Alternative Universes

As the sickly, cloying gas roils about you, something strange happens. A wizard named Occam turns to his friend Schrodinger, who is stroking his cat. 'I think it is time to slice this fellow up with my razor. You know! The one that Victor Kyam liked so much that he bough the company who makes them.' The cat is disturbed by the prospect of Occam slicing things up like salami and it disappears into the forest where, because the inhabitants had their ears removed by Mr Kyam as soon as he acquired the company, only the trees hear the cat's pitiful mewlings.

Occam finds his razor and, looking down into the great scrying stone that is his shaving basin, halves every last electron in your body (the gas is no impediment to him).

This is where it gets really strange.

Two 'yous' emerge from this electron mutilation. One, operating under the great scientific principal we shall call 5.5, sucks in smoke in spades, gives up the ghost and dies. So much for string theory. The other, operating far more soundly on a grand unifying theory we shall dub 7.5, is undoubtedly troubled by the heavy, poisonous chemical soup that the atmosphere has become - there is no protective ozone layer to destroy in capricious and cavalier fashion here - digs deep within, general relativity combining with quantum mechanics to take care of big and small alike, and stands, alive still, as the smoke drops to the floor, contact with which renders it non-toxic. It is good at times like these to take a moment to appreciate that seldom lauded commonplace feature, the dungeon floor. After all, what adventurer would be without one?

Once the musing on a death so narrowly averted abates, you see what the box has hitherto concealed: a writhing wig of snaky locks. It kinda looks like it would fit on your head and those snaky locks are not the sort of snaky locks that could bite if handled, that much is clear.

So what next, Einstein?