Foreword – The Double Slit Mystery

A puzzling behaviour of subatomic particles, like photons or electrons, is that when they are sent through two narrow slits, they create an interference pattern on the detection screen, just as waves do. This suggests that each particle behaves like a wave of probability, passing through both slits simultaneously. However, the moment you try to observe or detect which slit the particle goes through, the interference pattern disappears. The particle no longer behaves like a wave. Instead, it acts like a discrete particle, choosing one slit or the other as though it had never been a wave at all. The conclusion: “observation collapses the wave-like nature into particle-like reality”.

“If you can explain this using common sense and logic, do let me know,
because there is a Nobel Prize for you.”
— Prof. Jim Al-Khalili

Do watch this utterly engaging presentation on the double-slit experiment by Prof. Jim Al-Khalili (Double Slit Experiment explained! by Jim Al-Khalili)

When the Wave Remembered …

This is a short science fiction inspired by the bizarre behaviour of sub atomic particles like photons, electrons etc.

– The Slits Between Worlds

Dr. Mira Sen had spent her life staring at a pair of slits cut into a sheet of carbon black metal.

To others they were just part of a physics experiment, an echo of the century-old setup that revealed the dual nature of light. But Mira believed they were far more. She believed the slits were a doorway.

And tonight, she would prove it.

For years, high precision photon detectors sat beside the slits, ready to observe the incoming light. Every time the detectors were active, the photons behaved like particles, solid, singular, predictable. But when she powered the detectors off, something impossible happened: the interference pattern changed slightly each time, as if influenced by something other than her instruments.

Something aware.

– Awareness Creates Reality

Human consciousness, Mira theorized, was not trapped in the flesh. It was the observation center of a far more expansive self, one that existed across countless universes, overlapping like waves until the moment we focused on one.

“Your body,” she wrote once, “is simply the particle-form collapse of a much larger wave-self.”

Tonight she chose to test that idea.

– The Turning Off

She shut off the detectors.

The lab grew silent, no clicks, no readouts, no hum of machinery.
Only the low vibration of the laser remained, like a distant temple bell.

For the first time in years, Mira allowed herself to stop analyzing, stop measuring, stop controlling. She sat on the floor beside the apparatus and closed her eyes.

She slowed her breath.
One inhale. One exhale. Another inhale, followed by an exhale.
A simple presence, pure being, thoughtless and open.
Tranquility. Silence. A stillness that felt timeless.

It was the kind of stillness she had tasted only during meditation retreats in the Himalayas, a state the monks called satori, a moment of sudden seeing.

In that quiet, something shifted inside her,
a subtle widening of awareness,
a soft dissolving of the boundary between observer and observed.

The world outside faded.
The world within opened.

And in that inner silence, something responded.

The pattern on the wall brightened, not by the mechanics of the experiment, but as though an intelligence woven through probability itself was leaning toward her awareness.

A voice formed, not from the air, but inside her mind.
We are you.

– The Wave-Selves

Her knees weakened. “You mean, versions of me?”

Versions, extensions, variations. You collapse into matter only here. Across most realities you are wave form, unbounded, and aware.

“But why reveal yourselves now?” she asked.

Because you finally stopped watching long enough for us to show you.

A chill passed through her. All her life she had been observing, measuring, controlling. But the wave selves existed only when unobserved, free of the restrictions of attention.

It was not the detectors that collapsed the wave.
It was consciousness itself.

Human existence in physical form was simply an accident of focus.

The Shutter of the Mind

“What am I supposed to do?” Mira asked.

The shifting pattern grew brighter.

Remember.

– The Flash of Ancient Knowledge

At that word, something ancient stirred in her.

Suddenly she recalled what Indian mystics had whispered through the ages:
behind the individual atman lies the infinite Brahman, pure consciousness, the ocean from which all selves arise. In Hindu philosophy it is mentioned as “Tat tvam asi” or “Thou art that!”

The truth resonated like a struck gong.
She was not merely Mira. She was a ripple of Brahman temporarily collapsed into form.

Then came another flash, this time of Buddhism she had studied in college. The Four Stages of Nirvana from the Sutta Pitaka cascaded through her awareness:

Stream Enterer, the first glimpse beyond illusion
Once Returner, one foot in the world and one in the infinite
No Returner, dissolving the boundary
Arahant, the one fully freed

The levels were not steps on a ladder, she realized. They were states of collapse and un-collapse, stages of releasing the illusion of particle-self to awaken the wave-self.

As she felt her multiversal versions overlapping, she understood:
mysticism and physics were describing the same doorway, one through observation, the other through liberation.

And now she was crossing it.

A shutter in her mind lifted. Suddenly she felt herself stretch into dimensions she had no words for, countless Mira selves overlapping, harmonising, existing as probability, as potential, as pure presence.

Her body dissolved like sand in water.

But she did not vanish.

She expanded.

For an eternal moment, she knew herself as a wave across universes, a being of consciousness, not flesh, a presence that shaped reality by attention alone.

– Collapse

Her assistant Jonas arrived late, saw the detectors turned off, and frowned. “Dr. Sen? Did you leave in a hurry?”

He flipped the detectors on.

The interference pattern snapped back to normal.

And on the floor beside the machine, he found her lab coat, but not Mira.

She had collapsed into a different reality the moment he observed the experiment again.

Somewhere across the multiversal ocean, wave Mira rippled outward and smiled.

She was free at last…

Author’s note: As mentioned at the top, this story draws inspiration from the puzzling behavior of photons and electrons. Although I first learned about the double-slit experiment in my college days, I never fully appreciated its significance until recently. I had been toying with this theme for a few days and had a few key ideas, but I found it difficult to weave them into a coherent narrative. Then an idea struck me. I have been using AI-assisted coding for about a year — why not explore AI’s help in the creative process as well? With the assistance of ChatGPT 5.1, I was able to flesh out the story. Just as in coding, I still had to nudge, correct, refine, and fix logical flaws along the way. The first image was generated with Gemini’s Nano Banana and the second image with GPT-4o. The theme, direction, and final narrative choices are entirely my own.I am quite pleased with the result.

I hope you like it too…

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