Welcome to Witchlandia Read online

  WELCOME TO WITCHLANDIA

  Steven Popkes

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  May 10, 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-606-6

  Copyright © 2016 Steven Popkes

  As with all things, for Wendy and Ben.

  Copenhagen, 1926

  The sun glared off the snow, shining the early November light into the room as if from a mirror.

  Niels Bohr noticed when he walked into the light he felt noticeably warmer than when he walked into its shadow.

  Werner Heisenberg stared outside the window without moving.

  “You are taking it too hard,” Niels said.

  Werner waved his hand in the air, the smoke from his cigarette making spiral figures. “Schrödinger’s ‘visualization is not quite right’—he is correct in that, certainly. His visualization is crap.”

  “Werner,” said Niels gently. “He has shown his wave equation and your matrix mechanics are equivalent.”

  “Crap.”

  “Did you read Von Neumann’s paper?”

  “Yes,” Werner said shortly.

  “He shows that both sets of equations can be shown to be equivalent in Hilbert space. Is that crap?”

  Werner remained silent for a moment. “There is a fundamental problem. A presumption that there is anything there at all until it is measured.”

  “Yes. Even Erwin admits that.”

  “Then, we cannot know that which cannot be measured!”

  “Yes.” Niels thought for a moment. “But there is opportunity there.”

  Werner looked away from the window. “What do you mean?”

  “It is true that we cannot know that which cannot be measured,” said Niels casually. “But the corollary is also true: we can know that which can be measured.”

  Werner looked blank. “Yes.”

  “We can measure the speed of light to be a constant and the lensing of light in a gravitational field. Thereby, we can know relativity. We can measure the interference pattern of light and the activity of electrons. Therefore, we can know quantum mechanics.”

  “We can’t know everything. Not everything can be measured.”

  Niels nodded. “I know. But let us remain with those things that can be measured.”

  “All right.”

  “Quantum mechanics and relativity are two independent views of how the world behaves. How we observe the universe determines what we will observe.”

  “Of course.”

  “There is an apparent contradiction between quantum mechanics and relativity. I am not saying this contradiction will stand, but it does stand now. There could, therefore, be other views of world behavior equally rigorous and compelling but with equally strong apparent contradiction as there is between relativity and quantum mechanics. A verifiable observation contradicting both quantum mechanics and relativity would require its own different view of the universe.”

  Werner stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Niels paused for a moment and knocked the ash from his cigarette. “I must tell you about my mother.”

  Part 1: Katelin and David, 1994

  Chapter 1.1: Katelin

  “Katelin, there’s a party over on the ball field tonight. Want to come?”

  I shook my head, not looking up. “I have to study.”

  Sandy sat on my bed next to my desk. In our dorm room that was about the only place she could have faced me.

  “Come on. It’s Friday.”

  “And I have a forensics test on Monday. So what?”

  She gave me that look. “And I’m writing a paper on live electromicroscopy of tardigrades. So what? It’s no sin to have fun.”

  Blonde, blue-eyed, quick as a jackdaw and curved to kill, Sandy didn’t have much free time. She was one of those women who breeze through life. She worked hard enough to wreck the curve for the rest of us and then quit and had fun with her time. Me, I have to study to get my grades. I’m a hundred pounds soaking wet and need to work out to have a chest at all. Which I do—I want to be a cop and muscle mass counts for a lot when you’re as small as I am. I liked Sandy all right—she was nice enough, kept her half of the room uncluttered. She was finishing her Ph.D. in physics improving electromicroscopy for the world so we were never in the same classes. Why she decided to live in an undergraduate dorm I’ll never understand. When we became roomies I figured she would be living the quiet life. She had a good head for math and liked to help me shop for clothes I didn’t think I needed.

  I looked back at her. I could see the evening spread out in front of me. Sandy would shortly be joined by her two girlfriends. They would spend the next three hours talking while sporadically getting ready. About nine, they’d leave and I’d get a blessed three or four hours of solitude until she returned, somewhere between tipsy and outright drunk. If she returned alone, and I was awake, she’d want to talk about the party. If I was asleep, she’d bump through the drawers getting ready for bed, giggling to herself and thoroughly waking me up. If she didn’t come back alone, I’d go down the hall to the Resident Assistant and bunk out on the floor for the night. If Sandy didn’t come home I’d go looking for her.

  Better to declare defeat early and leave the field to the victor.

  “I’ll study at the library. Catch you later.”

  “Oh, come on, Katelin. Live a little.”

  I didn’t answer. I put on my slicks, threw my notes and the textbook into my backpack, grabbed my stick—a beautiful Bianchi I had bought just last year—and started to head out the door when I remembered I’d forgotten my beeper. Columbia’s not a big town. The Police Department isn’t big enough to have its own staff of divers, boat captains and pilots. So, they take on flyers like me. It’s similar to volunteer fire departments, except for the part about the fire.

  “Go on,” she said waving her hands. “Off to Witchlandia with you, then.”

  Witchlandia: Sandy’s term for any place I went outside of her interest. Coined the day she met me since I am, by popular definition, a witch. Not that any sort of witch exists. Or could exist, since there is no magic but only as yet undiscovered physics. Not that—but never mind.

  I stopped by the RA’s room and claimed the floor study area so I’d have homesteading rights when I got back. Then I ran down the stairs muttering to myself. When I decided Sandy and I were the least difficult combination out of the choices handed me, I hadn’t counted on so many interruptions.

  I consoled myself. I could use the flying time, anyway.

  Dobbs Hall is one of only two tall dorms on campus, and because Tabitha Purlin threw herself off the eighth floor balcony in 1992, the balconies were fenced over. I couldn’t get outside until I’d gone all the way to the ground floor. I could have insisted on a roof access. Paranormals have odd rights. We have our own little clauses carved out of the Civil Rights and Americans for Disability acts. Comes from being useful, I suppose.

  It gave me time to get my temper in check. Sandy was a good roommate in most ways. Like everybody else, she had her idiosyncrasies. I did, too. I strapped my helmet on.

  The weather had turned cool an hour before but now it was downright chilly. I could feel it right through my slicks. The thin spandex wasn’t much insulation. It was early spring. I could smell impending spring in the air but it was going to have to fight through the mud to make it.

  A stick isn’t like a bicycle—there isn’t much air resistance if you’re properly trained. Once you wrap yourself in the bubble—or the envelope or the field; we use a lot of different terms for it—the air is still. Practically speaking there was no reason for wearing slicks at all. I could fly just as well in an overcoat—minus the weight issues, of course.


  But bicycle tights look way cooler than galoshes when you’re flying over people’s heads. Besides, slicks are about the only thing my physique looks good in.

  I settled into the seat—took a moment to admire the paint job. The summer before I’d started college I’d blown a month’s worth of minimum wage on those golden flecks swimming in shocked violet. I checked the instruments and pulled the cover off the pitot tube in the front point—just long enough to stick out of the bubble. Got myself in the right frame of mind. I hovered about a foot off the ground to get settled, rose at an even hundred feet a minute and took off across campus, as pure of thought and bereft of machinery as Peter Pan.

  Chapter 1.2: David

  I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Misty made pictures out of the ceiling paint trying to make me laugh. Some of them were pretty good. Not bad for a delusion. Carl rapped on the door.

  “David. You naked?”

  “You wish.”

  He came in and sat down in the only chair in the room. “You should be so lucky.”

  I chuckled.

  He didn’t notice and looked uncomfortable. He was quiet for a minute. “You can stay here for as long as you want—”

  I grimaced. I could guess what was coming.

  “—but it’s been a week.”

  “You’ve gotten some calls, I take it.”

  Carl cocked his head to one side. “You could say that.”

  “Who’s called?”

  He ticked them off on his fingers. “Conductor Senbein has graduated from threatening dismemberment if you don’t let him immediately submit you to the Washington University Young Artists Piano Concerto Competition to eternal banishment if you don’t at least return his calls. Meister Eisenhart has expressed grave disappointment that after all his years as your teacher you could treat him this way.”

  “What about my dad?”

  Carl shook his head. “He probably hasn’t heard.”

  I nodded. My father was a fisherman out of Gloucester. He was likely far out in the Atlantic hunting swordfish.

  “So,” Carl said. “What happened?”

  I didn’t say anything. The room grew thick with awkward silence. “You know what happened,” I said finally. “I finished the audition and Senbein called me back to have dinner with him. He told me he wanted submit me and I excused myself and left the building. I called you—it’s not like I know anybody else in this state.”

  “That’s what you did. But that’s not what happened.”

  I knew what he meant. “I stopped breathing.”

  “Eh?”

  “It felt like I stopped breathing.” I looked at him. He was waiting for me. “I’ve been playing since I was four—since I went to the hospital. And always when I went to the well—”

  “The well?”

  I stared at him. “You must know what I mean. The place it all comes from. Whatever it is that turns a bunch of chords into music. The water. The air. The oxygen of the music.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I looked away. “It wasn’t there. Then, while I was playing for Senbein, it went away completely. When he said he wanted to submit me all I could see was concert after recital after concert where I felt like I was choking. I left.”

  Carl didn’t say anything for a moment. “You do know that everybody has bad days. Sometimes the inspiration just isn’t there.”

  “Why play, then?”

  “To get paid, mostly.” He chuckled. “Even when it’s merely a mechanical exercise. You’ve been playing in contests for years. Surely, it was like that sometimes.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a rare gift to have uninterrupted passion for so long.” Carl sighed. “But now it’s time to grow up. You’ll have good days and bad days. The show must go on.”

  “Maybe I should be a fisherman like Dad. He could probably use the help.”

  “Your father would skin me alive if I sent you back to the boat.”

  “That’s because I’m not very good at it.”

  “No, it’s because you’re meant for different things. It’s a sin to squander your gifts.”

  “Some gift.”

  “Yeah,” said Carl sadly. “Some gift.” He slapped both hands on his knees. “Well, then. The band is doing a mixer out on the ball field tonight. Big bonfire. Lots of girls. Want to come?”

  The room seemed suddenly small and claustrophobic. I shrugged.

  Carl sighed. He stood up and scratched his ear. “I grew up with Guillermo. I cosigned the note when he bought his boat. I’ve known you since you were born. I helped out when you went to the hospital. So I’m glad you came here. I’m happy to help.” He stopped for a moment. “So listen to me about this. You don’t get off this easy. You have something in you any one of us would kill for and that takes away your right to waste it. That’s the way to end up a bitter old music teacher at a half-wit college who gets off playing in a nostalgia band.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “The glamour fades after a while.” He slapped my foot. “You know where the ball field is. Come if you want to.”

  I wandered downstairs after he’d gone. I saw he’d left the Liszt transcription of Beethoven’s seventh symphony out near the piano—something he’d introduced me to years ago. I must have been nine when I first attempted it.

  “Nice try,” I said.

  I was staring off the edge of the piano, past the Statue of Liberty lamp resting on the lid, through the window into the gathering darkness. I remembered he’d gotten it when we had all vacationed down at Coney Island.

  I sat down at the piano and drew my fingers across the keys, gently, feeling the smoothness of the ivory. I didn’t like Columbia. I didn’t like Missouri. I didn’t like Carl’s house or the pollen-scented breezes. Not that I had anything against Carl—he’d taken me in when I needed him.

  I leaned against the keyboard.

  Misty turned the head of the lamp towards me.

  “It’s too pretty a night,” she said. “Let’s go out. It’ll be fun.”

  “Hush,” I said. I fiddled with the keyboard. The price of psychosis is inane chatter from inanimate objects.

  “Come on, David. It’ll be fun.” She put on her deep sultry voice.

  I put my hand over the lamp stand to shut her up. Lady Liberty grew a triple D cup size with hard little nipples. Startled, I let go. She was eyeing me lasciviously with a big silver-plated grin.

  “Stop that.”

  Lady Liberty deflated like an old balloon. Then the lamp turned to me and winked. “Better?”

  “Okay,” I said. I grabbed my coat. A symbolic gesture of defeat as the heavy black buttons gave her something of mine to talk through should she be so inclined. She gets cranky when she’s thinks she’s been left at home alone. As if I could. I should write a book on the care and feeding of schizophrenic delusions. I looked at the buttons. “But don’t make me crazy or I’ll throw you in the river.” The buttons smiled back.

  “You’re already crazy.”

  “Crazier.”

  But I liked that coat. It was a really nice black overcoat made from wool. Not so heavy it felt like wearing armor, but not so light you forgot it was there. A dress coat under which I wore my jeans and T-shirt. Deceit is part of appearance, I guess.

  Then down the stairs and across the grass into the gentle air. Misty was right. It was a beautiful night.

  Chapter 1.3: Katelin

  Practice makes perfect, I said to myself as I came in a good thirty feet over the top of the library. I held it still in mid-air—precision, Sam had told me. The regulations say within fifty feet but don’t settle for that. The stick had all the required aircraft instruments but I didn’t consult them. I wanted to be able to hold it by sheer will. It’s an important skill for a couple of reasons. The first is obvious. If you don’t know where you are you could be history already. This is true for any aircraft. Besides, when you’re flying around buildings, you don
’t have time to fly by the instruments.

  The second is unique to witchflying—all right, I’ll use the term. It’s the only good one around. I could call it “psychokinetic object self-motivation” but I’d gag first. Witchflying is all about psychology. Human beings know they can’t fly so they can’t. But deep in their hind brains we’re not so convinced that other things can’t fly. And if other things can fly, why not a stick? Why not a stick under my control? It’s like that old story about the high jumper not being able to jump his own height. But then, he thinks, if I can’t jump my own height, why can’t I jump one inch over my own height?

  Even with that little self-conceit, if your mind isn’t right, it’s not going to work at all. It wasn’t enough to know the instruments said your stick was five hundred feet in the air; you had to know your stick was five hundred feet in the air since it was your knowledge that was keeping your stick five hundred feet in the air. Remember, like every other civilized act, we’re using brains evolved to throw rocks and gather berries, organs never intended for advanced math or levitation. The brain is built to use sight, balance and tactile information to track what’s going on. Witchflying isn’t any different than the uneven parallel bars or swinging on a trapeze. You have to know where you are.

  I knew I’d never be more than a visual pilot—a really good visual pilot, but eyes only nonetheless. That’s the limit of my ambition. There are perhaps five thousand people in the world that can lift themselves an inch off the ground on anything at all—broom, vacuum cleaner, Bianchi. Of that, maybe a couple hundred are really good pilots—I’m trying to be number 201. Of those, there are three who have the genius to witchfly on instruments. There used to be four, but last winter my old teacher, Sam Kozak, got lost in a snowstorm and pancaked on Mount Washington while looking for two kids who wandered off the trail. Pilots track their own.

  I let myself down slowly until my feet were about six inches off the deck. Then, I pulled back the stick and set the tail down and stepped off. Sam would have been proud.