Superposition

^{CHAPTER 20}

After Officer Morales’s testimony, the jury was given an hour and a half to walk the streets and find lunch, or, if they were brave, to eat in the courthouse cafeteria. Lunch for me was a roast beef sandwich and a Coke in a tiny meeting room under the baleful stare of an armed guard. I made it last as long as I could, but a sandwich can only stretch so far. When it was done, I had nothing to do but sit and stare at the walls and miss Elena and the kids.

After lunch, the trial shifted to a new phase. It was the defense’s turn to start calling witnesses. Terry stood and regarded the courtroom like a king surveying his new domain, holding on to his lapels. So far, Haviland had been calling the shots, and he had just been doing damage control. Now it was his turn. The physical evidence against me was going to be difficult to overcome, but we had a few tricks up our sleeves. One big surprise in particular, but that wouldn’t come out until my testimony at the very end.

Jean was marvelous on the stand. She had dressed up for the occasion, in a classy black pantsuit and high heels. I had never seen her in anything but jeans and a sweatshirt before. She and Terry knocked questions and answers back and forth like professional tennis players, leaving the jury swiveling their heads back and forth in comic time between the two. She was funny, informal, and best of all, comprehensible. Terry was the perfect foil, pretending ignorance while tossing up the perfect leading questions.

“Dr. Massey, we all learned about atoms in school,” he said. “We’re all made up of them. But tell the jury—just how small are they?”

She smiled. “A piece of tissue paper is about one hundred thousand atoms thick.”

Terry pretended astonishment. “Really? But our case is dealing with things even smaller than that—subatomic particles, correct? So how big is, say, a proton, compared to an atom?”

“About a hundred thousand times smaller.”

Astonishment again. “So tissue paper is a hundred thousand atoms thick, but a proton is a hundred thousand times smaller than that? What about an electron?”

“An electron has no size at all.”

“How can something have no size? Doesn’t that mean it’s not there at all?”

“It has mass,” she said. “And spin, believe it or not, and of course a negative electric charge. But no, it’s a point particle, with no actual size to it at all.”

“Are there any other particles?”

“Sure. Neutrons, muons, pions, taus, neutrinos, quarks, photons…”

“Photons? Aren’t those light?”

They went on in that vein, driving the jury through a crash course in basic particle physics. Terry had gotten his nephew to convert some of Jean’s illustrations into graphics displays, which he showed the jury on the courtroom’s ancient plasma screen.

“So if atoms are made of protons, which are so tiny, and electrons, which have no size at all, an atom is mostly just empty space, isn’t it? So if I’m just made up of empty space, why don’t I just fall right through this table when I lean against it?” He leaned against the table to prove his point.

“It’s because of the electron field surrounding the atom,” she said. “They prevent the other atoms from passing through.”

She went on to describe the double slit experiment, which shows how subatomic particles aren’t really particles, but aren’t really not-particles, either. Haviland objected frequently to the relevance of the testimony, but Judge Roswell allowed it, citing the groundbreaking nature of the case and the complexity of the science involved. After several coin and tennis ball illustrations to establish the concepts of superposition and entanglement, they finally got to the crux of the matter.

“So what you’re saying is that Mr. Vanderhall could, theoretically, have killed himself, despite the fact that he was shot three times from at least two meters away, and no gun was found in the room,” Terry said.

Jean nodded. “He could have set up an entanglement situation with himself. For a brief period of time, he could have been in two places at once, enough time to shoot himself and dispose of the gun before the Brian probability wave collapsed into a single, dead Brian. Interestingly enough, it could have collapsed into the living Brian instead—there was no way to know until it happened.”

“Isn’t that an awfully convoluted way to commit suicide? I mean, why didn’t he just put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger?”

I thought Haviland might object to the question on the grounds that Jean couldn’t know Brian’s intentions, but he kept quiet. Maybe he thought the objection itself would lend credence to the whole idea in the first place.

“I can’t say what Brian was thinking, or that it even happened this way,” Jean said, perfectly following her script. “All I’m saying is, it’s possible. Given the technology Brian was researching, it could be done. Suicide is a possible reason for his death.”

“That’s your professional opinion?” Terry asked.

“It is.”

Terry let it go at that, and Haviland took the stand with a show of barely concealed incredulity.

“Ms. Massey…”

“Dr. Massey,” Jean corrected.

“Ah yes. Doctor. Of course. Do you really expect the jury to believe that the victim made a copy of himself, which shot him and then disappeared into thin air?”

“I’m not saying he did it. I’m saying it is scientifically possible.”

“Have you ever made a copy of yourself, doctor?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen anyone else do so?”

“No.”

“Have you read in any scientific journal that such an experiment has been made, or even attempted?”

“Not with a human, no.” It was a marvelous answer, though deceptive, since it implied such an experiment had been done with an animal. Of course, nothing like it had ever been tried, but Haviland didn’t know that. He couldn’t press her on it, because once he asked the question, he’d be giving her free rein to defend the concept on scientific grounds.

Haviland dropped a beat, and then said, “Remember that you are under oath, Dr. Massey, and that this is the real world, not science fiction. To your certain knowledge, in any reputable, peer-reviewed, scientific literature, has any copy of a human being through quantum superposition ever been made?”

“No,” Jean said.

Haviland threw his hands in the air and let them fall, shaking his head as if this had all been a criminal waste of time. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

Jean stepped down from the bench and flashed me an encouraging smile. I nodded back with a look that I hoped conveyed my gratefulness. Not all of my colleagues would have been willing to stand up and be counted with me, to risk the detrimental effect on their careers that media scrutiny of their statements might bring, not to mention the potential of being associated—depending on which way the verdict came out—with a convicted murderer.