What If? - Chapter 2

“Pat!” I drop my bag and sprint over to the machine, flipping the oversized red switch labeled Off. “What the hell are you doing?!”

He looks at me quizzically, “What?

“Are you seriously asking me?” he stares back at me blankly. It’s one of those times when there is no explaining. Where the person on the other end either gets it or they don’t and there is no logical way to make them understand.

“You have a loaded shotgun pointed at your head!”

“Oh, yeah, of course, it’s a Quantum Suicide Experiment.” Pat states calmly.

“You could have killed yourself.”

“Technically I did.”

“What?” I can hear the exacerbation in my own voice.

“Five times.” He holds up five fingers.

“You still look alive to me.”

“I died in five alternate realities though.” Pat gets out of the Quantum Suicide Chair and starts looking at a monitor full of numbers.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“I’m not.” He shoots over his shoulder, furiously typing on a keyboard.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” I’m ready to just leave and politely ignore all future phone calls from him.

“Huh?” I’ve interrupted his train of thought. “Oh, no, follow me.”

We leave Lab 207, taking a shortcut through the break room and into a white brick room. It smells horrible.

“What is that smell, like dead anima-“

“That’s the Schrödinger's cats.” Pat explains, as if I have any clue what that means.

He leads me over to another chair-like contraption with a helmet and goggles. It looks like something out of a low budget sci-fi mini-series.

“Another shotgun machine?” I quip.

“No.”

“Well, what does this thing do?”