Lemonade

The following day, Thandi went to work refreshed and ready to go over their research again. Mandy figured out that her brother did not succeed in convincing Thandi to give up.

“We are good at calculation, do you really thing we would make a mistake so many times?”Mandy asked.

“We made no mistake, it is quantum entanglement and we can’t change that” Thandi said.

“Then what are we doing?” Mandy asked. If Thandi accepts that they could not overcome quantum entanglement, why was she still doing the calculations? she wondered.

“We are making a lemonade, make that a double lemonade”Thandi said excited.

S’bu walked in and found his sister confused while his wife was so excited.

“What is going on?” he asked. He was still feeling guilty for neglecting them.

“Your wife is going crazy, she has accepted that we can’t continue but now she is so busy and excited and I have no idea why” Mandy explained.

S’bu looked at Thandi who was busy on her board writing an equation, she did not even notice him arrive. “Did you ask her what she was doing?” he asked his sister, concerned. Many scientists have become crazy and he could not help but worry about his wife.

“She says it’s a lemonade, no make that a double lemonade”Mandy said imitating Thandi. Thandi finished writing her equations, turned the board around to Mandy’s direction and noticed S’bu.

“Hello Honey, I didn’t see you walk in” she said lovingly.

“Are you okay?” he asked, concerned.

“I am better than okay, I’m great!” she exclaimed.

“But Mandy says you both have accepted defeat” he said pulling her to his arms to console her.

“Wait until she finishes looking at that board”she said excited.

“Holly! Molly! Thandi, you are a genius!” Mandy exclaimed.

“That my friend is just the lemonade” Thandi said beaming.

“Someone please explain to me in simple English what is going on” S’bu said confused and getting frustrated.

“In quantum physics, there is a concept of entanglement. It basically means that the particles are associated in a way that if you measure a state of one, it influences the others. Every time we measured one, it influenced the others and our results changed every time. While we were busy with the quantum state of these particles, we failed to notice that we were able to measure their momentum and place, with precision more than 100 times. That is something no one ever managed to do. I have no idea if we can reproduce this in a larger scale but it will definitely change some of the laws of quantum physics. That is the lemonade” Thandi said unable to hold her excitement.

“And the double lemonade?” S’bu asked trying his best to understand all these concepts.

“We know these particles influenced each other in this confined space. Now we need to figure out how far reaching is this influence. That is our next research” she said.

“But, great scientists aged and died trying to figure that out with no success!” Mandy exclaimed.

“We are in our late twenties and we have a starting point and time at our advantage. I’m sure we will come up with something before we die” Thandi said excited.

“Oh well, double lemonade it is” Mandy said conceding. No matter how ambitious Thandi’s goals were, she did not see herself working with anyone else. S’bu posted a photo of Thandi and Mandy wearing their white coats and wrote “I just spent an hour with these two and came out with a headache trying to understand the jargon. Scientific community, embrace yourself because here they come”. The following day, the JC research wing was all over the news. Their ground breaking research was published everywhere. Thandi and Mandy were inundated with interviews and invitations to different universities and research units all over the world. JC gained a lot of popularity and sponsors. The company was soon ranked number one in the country and top ten internationally.

Thandi and Mandy were both exhausted after four months of traveling in and out of the country and decided to stop traveling and do online presentations. Thandi took maternity leave when she was nine months pregnant to focus on her family and preparing for the baby’s arrival. S’bu and Thandi were looking forward to meeting their son but Amahle was the most excited of them all. Amahle had personally chose all the baby clothes and packed the hospital bag for both her Mother and her little brother.