Quantum Night

18

We hit Regina around 10:30 P.M. By that point, we were exhausted, and I think we both looked wistfully at the motels flashing past as we entered the city. But Kayla had to be at work the next day, and so, after a brief stop for coffee and donuts to keep our blood sugar up, I took over the driving and got us the rest of the way to Saskatoon. Kayla’s daughter, Ryan, was staying over at Kayla’s mother’s place, and—

And it was late, and, despite all our progress, Kayla did seem skittish being alone in her house with me, and so I said, “The couch looks great,” and I stretched out on it, put on the white-noise app on my iPhone, and was asleep within minutes.

But, for once, I had very nice dreams.

Kayla and I made it to the Canadian Light Source a little after 9:00 A.M. I was amused to note that its street address, on the University of Saskatchewan campus, was 44 Innovation Boulevard; I suspect the other occupants of that street were hard-pressed to match the sort of things Kayla described as she gave me a tour. “A synchrotron,” she said as we walked along, “is an amazingly versatile tool; it’s the Swiss Army knife of particle accelerators. You can tune its output to do almost anything, adjusting energy range, wavelength, resolution, photon brightness, and beam size. The researchers here do work in fundamental physics, archeology, geology, botany, new fuel sources, materials science—you name it.”

“And you said you tested your brother here? Was that unusual—a human subject?”

“It used to be, but now we often treat people here. One of the beamlines is called BMIT—that stands for Biomedical Imaging and Therapy.”

The synchrotron’s giant storage ring was in a vast square pit, surrounded on three sides by indoor balconies. The inner side of each balcony looked down on the ring; the outer side had doors leading into offices and labs. As we walked along, Kayla pointed out the various beamlines—straight projections at oblique angles coming off the ring. She must be used to the constant mechanical roar coming from below, but it was giving me a headache.

“Hey, Kayla,” said a sandy-haired man approaching us; he was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt. “Welcome back.”

She smiled warmly. “Hi, Jeff.”

“How was Manitoba?”

She glanced at me. “Enlightening.”

Jeff looked amused. “Don’t forget those budget reports, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Kayla replied.

“Who’s that?” I said, after he’d walked on.

“Oh, sorry. That’s Jeff Cutler; he’s the acting director.”

“Like Clint Eastwood?”

“What? Oh. Ha-ha.”

“He always dress like that?”

“Actually, yes.” Kayla pointed across the great expanse of the synchrotron to the balcony on the opposite side. “People have to find him all the time; the Hawaiian shirts make him easy to spot. Vic has her own variation on that; she always wears black, head to toe, and—see! That’s her, over on the other side.”

“You spotted her; how can she spot you?”

“Easy,” said Kayla. “I’m the one who always has a cute guy in tow.” She winked, and we headed around two more sides of the square. Victoria was walking and texting; we got quite close before she looked up. “Hey, Kay,” she said, smiling.

“Vic, this is Jim Marchuk.” Vic traded a look with Kayla—a suppressed grin. Evidently there’d been some discussion about whether Kayla would look up her old boyfriend when she went to Winnipeg. “And Jim, this is Dr. Victoria Chen.”

“Hello, Jim,” Vic said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I gave the automatic “All good, I hope” response, and saw, in a quirking of Vic’s mouth, that it in fact hadn’t all been good; of course Kayla had told her friend about how it’d gone south all those years ago.

“You guys all ready?” Vic said. “We’re lucky today; I get the beamline while the sun’s still up.” She glanced at the phone she was holding. “My beamtime starts in four minutes.”

“Great,” said Kayla. Victoria turned around and began walking briskly. I was amused to see that she was using her hexagonal dosimeter as a hair clip to hold her long black hair in place. Kayla fell in beside her, and they chatted physics as we went along. I kept looking down at the bustling activity in the pit; it reminded me of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

When the last balcony came to an end, we headed down a staircase onto the synchrotron floor. There were other researchers here, some in lab coats, and Vic and Kayla greeted each one we passed.

We quickly came to the SusyQ beamline, which had a gurney parked in front of it. Victoria had already received ethics approval and experimental permits for her ongoing work with humans here, but she still needed me to sign a waiver; I did so without bothering to read it. And then I lay down on my back, and, as Vic loomed in, I couldn’t help but notice that she was quite lovely. She put a strap—thick, off-white, the kind of material seat belts were made of—over my forehead to hold my head still. And then, with Kayla’s help, she rolled the gurney to the end of her beamline, a series of tubes that terminated in a conical emitter.

I looked up at the ceiling, far above. Conduits and pipes hung from it, and there was a yellow crane unit depending from tracks that apparently allowed it to move backward and forward as well as left and right.

Victoria said, “Okay.”

“Yup, anytime you’re ready.”

She laughed. “We’re done, Jim.”

“Oh.”

She leaned over me again and undid the strap. I rubbed my forehead to restore circulation; the strap’s texture had been impressed into my skin.

“And what’s the scoop?”

“You’re a Q3, just like me and Kayla,” said Vic.

“A super position to be in,” I said as I sat up.

“Is he always like that?” Vic said, looking at Kayla.

Kayla sighed affectionately. “I’m afraid so.”

I got off the gurney and walked over so I could see the monitor they were looking at. Vic pointed. “See the three spikes? Each one is an electron in superposition.”

“What’s that?” I said, pointing to a wobbly horizontal line much higher up on the display.

“We’re not sure,” said Vic, frowning. “It’s always there when we do our runs, and it never changes. It looks like some sort of quantum entanglement, but…” She shrugged.

“We’ll identify it eventually,” said Kayla, “but—yeah, it’s been driving us nuts.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”