THE QUANTUM LEAP
 
 
     There were only seven people in C T's quantum physics
class, two women and five men.  His calculations from
probability and statistics might indicate 10 possible
couples.  But for him it was to become only one.  Francine
had a flip to her that made no one flip.  Typically enclosed
in the moussed frizz of her hair was little in the way of an
understanding of life much less one of theoretical physics.
She was one of those interdisciplinary "general science"
students, out for a "life experience" in education because
she hadn't experienced enough life yet in any other way.  C T
was constantly amazed at how she hit on the other four young
and not-so-young men in the class, but not on him.  He
understood the subject and was thus "possessed" by it and not
handling it in the proper spiritual continuity she adhered
to.
 
     No Francine was not the one.  Rachel was.  C T didn't
realize it at first, but soon the structure of a definite
affair reached him.  Rachel had some admiration for the great
scientists like Planck and Schrodinger, but was secretly
after C T.  This was not so much to have him as a free
quantum physics tutor, although such a commodity was rare
even on the University campus for money.  No, C T held for
her the enchantment of understanding.  She tried a few men,
those gawkish boys in high school and the nefarious drunkards
on the floor below in that gladly left freshman dorm.  They
simply didn't match on enough points.  They held
discontinuities of mood and temper that struck her wrong.
They left her rapidly and gladly enough, then, because they
didn't know her real desires.
 
     It was the 14th week of the semester when C T discussed
some matters relating to hydrogen orbitals and spherical
coordinates that they finally realized each other.  At that
point, an irrevocable alignment took place between the two of
them that would certainly last in mature friendship if not in
marriage.  They reinforced each other's knowledge of the
material right away.  Rachel was a chemistry major, and she
was in quantum physics as a supporting course.  She had
latent interests in the highly mathematical parts of what
the chemistry courses hadn't the scope to cover, but C T
completed her standing, finally, both personally and in the
subject material.
 
     "What is the real significance of the normalizing
constant, C T," she asked in the hall after class.
 
     "It tells whether the distribution function is valid.
Over all space, the probability of finding the electron in
the orbital is one.  Otherwise, the electron isn't there."
 
     "You know a lot about your probability."

     "You took it, too, didn't you?"
 
     "Yes, but not to the point of understanding quantum
mechanics."  They started down the oak-trimmed hall to the
stairway.  Schrodinger Hall was worn from the time of its
naming after that great mathematician and theorizer.  It was
rare for a building to achieve the name of a man who hadn't
died yet.  When Erwin knew of the construction of the Hall,
he finally understood that he was understood.
 
     "Well we seem to have a lot in common.  Do you live on
campus?"
 
     "No, I live in a garrett room on the east side of town.
I like it.  The dorm was much too loud.  Mrs. Bohr doesn't
like men coming up, though."
 
     "I'm hungry.  Maybe we could order some pizza together.
You know, three smalls cost a fortune, even without any
items."
 
     Rachel shifted her backpack slightly.  Unlike rumors,
her backpack, at least, didn't slump her shoulder to the
side.  She had too sturdy a frame.  "We can go right now.
I'm hungry."
 
     Triomino's Pizza held the best franchise on campus for
poor students.  When the three-for-two craze hit, a lot of
people stopped eating pizza because of the threshold being
raised, but more parties started ordering pizza because
three, six, nine, etc.  sound bigger than two, four, six,
eight, and so on.  The smalls were cut into four pieces and
Rachel and C T ate six each on the steps of the Warren G.
Harding Presidential Library.  "I could eat maybe two more,
you know, C T..."
 
     "Oh, I usually stop at seven, myself.  It's hard,
though.  These little pieces are like potato chips."
 
     "We'll have to do this some more," Rachel said, not
bubbling as a rarefied Francine might have the first time she
smoked cannabis while drinking Asti, but instead looking
directly into C T's eyes.  The linking was an incredible
phenomenon; every bit of flux between the pupils was
contained, yet they had no physical desire--as of yet, at
least.
 
     "Whatever," C T said, "I think we hit it off.  We'll be
associates, let's say."
 
     "If only that..."  When the eyes separated, lines
appeared to bend around and connect them still.
Satisfaction.