David Walton - Superposition

She shrugged, a barely discernible twitch of one shoulder. “Not a big deal, Dad. To your generation, maybe. Not to me.”

“Do you watch other people’s?”

“Sure. My friends, a little. Mostly strangers. I find people I like and follow them for a while.”

“But… why? Isn’t it boring just watching somebody else’s life? I mean, it’s not like a movie. Nothing much happens to people most of the time.”

She sighed, as if forced to explain something obvious to an idiot. “There are apps that cut through the chatter. They key off of statistically uncommon visual patterns, raised voices, rapid eye movement—stuff like that. If you just want to see the highlights, you can. Sometimes it’s pretty interesting just to watch the raw feed, though.”

“Really? People tune in and just watch you do your homework or eat dinner?”

Alessandra—Alex—threw up her hands. “Haven’t you ever read a blog?”

“Sure, I just—” A little pop of understanding stopped me. I actually got it, a little bit. “You’re saying the appeal is similar to a personal blog. Someone talks about the ups and downs of his or her life; others tune in to the drama.”

“Exactly like. Viewers leave comments, get worked up, have little flame wars sometimes. The most popular personalities become super-celebrities. They live their whole lives in front of millions of people.”

I was silent for a bit, digesting this. The pine trees kept coming. When I was young, my mother had been suspicious of my Facebook account and had no clue how widespread or popular a phenomenon it was. I was starting to realize that the tide had turned and what I dismissed as a teenage game was, in fact, a serious cultural force.

I stole a sideways glance at her. “Is that what you want to be? A super-celebrity?”

Another minimalist shrug. She looked out her side window and didn’t answer. I took this to mean that yes, at least at some level, she did want that, but she didn’t want to open herself up to mockery or admit to longing for unlikely stardom. I could think of a dozen reasons why living your whole life in front of millions of people was a terrible idea, destructive to relationships, certain to cause an identity crisis, but I knew a turning point in our relationship when I heard one. Either I could tell Alex my mind, and she would never tell me hers again, or I could show myself willing to listen without judgment—something I wasn’t sure I’d actually done with Alex, ever.

“That would be pretty cool,” I said. “To have a celebrity in the family.”

She shot me a look, afraid that I was making fun of her. Then she smirked. “Pretty cool?”

“What, people don’t say ‘cool’ anymore?”

“Not in this decade.”

Alex was able to discover that Lily Lin did indeed have a viewfeed covering the time when she had walked Elena and the kids to Brian’s office, but the file was locked and not open to the public. With a little stretching of the speed limit, Alex and I arrived back at the Feynman Center before closing time. Lily Lin was no longer behind the desk. Instead, a thick-set man with an even thicker mustache stood in her place and scowled.

“Excuse me,” I said. “We’re looking for Lily Lin.”

“I am looking for her, too,” the man said, his irritation plain in his accented voice. He sounded a bit like Marek, so I guessed an Eastern European country. “She has been gone forty-five minutes and no notice.”

“Oh no,” Alex said. “She ran. You told her you were part of an investigation. She must have panicked.”

“Has she ever gone home early without telling you?” I asked the man.

The man shook his head and bared his teeth, like a dog with a scrap of meat. “No, she is never running away like this before.” The word running came out like runnink . Russian?

“She’s the killer!” Alex said.

“Killer? What killer?” the possibly Russian manager asked.

I sighed. “I’m investigating the murder that happened here last December.”

“And you think… Lily?”

“I just want to find her.”

“She took purse,” the manager said. “Left computer logged on.”

“She left in a hurry, then. Do you have security cameras?” I asked.

“Certainly. We can… Lily!”

I followed the manager’s gaze to see Lily Lin walking toward us, clutching her purse. Her eyes and nose were red, and her makeup was smeared.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Egorov,” she said.

“You have been gone forty-five minutes!”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Where have you been?”

“In the bathroom.”

“For forty-five minutes?”

“She’s been crying,” Alex said.

“You know something, don’t you,” I said. “Either you didn’t tell the police everything, or else your sister is covering for you.”

Lily wiped at her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “The day that woman and her children came, it wasn’t Sheila who brought them to Brian Vanderhall’s office. It was you.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m investigating Vanderhall’s death. We know you took a viewfeed of the incident. We’d like to see it.”

She took a step backward. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I can’t do that.”

“You won’t have to testify,” I said. “We just need to know the truth.”

“Go away. I don’t know anything.”

“You shot him, didn’t you?” I said. “Your sister is law enforcement; she must be protecting you. We know you were dating Brian. When he left you, well…”

“He wanted me to shoot him,” she said, her expression panicked now. “He made me do it. He said it wouldn’t hurt him.”

“So it was an accident,” I said.

“No! I mean, yes, I shot him, but it didn’t hurt him,” Lily said. “It worked, just like he said it would. The bullet went right through.”

“So how did he die?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He must have been playing around with it and shot himself, or maybe he got his new girlfriend to do it, only this time it didn’t work, and he blew his brains out. Serves her right. I hope she saw it happen. I hope his brains splattered all over her.”

“New girlfriend? Who was this, specifically?”

“I don’t know her name. There was always a new girl, and never the same one for long.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Can you believe I actually thought he was going to marry me?”

“Why didn’t the police discover all this?” Alex asked.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Your sister overlooked the fact that you were a recent lover of the victim, and thus a natural suspect.”

“No, she interviewed me,” she said. “She knew I was a suspect. But I had an alibi. I was with my brother and his wife that night. She knew it wasn’t me.”

“So what are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything,” she said, but she glanced at the doors as if contemplating her escape.

“The viewfeed,” I said. “Can we see it?”

“No. Who are you, anyway? I don’t have to show you anything.”

“Please. It might help us find them,” I said.

Lily gasped. She pointed at my face. “Oh my gosh!” she said. “You’re the guy! You’re the one who killed Brian!”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “You just said yourself that you thought it was an accident.”

“You’re supposed to be in jail!”

“Time to go,” I said. We headed for the door.

“Mr. Egorov, quick! Call the police!”

We pushed out through the double doors. “Ridiculous woman,” I said.