Superposition

by David Walton

  The guard unlocked the handcuffs and left the room, closing the transparent door behind him. The other Jacob was staring at me, mouth open.

  “Do you know this man?” Sheppard asked.

  “Looks like he could be my twin brother,” Jacob said.

  “You were caught in the varcolac’s probability wave,” I said.

  His mouth opened even wider. “Superposition,” he said. “Just like Brian.”

  I nodded. I held up my left hand. “See the wedding ring?”

  “Why is it on your right hand?”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “We’re on opposite sides of the Bloch sphere.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “This is weird.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  We both laughed in uncanny echo.

  “Will someone please tell me what’s going on here?” Sheppard asked.

  “A Bloch sphere is a concept in quantum mechanics,” Jacob said. “It’s a geometrical representation of the uncertain state of a particle—say an electron—that’s spinning both up and down at the same time.”

  “How can something spin up?” Sheppard asked.

  “It’s the right-hand rule,” Jacob said. “Take your right hand and curl it in the direction of the spin.” He held out his hand in a loose, thumbs-up gesture. “The direction your thumb is pointing is the direction of the spin vector.”

  “Only his is backward, from my perspective, because to me, that’s his left hand,” I said. I held out my right hand and curved the fingers the same way, causing my thumb to point down instead. “See? We represent both states at the same time.”

  “Which of you is the real one?” Terry asked.

  “Neither,” I said.

  “At least not yet,” Jacob added.

  I eyed him warily and caught him returning the look. It was oddly thrilling for another person to understand me so quickly and so completely. The problem was, it wasn’t another person. It was me, and when all this was over, only one version of me could survive. Was this what had happened to Brian? Had he killed himself to make sure his version was the one that lived?

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Jacob said, as if guessing my thoughts. “The two versions are the endpoints of a probability waveform—the real Jacob exists in all possible states between the two of us, with a certain probability. The wave will eventually collapse to be you, or me, or some average value in between. So if Up-Brian killed Down-Brian, that wouldn’t make Up-Brian the final version. It would just raise the probability that the final version would be dead.”

  “Though Brian might not have realized that,” I said.

  Sheppard held his head in his hands. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Okay, look. Every little bit of matter or energy in the universe, whether it’s a beam of light or a comet or a bacon cheeseburger, is made of tiny particles,” I said.

  “They’re not really particles,” Jacob said. “They can diffract and interfere with each other, so really they’re waves. They have a certain wavelength, usually quite small, that governs how they behave.”

  “Don’t interrupt,” I said. “It’s no good thinking of them as waves, as if they were ripples on a pond. They can be counted. You can have just one. They have some odd wavelike properties, but they’re clearly particles.”

  Jacob was ignoring Sheppard now. “How can you call them particles? They’re not Newtonian; they have no classic idea of position or velocity. The ‘particle’ concept is just a crutch for an inadequate imagination.” He turned back to Sheppard. “What we call matter and energy are just simple wave functions. The difficulty some people have in accepting that is purely psychological.”

  “Waves of what?” I asked.

  “What?” Jacob said.

  “A wave is the fluctuation of a medium. These waves you’re talking about—what is doing the waving?”

  “The quantum-mechanical substrate.”

  I threw up my hands. “And what is that? It’s just a word you made up to fill the void in your reasoning.”

  “They’re waves,” Jacob said.

  “Particles.”

  “Waves!”

  Sheppard stepped between us and waved his hands. “Stop it,” he said. “This is insane. What does this all mean? What are you going to do?”

  I took a deep breath. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good idea. “When does the trial start?” I asked.

  “Hard to say. The NJSC is a big political sore spot, so the media are running away with this one, poking at the possibility of a politically motivated killing. That will put a rush on the trial procedure, but it will still be months probably.”

  “That gives us plenty of time to work, then,” Jacob said.

  “The most important thing is to make sure that the final Jacob Kelley . . .” I said.

  “. . . whoever he is . . .” Jacob added.

  “. . . is found innocent of all charges.”

  CHAPTER 20

  DOWN-SPIN

  After Officer Morales’s testimony, the jury was given an hour and a half to walk the streets and find lunch, or, if they were brave, to eat in the courthouse cafeteria. Lunch for me was a roast beef sandwich and a Coke in a tiny meeting room under the baleful stare of an armed guard. I made it last as long as I could, but a sandwich can only stretch so far. When it was done, I had nothing to do but sit and stare at the walls and miss Elena and the kids.

  After lunch, the trial shifted to a new phase. It was the defense’s turn to start calling witnesses. Terry stood and regarded the courtroom like a king surveying his new domain, holding on to his lapels. So far, Haviland had been calling the shots, and he had just been doing damage control. Now it was his turn. The physical evidence against me was going to be difficult to overcome, but we had a few tricks up our sleeves. One big surprise in particular, but that wouldn’t come out until my testimony at the very end.

  Jean was marvelous on the stand. She had dressed up for the occasion, in a classy black pantsuit and high heels. I had never seen her in anything but jeans and a sweatshirt before. She and Terry knocked questions and answers back and forth like professional tennis players, leaving the jury swiveling their heads back and forth in comic time between the two. She was funny, informal, and best of all, comprehensible. Terry was the perfect foil, pretending ignorance while tossing up the perfect leading questions.

  “Dr. Massey, we all learned about atoms in school,” he said. “We’re all made up of them. But tell the jury—just how small are they?”

  She smiled. “A piece of tissue paper is about one hundred thousand atoms thick.”

  Terry pretended astonishment. “Really? But our case is dealing with things even smaller than that—subatomic particles, correct? So how big is, say, a proton, compared to an atom?”

  “About a hundred thousand times smaller.”

  Astonishment again. “So tissue paper is a hundred thousand atoms thick, but a proton is a hundred thousand times smaller than that? What about an electron?”

  “An electron has no size at all.”

  “How can something have no size? Doesn’t that mean it’s not there at all?”

  “It has mass,” she said. “And spin, believe it or not, and of course a negative electric charge. But no, it’s a point particle, with no actual size to it at all.”

  “Are there any other particles?”

  “Sure. Neutrons, muons, pions, taus, neutrinos, quarks, photons . . .”

  “Photons? Aren’t those light?”

  They went on in that vein, driving the jury through a crash course in basic particle physics. Terry had gotten his nephew to convert some of Jean’s illustrations into graphics displays, which he showed the jury on the courtroom’s ancient plasma screen.

  “So if atoms are made of protons, which are so tiny, and electrons, which have no size at all, an atom is mostly just empty space, isn’t it? So if I’m just made up of empty space, why don’t I just fall right through
this table when I lean against it?” He leaned against the table to prove his point.

  “It’s because of the electron field surrounding the atom,” she said. “They prevent the other atoms from passing through.”

  She went on to describe the double slit experiment, which shows how subatomic particles aren’t really particles, but aren’t really not-particles, either. Haviland objected frequently to the relevance of the testimony, but Judge Roswell allowed it, citing the groundbreaking nature of the case and the complexity of the science involved. After several coin and tennis ball illustrations to establish the concepts of superposition and entanglement, they finally got to the crux of the matter.

  “So what you’re saying is that Mr. Vanderhall could, theoretically, have killed himself, despite the fact that he was shot three times from at least two meters away, and no gun was found in the room,” Terry said.

  Jean nodded. “He could have set up an entanglement situation with himself. For a brief period of time, he could have been in two places at once, enough time to shoot himself and dispose of the gun before the Brian probability wave collapsed into a single, dead Brian. Interestingly enough, it could have collapsed into the living Brian instead—there was no way to know until it happened.”

  “Isn’t that an awfully convoluted way to commit suicide? I mean, why didn’t he just put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger?”

  I thought Haviland might object to the question on the grounds that Jean couldn’t know Brian’s intentions, but he kept quiet. Maybe he thought the objection itself would lend credence to the whole idea in the first place.

  “I can’t say what Brian was thinking, or that it even happened this way,” Jean said, perfectly following her script. “All I’m saying is, it’s possible. Given the technology Brian was researching, it could be done. Suicide is a possible reason for his death.”

  “That’s your professional opinion?” Terry asked.

  “It is.”

  Terry let it go at that, and Haviland took the stand with a show of barely concealed incredulity.

  “Ms. Massey . . .”

  “Dr. Massey,” Jean corrected.

  “Ah yes. Doctor. Of course. Do you really expect the jury to believe that the victim made a copy of himself, which shot him and then disappeared into thin air?”

  “I’m not saying he did it. I’m saying it is scientifically possible.”

  “Have you ever made a copy of yourself, doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever seen anyone else do so?”

  “No.”

  “Have you read in any scientific journal that such an experiment has been made, or even attempted?”

  “Not with a human, no.” It was a marvelous answer, though deceptive, since it implied such an experiment had been done with an animal. Of course, nothing like it had ever been tried, but Haviland didn’t know that. He couldn’t press her on it, because once he asked the question, he’d be giving her free rein to defend the concept on scientific grounds.

  Haviland dropped a beat, and then said, “Remember that you are under oath, Dr. Massey, and that this is the real world, not science fiction. To your certain knowledge, in any reputable, peer-reviewed, scientific literature, has any copy of a human being through quantum superposition ever been made?”

  “No,” Jean said.

  Haviland threw his hands in the air and let them fall, shaking his head as if this had all been a criminal waste of time. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Jean stepped down from the bench and flashed me an encouraging smile. I nodded back with a look that I hoped conveyed my gratefulness. Not all of my colleagues would have been willing to stand up and be counted with me, to risk the detrimental effect on their careers that media scrutiny of their statements might bring, not to mention the potential of being associated—depending on which way the verdict came out—with a convicted murderer.

  CHAPTER 21

  UP-SPIN

  No one at the NJSC had seen Elena or Claire or Sean. Jean said she had asked everyone she could think of, and no one remembered them being there. The police had been inquiring, too, but of course I couldn’t ask them what they’d discovered. As time went by, I found it hard to be optimistic.

  Christmas was unbearable. Three weeks had come and gone by then, with no word. My theory that they could still be alive started to sound ridiculous, even to me. Marek said Ava was convinced I had murdered Elena and the kids and hidden the bodies, and her other sisters were inclined to agree. It was putting quite a strain on their marriage, and he rarely came to see me anymore.

  I mostly stayed in Colin’s safe house, though even there the church held services and events, and I couldn’t entirely avoid the sounds of Christmas music and holiday cheer. I didn’t know what to say to Alessandra, so I didn’t say much of anything. She began to help out around the church: setting up for events, washing dishes, sweeping floors, just for something to do. She could have left me at any time. She could have gone to the police and turned herself in, and then lived with one of Elena’s sisters, but she didn’t. Not even when I started drinking, more heavily than I ever had before. I hadn’t been a drinker in college—there was too much to learn and do. Now I had nothing to do, and the more I could avoid thinking, the better.

  It would be months before the trial would start. There had to be all manner of preliminary hearings, and the pretrial, and the discovery process, and myriad motions by both parties, before it could begin. I had missed Jacob’s first appearance in court, which occurred only two days after his arrest, and involved his arraignment and the bail argument, although on a murder charge there was no chance of him getting out on bail. The first preliminary hearing was scheduled for early in January. I insisted to Terry on the phone that I wanted to come, but he shut me down.

  “You’re our ace,” he said. “The prosecution has no idea what we have up our sleeve, and if we bring you out now, they’ll have two months to work up a way to discredit you, or even get you barred from the trial.”

  “But how can they do that?”

  “I’m your attorney, remember? Trust me, the less the prosecution knows about our case for as long as possible, the more likely we are to win. The preliminary is the prosecution’s show—they’re on the hook to prove to the judge they have enough evidence to continue. We don’t have to reveal anything we’ve got planned, unless I choose to in order to get evidence struck down. So be patient. Lie low, and let me do my job.”

  So I lay low. I had promised my double that I would do what I could to prove his innocence, but I was no lawyer; I couldn’t help with any of those things. I couldn’t think of anything I could do to find my family, either, or even to confirm that they were dead. So I drank and slept and pretended I was fine and told Alessandra that tomorrow we were sure to find them.

  “I know what you’re going through,” Marek said on one of his rare visits. “When I lost my wife, just breathing seemed like more trouble that it was worth.”

  “Your wife is still alive,” I said. “Both of your wives are still alive.”

  “I expected her to come to the United States, eventually,” Marek said, ignoring me. “I was doing it all for her, sending her money, trying to save as much as I could. And she left me.”

  “What are you telling me?” I asked. “That the pain will go away, in time, and I’ll find someone else?”

  “I’m just saying, I know what it’s like,” Marek said. “It’s hard. It hurts. It’ll keep hurting for a while. But don’t let it crush you. Get out of this room. Go do something.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  He shrugged. “You have a daughter. Take her to a movie. Go out for ice cream. Anything.”

  “I’m drinking too much, is that it?”

  “It’ll get better,” Marek said.

  “I don’t want it to,” I said.

  January was even worse than December. I got news that my teaching position at the college had been filled by someone
else. I heard that Elena’s parents had visited my double in prison a few times, but that most of her family were keeping their distance. Of course, they all thought I was a murderer. The only family I had left was Colin and Alessandra.

  “Claire would have been starting to look at colleges about now,” I told Alessandra one day. I was sitting on the bed, flipping through pictures on my phone.

  “Who cares?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Who cares? Claire’s dead. Everybody knows that but you.”

  I put the phone down. “Don’t say that.”

  “If they’re not dead, then where are they?”

  “I don’t know where they are. Maybe they are dead. But it doesn’t mean we stop caring about them. Claire was your sister. She was pretty and smart and kind, and now she’s gone. Maybe she’s dead and maybe not, but she was a special person, and I miss her.”

  “Claire?” Alessandra shouted. Tears were streaming down her face. “All you talk about is Claire and Sean and Mom. What about me? I’m alive. I’m here.”

  “I know,” I said, bewildered by her outburst. “But I miss them. Don’t you understand that?”

  She turned away. “Yeah, I understand.”

  “Alessandra,” I said.

  She stomped up the stairs. “I know. Just forget it.”

  I knew I should go after her. That’s what a good father would do, but I didn’t have the energy, and didn’t know what to say. My head was pounding. I picked up the phone again and flipped to the next picture of Claire.

  Finally, Colin told me we would have to leave the safe house. “Too many people have seen you here,” he said. “The church leaders are getting nervous.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?” I asked.

  “I know people,” Colin said. “I can help the two of you get new identities. Go to the West Coast, find a quiet spot, get a job, and try to start over. There’s nothing left for you here.”

  “I can’t do that. What about the trial?” I asked.