Life and Physics

Early this evening, when I had finished an afternoon of interviewing PhD candidates over zoom, I set off to meet my wife, who had, for her approved exercise, gone walking over Hampstead Heath. I phoned her to check the route she was on, and also shared my location on google maps.

For some reason the latter didn’t work, or at least, my sharing did but hers didn’t. In any case we successfully rendezvoused near Parliament Hill and had a pleasant walk back together by the ponds. Even though some of it is by now a sea of muddy footprints, the heath is a lifesaver.

A few minutes after we got home, the new landline phone I bought a couple of days ago rang, with a waiting message. Picking it up, I heard a deadpan, strangely menacing robotic voice say

“I can see you, but you can’t see me.”