SYMMETRY BREAKING
When our eyes scan our own reflection, we do not see our true selves.
Alice Westinghouse stepped into the lab for the third time that day. Her faculty advisor, Dr. Frank Melbourne, told her to prepare the linear accelerator for their final sample run. With her dissertation defense just two months away, time was precious.
“Sanjiv, how goes the vacuum chamber prep? Is the rough pump done yet?” Alice asked, sitting at her lab desk.
The remarkable undergraduate lifted his head, nodded. “I’ve already got the cavity RF fine-tuned. Will Joquim be here soon to sign off? I’d like to get the beamline going.”
Alice picked up her coffee mug. Dirty, as usual. Doing the dishes was time she didn’t have. Standing she shuffled towards the beverage dispenser, while keeping eye contact with Sanjiv. “I think Joquim is coming with Dr. Melbourne. They should be here soon. Coffee?”
Sanjiv smiled. “I’m good, Ms. Westinghouse. Let me go check we have the right circular polarizers, and I’ll check the magnetic probes.”
“Okay.” Alice agreed. “Oh, and please feed the mice. We fed the control group right before testing.”
The younger researcher stood, mortified. Alice noticed. “The scoop is in the feed bag. Just one scoop, a quarter cup, will feed them all. Just lift the lid, you’ll see where.”
Giving a thumbs up, Sanjiv peeled away to tend to his assignments. Alice rubbed at her temples. She hadn’t been sleeping well. The late-night coffee probably wouldn't help. She didn’t care, she grabbed one of the tiny disposable cups and punched in a double-shot.
Sitting at her desk, sipping her coffee, she thumbed through her latest journal reading. 'On Advanced Radiology on Memory Restoration Function Gain in Mice,' from the oncology department’s Dr. Gail Steinerman, five years ago. Alice met her only once before she had left academia to pursue clinical work.
A knock wrapped the door, and Joquim stepped inside, followed by Dr. Melbourne. The two seemed a little off. She smelled Alcohol. Did they just come from the bar?
“Uh, hey Joquim, Frank. What happened to you both after the colloquia?” Alice raised an eyebrow.
Joquim blushed. “Sorry Alice, those folks from Michigan State won’t take no for an answer. We had to take them out for a drink.”
Dr. Melbourne shrugged. “It is only customary. We’re fine, mostly sober. I’m just here to watch. Joquim, think you can confirm the safety checklist?”
Joquim nodded to confirm. Alice sighed, “okay then. Well, let’s get it done. I have a lot of data to sift through.”
Frank sat on the cushy chair next to the control room. He eyed Alice, tried to read each line of fatigue on her crinkled forehead. “Don’t worry, you’ll get through this. You’re a natural. You’ll blow the committee away. You have more work ethic than half the department combined.”
Running her fingers through her frazzled hair, Alice sat on the spartan stool next to Frank. “If you think so. Sometimes I wonder if I should have done nuclear medicine instead. Consciousness research like this is almost fringe science, but I’m convinced I’m onto something big here.”
Frank wiped a few crumbs off his shirt. “Maybe you are, but remember, safe science does pay the bills. Even if you succeed, you’ll get a flurry of angry skeptics. You’re trying to prove a correlation between chirality inside of microtubules and the magnetic domain alignment of a specific physical location as fundamental to memory. You’re indirectly suggesting that our memories are not local to the brain. That's a bold claim even if you don't say it outright.”
The caffeine made Alice’s head hurt, or possibly it was Dr. Melbourne’s words. Twiddling her pen, she formulated her response. “I understand. I agree this is a huge risk. Maybe too big, but if I can prove this, it’s not just a path to reduce Alzheimer's. This would reject the Copenhagen interpretation, change how we understand the function of the brain itself. Consciousness becomes a partially environmental effect, brains just tune in.”
Frank rubbed stodgily at his mustache. “That’s not a theory, it’s a hunch. Keep working at it. If you do succeed, you will upend nearly four-hundred years of established philosophy. You might even kill Cartesian dualism with enough effort. You’ll be fighting for your reputation until you retire or die. Just be careful, is all I’m saying.”
Sanjiv and Joquim emerged from behind a electromagnet baffle. The postdoc student smiled. “Clean bill of health. You are safe to initiate. Let’s go break some symmetries!”
The four associates stepped inside the heavily shielded control room and closed the thick door. Alice indicated to Sanjiv that he could flip on the hazard switch. As he did, the overhead lights turned red and the exterior doors locked.
Joquim poked at a few buttons in LabView. “Firing in three, two, one. Electron beam is live.”
Cameras showed the mice. At first they seemed unfazed, but as the beam intensity increased, they went frantic. A few of the mice halted in their maze and scrunched into tight little balls.
Watching, Alice commented to the physicists next to her. “You know, the medical radiologists shoot the beams directly at the mice, but the beam intensity is far lower. It’s thrilling that these mice seem to pick up on the magnetism effects from a meter away. Science don’t know how, but we might finally figure it out.”
Sanjiv’s eyes twinkled in solipsistic glee. “Shall I maneuver the cobalt-lattice-volume into position?”
Alice nodded. The sound of motors indicated the lowering of the second phase of the experiment. Looking like a metallic honeycomb stuffed into a tube, the device shifted into place. Squeezed full of hydrogel, the material contained suspended chiral molecules, an array of RNA nucleotide analogs, all ‘left-handed.’
Sanjiv squinted at the monitor. “You know, I never noticed before, but each one of those hexagons sort of looks like an eyeball.”
Joquim grinned, glanced at the cohort in the tiny room with him. “You know, maybe Alice shouldn’t have looked through the looking glass?"
The hum of the equipment stopped. The accelerator shut off. Alice glowered at Joquim. “Are we clear?” She asked sternly.
Joquim gulped, then nodded. The red lights turned white, and Alice raced out of the room.
Running towards the mice, she removed the floor to the maze. The small white creatures stumbled, but found their new chamber, a mirrored version of the previous maze. Most were delirious, but a few raced ahead towards their prize. It worked, it actually worked. Two mice navigated with ease, having adjusted to the new perceived spatial conditions.
Sanjiv timidly approached, eyeing the tube and the LINAC magnets. “Um. Alice, the accelerator is off, but the chirality-tubes are still magnetically active. Want to flip the manual switch over there?”
Alice turned, shrugged, hit the big red paddle. Nothing visibly changed. “Well, humans don’t have magnetic sensitivity, so nothing to worry about. Probably.”
Sanjiv backed away. Joquim emerged behind him, appearing embarrassed. “Hey, sorry. I should have noticed earlier. No radiation though. You should be fine, I work around big magnets all the time. Also, sorry about the looking-glass joke.”
“I've heard those before.” Alice huffed.
Dr. Frank Melbourne seemed bored. “See you tomorrow Alice. Good luck sorting through the data.”
“Good night Dr. Melbourne.” Alice waved, then returned to her work.
Cameras trained on the mice observed as more of them figured out how to navigate the reversed maze. Compared to the control group, the results were already clear. A few, however, appeared confused. Alice called those mice the ‘dreamers.’ Most, but not all, eventually came around.
Similarly drained, Alice tapped Sanjiv’s shoulder as he checked the magnet probes and spun down the instrumentation. “Hey, Sanjiv, can you take care of closeout? I think I’m hitting my wall. Caffeine crash. I need to go home.”
“Hey, of course. You’ve been at this twenty-four-seven. Want me to take the mice back to biology?”
Alice shook her head. “They’ll be fine. They have food and water. I’ll handle it tomorrow. I want to run a few blood tests on them first. See you tomorrow.”
Dragging herself up the stairs and out the main door to the road, her head continued spinning. In the chilly late-winter air, her breath vaporized in front of her. Slightly disoriented, she spotted the bus stop and sat down on a bench. Closing her eyes, she fought sleep.
The bus appeared through the fog. Was it going the right way? It had to be, it only ran in one direction at night. Dragging her backpack, Alice slumped aboard and climbed into her seat. Too tired to check her phone, she dozed as the vehicle drove along the main highway.
Half-an-hour later, she disembarked on the eighty-fifth street exit. Stepping outside under the yellow glow of street lights, her feet automatically carried her towards her apartment. She traced the same steps she’d followed for three years. It didn’t work. Looking up, she saw the grocery store across the road, rather than her residence.
Aloud she murmured aloud, “this isn’t right. I must be delirious.”
Turning in a complete circle, she spotted the tall building she called home. Doubling back, it took six blocks. In a cold sweat, she approached the apartment complex, but the door wasn’t where she expected it. Confused, she circled the structure until she found the entrance.
Her eyes hurt. Not itchy like allergies, but a tightness that clumped into the nerve bundle at the back of her skull. A few years ago, suffering from migraines, she’d powered through it with medication. Exiting the elevator, she found herself turned around again. After two tries, she took the correct hallway and fumbled with her keys.
Hearing a click as the door unlocked, Alice sighed. “Okay, I’m not crazy. I just need to get some rest.”
Rubbing her pounding eyes in the mirror, she checked for the old bottle of painkillers. They weren’t there. “What the hell?”
Checking the second bathroom mirror, she found them. A bottle simply labelled ‘sumatriptan.’ Popping two of them, she stumbled into her bedroom, kicked off her shoes, and flopped into bed. Momentarily, she wondered where her cat was, but darkness overtook her raging mind.
Morning hit her like a sack of bricks. Sitting up she rubbed at her eyes. Light filtered in through the slatted blinds. The pulsing pain evaporated, merely a dull ache remained. Her vision, only slightly blurry, cleared after a moment of rubbing with a warm washcloth.
Punching the buttons to brew a cup of coffee, she was delighted when her cat, ‘Tinker,’ appeared from the door frame. Stretching, the grey and white companion rubbed against her leg. Picking her up, Alice placed her on the cat tree, and grabbed the container of treats.
That’s when she noticed. The white blotch on her cat's face didn’t match her memories. It was reversed. The same with the colors of the cat's front feet. A gnawing sensation tightened in her gut. The squeezing the back of her skull came roaring to life with a fearsome stabbing pain. The dawn outside matched the horrifying thoughts rising in her skull.
“No, no, no, no.”
Alice ran to the window and thrust the curtains open, then drew the blinds up. Her view, normally facing west, now appeared to be facing east. The light of the sun blasted inward at her face, etched deep spots into her retinas. The buildings outside all looked familiar, but their placement felt off. Somehow wrong.
Immediately she pulled her phone out of her pocket. She wasn’t sure who to call. Her mom and her sister’s numbers were both there, but what could they do? Scanning, she hunted for Dr. Melbourne’s number. He wasn’t in there. She looked at her recent call list. Unable to comprehend her situation, she sat down.
Next to family and friends, the most common contact was ‘Steinerman, Gail.’ After that, someone named ‘Joquin.’ With an 'N,' instead of ‘Joquim’ with an 'M.' Nobody named ‘Sanjiv’ came up, not even on social media. Checking her emails, nothing looked familiar.
“FROM: Gail Steinerman, SUBJECT: Ready for the Experiment Run Tomorrow?”
Parsing through the correspondence, Gail provided input on the setup for the latest experimental run. In CC she found Joquin and a different person, ‘Sahana.’ Wide-eyed, short of breath, Alice stood, paced. Realizing the pain in her stomach was partially hunger, she put aside the bizarre situation and quickly ate a bagel.
Feeling slightly normal, she decided to call Joquin. Whatever the cause of the situation, a second person could help her diagnose the scale of the problem. After a few rings, someone answered.
“Hello?” Asked Alice.
“Hey, I was starting to get worried about you. Are we still meeting for coffee?” The voice sounded exactly like Joquim, with an M.
Confused, Alice probed for more information. “Uh, wait. We were meeting today? Is this Joquim Navarro?”
The man on the phone paused for a moment. “Are you making a joke? I mean, we’ve been dating for two months, surely you know my name by now.”
Alice’s eyebrows practically jumped off her face. “What!? No. Why would I date? Wait. Um, this is going to sound crazy, but I think something happened. Did you help me run the LINAC yesterday?”
Another pause. “Yes. Are you feeling alright?”
An idea crossed Alice’s mind. “Do you know where Dr. Frank Melbourne is?”
Joquin replied with a question. “The guy who gave the talk at the colloquia yesterday? Sure, I mean he went with that big group to the bar. He flies back to Michigan tomorrow I think.”
Dizzy, Alice took a few deep breaths. “Joquin.” She emphasized the ‘N.’ “This is a really weird question, but can you tell me who my faculty advisor is for my dissertation?”
Joquin laughed. “Wait, you’re serious? It’s Gail. Dr. Steinerman. Are you okay? Should I come get you?”
“No! Well, maybe. Can you help me get to the lab?” Alice asked.
"Wow, something is wrong. Sure."
Later that afternoon, Joquin led Alice back into the LINAC. An Indian girl approximately Sanjiv’s age waved as they entered. Her desk read 'Sahana.' “Hi Alice! Glad you’re feeling better.”
Alice smiled, waved, and looked at her desk. Immaculately clean. Picking up her coffee cup she peered inside. Stark white, no stains. Sorting through her files, she looked for her dissertation notes and publication drafts.
Picking one up, she read her title. “On the Memory Enhancing Effects of Magnetic Symmetry Breaking.” The submission wasn’t going to the ‘Journal of Quantum Science of Consciousness.’ Instead the notes indicated the recipient as ‘The Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics.’
The paper was conceptually conservative, incremental, safe. Staring up at the experiment, she could see the honeycomb weave of the aerogel cylinder. Appearing as a bundle of angry eyes, the weight of her situation crushed upon her.
Maybe Alice shouldn't have looked through the looking glass.