…” He trailed off. His eyes were black and tarnished like old vinyl records that had long-ago skipped their covers, discarded, never to be played again. Bruce’s gigantic jaw trembled and his blood-stained, rubber teeth joggled flaccidly.

“We’re here for you, Bruce.” Phil tilted his portly, furry head and nodded twice, calming pheromones oozing from his glands, the musky groundhog scent masking the whiff of rotting seaweed the shark exuded.

“I’m Bruce.” The shark’s sunken eyes bulged. “And I’m… an animal who’s been exploited by scientists or performers or both.” He spat the words like they’d burned his gums. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.”

“Poppycock.”

“What? Who said that?” Phil’s nose twitched and his incisors clacked, his eyes darting from face to face, seeking out the naysayer.

“She did,” the four Dollys blurted in unison, nodding at Schrödinger's Cat.

“Hush your chops, Dollys.” Cat licked her paw, her elegant calico coat sheeny as ever, except for the tuft of fur that sat like a crown above her slick, beautiful face.

The Dollys’ ovine nostrils flared. “We have names, you know,” They spoke as one. “All different, all unique. We’re Daisy and Debbie and Dianna and Denise.”

“You’ll always be Dollys to me.” Cat arched her back provocatively, her tail snaking over the side of the stool. I felt my tale wag and put a stop to it. Damn, she’s hot.

No one in the group knew Cat’s real name. We’d asked plenty of times, but she’d never tell. “Names are but social constructs,” she’d say. On the face of it, she was better adjusted than anyone in the group and the most intelligent by far. But she had demons. I could smell the festering, noxious scent, the skeletons in her closet, the dread in the dreams.

Phil shook his head and wagged a paw for Bruce to continue.

“I was exploited during the production of a movie about—”

“You’re not a real shark,” the Dollys whispered.

“Dollys! Whichever one it was. This is a safe space. We don’t attack. We doubt cast aspersions.” Phil took a breath. He glanced around, poised to address any dissent. “Who are we to judge?”

“He’s made out of rubber and metal and wood,” Ham said. “What are those teeth even made of anyway? They couldn’t bite through a spider’s web, let alone a sealion.”

“We’re all made of stardust,” Cat said. “Ultimately.”

God, I love her. I could never tell her though. “Hey, Kitty. You say such beautiful things. Makes us feel all—”

“Don’t call me Kitty, mutt.” She scowled at me and flashed her teeth. Affectionately, I think.

“No, I won’t. I promise, Kitty. I mean, sorry. This slapdang tongue gets all loose and the words slobber out, like saliva when the bell tolls. And I…” Tell her! “I lo—”

“Arleekin, thank you for your… positive interjection.” Phil smiled. “But let’s get back on track, please.” Punxsutawney Phil cared for us. All of us, no matter what we’d been through, no matter how broken we’d become. His eyes told us we were safe. Loved. He’d given us all second chances.

Phil had led the group for decades with the patience of a barn owl. Guess that’s on account of him only getting exploited once a year. But like he always said, it was the waiting that did for him; until he saw the light, the way forward.

“Sure, yeah, sure thing,” I said, flicking back to the moment. “I’m sorry, let’s go, let’s do this.” Makes me all fuzzy, being around these guys, the nearest thing to family I’ve known since breaking out of Pavlov’s prison. I was the only one to escape. The others, Beck, Tungus and Milkah… hell, they didn’t make it.

“It’s a very brave thing you’ve done today, Bruce. We applaud you.” Phil’s incisors clacked in time with his paws. “Those who can.” He glanced at the Dollys, who tapped their forehooves. “Now, please, Bruce. Tell us your story.”

Bruce moved in, poking his snout between Ham’s stool and Jimmy’s perch. “Thank you, Mr Phil, sir.”

“Now look here, Bruce,” Phil said in a mock-admonishing tone. “Ain’t no airs nor graces here. I’m just plain old Phil to y’all. Or Pux if that’s preferable.”

“Okay, thank you. Pux.”

Phil smiled. “So pray tell, what brought you into our motley fold?”

Bruce gulped. “I’d been swimming… well, shuffling I guess, up and down these corridors for some time—”

“Time is a perceptual construct based on the—”

“Cat, please.” Phil waved Bruce on.

Cat rolled her eyes.

So sexy.

She saw me looking and scowled me down.

Bruce continued. “And I’d seen lights coming from this hall. Suppose I was just kinda curio—”

I barked. “Don’t say the C-word here.”

Everyone turned to Cat. Her bewitching dichroic eyes narrowed.

Bruce’s head creaked left and right. If his rubber cheeks were capable of blushing I reckon they would have glowed ruby red. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“It’s okay, Bruce. There are just some words we don’t utter. Words that can trigger certain things. You carry on. And go back, way back, to the beginning of your story.”

“Well, okay.” His dorsal fin swayed to the left. “In the beginning, I was minding my business, night swimming, seeking snacks, when this human—”

Ham spat on the floor.

“—woman started splashing around and screaming, scaring the fishes. I nudged her out the way, kinda friendly-like, and she kicked me right in the spiracle. Hurt like hell and I thought ‘I ain’t having this’ so I—”

Jimmy the Crow’s shrill screech filled the hall.

The Dollys bleated, loud and sharp, and nodded towards where Schrödinger's Cat had been sitting.

I howled. My stomach twisted.

Cat wasn’t there. She had gone. Disappeared. There one moment, literally not there the next.

“Oh no.” Phil slumped, eyes glazed. “Oh my.”

“Was it something I said?” Bruce said.

“He never should have come here,” the Dollys bleated, tapping their forehooves menacingly in Bruce’s direction.

“But I…” Bruce tried to turn, knocking into Ham’s stool.

The chimp reacted with a swift cuff to Bruce’s snout, prompting the shark to bare his teeth, which looked more comical than threatening.

“Wait.” Laika said. “Where’s she gone?”

Ham bounced and carouselled as he looked around, seeking Cat. “Not here. Not anywhere.” He slapped his stool and panted. Then paused, sat still for a moment or three and looked real thoughtful. “I wonder. Is it possible she was never here?”

“What do you mean, Ham?” I asked. “She was here, we all saw her. I could smell her.”

Ham’s lips withdrew, presenting his teeth and gums. “Can you see her now, Arleekin? Can you smell her now?”

Saliva pooled in my mouth. I swallowed hard. Her scent had gone. I scampered to her stool and sniffed where she’d been sitting. Nothing. No perfume lingered. “I don’t understand.”

Phil hopped off his stool and patted my haunch. “There were some things Cat never shared with the group.” He sighed. “But she opened up to me and Ham once, before y’all arrived. About the experiments back in Schrödinger’s lab. Near popped my pea-brain mind. Don’t know the details, but it sounded as though, somehow, she was in two places at once, in two different times, if such a thing could be imagined.” He shook his head, cheeks wobbling. “She knew the moment may arrive when she’d cross some boundary into one time and place… and stop being in the other. At which point, she said she would stop exciting, actually that she would never have existed in the other there… or then.”

“Makes no sense,” I said as the panic filled me. I never told her how I felt, never gave her the chance to say yes or no to understand that I loved her and that even though she was far too smart and far too beautiful for me, maybe we could have had something meaningful, magical, magnificent. “Makes no sense,” I said again.

“Some things don’t, Arleekin,” Phil said.

“No. I mean, if she’d never existed here, for us, how can we still remember her?”

Ham piped up. “I suspect that will fade. In the near future.”

“Future?” Tiger said.

Ham continued. “I believe it could be some kind of quantum transitionary flux that will cause our memories to linger for a short time but—”

I barked. “Then we can save her, maybe we have time to find her, bring her back before—”

Tiger barked. “What did you say?”

“Maybe we can save—”

“No, no. Ham, what did you say, transit what?”

“Transitionary flux.”

“Flux! That’s it.” Tiger leapt in the air. “My ol’ pal with the frizzle-topped head-coat. He could help. He has some special machine that can go from one time to another and leaves trails of fire but whoever’s in the machine is unhurt and they can come back to the present time, too, and maybe we could use it to find Cat and bring her back. But… he’s a human.”

Ham hawked and spat. “Can’t get help from a human.”

We looked at one another. “Come on,” I said. “This is Cat we’re talking about. We have no choice.”

“We always have a choice,” Phil said. “But y’all know where I stand.” He smiled. “Let’s do this.”

Jimmy cawed, the Dollys bleated, Tiger and Laika barked, Ham hee-hawed and Bruce’s innards drummed. It was decided: we would save Cat.

With Cat gone, Ham was the sharpest mind on account of his cosmonautic training. His plan was simple: travel in Tiger’s friend’s time machine to when Cat was a kitten (before she got exploited), kittennap her and bring her back to our time.

“We can work out the rough when we need to travel to.” Ham scratched his head. “The problem is the where.”

That’s when Bruce piped up, his eyes as bright as they’d been since he’d arrived. “Princeton, New Jersey.”

“What?” I barked. “How would you know that, you’re just a fa—”

“Fake shark? Yep, heard it all before, doggy. But I ain’t half as dumb as I look.” His innards clunked and hissed. “Anyways, I used to swim in Sandy Hook Bay, and one day an octopus buddy pointed him out, and octopuses are real smart.”

“Him? Him who, Bruce?” I said.

“Erwin Schrödinger of course! Strolling up Ideal Beach with his two ladyfriends. Well, we got chatting. Interesting fellow. Very interesting. Mentioned that he lectured at Princeton.”

“This is it.” I panted hard and licked Bruce’s snout, but instantly regretted it as I almost yakked up. “Thank you.”

Tiger sourced the machine from his human friend. Ham adapted it to incorporate a spatial component and we were all set, ready to save… to save…

“Wait,” I said. “What are we doing again?”

“Cat,” Ham said. “We’ve got to save Cat.”

“Who’s Cat?” I said. I looked around: blank expressions on the faces of the Dollys, Jimmy and the others.

“I… don’t know,” Ham said. “I thought I did… but… no.”

I looked at each of them in turn. We were definitely in the middle of something. There was a silver-looking car in the corner of the hall. Did the shark travel in it? I… I…

“Okay then, folks. Let’s continue.” Punxsutawney Phil smiled at Bruce. “Please, Bruce. Go on.”

“Where was I?”

“Something about a man on a beach?” Ham said.

“Ah, of course. So this man on the beach gave me a box and asked me to mind it for him. Told me it was very special. Look.” Bruce shimmied himself perpendicular to the group, his vulcanised rubber belly squeaking against the hall’s parquet floor. A brine-stained, seaweed-strewn wooden box sat nestled among his cogs and wires.

I approached, sniffing. The scent was familiar. It excited me, but I didn’t know why. “What’s inside?”

“Don’t know,” Bruce said. “Shall we take a look?”

Ham removed it from just behind Bruce’s right pectoral fin and prised it open.

An elegant, calico-coated cat leapt out. She had a tuft of fur that sat like a crown above her slick, beautiful face. Her dichroic eyes bewitched me. She radiated the aura of wonder and magnificence.

I was in love.

“I’m Sophie,” said the cat, nuzzling her cheek into my neck. “And I’ve been exploited by scientists.”

END