Quantum Night

28

They could have just tried the tuning fork without preamble, but if it didn’t work, Kayla would never know whether the failure was because of some flaw in the device or because Mrs. Hawkins wasn’t actually currently in the classical-physics state, and it seemed best to determine that beforehand rather than try to beg for further cooperation from Dale if she didn’t wake up. Of course, if it turned out she wasn’t currently free of superposition, they’d give the tuning fork a try anyway—what the heck.

And so, just as they’d done with Travis, Mrs. Hawkins was brought via ambulance to the Canadian Light Source, and taken on a gurney down to the SusyQ beamline. Kayla had told her boss Jeff what she was doing, and he was standing at one side, his Hawaiian shirt turquoise and aquamarine today; next to him was Dr. Amsterdam. Dale was on hand, too, and he’d shaved off his facial hair. “I didn’t have the beard when she was awake,” he explained, “and I want her to recognize me immediately.”

Mrs. Hawkins—Jill—looked no older than she had in the smiling photograph at the farmhouse, except that her hair was now completely gray; it might well have been back when that photo had been taken, too, but any dye job had grown out in the interim.

A CLS staffer was recording everything on video as Victoria and one of the ambulance attendants carefully positioned Jill with the crown of her head by the conical beam emitter. Vic didn’t bother to strap Jill’s head in place; she wasn’t moving at all.

As always, the test didn’t take long. Kayla knew it was odd to feel elated that this poor woman was showing absolutely zero consciousness—but, as she looked at the readout on Vic’s monitor, she did feel just that: no superposition; not even that usual background-noise line high up. Mrs. Hawkins was in the classical-physics state.

“Perfect,” said Victoria, grinning.

Vic got the quantum tuning fork out of its foam-lined case. She handed it to Kayla, who held it, the metal shaft cold in her hands. Dale, wearing a nice gray dress shirt, was whispering a prayer as his tattooed hand gripped the back of a chair. Kayla touched the fork’s twin tines to Jill’s forehead and slid the red switch on the handle forward.

Nothing happened. True, even if the fork restored superposition, it didn’t necessarily mean that Jill would actually wake up; she could be blissfully asleep now. But Vic’s monitor showed no change.

Kayla took a deep breath and tried rotating the fork, flipping the tines, just as she’d done with Travis. But it made no difference. The readout still didn’t show any spikes.

Of course, the conditions were different than with Travis; the synchrotron itself and tons of other high-tech equipment were operating here. But Victoria’s colleagues had been using the tuning fork for many days now with substrate blocks adjacent to beamline emitters, and it worked just fine in boosting them into superposition. And, yes, Kayla would go back to the facility with Jill and try again there, just to be sure, but…

But she knew in her heart that it wasn’t going to work, and looking over at Dale, this rugged, tattooed farmer now with tears running down his cheeks, she felt awful.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. She was sorting through other words she might say, hoping to find ones that could comfort him, such as noting that at least things were no worse than before, but—

But Dale beat her to it, turning to Dr. Amsterdam, and as soon as he finished speaking, she knew that things were, in fact, much worse. “Until today,” he said, “I always thought she was in there. I always thought she could hear me when I talked. I always thought she’d come back to me someday, but…” He gestured at the monitor and its damning flat line. “But she’s gone, isn’t she? Been gone for years.” He wiped his nose with his arm, the shirt’s sleeve pushing up to reveal more ivy. “It’s time to let her go.”

I walked out onto my third-floor balcony and looked at the Red River rolling by. Between my building and it was a green strip with a couple of picnic tables. It was dark out, and, as a gibbous moon was rising over the park on the opposite side of the river, I batted away a few of the season’s first mosquitoes—they were coming earlier every year. While I stood there, I saw two people jogging north, and, shortly thereafter, two more running south. P-zeds? Psychopaths? Quicks? Who knew?

I returned to the living room and plunked myself back down on the couch. My walls were a celery shade; that wouldn’t have been my choice, but that’s what they’d been when I moved in. I stared into the soft greenness, thinking…

…and I must have lost track of time, because I was interrupted by the bleep-bloop-bleep-bloop of an incoming Skype call. Kayla was supposed to reach out to me tonight at 10:00 my time, after she’d put Ryan to bed; I hadn’t realized it had gotten so late. I hurried over to my laptop and clicked on the button to answer the call.

She was in her living room, wearing a plain brown top, her red hair tied back. She looked melancholy, and I guess she must have thought I looked the same way, because we both said, “What’s wrong?”

And that, at least, caused each of us to smile, however wanly. “Okay,” I said. “You first.”

She recounted her attempt of this afternoon to revive one of the other patients from the long-term-care facility. I was quiet, listening.

“I don’t get it,” she said at the end, “and neither does Vic. Why did the quantum tuning fork restore my brother’s superposition but not Mrs. Hawkins’s?”

I lifted my shoulders and shifted on the couch, then tilted my laptop’s screen back slightly to reframe myself in the outgoing video. “I don’t know. There’s something different about your brother. Why did I wake up only a few minutes after Menno knocked me into a coma, but your brother stayed in that state for almost twenty years? Sure, each brain is unique, but it would be nice to know why Travis reacted differently from me and differently from this woman.”

“I feel horrible,” said Kayla. “I got her husband’s hopes up. She didn’t respond when we tried again with her back at the facility. Her husband’s going to see his lawyer and get the paperwork done so that they can stop feeding her.”

“Oh,” I said softly, knowing better than to point out that this was indeed the right utilitarian move.

“I mean,” said Kayla, “she’s been gone for years—almost certainly since her accident. But still…”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway.” She tilted her head. Behind her, I could see the table and bookcases in her dining room. “How was your day?” she asked.

I thought briefly about what normal couples talked about at the end of the day, and kind of envied it. “Well, I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but…”

“Yes?”

“They handed down the sentence in the Devin Becker case today.”

“Oh! No, I hadn’t heard. And…?”

“They’re sending him to death row.”

“Oh.”

“So I failed to convince the jury that his psychopathy was a mitigating factor.”

“Well, after…” She trailed off; she’d been about to say, no doubt, after the district attorney tore me to shreds on the witness stand, it’s no wonder. But it didn’t have to be said in words; her lifted eyebrows were enough.

I nodded. “Yeah. Georgia law has all sorts of provisions for executing people when the victim is a cop or prison guard; nothing in the rules about when the perpetrator is one. But the statute says death can be imposed in cases where the victim was tortured, and, well, you saw the Savannah Prison videos, I’m sure.”

“Yeah.”

I let out a long, whispery sigh, and pretty much simultaneously she did, too.

“Anyway,” I said. “It’s late—here, at least. And I’ve got a 9:00 A.M. class.”

“Okay,” said Kayla, looking out at me from my computer’s screen. “Sleep well, baby.”

“You, too,” I said.

But I doubted either of us was going to sleep at all.