Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

At least I knew where Dr. Gedanken was. I changed my clothes and got in the elevator, thinking about wave/particle duality and fractals and high entropy states and delayed choice experiments. The problem was, where could you find a paradigm that would make it possible to visualize quantum theory when you had to include Josephson junctions and passion and all those empty spaces? It wasn’t possible. You had to have more to work with than a few footprints and the impression of Betty Grable’s leg.

The elevator door opened, and Abey Fields pounced on me. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said. “You haven’t seen Dr. Gedanken, have you?”

“Isn’t he in the ballroom?”

“No,” he said. “He’s already fifteen minutes late, and nobody’s seen him. You have to sign this,” he said, shoving a clipboard at me.

“What is it?”

“It’s a petition.” He grabbed it back from me. “‘We the undersigned demand that annual meetings of the International Congress of Quantum Physicists henceforth be held in appropriate locations.’ Like Racine,” he added, shoving the clipboard at me again. “ Unlike Hollywood.”

Hollywood.

“Are you aware it took the average ICQP delegate two hours and thirty-six minutes to check in? They even sent some of the delegates to a hotel in Glendale.”

“And Beverly Hills,” I said absently. Hollywood. Bra museums and the Marx Brothers and gangs that would kill you if you wore red or blue and Tiffany-slash-Stephanie and the World’s Largest Oil Painting Incorporating a Religious Theme.

“Beverly Hills,” Abey muttered, pulling an automatic pencil out of his pocket protector and writing a note to himself. “I’m presenting the petition during Dr. Gedanken’s speech. Well, go on, sign it,” he said, handing me the pencil. “Unless you want the annual meeting to be here at the Rialto next year.”

I handed the clipboard back to him. “I think from now on the annual meeting might be here every year,” I said, and took off running for Grauman’s Chinese.

When we have that paradigm, one that embraces both the logical and the nonsensical aspects of quantum theory, we will be able to look past the colliding electrons and the mathematics and see the microcosm in all its astonishing beauty .

—EXCERPT FROM DR. GEDANKEN’S KEYNOTE ADDRESS

“I want a ticket to Benji IX,” I told the girl at the box office. Her nametag said, “Welcome to Hollywood. My name is Kimberly.”

“Which theater?” she said.

“Grauman’s Chinese,” I said, thinking, This is no time for a high entropy state.

“Which theater?”

I looked up at the marquee. Benji IX was showing in all three theaters, the huge main theater and the two smaller ones on either side. “They’re doing audience reaction surveys,” Kimberly said. “Each theater has a different ending.”

“Which one’s in the main theater?”

“I don’t know. I just work here part time to pay for my organic breathing lessons.”

“Do you have any dice?” I asked, and then realized I was going about this all wrong. This was quantum physics, not Newtonian. It didn’t matter which theater I chose or which seat I sat down in. This was a delayed choice experiment, and David was already in flight.

“The one with the happy ending,” I said.

“Center theater,” she said.

I walked past the stone lions and into the lobby. Rhonda Fleming and some Chinese wax figures were sitting inside a glass case next to the door to the restrooms. There was a huge painted screen behind the concession stand. I bought a box of Raisinets, a tub of popcorn, and a box of Jujubes and went inside the theater.

It was bigger than I had imagined. Rows and rows of empty red chairs curved between the huge pillars and up to the red curtains where the screen must be. The walls were covered with intricate drawings. I stood there, holding my Jujubes and Raisinets and popcorn, staring at the chandelier overhead. It was an elaborate gold sunburst surrounded by silver dragons. I had never imagined it was anything like this.

The lights went down and the red curtains opened, revealing an inner curtain like a veil across the screen. I went down the dark aisle and sat down in one of the seats. “Hi,” I said, and handed the Raisinets to David.

“Where have you been?” he said. “The movie’s about to start.”

“I know,” I said. I leaned across him and handed Darlene her popcorn and Dr. Gedanken his Jujubes. “I was working on the paradigm for quantum theory.”

“And?” Dr. Gedanken said, opening his jujubes.

“And you’re both wrong,” I said. “It isn’t Grauman’s Chinese. It isn’t movies, either, Dr. Gedanken.”

“Sid,” Dr. Gedanken said. “If we’re all going to be on the same research team, I think we should use first names.”

“If it isn’t Grauman’s Chinese or the movies, what is it?” Darlene asked, eating popcorn.

“It’s Hollywood.”

“Hollywood,” Dr. Gedanken said thoughtfully.

“Hollywood,” I said. “Stars in the sidewalk and buildings that look like stacks of LPs and hats, and radicchio and audience surveys and bra museums. And the movies. And Grauman’s Chinese.”

“And the Rialto,” David said.

“Especially the Rialto.”

“And the ICQP,” Dr. Gedanken said.

I thought about Dr. Lvov’s black and gray slides and the disappearing chaos seminar and Dr. Whedbee writing “meaning” or possibly “information” on the overhead projector. “And the ICQP,” I said.

“Did Dr. Takumi really hit Dr. Iverson over the head with a gavel?” Darlene asked.

“Shh,” David said. “I think the movie’s starting.” He took hold of my hand. Darlene settled back with her popcorn, and Dr. Gedanken put his feet up on the chair in front of him. The inner curtain opened, and the screen lit up.

I wrote “At the Rialto” after an SFWA Nebula Awards Banquet weekend which actually featured many of the elements depicted in the story. It was held at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was right across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre; we did go to the Bra Museum at Frederick’s of Hollywood, which has Madonna’s gold cone-shaped bra and Ethel Merman’s girdle; the desk clerk was a model/actress; and there were definitely signs of quantum effects occurring at a macrocosmic level. We did not, however, see Benji IX at the theater. We saw Willow . And we didn’t make it out to Forest Lawn.

But we had a great time. And what else can you expect from Hollywood? I adore the place. It’s so deliciously nutty. I mean, not only is every hotel clerk and waitress and valet car-parker an actor/something-or-other, but the trademark Hollywood sign up on the hill was actually an advertisement for a housing development called Hollywoodland till the last four letters fell over, and the shopping mall has rearing concrete elephants and a massive replica of the Babylon set for D. W. Griffith’s 1916 silent film Intolerance .

They named one of their cemeteries Hollywood Forever, and during the summer they project movies on the side of the mausoleum (I am not making this up), and the locals bring picnic baskets and sit on the grass among the graves of Douglas Fairbanks and Cecil B. DeMille and Jayne Mansfield.

And all those stories about crazy directors and clueless producers and pitch meetings are true. When they turned the Broadway play The Madness of King George III into a movie, they really did insist on changing the title to The Madness of King George because they were convinced the audience would otherwise think it was a sequel. You know, like Spider-Man 3 .