David Walton - Superposition

“You’re doing great,” I said. “Hang in there. We’ll get you out.”

The idea that there were things that were beyond the power of the varcolac to accomplish was encouraging. Of course, Alex might be wrong. The varcolac might wear no eyes because it found them redundant or repellent. But it was something to think about.

I began pacing again, tracing the limits of my cage, trying to find some chink in the armor. I had no tools, no weapons. I had a solid cinderblock wall on one side and an invisible electric fence on the others. It was a simple and effective prison.

“Please stop,” Elena said. “Sit down.”

I kept pacing. “There must be a way out,” I said.

“And you’ll find it if you sit and explain it to me,” she said.

She had always known me better than I knew myself. I sat.

“Now why is all this happening?” she asked.

I skipped over most of the details and jumped to the main point. “Brian Vanderhall and Jean Massey found a way to alter the Higgs field in our universe.”

“What’s the Higgs field?”

“It’s a background field that gives particles their properties,” I said. “It affects how much mass things have, what kinds of elements are possible, what their properties are—really, just about anything. Assuming you can control it, you can play God. Break the laws of time and space.”

“And what does the varcolac have to do with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said these creatures have always been here, in our universe, unseen but present. Why can we see them now? What changed?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I realized that I didn’t really know. It was possible that they could do it all along, but something tickled at my memory, something Brian had said… “That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Elena asked.

“Brian said the varcolac was tied to the collider. That it feeds off of the exotic particles the collider produces, and draws from its power. And here it is, operating out of the collider’s central power hub. It’s not roaming the world, going wherever it wants to. It has to stay close to the collider, or at least it has to keep coming back again. The collider is what keeps it going, giving it the power to make these physical manifestations. There are hundreds of electromagnets here drawing thousands of volts every second.” I drove my fist into my other hand. “That’s got to be it.”

“What does it mean?” Marek asked. “What do we have to do?”

“We have to shut off the power to the collider,” I said.

“Can we do that from here?”

I shook my head. “We can’t even touch the wires, never mind reach the breaker boxes. Besides, they’re computer-controlled; I doubt it’s a matter of simply flipping some switches. There are probably passwords, or even physical keys. What we need to do is call the control floor, and get them to shut the power down.”

“How do we do that?” Elena asked. “Our phones don’t work down here.”

“No, we’re too deep. We need someone outside to do it for us,” I said.

“Which is impossible,” Marek said.

I closed my eyes. I saw a flash of Jean Massey, of her office at the NJSC, of Chance lying on her desk. The other Jacob might have his own troubles to deal with, but at least he was free to move around and use his phone. “Maybe not impossible,” I said.

Jean’s hand hovered over the Higgs projector, just moments from erasing the life of her child. The original Chance was still there, in the flesh, but the physically perfect version was superimposed over her, like a second movie projected onto the same screen.

I flicked my eyes through the projector subroutines and chose StrongNuclearForce. A selector icon appeared in my vision, and I used it to select first Jean, and then the office wall. Jean and the wall were suddenly attracted to each other by a force far stronger than magnetism. She was hurled sideways and crashed hard into the paneling.

It wasn’t enough. I ran toward her, hoping to grab her projector, but before I could reach her, I was thrown backward against the wall. I got up, ready to retaliate, just in time to see a swivel chair come crashing down on top of me. The metal base struck the side of my head, and I saw sparks. She was too fast for me, too accustomed to the interface and familiar with the subroutines.

Chance started to cry. Her face turned red, and she clenched her tiny fists while her wails filled the room. Jean rushed back to her, put a hand on her chest, and made soothing noises.

I tried to get up again, but my vision swam. I saw Elena in an underground room, and in that moment, I heard a voice saying, Turn off the power . I didn’t have time to think about what it meant. I scrambled to my feet and fumbled with the StrongNuclearForce pointers again.

“This is none of your business!” Jean screamed at me. “Just leave me alone.”

My pocket burst into flame. I threw myself back onto the floor and rolled to put out the fire on my pants. It worked, but the projector was burned beyond recognition. The message “Signal lost” flashed briefly in my vision. Just that quickly, Jean had won.

Nick tried to run for the desk and grab Chance while Jean was distracted, but she threw him aside like a rag doll.

“I was a friend to you,” Jean said to me. “I didn’t have to help you with the trial. I could have just left you to take the fall, but I didn’t.”

“You helped me because you thought I might lead you to the projector,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m finished with you. I’m going to do what I think is right, and nothing you do will stop me.”

“It’s another murder,” I said. “You’re planning to kill your own daughter.”

Jean stroked Chance’s hair and ran her finger along one cheek. “To cure her,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

An explosion echoed through the room, unexpected and deafening. Jean cried out, and Officer Richard Peyton stepped into the room, his gun raised. “Hands in the air!” he shouted. Behind him were half a dozen more police with weapons and body armor.

Jean raised her hands. Chance started screaming again, frightened by the noise. “I just need to pick up my baby,” Jean said.

“Don’t let her do it,” I said.

“Stop where you are,” Peyton warned her, taking a step forward. “Don’t move.”

“She’s the real murderer,” I said. “She’s trying to kill that child.”

One of the other policemen was training his gun on me. “All of you, hands on your head. Lie down on the floor,” he barked.

“Watch out,” I said. “She can—”

Jean attacked. Peyton’s gun flew out of his hand and his uniform burst into flame. Behind him, the other policemen were burning, too, but they were well trained. They didn’t know where the attack was coming from, but they didn’t panic or run away. They charged into the room, trying to control the apparent aggressors. Jean reached for Chance, and I knew if she touched her, she would teleport them both away and we would never find them. I reached for her, but it was ultimately Nick who took her down. He snatched a lab coat off a hook on the wall and rushed her, holding it high, blocking her vision. He wrapped the coat around her head, knocking her to the ground, preventing her from using the visual interface that controlled the Higgs projector. I reached her a moment later and tore the projector out of her hands.

Without it, Jean was just a person. She lay still under the lab coat, crying bitterly. I synched my lenses to her projector and saw immediately that it had a much improved interface, with more subroutines available and a more natural way of selecting and executing them. She must have been the intellect behind the software, not Brian, and she must have kept writing code even after he died. I imagined how furious she must have been when she killed him, only to find that he didn’t have the projector on him, and she couldn’t find it among his things.