Author : Russell Bert Waters

Let me be clear: there is reality, even when there is not.

What I am writing here exists.

It is both linear and classical.

It is on paper, and it is not.

It’s on paper if you print it.

But you cannot, with certainty, proclaim that it is not on paper even, if you do not choose to print it.

I could have printed it here, for instance.

It could be stapled, paper-clipped, perhaps even bound.

Let’s assume neither of us decides to print this.

It is nothing but zeroes and ones, or energy, or even some telepathic link.

It is a series of thoughts transmitted from me to you.

An intimate pairing of two minds that will maybe never meet.

You are likely thousands of miles away, receiving my reality of the moment.

You are receiving what I feel is important to share with you.

I was named Erwin, which I believe is an important fact.

I will share a fact with you, in our telepathic link, you will receive the fact, then you will apply some critical thought to the fact in order to determine whether you accept it as such.

After all, my name could be George.

I was named Erwin, though, not George.

I was named after an Austrian Physicist named Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, to be exact.

He may or may not have had a cat, which may or may not have lived or died.

And there was a steel cage, from what I was told.

I’m not a scientist, but I dabble.

I “know enough to be dangerous”, to be exact.

In the other room there may or may not be a prostitute.

She may or may not be in a makeshift kennel.

Furthermore, she may, or may not, be alive at this moment.

I’ll go check in on her after I’m done either writing this, or not writing this.

You still haven’t decided whether I’m actually Erwin, and whether you’re accepting any of these statements as fact.

I will tell you this: she wears way too much perfume.

My olfactories adjusted to this quite some time ago.

I joked with her that all one needs to bring to a party is a steel cage, a hammer, some hydrocyanic acid, a Geiger counter, and, of course, some randomly decaying radioactive substance.

Who needs coke, right?

She could either be alive, dead, or in some superposition of both…or maybe neither?

She didn’t think my joke was funny, so I’m not particularly eager to check on her well-being at this moment, to be honest.

If she does exist, I likely had to gag her.

If I were experimented on against my will, I’d likely be vocal about it.

Especially if it were a life or death experiment.

Pavlov didn’t seem to care about what the dogs thought, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow a hooker’s objections to get in the way of hard science.

But, I’ve written, or not written, enough at this point.

I’m going to stop maybe writing this, and you’re going to either read it or not.

It’s time for me to wander into the next room and check on someone who really should learn to use less perfume, and should maybe develop a more open-minded sense of humor.

I mean, assuming any of this is real, of course.