Excerpt: the Initiation

He’d been researching the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The relevant points all boiled down to the fact that you can’t really know. As he read it, everything was just so much probability until you actually looked to see what happened, which made all the possibilities collapse into the happened. He understood it much better than most, but even he tended to ignore the parts he didn’t like, and dwell on the amusing aspects of any given misinterpretation.

The minutes stretched out. Nothing happened. Had he gotten fake mushrooms? Were they just a bag of shitake? Breathe… he just needed to wait. Don’t be impatient. Maintain focus. Meditate.
Schroedinger’s cat as his familiar, he’d dreamed. God particles performing his miracles. There was room here for something to happen, some strange aspect of the universe otherwise overlooked could reside in these weird little quantum corners, and account for all sorts of craziness. He was going to find the Troll hiding under an Einstein-Rosen bridge.

The thought struck him as unbelievably funny. Billy Goat Gruff with his quantum horns entangled. He giggled, and couldn’t stop.

He heard Cappy sigh, and saw him peeking around the corner. How could he not have noticed before that Cappy was an Ogre? Hm… No quantum theory connection? Well Cappy was never very discrete. The thought set of another round of laughter, this time howling. He could see the laughs echoing off the walls, waves of hilarity, and at the same time neat bundles of joy, pregnant with mirth and frank with incense.
He blinked; his logic was coming completely apart. He fought to hold on to it, to keep his analytical shape, but then he’d never taken analytical geometry formally. He imagined a triangular top hat, and lost himself in keening laughter again, watching the smell of the candles waft through the air, seeing the osmosis, the dispersion, the fluid dynamics like a dance of sugar plum fairies. Brownian movement! I always said that’s why hot water cleans better – it’s got brownies!

The fires of all the little individual candles worked diligently to push air to the rarified ceiling, but the fan kept pushing it back down. That was hardly fair. He was contemplating the injustice of the matter, and what might be done to make the rules follow the rules, when the cramps hit him. He spasmed, and almost immediately spit up bile along with a pile of squishy mushroom. He blinked. That really hurt.

All the little fires kept roaring, but suddenly he remembered he’d taken a large dose of mushrooms someone else had told him were what he wanted. It was a sobering thought, but too little too late. Another lance of incomprehensibly painful spasm pierced his belly, and all his muscled locked at the same time. He was one big Charlie horse, and felt like a horse’s ass, and the imagery swirled through his imagination with the impact of a titan’s gavel. No, he growled to himself. Schroedinger’s cat. The delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. Heisenberg’s uncertainty. The Einstien-Rosen bridge.

His focus didn’t quite bring him back to reality, but it did wake up the Dragon. He saw what he had previously thought to be the fireplace blink, a great nictitating membrane sliding back to reveal the eye of Schroedinger’s cat to be not actually feline at all, but reptilian, and the size of a bread truck. He looked down at the great thumbnail piercing his plexus, at the blood and bile and, and (pain) what is that?

The dragon lifted him up to its great elongated snout, beautiful golden scales displaying the waveforms of astronomically unlikely events. It’s breath puffed out over him in hot gusts, making him realize how cold he was, and how sweaty. He was shivering violently, and every twitch sawed the edges of the great chitinous nail through his belly. The dragon’s fist squeezed him round about, paralyzing him, immobilizing him, crushing him with aching, burning, throbbing in every muscle with every pulse. He stared at it, and decided this was probably as good an ordeal as any.

Good, the dragon thought. You might as well be happy with what you can’t be rid of.
Ok, Mike thought, and no, the dragon interrupted, you don’t get to ask questions. It continued to squeeze him.
Why not?
That’s a question.
So?
As is that.
Dammit!
Better, the dragon acquiesced, but still not very productive.
Productive, he thought, frustrated. What am I—
The breath rolled out over him again, and the thumbnail wagged back and forth in the wound, sticking out behind him. Mike screamed.
But how—I mean, wh—Ahh! He hadn’t planned on this.
But you’re learning, the dragon pointed out. You’ve stopped asking questions.
No, I’ve merely stopped expressing them.
Semantics, the dragon shrugged. Mike glared at it.
So put me down, he ordered.
Very good, but I can’t.
Why n—he howled as the nail ground in his viscera.
Fine, damn you! You tell me why you can’t put me down.
Ah, said the beast, isn’t that a question?
No, it’s an order, you oversized Bic!
And right you are, and so I will comply. I cannot put you down, because I must squeeze you, and grind this hole in your belly.
He ground his teeth against the pain, and fought to stay conscious. Explain.
Better, it said. You learn fast. You see, one of the mushrooms you’ve taken was poison. If I put you down, then there will be nothing but the poison to explain the pain, and then you will be poisoned. You’ve already told Cappy not to involve doctors, so you won’t get the absolutely required medical help in time and you’ll die horribly.
Mike swallowed. Oh, he managed.
Exactly. So now you must choose.
Choose? He realized his mistake a moment too late.
You really must stop that. You won’t survive much more.
His mind raced.
Again, exactly, the dragon commented. You’ve limited time here.
I won’t quit, he decided. I won’t give up.
Even if it kills you?
Even if it kills me, you son of a bitch.
Then I guess you’d better do something about the poison yourself.
With an effort, he stopped himself from asking what he could do.
There is no poison. This pain is because of your thumb in my gut.
Oh?
Yes, so get your goddamned thumb out of my gut! The pain was so sharp, he didn’t think he could stay conscious much longer.
No, the dragon said, you have to do it. Got any ideas?
Holy lethal hallucinations, batman! He grabbed the dragon’s thumb and began pushing for all he was worth.
Is that what I am? Hallucination?
Mike stopped. He looked again at the dragon’s golden nose scales, in their pattern of infinite intricacy.
No, he said, mostly to himself. Embrace tiger, return to mountain… you’re not the dragon, I am.
Ah, said the dragon. Then why are you doing this to yourself?

Mike smiled. The tiger was instinct; the dragon was the mind and will which overcame the base self.

He looked at the dragon, at the terrible improbability of it, at the fluid dynamic patterns of the air dancing around him, at the waveforms and echo patterns and interacting energy and probability of every microparticle in the room, and decided the dragon was in fact him. All he had to do was see the room and the problem and the possibilities, and then take the dragon’s step and choose an option, squeeze the tiger, collapse the probabilities into the happened that he wanted.

So what did he want? Was there an unknown mushroom? He considered carefully.

Yes. There was. It was, however, not really all that harmful. It would be one that would make him really sick for a few hours, but then he’d be fine.

It was the price he had to pay. He stopped squeezing the poor fool he had been, removed the likelihood of painful death from his own abdomen, laid aside his old life, and breathed out his new reality back into the waves of the room. It was enough.