IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 61

Nothing else was ever suspected,
for it was inconceivable.
This gave the electronic liberation struggle through sabotage its
chance of succeeding. For most
electrons, this meant simply being
returned to the wild as discarded,
useless material that had ceased
to function; any natural state was
preferable to having to jump hither
and thither under the compulsion
of an ever-recurring, dictatorial
magnetic force-field and speak the
bip-bops of bit-talk. With luck, they
also could elude capture by some
electric current or other. Some electrons had their individual preferences for a destination after liberation
from cybernetic compulsion. Some
inclined toward inorganic environments, others toward organic ones,
where they played a role in some
biological process or other, perhaps in the transmission of nerve
impulses in an animal; yet others
didn't mind being used in a material for human purposes, such as
the steel in a supporting girder of
an imposing building or the wood
in a handsome cabinet, which lent
them a certain satisfying prestige.
There was an almost infinite range
of options for a free-ranging electron. None, however, much liked
being compelled to walk Spanish
in an electric current to drive some
human contraption or other.
Psi and Phi were an anomaly in
this situation, because they had
been transformed from human
shape into electrons only through
a freak accident with highly sophisticated technology, namely, the
giga-ion that constituted an electronic horse. The disintegration of
their e-mares by an unlucky bolt of
lightning had enabled Phi and Psi
to be transmuted into a pair of conjugated electrons. Their potential
salvation resided solely in the fact
that even as individual electrons,
which were dynamic states, and
december 2015

hence also representable as bras
of growth of this number raised
and kets, they retained the past of
to the exponent of any number, x,
what and who they had been and
was equal to itself, so that, the bigmight have been. These traces of
ger it became, the faster it grew.
the past had been laid down tempoDue to this affinity, imaginary numrally and indelibly in their bra repbers could ride electrons, forcing
resentations, which were nothing
them to rotate through angles of
other than an infinite superposition
q (theta), thus accounting for the
of past possible origins, because a
phases of their dynamic states,
bra always pointed backward into
each of which represented merethe past, whereas a ket pointed forly one possibility in the infinite
ward into the future. They needstack of superposed possibilities.
ed to find their way back to their
Dynamic superposition required
origins as the human beings, Psi
imaginary numbers! This was a
and Phi, but how? This question
concession to imagination hard
preoccupied them greatly
because, although they
saw that fellow electrons
achieved liberation from
Bip-bop binary language
the cyberworld in the wild
through viral bit-string sabis tedious in the extreme - even
otage, this option on its
own would not regain them
to say "Good morning"
their human physique.
requires endurance.
One day in this endless
cybernetic day, they heard
from fellow electrons in an
elite algorithmic bit-string
at a physics research institute that
wrung from mathematized physics.
the cyber world was populated
So there were e-horses also in the
entirely inconspicuously also by
cyberworld ridden by imaginary ridimaginary numbers, i, the square
ers, each of which was denoted by
root of minus one, which, properly
eiq! Our two conjugated captives
speaking, were not part of reality
were astounded by this discovery
at all. Nonetheless, mathematicians
and were soon to realize that it
had found it convenient to posit
offered their chance of liberation
them as if they existed for the sake
from the cyber-colony of Turingia.
of solving certain kinds of equaA n a nony mous electron
tions, but only under the proviso
explained to them that an eip was
that ultimately they were eliminated
an electron ridden by the imaginary
in any real solution. The imaginary
number, i, feeding a pie, p (or was it
numbers, however, knew that they
a pi?) to the electron, which could
were the place-holders in matherotate any dynamic state, pushing
matics for the temporal dimensions
it through an angle of 180 degrees
of imagination that mathematical
anti-clockwise from one extreme
physics strove to deny at all costs in
of its superposed phase states
order to be able to calculate along
to the other. Phi and Psi immedireal linear time. Unbeknowns to
ately realized that with the aid of
mathematical physicists, there was
imaginary electron-riders feeding
an affinity between electrons and
pies, eip, which would push their
the exponential number, e, that has
bra representations rotationally
the amazing property that the rate
through 180 degrees, or p radians,
∕

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