David Walton - Supersymmetry

“It can’t be,” Ryan said. “As soon as you sent that particle back in time and stopped the varcolac from destroying the stadium, it ceased to exist.”

“But if it ceased to exist, how could it have stopped the varcolac? Isn’t that a paradox?”

Ryan smiled. “I didn’t say it had never existed. I said it ceased existing. The Other Future is effectively in our past, a loop tied into the string of our timeline.”

“We’ve been talking about this,” Alex said. “Think about the chain of cause and effect. The varcolac destroyed the stadium, which caused you to send a particle back, which caused the varcolac not to destroy the stadium, which caused us to be sitting here talking about it. The chain of cause and effect is unbroken. It always moves in one direction, even when it jumps backward in standard time. Nothing we do now can ever change the events of the Other Future—that’s already happened. All we can affect is our own future.”

Sandra shook her head. “It’s enough to make my head swim.”

“There’s still a problem,” Angel said. “What about the quadcopters?”

“What about them?” Alex asked.

“How did they gain the power to act as if they were programmed with Higgs projectors? There’s no reasonable explanation. As I apparently told Sandra in the Other Future, it makes no sense.”

“They must have picked it up at the scene somehow,” Sandra said. “All that quantum stuff going on…” She trailed off.

“I don’t see how. Yes, they were reading data from hundreds of ID cards around the stadium. Yes, someone could conceivably have designed a virus to affect the copters’ programming and left it there for the copters to read. But it would require very precise knowledge of the flight control software to patch it in that way, not to mention knowledge of the operating system and its vulnerabilities. I’m the only one in the world who knows their software that well.”

A chill went down Alex’s spine. “Wait,” she said. “What if you did write it?”

Angel shook his head. “I had never heard of Higgs projectors at the time, much less knew how to program one.”

“I don’t mean that you programmed it then .”

She looked around the circle. Everyone else was staring at her blankly.

“Who’s to say that the Other Future is the only time this has happened?” she asked.

It was all she had to say. Dawning realization crossed each of their faces.

“Angel says the only person with the knowledge to write a virus to insert that software, and to hide it on a chip at the stadium, is him,” she went on. “What if, in a prior future to the one we’ve been watching, the varcolac killed Sandra and me at the prison? What if Angel—with the help of Ryan, presumably—figured out a way to send that chip back in time, where the copters would pick it up?”

“Only they didn’t think of storing the eyejack data in the baby universe,” her father said. “So none of you ever knew.”

Angel’s eyes were wide. “How many times do you think this has happened?”

They talked for hours. When Alex slipped out to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water, Sandra followed her and wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug. It was amazing. A few weeks earlier, Sandra would never have done such a thing, and if she had, Alex would have pulled away. But the Other Future had brought them together in a way that simply being the same person never had. Somehow the experience of having saved the world together—even though they only remembered doing so through an eyejack recording—superseded the fears and insecurities about their identities that they’d built over time.

“So what do you think of him?” Alex asked.

“It’s weird,” Sandra said. “I know all this stuff about him, but we only just met.”

“He is a little weird.”

“That’s not what I meant! I think he’s sweet.”

“And weird.”

They sat down on stools in the kitchen, for all the world like they were teenagers again, growing up in that house. “He’s so easygoing,” she said. “I feel comfortable with him, even though we really just met today.” Her eyes were lively, despite the late hour. Alex was glad for her. She hoped this Angel would be good to her and not hurt her. It surprised her how fiercely protective she suddenly felt toward her sister. And how comfortable she felt sitting here chatting with her. She grinned suddenly, and Sandra saw it.

“What?” she asked.

Alex shook her head. “I’m glad you’re you,” she said. “Whoever Alessandra would have been, she’s not either of us now. You’re different from me, and I’m glad for who you are.”

“We were both Alessandra for a moment there,” Sandra said. They hadn’t talked about that part of the Other Future yet, not directly. “And it was okay. We did well.”

“We did,” Alex said. “We saved the world, in fact.”

Sandra smiled. “And if we ever have to do that again… you know, to save the world again or something?”

“We could do it,” Alex said.

“We could. We will, if we have to. And if we do…”

“…it won’t be the end.”

“No,” she said. “It won’t.”

Much thanks to Rene, Jill, Lisa, Peter, Sheila, Liz, and all the rest at Pyr/Prometheus for their enthusiasm and ingenuity in bringing Supersymmetry to the world! It’s been a true pleasure to work with you. Thanks once again to David Cantine, Mike Shultz, and Chad and Jill Wilson for reading early drafts and helping me make them better. And thanks to all of you who read Superposition and liked it enough to read this as well. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

David Walton is the father of seven children, none of whom sprang into being via quantum superposition. He lives a double life as a Lockheed Martin engineer with a top secret government security clearance, which means he’s not allowed to tell you about the Higgs projector he’s developing. (Don’t worry, he’s very careful.) He’s also the author of Superposition , the Quintessence trilogy, and the award-winning Terminal Mind . He would love to hear from you at davidwaltonfiction@gmail.com.

Superposition

Published 2015 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

Supersymmetry . Copyright © 2015 by David Walton. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopy­ing, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, ex­cept in the case of brief quotations em­bodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

Cover Image © Media Bakery

This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.