"The scale is given by Planck's constant. Which is a small number; one of the fundamental constants of physics. But in real terms -- suppose you measured an electron's position to within a billionth of an inch. Then the momentum uncertainty would be such that a second later you couldn't be sure where the damn thing was to within a hundred miles."

I nodded. "Then the principle is describing a fundamental fuzziness in reality--"

She waved her hand with exasperation. "Don't talk like a cheap data desk, Jack. There's nothing fuzzy about reality. The wave functions are the fundamental building blocks of the Universe; their governing wave equations are completely deterministic... well, never mind. The Uncertainty Principle is essentially an expression of the scale of those wave functions."

"How does this relate to your work?"

She sighed and sat back in her couch. "It was at the heart of it, Jack."

Eve had spent much of her working life trying to develop the principles of remote translation systems. Teleport beams, to you and me.

She said, "A translation device might work by scanning the position of every particle in an object. That information could be transferred somewhere else and a copy constructed of the original, exact down to the last electron."

"But the Uncertainty Principle tells us that's impossible."

"Correct. But the Principle says nothing about transferring exact data about the wave functions themselves... and that was the approach I was working on. Also, in some way we still don't fully understand, the quantum waves provide a connectivity to space. When two objects are once joined there is a sense in which they are forever linked, by quantum properties. It may be that unless full quantum functions are copied, remote translation is impossible."

"That which God has joined, let no man put asunder."

She looked at me suspiciously, as if expecting me to burst into tears. "Something like that. Jack, it may also be that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon. Without our defining quantum functions -- without the anchorage they give us to reality, and to those around us -- we are nothing."

I set down my glass, stood and walked to the wall. Hesitantly she got up and walked closer to her side. "And this wave-function mapping was the technical barrier you could never breach."

She shrugged. "Perhaps it's just as well. Because if this was a perfect image of me, Jack, stored in this wall, you'd never leave this damn apartment." She looked up at me, and I imagined her eyes softening. "Would you?"

"What would happen if you violated the Uncertainty Principle?"

The image wavered slightly; I imagined the wall frantically searching its datastores for a response. "You can't. Jack, haven't you understood a word I've said?"

"Just suppose."

She frowned. "If the uncertainty limit were lowered somehow then greater data compression would be possible. Better data storage."

"So sharper wall images. What else?"