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The Quantum Mechanist
Ayla Walter

The quantum mechanist is underpaid and overworked—
overlooked but she will not complain. The quantum 
mechanist sails on un-lauded coattails, and never forgets a 
figure. Sees the pattern she is laying but still won’t get the 
grant money—still rides sidesaddle in the parking lot, claws 
her way to tenure by a fingernail. This is what the quantum 
mechanist does. Even as if  you won’t see it—

She spins the story. Charms her way up and down, dances 
in the dark. Spooky action under a distant office lab in the 
hours before daybreak.

The quantum mechanist swans into campus bar ten minutes 
till last call, and orders straight tequila from a Klein bottle. 
Sits the way women aren’t supposed to sit. Then gets up at 
5:30 the next morning to apply concealer over the circles 
under her eyes, drags a brush of  sealant through tear tracks 
and sweat beads, puts her face on with a neutral-tone smile. 
Not red—not for work. 

She has a reputation to uphold on those slight shoulders. 
She don’t shrug off a single question—puts her time in deep 
gravity wells, punches that clock Doppler style all the way 
down to deadline.

All the while the Administration considers her… 
unconventional, too emotional, her dress too something, 
her hair too big, her weight up for grabs, reaction for every 
progressive action, mass equal to energy divided by the 
speed of  light squared—



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Einstein’s woman. She doesn’t need a name or Nobel to 
know this bell curve is skewed by omitted data, by all the 
witches burned, all the points overruled, all the shades erased 
with a one-sided one-dimensional white board theory of  
everything.

The quantum mechanist knows how to classify Schrödinger’s 
cat-shit when she sees it. And she sees it. But she steps over, 
rises above the valence shell of  every atom, she’s ionized. 
Ready to react.

Still, she won’t explode, won’t let that Markov Chain get 
ahead of  her. The quantum mechanist keeps her feet 
underneath; she’s on her toes all times looking both ways 
to cross the classroom. She sees in all four dimensions and 
more—builds a multi-matrix of  directions to hand down to 
her students, plots her pathway to brilliance on Cartesian 
coordinates. Won’t let any budgetary committee tell her 
what’s possible, she knows that nothing for her is impossible. 
She’s high frequency and ultraviolet, shattering glass event 
horizons. She stays up late and gets up early; she writes her 
dissertation while asleep and yes! Sometimes, she even takes 
the trash out.

Because that’s the Quantum Mechanist; strange from top to 
bottom, and she makes it work.

The Quantum Mechanist