“Okay. Thanks.” Tick gathered his things and headed off to his next class.

~

Long after the last bell had rung, Tick and Mr. Chu sat at his desk, discussing the many theories—all of them confusing—of quantum physics. The stale smells of dried coffee and old books filled the air as Tick leaned forward, his elbows resting on top of several messy piles of papers that needed grading. Through the window over his teacher’s shoulder, Tick could see the long shadows of late afternoon creeping across the parking lot, where only a few cars remained.

“It’s basically the study of everything that’s teensy tiny,” Mr. Chu was saying. “Now that doesn’t sound like a very technical term, but that’s what it’s all about. Forget about the atom—that thing’s huge. We’re talking about electrons and protons and neutrons. And stuff that’s even smaller—quarks and gluons. Sound like fun?”

“Well . . . yeah, actually,” Tick answered.

“The basic thing you need to know is that all the stuff you think you know about the laws of physics—like, what goes up must come down—goes right out the window when you get down to particles that small. It’s been proven those rules don’t apply. Everything is different. And did you know that light has properties of both waves and particles . . .”

Mr. Chu went on to talk for at least a half hour straight, telling Tick all the basics of quantum physics and the experiments scientists had done to establish theories. What it really sounded like, though, was all a fancy way to say no one had a clue how it worked or why it was different from the big world.

“ . . . and so by observing an electron, you are actually deciding where it is, what position it’s in, what speed it’s moving. And another person could be doing an alternate experiment at the same time, observing the same electron, but in a totally different position. Now, this is getting on the fringe of what the real experts say, but some people think an electron and other particles can literally be in more than one place at once—an infinite number of places!”

Tick felt like he was a pretty smart kid, but some of Mr. Chu’s words made as much sense to him as an opera sung in pig latin. But that last sentence really made him think. “Wait a minute,” he said, stopping his teacher. “You keep talking about these little guys like they’re in a different universe. But aren’t those tiny things inside my body, inside this chair, inside this desk? Isn’t the big world you talked about just a whole bunch of the little worlds?”

Mr. Chu clapped his hands. “Brilliant!”

“Huh?”