The electron moved down the wire. Moved is not quite the word here, it jumped from one potential well to another. Rather, it existed at one potential well, then ceased to exist and simultaneously was born at another potential well. We can work on this a little more. It existed at two potential wells at the same time, teetered between them in some mind twisting way, which we will not go into (because it is mind twisting) and decided to go forward instead of stay back. This, it did because of something called the Uncertainty Principle, something built into the very fabric of the Universe. The next electron did exactly the same. So did the one after it. And the next ten million. But the one which came along after those ten million, teetered .. and fell backwards. The tiny current in the transistor stopped flowing. The transistor which amplified a much larger current; stopped working. The larger current stopped. A switch turned itself quietly on. A microchip embedded in the heart of the satellite fried itself in the voltage surge that followed. The transmitter unit of the satellite died. The satellite(and since we are spending so much time talking about it, it seems fitting to use its given name: Solar Dynamics Relay-1, or as its designers had affectionately nicknamed it, the Sod) itself was fine. All its observation units, the analysis computers, the navigation was perfectly fine. The transmitter simply copped it. As a result, it was unable to relay the data which it accumulated back to the relay satellites which peopled the utterly vast space between Earth and the satellite(ok, fine, the Sod). The billion dollar project was written off because Mama couldn’t hear a chirp from her baby and Farside observations near the solar atmosphere without knowing where to look is somewhat more complicated than looking for a needle in a haystack.
Most ancient civilizations revere, love and fear the Sun. And quite rightly so, for one never knows what that big ball is cooking in its belly. This time, it happened to be a rather intense burst of high energy particles and radiation. So intense, in fact that it would toast everything this side of Mars. Sure, an early warning would help, one could build bunkers and live inside the ground; at least for the few days that the solar storm would last. But such an early warning could only come from, yes, the Sod; who was screaming his electronic heart out to his makers. Who couldn’t hear a darn thing. Right on schedule the gazillion tonnes of fusing hydrogen bubbled to the surface of the Sun, and the astronomers had a field day, collecting all the data they would need for ten years of analysis and a couple of hundred PhDs. With the data came the radiation. People in the tropics started dropping in a few hours. Those at higher latitudes lived a few days. Nightside was protected, but the disease spread without end. And in a month life disappeared.
He looked up from his tea, and saw in an instant what had happened. It was too late to change anything, and anyway, His own rules wouldn’t let him. He would just have to start all over again. “And this time, no Uncertainty Principle!”
