David Walton - Superposition

I cleared my throat loudly.

“It’s an aerobics class, Dad.”

“Right,” I said. “Moving on.”

“It might take me awhile to go through all this,” Alessandra said.

“You should be able to narrow down the time pretty well,” I said. “She said she saw Elena just before five o’clock on December third.”

“The problem is, she didn’t index by time.”

“Okay, I get it. I’ll leave you alone.”

I wandered the displays for a while to let her search in peace. Most of them exaggerated the NJSC’s accomplishments in overblown and misleading language, sometimes claiming what seemed like outright falsehoods to me, but which might simply have been attempts to express the truth in simple enough language for the average tourist to understand. I kept glancing over my shoulder, nervous that someone would come in who would recognize me, and I finally suggested to Alessandra that we go out for lunch, and she could continue the search there. I found a soup and sandwich shop I used to frequent, but fortunately I realized my mistake before actually going inside. I was bound to be recognized, if not by the staff, then by former coworkers on their lunch break. I chose a diner instead, and ordered chicken sandwiches for both of us.

The food had arrived by the time Alessandra found the right viewfeeds in Sheila’s library. I still had my lenses, so I synched to Alessandra’s phone, and we watched together.

We saw the Feynman Center’s atrium from a view behind the desk, and there, as Sheila had described, were Elena, Claire, Alessandra, and Sean, looking lost and upset. I heard Alessandra—the Alessandra next to me in the seat—gasp as she saw herself. It was one thing to know you had a double; it was another to see it with your own eyes. I just watched Elena. At the same time that I had been finding her dead on the living room floor, she’d been out there, alive, and looking for me.

Elena met my eyes—Sheila’s eyes, really—and said, “I’m looking for my husband, Jacob Kelley. Do you know where he is?”

Sheila checked her screen. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is,” she said. “Kelley? Does he work here, or is he a guest?”

“He used to work here, a few years ago,” Elena said.

“I’m sorry,” Sheila said. “I don’t know where he would be. Do you want me to get my manager?”

“No,” Elena said. “He was here to see Brian Vanderhall. Can you tell me where his office is?”

“Oh, yes. We know who he is.” The view shifted, and Sheila traded looks with the other receptionist—the young Asian woman I had just spoken to at the NJSC. I realized I hadn’t thought to get her name. “His office is in the Dirac building. Go out these doors and take a right…”

“I’ll take her there,” the Asian receptionist said.

“Are you sure? I thought you never wanted to see him again,” Sheila said.

“I’ll just show them where the building is. It’ll give me an excuse to cut out of here a few minutes early.”

“Oh, so you’ll leave me to close up,” Sheila said.

“That’s the basic idea,” the other one said. She winked. “Come on,” she said to Elena, “I’ll take you.”

As they walked out, Elena dialed a number on her phone and listened. Now it was my turn to gasp. She was calling me . That call, the one that had come just in time to distract the policeman before I hit him—it hadn’t been Alessandra calling with Elena’s phone. It had been Elena , calling to see where I was. If she had called five minutes earlier or five minutes later, I would have answered the phone. I would have talked to her. I would have known she was alive right from the beginning.

Sheila watched long enough that we saw them head out the door in a little train, Claire following the Asian woman in the front, and Elena taking the rear. When it was clear there was nothing more to see, I blinked furiously to shut off the viewfeed.

The chicken sandwich was growing cold on my plate. It took me a moment to remember where I was.

“She lied,” I said. “They both lied. Sheila didn’t mention the Asian woman at all in her testimony, and they both said it was Sheila who told them where to find Brian. Neither of them said anything about actually leading them to Brian’s office.” I pounded the steering wheel. “I didn’t even get her name.”

“That’s not much of a lie,” Alessandra said. “What does it matter?”

“Sheila referred to the other woman never wanting to see Brian again. That implies a past relationship, and given Brian’s reputation, probably a romantic one.”

“So? From what you’ve said, there are probably a lot of young women there with a former romantic relationship with him.”

“The question is, why are they lying at all? What are they hiding?”

On the drive back to the NJSC facility, Alessandra eyejacked again to track down the name of the woman who had lied to us. It didn’t take her long.

“Lily Lin,” she said. “Right off of Sheila’s friend list.”

“Lin?”

“That’s what it says. She works at the Center, lives nearby. Looks like a lot of her family’s in law enforcement.”

“Wasn’t there a Lin who was a police investigator, who testified at the trial?”

“Brittany Lin. Looks like it’s her sister.”

“You’re kidding me. So Brittany could have doctored the evidence to protect her sister. An actual police cover-up?”

“I guess.”

“Great job, Alessandra.”

She smiled, a genuine smile of pleasure. “Alex,” she said.

“What?”

“I know you and Mom like to use my full name, but call me Alex. That’s what my friends call me.”

My first thought was to say that I didn’t realize she had any friends, but I managed to swallow that thought before it came out. I knew she was talking about friends online. “Alex,” I said. I rolled it around in my mouth. I didn’t like it. It completely lost the old Italian beauty of her given name. But it meant she was including me in her list of friends. I decided not to complain. “Alex it is. Do you think you can find Lily’s viewfeed of that day?”

“Looking. We got pretty lucky with Sheila. Not everybody’s a Lifer, you know. “

“I can’t imagine why anyone would be,” I said. “What’s the point of recording your whole life? Most of it’s pretty dull. Special occasions, okay, I get it, but—”

“Some Lifers are extremely popular,” Alessandra said. “They have thousands of people watching them, all the time.”

“So people with no life of their own spend their time immersed in someone else’s? That’s a pretty sad—”

“I’ve had mine recording for over a year.” Her tone was belligerent, challenging me to object.

I closed my mouth. A year? Everything that she saw in our home, available online? I almost made a sharp comment, something to the effect of airing our family’s dirty laundry in public, but I stopped myself in time. She was talking to me. She had just volunteered information about herself. I would be a fool to shut her down.

Instead, I just said, “Why?”

She rolled her eyes. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, Dad.”

“I mean it,” I said. “I don’t get it. Why share video feed of every second of your life with complete strangers?”

My sincerity must have come through, because she answered seriously. “It makes me feel connected. People comment on my life, people across the world sometimes. They understand what I feel, cheer me on, give me advice sometimes. Not a lot. I don’t have a big following.”

“But… what about privacy?”