David Walton - Superposition

I took a sip of coffee. It was fresh, a quality brand, and it tasted good. “I think the splits resolve when the two paths meet—or become similar enough,” I said. “Both versions of her were in the street, running away from the house, so they merged again. The two versions of me are still drastically different, though, so we haven’t resolved.”

“It still doesn’t quite make sense to me,” Jean said. “Before it resolves, a particle exists in many places and times, not just two. If this is really possible, why aren’t people splitting all the time, and into millions of different versions?”

“I think they might be,” I said. I’d been thinking about this on the drive over. “I think that any time anyone comes in contact with the varcolac, there are a million possible paths that split off. Only, most of them resolve again, almost instantaneously, because they’re so similar to each other, and you never know it. It’s only when those paths are very different—the difference between meeting the varcolac and leaving the house before it arrives, for instance—that the paths persist.”

“So half a million possible paths resolved to them getting away, and half a million resolved to them not getting away, leaving two distinct paths,” Jean said.

“I think so. When I ran away from the varcolac, I ran out the back door,” I said. “If it had come after me a little to the right, however, I might have run out the front door. That could have been the difference between escaping the police and being arrested.” I heard crying upstairs. “Is that your daughter?” I asked.

“Yes. Nick will get her. Your reasoning sounds solid,” she said. “Crazy, but solid.”

“Really? You believe me?”

She shrugged. “I’ve known you for a lot of years, Jacob. If that’s what you say happened, I believe it.”

I heard footsteps on the stairs, and then Nick Massey appeared, carrying a baby girl in a pink, cotton dress. I stood and shook his hand. I’d met him a few times before, but didn’t know him well.

“And this must be Chance,” I said. I looked down at her and frowned. She had a very round face, small chin, almond-shaped eyes, and a large, protruding tongue. She was cute, but I recognized the pattern of her features. I was pretty sure that Chance had Down Syndrome. I looked at Jean. “She’s beautiful,” I said.

Jean looked away, but not before I saw the pain in her eyes. She picked up my empty coffee mug. “Can I get you another cup?” she asked.

“Sure. Thanks,” I said.

When she left the room, Nick shook his head. “Jean didn’t tell you, did she?”

“She didn’t mention it,” I said. I remembered Jean’s reluctance to talk about her daughter when she had first let me into Brian’s office.

“She didn’t show you a picture, either, did she?”

“No,” I said.

“She never does. It hit her pretty hard.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be.” Nick picked up the pacifier and slipped it into Chance’s mouth. “She’s a beautiful girl. She’s everything I ever wanted, but not for Jean. She wanted a smart kid. A scientist. Somebody like her. She thought, with a quantum physicist and a Princeton geneticist for parents, it was a lock. As if genetics were that predictable.”

Jean returned with a fresh cup of coffee.

“Well, nice seeing you,” Nick said, slipping out again with the baby.

“You, too,” I said.

“The important thing,” Jean said, “is that your family might still be alive. They were heading for the NJSC, so that’s where we have to start looking.”

I shrugged. “That’s why I’m here. I can’t really walk around in the open.”

“Say no more,” Jean said. “I can ask around. If they were there, we’ll find them.”

“I’m worried,” I said. “I have to believe they’re still out there, but where? They would have seen the news by now; they would have talked to the police.”

“Maybe they have,” Jean said. “Maybe they’re at the prison right now, talking with the other version of you.”

“I’m afraid they may have resolved, back to the dead versions of themselves,” I said. “I don’t want to think about it, but I’m afraid of it all the same.”

Jean shook her head. “No, that’s not right. The bodies disappeared.”

“What?”

“The article says nothing about your family being dead, just about Brian. They didn’t find your family. If they had resolved to their dead versions, their bodies would be there, just like Brian’s.”

I laughed. “You’re right!”

“Now, I can ask around. If they’re out there, somebody must have seen them. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. What else is there to do?”

“I think you should go meet your double. Make sure there actually is a second version of you sitting in jail.”

“I can’t just walk up to the prison and ask if they have me there behind bars.”

“No.” Jean held up her smartpaper, which still showed the article. “But it mentions the name of the lawyer who signed on to defend you. You could ask him.”

I thought about it. “That could work,” I said. “He’s not going to turn me in to the cops, anyway.”

“And Jacob?”

“Yes?”

“Tell your double that if he needs an expert witness for the trial, he can count on me.”

The prosecution’s case was moving toward its climax. Haviland brought his DNA specialist to the stand, who took two hours to give the jury a primer on DNA analysis and make sure every one of them knew that it was irrefutable. The blood on my shoes was Brian’s. Scientifically proven. Beyond any reasonable doubt. Terry barely asked any questions on cross; there was nothing to be said.

Haviland’s final witness was Officer Emilio Morales, the detective with the New Jersey State Police who had led the investigation. Haviland walked him through the reasons why he had concluded I was the murderer, which meant the jury got to hear a summary of all the evidence against me, laid out by a well-spoken and honest-looking cop.

They covered my apparent motive for the murder—that Brian had taken a shot at my wife—and all of the physical evidence that linked me to the crime.

“Was Mr. Kelley able to provide an alibi for four o’clock AM on December third, the time when Brian Vanderhall was murdered?” Haviland asked.

“No. He claimed to have been home asleep at the time, but no witnesses have been able to confirm that,” Morales said.

“Was there any more evidence that Mr. Kelley murdered Mr. Vanderhall?”

“At the murder scene, we have Mr. Kelley’s fingerprints and shoeprints,” Morales said, ticking them off on his fingers. “He was arrested with the murder weapon in his possession, GSR on his hands, blood on his shoes, and driving the victim’s stolen car. What more evidence do you need?”

Haviland said he was done and sat down. Terry cleared his throat and took the lectern for cross-examination.

“Mr. Morales, my client lives with four other people: his wife, Elena; and his children, Claire, Alessandra, and Sean. Why were they not able to confirm his alibi?”

“Mr. Kelley’s family has not been seen since his arrest.”

Terry pretended astonishment. “Did you look for them?”

“Certainly we looked for them,” Morales snapped. “After all that talk about them being dead when Kelley was arrested, we thought maybe he’d murdered them, too.”

“So, you asked family members?”

“We asked family members, coworkers, neighbors, friends. We put out an alert for them. Either they changed their identities and went somewhere far away, or they’re dead. Personally, I would guess the latter.”