In Everett's ‘many worlds’ view of quantum mechanics, the complete multidimensional Universe can be divided into many vector subspaces. Each subspace is a physically real ‘parallel world’. Quantum-probability paradoxes neatly disappear. Schrödinger's famous cat, whose life hangs on one random quantum event, lives in some of the Everett worlds, but dies in others.

Clever, says Daedalus; but not clever enough. Why should the Universe divide so neatly into perfect physically real worlds? By choosing a different set of orthogonal vectors, you could divide it just as validly into worlds whose quantum states were hopelessly mixed. Their inhabitants would be like Schrödinger's cat before it is observed: neither alive nor dead, but in a ghostly, non-physical, quantum superposition of these states.

So Daedalus sees the complete Universe as a set of physically real Everett worlds, embedded in a matrix of quantally mixed, physically non-real, ghostly worlds. He identifies this mystic matrix with the spiritual world of ghosts, telepathy, and so on. Indeed, it may act as a telepathic channel for messages from other Everett worlds. This theory explains the deplorably unreliable nature of mystic insights, telepathic intuitions and so on. They may in fact refer to some other world.

But how to tell? Daedalus reckons that a complementarity principle must apply. To sustain the correct probabilities of its quantum states, a live Schrödinger cat in one world implies a dead one in another; a successful lucky chance in one world must fail in another. Daedalus recalls a study of intuition in business executives. Successful ones scored significantly better than chance; but failing ones scored worse than chance. Clearly, says Daedalus, these perverse ‘anti-psychics’ were, sadly for them, tuned to another world. So Daedalus plans to seek out such rare and gifted individuals among bankrupt businessmen, failed spiritualists and inspired losers of all kinds. He will then look for statistical agreements among their hopeless fantasies. Tantalizing glimpses of some other Everett world may emerge.

Although this world will probably be very close to ours in the universal ‘holospace’, Daedalus can see no way of exchanging material as well as ideas. He does wonder, however, whether its inhabitants find extra socks in the wash, but suffer mysterious losses of wire coat-hangers.