David Walton - Superposition

Before long, I was starting to make sense of it. “Look, he’s got a set of subroutines here to create particular effects,” I said. The subroutines had names like GroundStateSpin, MacroDiffraction, StrongNuclearForce, and Tunneling. There were different versions of each, and optional circuitry that was cut off from the system that provided still more variation. “He was experimenting,” I said. “Interacting with the modules in different ways, seeing what they could do.”

There was even a subroutine called TeleportExperimental, with an intriguing comment that read, “Do not use before solving destination bug!!!”

“There’s a lot here,” I said. “It must have taken him months to write all this.”

I spotted some graphics modules, and realized that the code was designed to work with a pair of eyejack lenses. I went upstairs, rummaged in a drawer until I found the pair that had come with my phone, and brought them back down.

“Let me try it. I don’t want you killing yourself,” Jean said.

“You’re our star witness,” I said. “Besides, there’s an extra one of me. I’ll do it.”

“You have a daughter.”

I gave her a look. “So do you.”

Jean held up her hands, relenting, and I put the lenses in my eyes. They quickly recognized Brian’s smartpaper as being in range and synched to it. I initiated the main program, and the now-familiar tugging sensation began in my chest, like a bass thrumming so deep I couldn’t hear it. A basic menu appeared over my vision with the subroutine names. I scrolled through and selected GroundStateSpin, since I thought I could guess what that might accomplish.

Overlaid on my vision, a curved, double-headed arrow appeared. When I looked at an object in the room, the arrow would move over it and the object would highlight. I chose a tea kettle on the counter and blinked at it. It started spinning, just like the gyroscope, its spout whipping around and around like a boy on a merry-go-round.

It was incredible. I could move things with my mind . Jean and Alessandra stared at it, transfixed. I made the tea kettle stop, and started twirling the flour canister. Best of all, the energy for the spin was coming from the ground spin state of the particles. We could turn generators with this technology, maybe solve the world’s energy problems.

What could the other subroutines do? I went back to the list and chose Tunneling. I still had the flour canister selected, and now, in my vision, a cone projected out from the center of the canister and into the room. I found I could rotate the cone around the canister and change its length. On the other side of the kitchen wall from where the flour canister stood was the living room, and I knew there was a small, decorative table standing against that wall. I aimed the cone directly through the wall and blinked.

The flour canister disappeared. At the same moment, there was a tremendous cracking sound like a gunshot. It was too loud just to be the canister shattering. I raced around into the living room, followed closely by Jean and Alessandra. The decorative table was smashed into splinters and covered in flour. Shards of table and porcelain were embedded in the wall.

Hastily, I quit the program and shoved the Higgs projector into my pocket. The thrumming sensation stopped.

“What were you trying to do?” Alessandra asked.

“I was trying to tunnel the canister through the wall and have it land on the table,” I said. “I think it appeared in the table instead, and the stress of all that matter suddenly appearing in the middle of already-existing matter tore the table apart.”

“It looks like we’ll have to be more careful,” Jean said. She held out a hand. “May I give it a try?”

“Let’s not try it again just yet,” I said. “I want to study the programming a little more, get a better understanding of what a module does before running it. I don’t know how well Brian tested his software, either—I don’t want to blow up a city block because he accidentally used English units in one place instead of metric.” I looked around the room where Elena had died. I felt tired. “I want to get out of here,” I said.

Driving back, Alessandra asked, “Why did the varcolac want to take that letter anyway? It can do all this magic stuff without it.”

I shrugged. “How could we know? This was an alien encounter, from both sides, neither of our species comprehending the other. The varcolacs originally provided the equations for the core modules to Brian, probably in good faith, but we don’t know what that information meant to them. Maybe it was simply a kind of textbook, an explanation of who they are and how they’re made. Regardless, when Brian put this together”—I gestured at the smartpaper—“it had some effect that they didn’t like, and they wanted it back. Who knows what changes this has made in their world? It could be killing them, or causing some other disruption—we just don’t know.”

“This is the creature that murdered Mom and Claire and Sean,” Alessandra said. “It’s not just misunderstood. It’s a killer.”

“I’m not sure if it means to be,” I said. “You could be right—it could be acting out of rage or simply enjoy killing; I don’t know. But look how it took Marek apart and put him back together. Look how its body is so awkwardly assembled out of different parts. It’s trying to understand us, and not getting very close. I doubt life and death even mean the same thing to it as they do to us. The idea that a being’s total existence is enclosed by a piece of matter is probably incomprehensible to them.”

“So it was all, what, some kind of cosmic accident?” Alessandra asked, anger simmering in her tone.

“If anyone’s to blame for this, it’s Brian,” I said. “He thought he could trade with a radically different intelligence and come out ahead. He was greedy and stupid. The varcolac… we have no idea what motivates it. All we know is that it wanted to reclaim Brian’s copies of this programming.”

“And it killed people to get it.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “It did.”

“Is that programming a threat to them? Could you use it to hurt the varcolac?” Alessandra asked.

I remembered Brian making the varcolac disintegrate, at least momentarily. “Maybe,” I said. “Brian said the varcolac gets its power from exotic particle leakage from the collider, such that when he used his circuitry to eliminate those particles, the varcolac lost its coherency. So I guess, if we learn enough about how to use the projector, perhaps it would be a threat.”

“Well then,” Jean said. “I guess we’d better learn.”

“That was a train wreck,” I said. Terry had come again to visit me in the prison meeting room. He sat in one of the yellow chairs, looking tired. I paced the room. “Marek looked like he was lying, because half the time, he was.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Terry said.

“I was embarrassed to put him in that situation,” I said. “He’s one of my only loyal friends, and I hate that he had to perjure himself on my account.”

“He told the truth where it counted,” Terry said. “He told the court that he saw Vanderhall alive. That’s crucial for our case, and it was important for the jury to hear him say it.”

I let out a sigh and threw myself down in a chair. “It’s only important because we’re trying to prove that Brian killed himself. Which I don’t believe for a minute. The Brian I saw in the woods didn’t know that another version of him was lying dead in the bunker.”

“He wouldn’t necessarily tell you…”

“No. He didn’t know. I’m sure of it.”

“It’s not that important,” Terry said.