Quantum Entanglement

by Liesel K. Hill

  David’s face darkened by degrees as Marcus spoke. His hands balled into tight fists by his sides. “What’s so great about being me?” His voice sounded too calm. “Dad tells us to think for ourselves, but won’t let us go find out anything on our own. How do we know what the collectives are like—or if they even exist—if we haven’t experienced it ourselves?”

  “Why would you want to experience tyranny?” Marcus growled.

  “We don’t know that’s what it is! I always thought collectivists would be monsters. Those people yesterday were normal. And nice. The way they talked about the collectives made them sound great.”

  “Of course they spoke highly of collective life, David. They wanted to recruit you.”

  “So what? Either way, they weren’t any different than we are!”

  Marcus took a deep, calming breath. His father never got angry with David. Marcus wished he knew the secret to it. “David, not one of them used the word ‘I’ while we talked to them.”

  “There were four of them.” David’s said incredulously.

  “Okay,” Marcus shook his head, deciding to change the subject. “Maybe we can talk all about this with Dad tonight over supper.”

  David’s mouth hardened, his jaw clenching. “You mean after we’ve left the area?”

  “They’re not coming back, David.”

  “How do you know that? If Dad would talk to them—”

  “If they’d wanted to sit down like polite, respectful human beings and have a chat with Dad, they would have done it yesterday. Did you notice how Dad came back less than half an hour after they left, even though they told us he was still miles away? They could sense him returning, David. That’s why they took off. The only reason they’d come back now is to drill our brains while we sleep.”

  “You don’t know that,” David growled through clenched teeth.

  Marcus ran a hand through his hair. He needed to calm his brother before one of them threw a punch, and he wasn’t sure it would be David who did it. “David, what is this about? You’ve never talked like this before.”

  David’s gaze slid away from Marcus. He swallowed loudly and moisture pooled in his eyes.

  Marcus’s chest clenched and he stepped toward his brother. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m just,” David rubbed angrily at his eyes, “I’m lonely, Marcus.”

  Marcus suppressed a scoff. “Why are you lonely? You’ve got me and Dad. We’re all together all the time.”

  David shook his head. “It’s not enough. I’m sorry. I wish it was. But it’s not.”

  Marcus studied the ground, searching it for the appropriate response. After a minute David began darting furtive glances at him.

  “What?” Marcus asked.

  “Maybe,” David’s tears disappeared and he seemed nervous, plucking at the hem of his shirt. “Maybe it would help if...”

  Marcus stepped closer and put a hand on David’s shoulder. “Tell me. What would help?”

  Another ten seconds passed before David raised his gaze to Marcus’s. “If we...linked our minds together?”

  Shocked, Marcus’s hand dropped and he fought to keep from stepping back. “What?”

  David stared at him levelly, not offering any reason or justification.

  “David, that would leave us vulnerable to the collectives—”

  “Says Dad.”

  “—and we’d be in each other’s heads all the time!”

  At that, David shook his head. “Those three said not. They said it was possible all the time, but you can shut out thoughts you don’t want.”

  “How do you know they’re telling the truth? Why do you trust them over Dad?”

  “I don’t. I just want to know for myself. I don’t want to live in a collective for the principle of it, Marcus. I swear. I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”

  “You aren’t alone!”

  “I am! In my head, I am!”

  “We’re supposed to be alone in our heads, David. That’s how we keep being...ourselves. We talk to and interact with others so we’re not lonely. That’s what we do.”

  “I want more than that,” David’s voice had gone quiet.

  Marcus took another breath. “Dad won’t ever agree—”

  “I’m not asking Dad. I know he’d never do it. I’m asking you. You’re my brother.”

  Marcus gazed down into David’s troubled eyes for a dozen heartbeats before shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  David threw up his hands. “Why do you always have to do everything right, Marcus? Can’t you ever take any risks?”

  Marcus sighed. “With my freedom? I guess not.” As he said it, he felt the truth of it.

  “Well I guess we all can’t be as perfect as you are,” David snarled. He leapt off the boulder and stalked up the embankment.

  Marcus turned and watched the water churn white over the rocks, listening to the sounds of David’s footfalls crashing through the foliage. When the sound had faded completely, he turned away from the river. “David, wait—”

  A strong hand closed around his forearm. He turned to find his father looking after David. “Let him go, Marcus.” His father had crept close while they’d been fighting, but Marcus was so focused on David, he hadn’t registered it.

  Marcus turned his face away, hoping the moisture in his eyes wasn’t obvious. “I...thought you wanted to leave.”

  “I do. Let him cool down and then I’ll go talk to him.”

  His father looked down at him then. Marcus kept his gaze on the ground.

  “You said everything right, Marcus. I couldn’t have refuted his points any better myself.”

  Marcus glanced up. Perhaps, but he doubted his father would have raised his voice to David. “What do we do, Dad? We’re losing him.”

  Danic shook his head. “He’s not getting lost, Marcus. He’s trying to find himself. I know it’s frustrating. We must be patient with him. He’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “He will.”

  “What if he doesn’t? Dad, he’s thinking about life in the collective.”

  His father arched an eyebrow at him. “Haven’t you ever thought about collective life?”

  Marcus glanced after David and gave half a shrug. “I guess I’ve...wondered what it’s like, but I’ve never wanted to experience it.”

  Danic chuckled softly. “You’re a rock, Marcus. As solid as they come. I’m already proud of the man you’re becoming. But David is not you. He doesn’t let us see it often, but he’s struggled ever since that girl’s death last year.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened. “You mean Laina? You think this is about that?”

  His father heaved a deep sigh. “David doesn’t realize it, but he’s still grieving for her. He loved her.”

  Marcus guffawed, crossing his arms over his chest, and his father raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m sorry, Dad. It’s just...I know they spent a lot of time together, but he only knew her—what? A month? Six weeks. And he’s thirteen! He was only twelve at the time. How could he have been in love with her?”

  A soft smile played over his father’s lips. “I’m not saying it was a deep, abiding, life-long emotion, Marcus. More like puppy love. I’ll agree with you on that. But she was the first girl David ever had a crush on. You’ve never felt that, so it’s difficult for you to understand it. Besides, you weren’t there when Laina died.”

  “I saw the aftermath,” Marcus objected.

  “You did,” his father agreed, “but it isn’t quite the same thing.” Danic sighed and rubbed his thumb and forefinger around the line of his mouth. Marcus thought he might be struggling to explain something. Surprising. His father was always so eloquent. “Unless,” Danic began again, “Unless you’ve experienced it yourself, it’s impossible to understand what it’s like to love someone, and have to watch them be hurt and not be able to do anything about it. That’s what happened to David. And Laina wasn’t only hurt. She died. Dav
id hasn’t been right in the head about it ever since.”

  “Dad, the collectives caused Laina’s death. Why would he want to join the same organization that hurt her? That put him in this messed up state?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Marcus. He’s all tangled up about it. His grief has grown within him. A darkness. It’s eating away at him. He wants respite, and he’s looking in all the wrong places, but he doesn’t see that or care. He simply wants relief.”

  The greasy feeling had built up around Marcus’s heart again and he rubbed his chest, wishing he could make it go away. “So what do we do?”

  Danic gave Marcus a sad smile. “We redouble our efforts. We make sure he finds that respite with us, so he doesn’t have to look for it elsewhere.” He clapped Marcus on the shoulder. “Go back and finish clearing up the camp. I’ll talk to David.”

  Marcus watched his father disappear into the foliage before turning to trudge back to their camp site.

  His feet felt like mountains.

  Chapter 14: Quantum Entanglement

  MARCUS WOKE VIOLENTLY. His heart slammed into marathon mode as something pounded painfully against his ear drums in a quick, pulse-like rhythm. It felt like someone drumming on his skull with a hammer. Marcus rolled onto his side, groaning. A sheen of sweat covered his forehead and his chest felt like a boulder sat on top of it.

  He vaguely registered Karl’s voice, though it sounded far away, echoing against the pain. Marcus? What’s wrong?

  All at once the pounding stopped. It didn’t fade by degrees or slowly drain away. It was simply gone. Marcus opened his eyes to find Karl squatting over him, a hand resting on his shoulder. Stars speckled the vast, black sky above. The mountain remained blessedly still, but for a soft, cool breeze wandering through the grass. Marcus wrestled himself into a sitting position with Karl’s help, and Karl sat down beside him.

  Marcus rubbed his forehead, breathing deeply for several minutes and letting the cool wind calm his nerves and slow his heart rate.

  “Well?” Karl finally said.

  Marcus looked at him. “Well what?”

  “The collectivist woman is asleep, and we have nothing specific to be doing tonight, other than sleeping. Now would be an excellent time for you to tell me what’s going on with you.”

  Marcus studied his knees. He owed Karl answers, but he didn’t want to give them. “What do you mean?” he asked lamely.

  Karl gave him a don’t-be-stupid look. “You’re having nightmares.”

  “It wasn’t a nightmare. Exactly.”

  “Then what was it?” Karl’s tone said he wouldn’t let Marcus brush him off this time.

  He sighed, resigned. “Do you remember when we met the Remembrancer in the basement of that lighthouse? She touched my forehead?”

  “Yeah. You jumped like you’d been electrocuted. Scared us all half to death. You’ve never told me what you saw when she did that.”

  “At the time, it wasn’t so much what I saw. I saw images, but couldn’t make any sense of them. It was more a sensation. Things I felt a long time ago. When David first went into the collective. Not only did she bring those emotions back, she did it with such clarity that I knew exactly what they were and what to associate them with. Ever since then, I’ve been having memories. Intense flashbacks of what happened back then.”

  “Back when, exactly?” Karl asked.

  “The time right before David left my father and me and went into the collective.”

  Karl heaved a deep breath, his eyes searching the ground while he thought. “In the lighthouse, the Remembrancer told Maggie she’d brought some memory to the surface you’d tried to forget.”

  Marcus nodded slowly. He vaguely remembered the woman in the lighthouse saying that. “It does seem like I’m trying to make myself remember something, but I can’t imagine what. It’s not like I’ve forgotten what happened back then.”

  “How would you know if you had? Maybe there’s some detail you’ve forgotten that’s important. My mother used to say God is in the details.”

  Marcus suddenly understood how Maggie must feel, having pieces of memories come back to her and not knowing the reason.

  “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened?”

  “You already know everything that happened,” Marcus said, turning to Karl.

  “I know the basics, but you’ve never told me in detail. Never given me a play-by-play.”

  “You never asked,” Marcus said quietly.

  “I didn’t,” Karl agreed. “It’s fairly self-explanatory. I never thought the details would make any difference, and I didn’t want to force you to relive a painful memory.”

  Marcus nodded. “David was having a hard time. He had been for a while. The year before, we met a man and his daughter. The daughter was David’s age and they became...friendly.”

  Karl grinned. “Friendly like...”

  “Like puppy love. They were twelve.”

  Karl moderated his smile. He nodded and motioned for Marcus to continue.

  “One day, Arachnimen attacked her and David and her father. My father and I were close, but by the time we got there, the girl and her father were already dead. I couldn’t understand why at the time, but David didn’t ever get over that. A year later, he started questioning individuality, talking about wanting to experience collective life.”

  Karl nodded. “Then what happened?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Eventually he decided to leave us and go join the collective.”

  Karl raised an eyebrow. “And that’s it?”

  Marcus met his friend’s gaze levelly. “What else would there be?”

  Karl shifted his position on the ground, frowning. “Well, what happened, exactly? What did he say on the day he left? What explanation did he give?”

  Marcus furrowed his brows, trying to remember. He knew this. Of course he did. It was like the memory sat on tip of his tongue—or the tip of his memory—but he couldn’t bring it up.

  “Marcus,” Karl said quietly, “do you not remember?”

  “Of course I remember. He...well we...” Marcus put his fingers to his forehead and closed his eyes. The memory he’d just dreamed ran so vividly through his mind, it might have happened yesterday, rather than a decade ago. After that last conversation with his father...everything got hazy.

  He looked at Karl. “I don’t remember. Not entirely. Everything runs together after a certain point. David left...and a short time later my father and I went to live at Interchron. Doc came out and found us. And...”

  Miles took the front of the litter from Marcus and Karl picked up the end by Danic’s feet.

  Mild surprise bloomed in Marcus’s chest. Why hadn’t he remembered the litter? “My father was sick when we came to Interchron. I’d forgotten that until now. I made a litter and dragged him a good part of the way.”

  Karl’s eyes widened as he spoke. “Marcus, he wasn’t sick. He was hurt.”

  Marcus’s head snapped up. “He was?”

  “Yes. You’d bound his torso up with bandages and he’d bled through them. That was before my folks passed. My father and I took the litter when Doc brought you, and carried him into the mountain. Joan came out with us to meet you. Don’t you remember that?”

  Marcus nodded slowly as memories oozed back. “I remember meeting you at the entrance. I remember your father and Joan. I just...don’t remember how he got hurt.”

  Karl heaved a deep breath. “I wasn’t given all the details. My father said you two got into a fight with some collectivists. He said you were headed toward Interchron anyway, though.”

  Marcus nodded. “That much I know. My father told me weeks before that we were headed there.” Marcus sighed in frustration. “I still don’t remember, but I’m thinking we must have run into Arachnimen after David left, so I had to drag my father the rest of the way. I don’t know why I don’t remember.”

  “I suppose that’s why the Remembrancer tried to bring it to the surface.”


  Marcus blew his breath out forcefully, glaring at the darkness.

  Karl’s eyebrows rose. “What?”

  “The more I think about this Remembrancer woman, the more I dislike her. She took Maggie’s memories, then tried to give them back. She answered our questions with riddles and mystery. And she tried to force out a memory I’d buried without asking permission.”

  “Why don’t you want the memory, Marcus? Why would you have suppressed it to begin with?”

  “Because of the pain. David leaving was the deepest anyone ever hurt me. I never wanted to think about my brother again. When I got to Interchron, I told Doc everything, but didn’t think about it again. David was dead to me.”

  “Don’t you want to know the truth? Isn’t it better to know what happened, even if it’s painful?”

  Marcus didn’t answer.

  “Marcus,” Karl looked him dead in the eye, “there’s more to this than what you’ve told me. You aren’t the kind of person who cuts people out of his life. You never have been. That emotional reaction alone tells me something else happened. You just don’t remember what.”

  Marcus ran a hand through his hair. Karl was right, but Marcus didn’t want the rest of the memory to come. “What’s the point of remembering it now? David’s here.”

  “And you haven’t forgiven him, have you?”

  Marcus remained silent.

  “You haven’t forgiven him, and you don’t even remember why you were so angry and hurt in the first place. Maybe to find peace with your brother, you have to remember what happened back then, in all its...emotional gore.”

  Marcus rubbed his face vigorously. “I don’t have time for this. We have other things to focus on. Colin. Bringing Maggie back.”

  Karl put a hand on Marcus’s forearm, his face sympathetic. “I miss her too,” he said quietly. “We’ll get there, Marcus. We will. I know it’s taking longer than either of us hoped, but we are making progress.”

  Marcus nodded, though his heart wasn’t in it.

  “Are the nightmares...violent in some way?” Karl asked.

  Marcus frowned. “No. Why would you think that?”