He nodded.  “It’s that big.  Imagine everything you believed you knew, and I don’t mean just you—I mean everyone.  Imagine everything all of us thought we knew about how the world worked suddenly made no sense.  Nothing.  Not gravity.  Not oxygen.  Not even the sun rising every morning.  Because while they all appear to work day in and day out, imagine just peering at everything in the world a little closer to reveal that it was all broken.  That water travels uphill rather than downhill.  That things were never where you left them.  That’s how weird it is.  Protons, photons and electrons.  No one would believe it if it hadn’t been proven time and time again to be utterly bizarre.”

They both remained still in their seats, letting his words sink in.  “So… how is this related to the tower in Bolivia or glass in the desert?”

“I’ll tell you how.  Because just twenty years ago, there was no way I would have believed something like that glass spire could be real.  Not a chance.  But in the world of quantum, it’s no longer possible to claim anything isn’t real.”

Townsend reached into his seatback and pulled out a magazine.  “This magazine,” he said, flipping through it, “is as real as anything else in the world, right?  Pages made from paper and ink, all bound together with pictures taken by cameras we know exist.  And yet none of it does.  Because while this object, this magazine, is real, every square inch of it is based on building blocks we cannot call real.”

“None of the building blocks are real?  How is that even possible?”

“No one knows,” answered Townsend.  “No one.  Which is the ultimate conundrum.  Not just for me but for every living person on this planet who understands even the smallest modicum of quantum theory.”

“Which now includes us.”

He nodded.  “Which now includes you.”

“But… this is all still theory.  After all, it is called Quantum Theory, right.”

“It’s called a theory.  But it’s not.  It is extraordinarily and disturbingly real.”

“Then,” Joe said, looking around, “you’re saying this entire plane, the metal, the circuitry, the fuel, even the passengers… none of us are real.”

“I’m not saying.  I’m asking the same thing Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein asked—how can we consider any of our world real when the constituent parts themselves cannot be real?”

“Wow.  That’s heavy.”

“And it’s not all,” said Townsend, briefly pausing as a passenger strolled by.  “The very definition of weird takes on a whole new meaning when it comes to quantum entanglement.”

Angela nodded.  “Now that I’ve heard of.  I don’t understand it, but I’ve heard of it.”

“Quantum particles are strange enough, but entanglement of those particles truly puts weirdness in the rearview mirror.”

“Entanglement has to do with them being connected, right?”