Superposition

^{CHAPTER 15}

Colin’s life had been turned upside down by Uncle Sean’s violent death, just as mine had, though in a very different way. Instead of heading off to college, Colin had gotten meaner, more aggressive, more likely to kick an opponent when he was down. The bruiser who killed Uncle Sean in the ring eventually turned up dead in an alley. Colin told me he wasn’t involved, but to this day I don’t know if I believe him. Three days after I started college, though, he was busted for illegal possession of a firearm and spent a year in the pen.

The day he got out of prison, a bullet to the knee ended his boxing career forever. The details of how it happened were murky. He called me at MIT and told me he’d found Jesus and was turning his life around and leaving boxing behind. I asked him how that was possible, knowing that the underground boxing rings didn’t easily let their boxers go, and he told me about his knee. That was twenty years ago, and I still don’t know if he pulled the trigger himself.

Colin never left South Philadelphia. I took Passyunk Avenue to get to his place, past the rows of gentlemen’s clubs and adult bookstores that in the bright of the day were empty and dark. I’d read an article recently that claimed that, according to the author’s calculations, the sexual exploitation industry had surpassed the oil and gas industry as the largest grossing business in the world. In this part of town, it certainly looked like it, though of course most such business was conducted across the net and included men of every level of education and culture. Here on the street, there were just no pretensions.

The growing population of South Philadelphia was trapped: Center City to the North, the airport to the South, and the river and the wetlands preserve to the East and West. There was no room to grow, no place to go, and nothing to promote new development or new jobs. The neighborhoods, which had been poor when I lived there, had been sliding downhill ever since.

Colin was the founder of a Christian outreach complex called Salt and Light, located only a few blocks from where I grew up. He’d acquired one of the old stone churches that dotted the Philadelphia landscape, as well as the two row houses directly behind it, and had knocked holes in the connecting walls to join all three buildings into a warren of confusing turns and passageways.

Most of the space was used by a tiny Christian school aimed at teaching the gospel message to underprivileged youth, with about forty kids total in kindergarten through twelfth grade. Besides the school, there was a pregnancy center, a soup kitchen, and an evangelical chapel with daily services. The school charged students a nominal tuition—if they could afford it—which wasn’t nearly enough to cover operating expenses or pay any salaries, and none of the other ministries brought in any money at all. My uncle, and the others who worked there with him, were entirely supported by the donations of the generous. I saw Colin as little as possible, but I sent a substantial donation every year. A kind of guilt offering, I suppose.

He welcomed Marek, Alessandra, and me into his tiny office, shook Marek’s hand, and gave me a crushing bear hug. He was still strong, though his muscles were less defined and his skin had dulled to a leathery gray, his tattoos stretched and faded. Instead of hugging Alessandra, he crouched down to look up into her face. She stared at the floor, unresponsive. Colin stood, his smile vanishing. “What happened?”

I told him the whole story. He canceled classes and shooed away volunteers who came to his door with questions or problems. He didn’t comment until I had told him everything, as much of it as I understood.

“The police must have found Brian’s body in the bunker,” I said. “They think I murdered him.”

“So you’re being chased by both the police and this demon,” Colin said.

“Don’t mock me,” I said. “It’s real.”

“I’m not mocking,” Colin said. “I believe you. You can’t stay here, though.”

“You’re kicking us out?”

“Not exactly. I’m your one living relative. The cops will come here eventually, and they’ll turn the place upside down looking for you. Don’t worry, though; I have a safe house. We’ll hide you there.”

“A safe house? What are you, a drug runner?” I knew I was being rude, but I hated having to come here for help, and I hated Colin to see my failure. It wasn’t Colin’s fault, but I wanted to take it out it on him anyway.

Colin gave a tight smile. “This is a sanctuary. You’re hardly the first person to come here with crimes on his record, deserved or not. We walk a fine line, but we need the trust of the street, or we’ll never help anyone in this neighborhood.”

The safe house turned out to be a grand name for the basement of another church. “I mostly use it for women who need to get away from their boyfriends or husbands,” Colin said. “Or occasionally a guy borrows money from the wrong people and needs a little more time to pay it back.”

It was past midnight by the time we got there. There were two twin beds in the room, a beat-up dresser, and industrial gray carpet with various stains. Alessandra lay down on one of them, curled up, and faced the wall. Colin pulled a blanket over her that was either blue or green, but old enough that it was hard to tell. Marek, Colin, and I climbed back up the stairs to the sanctuary, which was old as well, with threadbare upholstery on scratched pews, and a stained glass window that might have been beautiful before the outside was boarded over to prevent breakage.

“Alessandra hasn’t said a word,” I said, dropping into one of the pews. “She won’t talk to me; she won’t answer questions. She was there when”—I swallowed—“when it happened. I think she might blame me. For not being there to stop it.”

“Don’t push her,” Colin said. “Grief takes time. Sometimes a lot of time. Blaming you, if that’s even what she’s doing, is a natural part of the process. As is blaming herself.”

“Thanks for the tip, Father,” I said. I couldn’t help it. Colin’s conversion had always seemed like a charade to me. I remembered every cruel thing he ever did, every person he bullied, how he treated his girlfriends, and every nasty word he ever said to me, so it was hard for me to take him seriously as a saint. He just seemed like a hypocrite to me, even though I knew full well that he wasn’t, which made me feel even worse and increased the sense that he was looking down his holy nose at my choices.

“You can stay here as long as you need,” he said, ignoring my remark. “Until you can get things cleared up.”

I was still feeling belligerent. “Did you believe any of the story I told you?”

“Every word. Was it true?”

“Of course it was. But really? You’re telling me you believe all that stuff about an alien creature?”

“Yes, I believe you.”

“Doesn’t the existence of another intelligent race undermine your faith?”

Colin sat sideways on the pew in front of me and propped his feet up. “Not a bit.”

“I thought man was supposed to be unique. Created in the image of God.”

Colin shrugged. “A lot of people might have trouble with the idea, I suppose, but there is some precedent.”

“Precedent? For alien creatures?”

“Not aliens, exactly, but the angels in Scripture are a race of intelligent beings unique from man. They’re not physical beings, but they can take different forms, and speak, and make their own choices. Some of them chose to follow God, and others—the ones we know as demons—rejected him, but they’re both the same race. The same species, if you will. Unlike humans, though, they don’t get a second chance. There’s no redemption for them, no sacrifice to atone for their sins. No Christ comes to their race to take their due punishment.”

I stole a glance at Marek, who had wandered across the room and was peering at the images on the stained glass. “So you think these quantum creatures are demons?” I asked.

“Not necessarily. I don’t know what they are. I’m just saying, there’s a precedent for a created race of intelligent beings that God deals with in a different way than he deals with us.”

“This is ridiculous.” I gripped the pew in front of me, wishing I could tear it apart or throw it across the room. My voice rose. “You’re ridiculous. Sitting around talking about elves and gremlins as if any of this made any sense. This is all some crazy trick. If there is a God, he’s probably laughing his head off right now.”

Colin put his hand on mine. I shook it off and shoved him. “And don’t give me some sanctimonious babble about God’s ways being higher than ours. If this is the real world, and not somebody’s messed up idea of a practical joke, then it was created by a sadist.”

Marek came up behind me while I was talking and put a strong hand on my shoulder. It was just the excuse I needed. I whirled and threw a punch at his face. He was ready for it and twisted, letting the blow glance of his shoulder, and then wrapped his arms around me. I grappled with him, shouting, and we both fell on the floor. We rolled around, wrestling and punching each other at close quarters, while Colin sat by and did nothing to intervene, until I lay panting on my back and the tears came. My body shook with sobs, and I lay there on the floor, letting them come.

When they finally subsided, Marek gave me a hand and hauled me to my feet.

I dropped back into the pew, still breathing hard, and looked at Marek and Colin. Neither man said anything.

“What do I do now?” I asked finally. “My wife and children are dead. I can’t go home. I can’t go back to work. If I turned myself in, I’d never be able to explain my actions to the police.”

“Not all of your children are dead,” Colin said.

Any response I might have made was cut short by a scream from the basement.

I jumped up so fast I bashed my hip against the pew in front of me, but I still beat Colin down the stairs. Alessandra was sitting up in bed, clutching the old blanket, her face white.

“What happened? What did you see?”

“A face,” she said. “In the mirror.”

I swiveled and saw a battered shaving mirror hanging from a nail in the wall. “Whose face?”

“It was him. That man.”

“No eyes?” I asked.

She nodded. I put my arm around her, but she remained stiff, her muscles tensed for flight.

“It’s okay,” I said, although I knew it wasn’t.

“Miss Alessandra,” Colin said formally. “Can I get you a Coke?”

“No.”

Marek quietly turned the mirror around to face the wall.

“Can you tell us what you saw at your house?” Colin asked.

Alessandra pulled her knees up under her chin.

“I know you saw your mother and sister and brother die,” he persisted. “It’s hard to talk about. But we want to protect you, and we want to protect ourselves, and the best way for us to do that is to know exactly what happened.”

She didn’t answer.

“Let it go,” I said.

Colin shrugged. “There are two kinds of people. Those who get up and fight, and those who just lie down and accept whatever happens to them.”

I stood at that, ready to throw another punch, but Colin held up a hand, palm raised, and shook his head.

Alessandra glared at him. “I can hear you, you know.”

“So what?” Colin said. “You won’t do anything about it. You’re the lying down kind; I can see that.”

“My mother just died. You’re supposed to be nice to me.”

“Why?”

She made a noise of disgust. “I thought you were a priest.”

“I’m not. I don’t hear confessions, and I don’t preach sermons. I’m more of a missionary to my own tribe.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Colin sat at the foot of the bed. “If my mother was murdered, I’d be angry. I’d make sure the person who did it didn’t escape. I’d find him and…” He trailed off and looked at her expectantly.

She couldn’t help herself. “And what?”

“Turn him over to the police, probably. Or maybe kill him; I don’t know. It depends. But I wouldn’t leave it alone. I wouldn’t say, hey, it doesn’t matter, these things just happen. I’d do something about it.”

“I’m fourteen years old!”

Colin crossed his fingers on his lap. “I killed a person for the first time when I was fourteen.”

She gaped at him. I gaped, too. I had never heard that before. Was it true? Or was he saying it just to get a reaction?

“You did not,” Alessandra said.

“I did.” Colin smiled sadly. “It was a terrible thing. But you listen to me.” His smile disappeared and he bored into her with his clear, blue eyes. “You’re only a victim if you believe you are. You can do anything at fourteen.”

“What do you know?” she screamed at him. She lashed out with her feet, kicking him in the side. “Shut up, just shut up!”

“I know that you can tell your father what you saw. I know you can remember every detail of how this creature moved and reacted. You know what it said, or what it seemed to be after, or what it could do and couldn’t do, and you can tell your father, and he can figure out what this thing is and how to stop it before it kills again. I know you can do that.”

She stood, shaking with rage, her lower lip trembling. “How do you know? You don’t know me.”

“Because you’re a fighter. Unlike your sister Claire, who had everything she ever wanted, you had to make your own place. You fight, just like your father, just like me. I know. I can see it in your eyes. So tell us what happened.”

“I ran,” she said, her voice on the edge of tears. “I ran away and left them all, okay? They needed me, and all I thought about was myself.” She bit her bottom lip.

“Keep going,” Colin said. “Why did you run? What did you see? You can tell us.”

“I can do better than that,” she said. She yanked her phone from her pocket and hurled it at me. I caught it, by reflex, before it hit me in the face. “It’s all there,” she said, and began to cry. “Everything.”

To my surprise, Colin had a pair of eyejack lenses, which he popped out and washed and let me borrow. I wasn’t used to them, and they made my eyes water, but with some copious blinking I could stand to look around. After a few more minutes of fiddling, I even managed to get them synched to Alessandra’s phone, and a menu appeared in thin air, like a scroll unrolling two feet in front of me and hovering there. I turned, and the menu moved as well, a bit disconcertingly, since there was no other indication that it wasn’t a real, physical object. I reached out, almost expecting to feel real paper, but my hand passed through it.

“It’s a bit easier if you sit down,” Colin advised.

I did so, and only then realized how dizzy I was. Besides keeping teenagers connected to their friends, this technology was frequently used in business circles for virtual meetings that appeared to be face-to-face. The lenses might project the image of a coworker or customer into an empty chair at my table, as if he had come to visit, when in fact he was in San Francisco or Seoul or Jakarta. I actually had a pair of lenses at home that had come with my phone, but I had only tried them once before. I found the experience of seeing something that wasn’t there a bit unnerving.

With a little practice, I could navigate the menu by centering my focus on a selection and blinking, though I had a tendency to blink unintentionally and choose the wrong option. I accessed the history of what Alessandra had seen—there were quite a large number of files available, but she kept them well organized, and I cycled through the video until I found the time in question. At first, it started playing in a two-dimensional rectangle about two feet in front of me, as if I were watching the stream. I selected full-screen mode instead, and I was suddenly immersed.

I was back in my house, in the living room, looking at a fashion magazine. It wasn’t like watching a movie on the stream. The picture flicked around as Alessandra moved her eyes. My instinct was to turn my head and look around, but of course, that did nothing but make me feel lightheaded. What was recorded was only what Alessandra herself had seen. I couldn’t change the viewing angle. Colin fitted earbuds into my ears, and I could hear as well.

“Alessandra! Put that down, and go tell your sister and brother to come get their shoes and coats on.” It was Elena’s voice.

The view changed as Alessandra looked up, and there was Elena, vibrant and beautiful and alive. She was just pulling the brown suede coat on over her green sweater. Her forehead was tight with worry and stress. I wanted to reach out and hold her hand, to whisk her away from there and protect her this time. A hard ball formed in my throat and my eyes stung. I coughed violently and shook my head to clear it.

“Where are we going?” Alessandra asked.

“You know that man who was here last night? The police just called and said they found him dead at the NJSC.”

“Wow, like he was murdered?”

“That’s what they say,” Elena said tightly.

“Is that why the police called? To find Dad?”

“Yes, now please! Go get Claire and Sean.”

“Why do I have to come?” Alessandra asked.

“Because I’m not leaving you here when I don’t know what will happen, or how long I’ll be. We should stay together.”

“Why don’t you just call him?”

“I have been calling, but he hasn’t picked up. I called the NJSC, and they don’t know where he is either. I don’t want to sit here wondering. We’re going.”

“Are they going to arrest Dad?” Alessandra asked. “Did Dad kill the man?”

“Alessandra!”

“Well, did he?”

“Of course not,” Elena said. She grabbed her purse from the easy chair and rummaged through it. Now go get Claire and Sean and tell them to meet me in the car.” Elena took out her keys, swung the purse over her shoulder, and turned the handle to the front door. I wanted to shout, to warn her, but of course, she couldn’t hear me. I wasn’t really there. I watched mutely as she swung the door open. The varcolac was standing there.

Elena had never been one to scream. She stepped back and tried to shut the door again, but the varcolac walked through it as if it were air. It was followed by lighter, more shadowy versions of itself, like the interference pattern we had seen before, but these quickly merged into the one figure.

“Alessandra, call 911,” Elena said in a sharp voice, which she kept admirably under control. “Right now.”

The perspective changed as Alessandra jumped to her feet. An option scroll sprang into view in her vision. Much more rapidly than I could have done, she manipulated the options to control her phone and dialed the emergency number.

Elena took another step back. “Leave this house, or I’ll call my husband.”

The varcolac cocked its head, reached out, and put its hand through Elena’s chest. It didn’t break the skin; it just passed right through, like it had with the door. For a split second, she gasped, and her eyes flew wide, then her face crumpled and she collapsed. Alessandra screamed. I shouted and stood up, nearly stumbling over the chair. I felt Colin steadying me.

The varcolac leaned over Elena and peered at her, sniffing. Alessandra screamed again, and the varcolac looked at her, swiveling its head as quick as a bird. She ran, stumbling, into the kitchen, around the table, and out the back door. With one backward glance to make sure he wasn’t following her, she crossed the back yard and climbed over the neighbor’s fence. I kept expecting her to turn around, to go back to the house. I figured the varcolac must have gone upstairs to kill Claire and Sean, and then Alessandra went back and saw my car and went inside, and that’s when the varcolac got hold of her. But it didn’t happen. She kept running through the streets and crying until she saw Marek run along beside her, and then I pulled up in my car and they both climbed inside.

The dizziness was getting to me. I blinked the display off, pushed past Colin, and ran to the bathroom, just in time to throw up in the toilet. I’d barely eaten all day, so it wasn’t much, but it made my throat burn. I realized I was shaking.

Colin came up behind me and helped me to my feet. He found paper towels under the sink and let me wipe and wash out my mouth before leading me back into the basement room. Alessandra was lying on her back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Now you know,” she said bitterly. “I ran away and left them all to die.”

“You couldn’t have saved them,” I said. “You were right to run. But I need to know something: did you go back to the house at all?”

She glanced at me, suspicious. “You know I didn’t. I saw Mom fall, and I ran. I didn’t know if she was dead or what; I just ran away.”

“I saw you, in the house. After Marek and I found Claire and Sean, we went back downstairs and saw you.” I looked to Marek for confirmation, and he nodded.

“That’s true,” he said. “You were there.”

She sat up. “Alive?”

I nodded. “Alive. The thing that killed Mom had a hold of you, and I distracted it, and you ran away.”

Colin looked more worried now than he had since we arrived. “And did you see that just now? When you watched the recording?”

I shook my head. “No. And that wasn’t the only strange thing. Alessandra, tell me—are you right-handed or left-handed?”

She looked at me like I’d gone mad, and I didn’t blame her. “I’m right-handed, as you well know.”

“Raise your right hand.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Please, Alessandra. Just do it. Raise your right hand.”

Slowly, skeptically, she raised her left hand.

“You’re not messing with me now, right? That’s your right hand?”

Colin intervened. “What are you doing, Jacob?”

“Everyone, raise your right hand,” I said. The four of us were in a circle now, the three men standing, and Alessandra sitting on the bed.

Marek and Colin and I raised our right hands. Alessandra raised her left.

We all looked at each other.

“What’s going on here?” Colin asked.

“The rest of the family,” I said, hardly able to keep my voice under control. “Elena and Claire and Sean. They might still be alive.”

We talked around the events of the day for hours, but came to no real resolution. Alessandra fell asleep on the bed with the old, blue-green blanket wrapped around her.

“One of you must be mistaken,” Colin said. “She couldn’t have both come back to the house and not come back to the house. Either the two of you didn’t see what you thought you saw, or she’s blocking the experience from her memory.”

“The recording backs up her story,” Marek pointed out.

“True,” I said. “But maybe you’re wrong. Maybe she could do both.”

Colin’s raised eyebrow showed what he thought about that suggestion. “Let’s keep our considerations to the physically possible, okay?”

I couldn’t resist the shot. “Funny to hear you say that, of all people.”

“Just because I believe in the miraculous doesn’t mean—”

I waved away his explanation. “This is physically possible. We’ve already seen that the man with no eyes exhibits quantum probability waves. What if Alessandra was caught up in that probability wave? What if she briefly experienced superposition, like a subatomic particle, and existed as a set of possibilities, rather than a single reality? She was terrified, but at the same time she wanted to protect her siblings. She both ran away and she stayed, both at once. Both of those possibilities were in evidence.”

Colin looked at me skeptically over his glasses. “In evidence. You’re telling me there were two Alessandras running around your house and neighborhood.”

“Not two girls, exactly,” I said. “Two possibilities, momentarily unresolved. We say an electron orbits an atomic nucleus, like the Earth around the sun, but it doesn’t really. It’s part of a waveform, a probabilistic cloud that exists at every point around the nucleus at the same time, with some probability. Similarly, a particle can have an up spin or a down spin, but until it resolves, it has both—it’s in quantum space, spinning both ways at once. For Alessandra, I think the wave resolved once I picked her up in the car, or maybe slightly before that. The two versions didn’t deviate all that much.”

“That’s the most ridiculous theory I ever heard,” Colin said.

“Wait,” I said. “This is the important part. If Alessandra could split, then why not Elena and the others? They were about to leave the house. What if one version of them did leave the house, before the varcolac arrived, and thus weren’t killed?”

“This is wishful thinking,” Colin said. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

“It makes sense,” I said. “The varcolac wouldn’t arrive at a single, discrete point in time and space, like we would. Its arrival would be smeared over a range of times and places, with some probability.”

“You’re losing me,” Colin said.

“Me, too,” Marek said.

I growled, angry at them. Why couldn’t they understand? “When you go somewhere, you arrive at one time,” I said. “At five o’clock, say. But a varcolac doesn’t. It arrives at 4:45 and 4:46 and 4:47, through to 5:15, and may eventually resolve to only one of those arrival times, though some have a higher probability than others. That means it arrived both before and after they left the house. They became entangled with its probability wave and split, one version of each of them heading off in the car to the NJSC, oblivious, while the other versions were caught and killed.”

Silence. “Well,” I said. “What do you think?”

“A lot of crazy things have happened today,” Marek said. “Sure. I believe you.”

Colin yawned. “It’s two-thirty in the morning,” he said. “Could we figure out what universe we’re living in tomorrow?”

I apologized and let him go. I didn’t know how I was going to sleep, though. I was buzzing. They were out there somewhere, alive. Tomorrow, I would find them.

Colin left us with a promise to bring us breakfast in the morning. I tried to convince Marek to take the other bed, but he insisted on the floor. The bed springs were old and creaked loudly, but as soon as I lay down, exhaustion took over, and I knew I was going to sleep after all. With a last nervous glance at the backward mirror, I closed my eyes. I dreamed of an endless hall of mirrors and of Elena, always just glimpsed in a reflection, but never there when I turned around.

I woke to Colin shaking me, his eyes wide. “Jacob. Jacob! Wake up. You have to see this.”

I groaned and sat up, slowly registering the unfamiliar surroundings and remembering the horror of the day before. “Why couldn’t you have let me sleep?”

“Look.” He thrust a piece of smartpaper into my hand. It was a news feed, and I read the headline.

I scanned the article and saw my name and an old picture of me. According to the article, I had been arrested for the murder of Brian Vanderhall, who had been found shot to death in his office at the New Jersey Super Collider. There was nothing about the deaths of my family, just that I had been picked up at my home, and the police were making no further comment.

“Why would they lie about that?” I asked. “You’d think they’d want people to know they were looking for me.”

“Maybe they aren’t.”

“What do you mean, they aren’t? I’m a murder suspect; of course they’re looking for me.”

Colin smacked me on the side of the head. “Wake up. You were the one going on last night about being in two places at once. Why should you be any different?”