The Physicist
“There are things so serious we can only joke about them.” — The Physicist
After a long day of trying to commune with the universe; answer its question of state and solve its problems, our dear old physicist decides to call it a day. He takes a walk to the other end of his lab, ignoring the other attendants as he walked past — such idiots, bearing gnat-sized brains. He’s silent enough to get past Gerd, the little kid who just joined and was always trying to get him to look at his work.
This physicist gets to the other end of the lab undetected, takes off his lab coat and replaces it with a dusty trench one, put on his hat and slips past the door in a series of quick, light fingered moves that would make a ninja jealous. Now, it’s just him, the cool evening breeze and his Model-T Ford with a broken speedometer. Who cares anyway? There’s a lot of important problems in the universe left to solve. He really never bothered how fast he was going, so long as he knew where he was.
He gets into his car, ignites it and the very sound gives him joy, as he steers it out through the mud into the decent streets of Munich, enjoying the breeze and the scenery that came with it. Barely 20 minutes into the joyride, our physicist gets a shout from the Polizei (Police), ordering him to pull over.
“What could these morons want now? Interrupting a man trying to escape all unpleasantness.” He pulls over anyway, but with a stern look on his face.
“Sir, you’re driving too fast, I trust you know that,” said the first polizei as he came from behind.
“Well as you can see, my speedometer is broken,” he snapped back.
“Sir, I see from your ID that you are a well-respected scientist. I do not wish to make this night any longer than it already is. You were driving at 35 mph; well over the 20mph limit. Fix your speedometer and get your brick brain off my roads,” bellowed the second officer.
This man was clearly the superior and the physicist, proud as he was, wanted no further problems. He breathed his anger out and drove off.
“35 miles per hour,” he murmured, mimicking the polizei, “I don’t understand how I manage to be surrounded by fools all…” the ford came to a sudden halt. Our physicist looked around and something was off. He had plied these roads a hundred times before, but now they looked strange. He tried to look around for landmarks, but couldn’t find any. Then something even stranger happened; he noticed his speedometer was working again.
After hours of trying to find his way back, the sudden rain that had him drenched, he found one whom he thought looked like a fellow intellectual. Our physicist alighted, stepped through the mud and went to tap on the stranger’s shoulder; who then looked at him, blank-faced from a bench. The physicist said, “Hallo! My name is Werner Heisenberg, and I think I’m lost. Where is this place?”
“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” — Werner Heisenberg (The Physicist)
Edit: It would appear this one is harder to grasp than I thought, so I’ll give a hint:
