Complex Numbers

Missed Connection

PROMPT November 22nd

Write about a missed connection.

I'm convinced that USB connectors exist in four-dimensional space.

You try to plug one in and it doesn't work, so you give it half a turn and try again. It still doesn't work. So you give it another half a turn - rotating it 360° from its original orientation - et voilà! It slides right in, no problem.

A 360° rotation in our normal, everyday universe is the same as a 0° rotation. But in the subatomic realm, you get weird things like electrons and other particles with "spin ½," which only return to their original orientation after a 2*360=720° rotation. One hypothesis for this weirdness is that it's partially rotating in a fourth (or fifth) dimension, a property limited to fermions - and USB connectors. "But you only rotated the USB connector by one and a half turns." Yes, but the first time it didn't work, remember? Another half-turn and it would go back to not working, which was its original orientation.

I'm going to be traveling next month. It's only for six days, but the complication here is that, usually, when I travel, my housemate is here to take care of my cats - and vice-versa. Well, this time, she's going to be away as well, so we needed to arrange for cat-sitting. All my other friends live too far away now, so I opted (this became my responsibility) to go with a professional pet care service. So I did extensive research (translation: I chose the third result on Google Search, not trusting the first two to be anything other than a Search Engine Optimization scam, which is my advice for the day) and called a local place that does that sort of thing.

I spoke with the nice lady and we arranged for a meeting at chez moi so she could meet the cats. This is harder than it sounds because all the cats tend to be shy around strangers. So on the arranged date, which was Wednesday, I took the time to ensure that all the cats were at least inside where there was some chance she'd be able to get to know them, and that their litter boxes weren't too bad. The time for the meeting came - and went, without a sign of the pet sitter.

I called her and, lo, she had utterly forgotten about the meeting. This does not bode well, of course, because what if she forgets when the cats need their food and water? But it's the accursed holiday season, and at this point it's probably too late to pick someone else, so when we finally did connect, yesterday, I wanted some reassurance that someone would actually show up to feed the cats. She assured me that, yes, it was on the calendar, and she'd contact me every day after the deed was done.

My reasoning for going ahead with this was simple: she messed up once, and when you're running a business and mess up once, you do everything in your power to recover a good impression. I thought about installing a few nanny cams for insurance, but then I remembered that I would also get notifications when someone (dis)arms the security system, so I'd have verification that at least someone showed up.

So yeah, sometimes you have to rotate something by more than 360° to get it to fit, but then it runs as smooth as anything.