Inspired by a visit to CERN, Switzerland
I come back home with my head filled with physics and heart filled with awe and start chattering to you.
I gush about colliding particles and invisible dark matter and you nod your head sagely in non understanding. Ghosts, you pronounce them. The dark matter particles you can’t see but whose presence you can feel.
And that reminds me – I jump to tell you about something even cooler.
Soulmate particles!, I say, and your ears perk up. I tell you all about quantum entanglement and how two particles can share an inexplicable bond even when separated far, far apart. And the applications that could begin at cryptography and end at teleportation.
But you’re not awed. You’re upset. That the soulmates are being separated far, far apart. We go quiet for a minute. Because I’m not really home, in a physical sense. I’m only on the phone with you from 5,000 miles away. I’m sorry for separating the soulmates, I whisper. It’s not your fault, you whisper back.
I would like to go on and on and tell you all about all the mysteries of the cosmos before you start getting sleepy. But then there are an infinite number of things I would like to do, and I can’t have all of them, can I? I haven’t quite mastered the skill of quantum superposition yet.
They say love is the mother of invention. Maybe when the world finally receives the gift of teleportation, it’ll be because I woke up one day and decided I could not stay away from you a nanosecond longer.
For now, I’ll look up at the night sky and know that the same starlight is reaching me and you. That we’re not really far, far apart in the grand scheme of things.
I’m sure the soulmate particles always find their way back to each other, I reassure you. Mmkay, you mumble and fall asleep, and I stay on the call for a few more moments imagining I can hear your breathing.
Preetha Devi is a young aspiring writer from India. When she’s not busy daydreaming about being a published author, she works as a marketer. She holds a dual MBA from Bocconi University and IIM Bangalore and loves traveling, cats, and desserts. She can be found on Bookstagram posting about her latest favourite reads.