All over the place (fiction)

People have no idea how annoying this is.

A lot of people, when they hear about the mod, think 'Oh, that sounds nice.' It's not. It's absolutely terrible.
The thing I'm talking about is, of course, the damn quantum omniscience mindmod. In an atom-sized nutshell, it allows you to view all the possible superpositions of a quantum process. Basically, if someone actually did the Schrodinger's Cat experiment, you'd be able to see both the alive and dead states of the cat. Apparently it uses some weird subquantum interaction to avoid collapsing the wave function. Who cares. Normally, having the mod wouldn't be such a problem. Yeah right. The problem is, it was designed and built by a friend of mine, James Calindon.

Yeah, yeah, you probably know who Jamie is. He's the guy that invented the first practical FTL a few years back. He has an intelligence factor nearly as high as you can go without going postsapient. So anyway, back to the mod. He invented it for a bet that he made with me back in 2291. Took him ten years to do it, but he eventually cracked the necessary science. And as a result, I had to use the mod for a whole half-year. This is getting really *unidentifiable expletive*ing not funny. I don't have problems with quantum computers, since the probabilites of their outputs are heavily weighted towards the correct answer, so the effect around them is limited. However (as is the Calindon way) he invented a system just to annoy me. He created a quantum random bitstring generator(don't ask me how) and hooked it up to his decision-making processors in his brain. So, whenever he has to make a choice, he has an equal probability of taking all of the possible choices. This makes my life hell. Unfortunately, he also hooked the same system up to his neo-sapient cat Heisenberg. This makes my life hell squared. Dealing with one mad genius is enough. Dealing with 17 quantum mad geniuses? Impossible. Same with his bloody cat. I trip over cats that aren't there, cats that might have been there and occasionally different cats entirely. This sucks.

I walk out into the main open area of the Eratosphenes Quantum Gravity Institute, and my problem becomes clear. Right now I can see four Jamies. One is over at the dome wall. One is at the foodfab, waiting for something. One is sitting under one of the bioengineered oaks. And the last one is on the roof of the Neutrino Lab, messing around with some equipment. I head for the one under the tree. Heisenberg is running around in the branches, practicing chasing the cleaning nanofog around the building.
"Hi." I say.
He gets up, and as he does so, two copies of him split off.
'Hi.' 'Hi.' 'Hi.' they say.
"Listen, about the mod. This is getting really annoying. Can I just pay you the five hundred ecus and you can take it out?"
He/they think/s about this.
'Meh, alright. Just this once.' 'No way. You said you would use it for a half-year, and you're going to.' 'Come on, you've only got a few more orbits to go.' they reply.
Heisenberg climbs down the tree trunk and onto the grass. As he does so, he splits into two versions.
'So, you want the mod off, do you?' 'Don't bother. He'll never let you take it out until the time's up.' the two Heisenbergs say.
Two of the three Jamies tell Heisenberg to shut up. Both Heisenbergs return yet another of their witty comments, and walk away in opposite directions.
I've seen far too much. I mutter goodbyes to all of the Jamies and go back into the Lab.

In the end I did get it out. It was pretty good, being back in the world where I don't have to deal with multiple copies of Jamie. Now I can see why the early TwenCen physicists thought QM was weird.

On the other hand, Mario from the Supercollider Control Room has made a bet with Jamie...