Quantum Entanglement

by Liesel K. Hill

  Maggie nodded. She remembered him saying before that it was painful. “What did it feel like?” she asked. “Can you describe the sensation?”

  David glanced around the room, looking frustrated. His eyes roamed over the carport as if the answer to her question lurked in the dim shadows. His head came around toward her, eyes still searching, until they rested on her. They went from her eyes to just above her forehead. He peered at her hair, and the frustrated look disappeared.

  He raised one arm and gently ran his fingers through her hair. Her neurotic feminine side wanted to jerk away, not because of the intimacy of the motion, but because she’d been running around in the sun for the past twenty-four hours and sweating, which meant her hair was bound to be much greasier than normal. She resisted the urge.

  “Imagine,” he said, “that you’re linked to a lot of other people by your hair.”

  “My hair?”

  “Yes. In a collective, minds are woven together much like threads in a loom. Imagine you have very long hair—miles and miles of it—and it’s woven together with the hair of thousands of others. Your hair is so long, and can be split in so many ways that you have a direct link to each and every one of those thousands.” He turned more fully toward her and slid both of his hands into her hair. His fingers skimmed up until they reached her crown and he balled his fists up against her scalp, grasping two large handfuls of hair. “Do you feel how tightly I’m holding the hair?”

  His face was inches from her and she could only nod.

  “Imagine that sensation all over your scalp because every strand of your hair is so tightly woven in this collective braid. Now, try to pull away.”

  Maggie didn’t try. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well...I’d yank out my own hair, for one thing. Even if I was okay with that, I still don’t think I could. I’m too tightly held. I don’t think I’d be strong enough.”

  The smile David gave her was sad and knowing. His hands relaxed and slid out of her hair. Maggie told herself she’d imagined that they lingered on her jaw line for an instant.

  “That’s what breaking away from the collective felt like. I had to tear myself away from a weave that strong—stronger, really. I ripped away neural pathways, energies that had been in place for a decade. I lost a lot of brain cells to it.”

  Maggie shuddered. “That does sound painful.”

  “It was. But then there was the sunset. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I’d never realized it until that moment. I’m sure my reaction to it had everything to do with the trauma I’d been through, though I couldn’t understand that at the time.”

  “When you say, ‘reaction’ do you mean you found it to be beautiful, or was there more?”

  “I cried.”

  “You did?” He didn’t seem at all self-conscious about the confession.

  “Yes.” He gave a quiet laugh. Maggie rarely saw a genuine smile on David. He was lost in his memory, now. “I was so confused about it. I knew there must be a link between the moisture in my eyes and how the sunset made me feel, but I couldn’t connect the two. I had no frame of reference for an emotional reaction of that magnitude.”

  He turned to look at her and his smile faded again.

  “How long had it been since you’d cried?”

  “Since I was a boy. More than ten years.”

  Maggie smiled. “Maybe this is a girly thing to say, but how do you go ten years without crying about something?”

  David smiled. “Emotions are mediated in the collective. You don’t have visceral reactions to anything.”

  Maggie’s smile faded.

  “You disapprove?” David asked.

  “It’s just sad, David. Those kinds of visceral reactions speak to our souls. They show our true character; how we react when we can’t control our emotions, when logic isn’t part of the equation. Without them, we have no passion. We’re not...human.”

  “All those that live in the collectives are human,” David said quietly. “It’s true they live without passion, but they are human beings.”

  “Without emotion, how do you make decisions?”

  “Using logic.”

  Maggie rubbed her forehead, wondering how to make him understand. “David, you told me before that the sunrise was beautiful and it was the one thing you wanted to see again—that might make individualism worth living. You’ve seen many sunrises since then. Have you had the same reaction each time?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But you get used to a thing, and as I said before, my reaction may have been a result of the trauma I’d just been through.”

  “Yet, you keep looking at the sunrises, don’t you? If you’re ‘used to’ them, why do that except to get the same reaction again?”

  “I don’t want the same reaction again,” David said. “I wasn’t in control of it.”

  “Some part of what you experienced was good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have thought the sunrise was so beautiful. So perhaps it’s not the reaction itself you liked, but the way it made you feel?”

  David frowned, and she could tell he was thinking over her words.

  “It’s human to yearn for things, David. It helps us know what we truly want.”

  David turned to face forward, away from her, putting up walls between them. “Yearning for things you can’t have brings pain. There’s no such pain in the collective.”

  Maggie chose her words carefully. “Even negative emotions can be a good thing.”

  He threw a skeptical glance her way.

  “We all want to feel good things,” she continued. “Negative emotions drive us to go after what we want: the things that give us those good feelings. Without passion and yearning, we’d never have the drive to attain our deepest desires. So, it’s not a bad thing in the long run.”

  David searched her face until she dropped her eyes.

  “And it’s a good thing to go after what we yearn for?”

  Maggie looked up to find David leaning toward her, his face inches away and eyes boring into hers. “Um...well...so long as it’s an...appropriate thing to yearn for. Even if we can’t always have what we think we want...yearning can help us to know ourselves and...what we want.”

  He leaned closer. “And we should pursue what we want.” It was no longer a question.

  Maggie leaned away from him and put a hand on his shoulder. “David,” she whispered.

  He sat up straight and turned away from her. Maggie got to her feet, running her hands through her hair.

  “I’m sorry,” David said quietly. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  Maggie sighed. She felt guilty, though she couldn’t have said why. “Don’t be sorry,” she managed, turning to him. “David, you think you feel a certain way about me, but you don’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you’re still confused. You’re still figuring yourself out. You’ve latched onto me and I’m happy to be here for you, as a friend. But...I don’t think your emotions are what you think they are.”

  He stared at her for long seconds before answering. “If it makes it easier for you to believe that, please do.” It was said without malice or irony, but rather with a quiet acceptance.

  Maggie sighed. She ran her hands through her hair again, trying to think of some way to change the subject. Why couldn’t it be dawn already?

  She remembered wanting to ask David something earlier. There was something she’d meant to talk to him about when they got a minute. Now she couldn’t remember what it was. She ran through everything that had happened. Justine, the attack, the fight, Kristee being hurt...That was it. David had done something.

  “What did you do to Kristee when she got hurt?” she asked. “You said you can’t Heal, but you did something that snapped her out of the pain and allowed her to Travel. It looked like it was...uncomfortable for you.”

  David passed a hand over his eyes. “It’s just something I know how to do. I to
ok away some of her pain so she could get us out of there.”

  “How is that not Healing?”

  “With Healing, you knit the person’s body together, repair it. I didn’t Heal her injury. I simply took her pain away so she could function.”

  “Like...dulling her nerves, or something?”

  David smiled without humor. “No. Pain is an energy all its own. It isn’t caused exclusively by physical injury, so it’s not an exclusive by-product of that. You know that’s true because we often feel emotional pain, even when there is no actual injury to go along with it.”

  “So,” Maggie rubbed her forehead, “pain isn’t caused by injury?”

  “It’s more like the injury itself gives rise to pain. When someone is hurt, physically or emotionally, the very act of having some part of their body or mind broken or torn produces a negative energy, and we perceive it as pain. All I did was take that energy away. I didn’t heal the injury.”

  “Energy can’t be created or destroyed,” Maggie ventured, trying to follow his reasoning. “It has to go somewhere. What did you do with it?”

  He looked her dead in the eye. “I have to take it on myself.”

  Maggie’s eyes widened as she considered the implications of that. “You physically took her pain on yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “But,” Maggie sputtered, “why didn’t the pain knock you on your butt the way it did her?”

  “She was actually injured, where I wasn’t, so it was harder for her to deal with. I also chose to take the pain on, which gave me more power over it. It was inflicted on her. And she was in too much pain to be conscious enough to take control of it. I had to take enough of it to allow her the control to get us out of there.”

  Maggie swallowed. “David...that’s kind of amazing.”

  He shrugged. “No, just desperate.”

  Maggie became aware of something in the distance she couldn’t identify. It felt like something hot was burning through the air; like someone waving a sparkler around half a block away. She wondered vaguely what she was sensing, but was too fatigued to worry about it. Perhaps they would have time to explore it in the morning.

  Maggie went to sit beside David again. “I don’t want to try and sleep again, but maybe you should.”

  David gazed over her head toward the window. “No.”

  “So I have to rest from my ordeal, but you don’t?”

  “Maggie, be quiet.”

  “Well it’s a little chauvinistic, David—”

  He cupped a hand over her lips. “Shh. I heard something.”

  Maggie froze. She heard it, too. A soft scuffle, like an animal digging in the dirt, or the toe of a shoe pushing pebbles around.

  David put a finger to his lips. She nodded. He lifted one knee and put his foot flat on the ground. Moving slowly so as not to make any noise, he rose up onto his knee, then pushed himself silently to his feet. Behind him, what looked like small, concentrated flashlight beams jumped and danced against the back wall. David pulled Maggie silently to her feet, and they both stood rigid, listening.

  “What do you think?” The male voice sounded like it was right outside the car port.

  “I don’t know. I still think it was an animal.” The second voice was deeper.

  “There aren’t any strays around here no more,” the first said.

  “Could’ve traveled from another district. Been known to happen.”

  “The ‘bot didn’t register fur; it registered cotton,” the first insisted. “It said the mixture was really old. No one’s manufactured material like that for eighty years.”

  “That proves my point. It must have been an animal,” the second said.

  “Because stray cats run around wearing antique clothing?”

  “It was probably something the animal dug up and dragged through here.”

  A sigh came from the first. “Maybe,” he conceded. “I’ll start at the other end. You start here.”

  “All right. Let’s make this quick.”

  Maggie looked up at David, who was frowning. We have to hide, she mouthed.

  He turned, eyes searching the space. Maggie turned to the trunk they’d been sitting against, wondering if they could open it without being heard. David moved toward the back of the port, eyes darting around for a solution. A white beam flooded Maggie’s eyes, blinding her.

  “Hey,” voice number two shouted, “what do you two think you’re doing? Simmons, in here!”

  A strong hand grabbed her upper arm and Maggie was yanked forward. She gasped, trying to pull energy toward her...and found she couldn’t. When she tried, nausea set in so strong that she doubled over and nearly vomited. She couldn’t see the man who held her, but he held her against the wall in a death grip.

  “Leave her alone!” In her captor’s light beam she caught a flash of David lunging toward him. The sounds of fists hitting meat followed.

  The nausea felt much the same as that which came from neurological sedatives. On the island, she’d overcome the one Colin had given her, but she had no idea how. She barely remembered the incident. She reached for the energy again, trying to ignore the nausea. If she could just push past it, transcend it somehow...

  “Hey, what are you doing? You stop that!”

  The first man had knocked David to the ground, but was obviously addressing her. She frowned. It was almost as if he saw what she was doing. He couldn’t possibly, could he?

  The man wasn’t much taller than her, but that was all she could tell about him. He pulled a round object from his pocket and thrust it out toward her.

  Maggie slammed into the ground. The thing emitted a low, fast pulse that pounded so violently in her ear canals, it felt like someone was drumming on her skull with a mallet. She clasped her hands over her ears, curling up in a ball as her pulse tried to pound its way out of her forehead. It didn’t help. She opened her eyes to find David on his knees a few feet away, hands over his ears and face contorted in pain.

  The world went dark.

  Chapter 13: Forbidden Links

  MARCUS PASSED A HAND over his eyes. “You’re hurt, Karl, and I can’t Heal you for hours yet. You ought to sleep first.”

  Karl shook his head, jaw set stubbornly. “Nope. It’s all you. I’ll sleep better when you have Healed me, which won’t happen until the neurological sedative burns away. So you might as well sleep now. Best way to make sure we’re both as refreshed as possible. Besides, the injury’s not so bad I can’t stay awake for five or six hours. You’re exhausted.”

  “Am not,” Marcus tried to say, but had to stuff his fist in his mouth to stifle a yawn before the second word got out. Between whatever hit him on the fallen tree the night before, Healing Tenessa, and the bump on the head Colin’s henchmen administered, his eyelids kept trying to shut on their own. He threw his hands up. “Fine. Wake me if there are any problems.”

  Karl muttered something about ‘Captain Obvious.’ Marcus ignored him. He pulled a blanket from his pack and rolled himself in it. The sky wasn’t completely dark yet, but Karl was right: Marcus was exhausted. The light wouldn’t hinder his ability to sleep in the least.

  He’d filled Karl in on everything Colin said. Karl only shook his head in disgust. “How does that guy always manage to piss off everyone around him enough to make them all want to kill him, and somehow still walk away?”

  Tenessa hadn’t said much. She kept her distance from Karl and Marcus, huddling in on herself and wrapping her arms around her knees. Now she sat six feet away, staring sullenly down the mountain. As Marcus began to drift off, he heard Karl shuffling around, and opened one eye.

  Karl had pulled a blanket from his pack and walked toward Tenessa. Though the night wasn’t terribly cold, Marcus could see Tenessa shivering in the twilight. Karl must have noticed it too.

  “We don’t need the Separatist’s help,” Tenessa barked at him, slapping away the blanket he held out to her. Karl dropped it beside her, putting his hands up in surrender, and walk
ed back to where he’d been sitting.

  Marcus sighed and closed his eyes, wishing he knew what to do next.

  He dreamed of Colin, and snarling Trepids. Soon the adrenaline-filled dreams gave way to sweet ones, of time spent with Maggie, and being safe with his friends and family deep within the caverns of Interchron. Then, the dreams changed again.

  “There you are.” Marcus sagged with relief as he walked to where David sat cross-legged on a rock over-looking the river. After the encounter the day before, they hadn’t run into the collectivists again. David had been uncharacteristically quiet since. When Marcus and his father awakened this morning, David was already gone. “Dad and I have been looking for you for an hour. What are you doing?”

  David’s mouth set in a hard line. “What do you care?”

  “Dad says we have to go. He doesn’t want to stay around these parts. Those collectivists may still be in the area.”

  David gazed out over the rushing waters.

  “C’mon, David. Let’s go. Dad’s waiting.”

  “I wish Dad would just talk to them.” David’s voice was so quiet, Marcus wasn’t sure whether he’d heard correctly.

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  David turned such a sharp scowl on him and Marcus took an involuntary step back.

  After a moment, David moderated his look and dropped his eyes to study his shoes. “I talked with them a long time yesterday morning, Marcus. For maybe an hour before you got here.”

  Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “That long?”

  “I think they have some good points. Would it be so bad to live in a community of people? To have security?”

  “We are going to live in a community, David. One full of individuals. If we went into the one they propose, we’d be slaves to it.”

  “How do you know that?” David’s smoldering glare returned and he jumped off the rock to face Marcus. “That’s what Dad says, but how do we really know?”

  “David,” Marcus rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Why are you asking this? You know better than this. Dad has raised you better than this. He’s raised us to think for ourselves. You want to throw it all away and live as part of a mediocre whole instead of as your own person?”