John Schettler - Touchstone

Nordhausen looked sharply at Dorland. “You think it’s gone, don’t you.”

Dorland kept his eyes on the road. “No, I don’t, I just agree with Maeve, that we should keep it in a safer place.”

Nordhausen was silent for a moment. “Kelly is in a Schroedinger’s Box,” he said with a sudden finality. Dorland’s gave him an odd look, waiting for him to explain himself.

Nordhausen went on. “Kelly is like the cat in the Schroedinger’s Box. Except, he’s outside the box, but we don’t know if he is alive or dead!”

“Go on.” Paul was listening very closely now, his attention divided between his driving and Nordhausen.

“Well,” said Nordhausen, slowing down as his theory ramified in his mind, “as you know, Schroedinger set up a thought experiment, in which he put a cat in a box, with a bottle of prussic acid and a trigger on the bottle hooked up to a Geiger Counter.”

“Yes, yes, and the Geiger counter was monitoring a source of ionizing radiation, with even odds that it would or would not emit a detectible particle in any hour.” Dorland hurried him along.

“Slow down, let me work this out,” Nordhausen protested. “Okay, let me see… In the thought experiment, after the passage of an hour, the source either has or has not radiated, and the cat is or is not dead, but occupies a condition that is both, until you open the box and look.”

“Yes, yes, Schroedinger tossed that out as an offhand comment, and said that it was solved by observation, and a half dead and half alive cat in a box was a logical nonsense. Many liberal artists like you take it to mean more than it does.”

“Well, whatever nonsense it is, we have a black box, and we don’t know what is in it, and we are relying on what is in it to maintain Kelly’s existence against Paradox. Sounds like a Schroedinger’s box to me!”

Dorland went into a brown funk as he drove, his mind wrestling with time theory even as he twisted the wheel to navigate the narrow road. They were in the Berkeley Hills, working their way along a wooded road behind the university and the Lab complex.

The night had come early with the appearance of a low, wet front. The sky was darkening, although the rims of the clouds in the western horizon were made brilliant by the low sun. It was suddenly cold and blustery, with a light rain speckling the windshield. Dorland gripped the wheel harder, his head poking forward to see through the rain. Thankfully, a full moon was riding high through the moving clouds, illuminating the way ahead with a silvery sheen.

“A Schroedinger’s box!” Dorland came out with that very suddenly, as though his thinking had just reached a sure conclusion. “How can you plan for something like that?”

Nordhausenwas gripping the handle over the door in a struggle against the momentum of the car as it rounded a tight bend in the road. His face was lit by the green glow from the instrument dash, the only light in the darkness of the cabin.

“Perhaps Maeve is right,” he said. “Maybe we should just dismantle the whole shop, shred the documents, and part out the hardware.”

“No! Taking care of Kelly is one thing; the project is another matter entirely. Once we recover the DVD, and figure out how to protect it, Kelly will be fine, and we will be able to continue the project—and find out about your Rosetta Stone for starters.”

“What is the project now Paul? What are we supposed to do with it all?”

“We’re standing a watch,” Paul said. “We’re out on the walls of eternity with our eyes puckered against the dark.”

“Very poetic, you always overuse that puckered eyes thing, but what does it mean?”

“The alarm just went off and we’ve got to get a line on what’s happening. Tell me: when was your mission departure time?”

The professor adopted that sheepish look again, regret plain on his face. “Oh four hundred.”

“And your retraction?”

“Thirty minutes later.”

“How long were you there?”

“Forty-eight hours, though it seemed like forever.”

“And when did you meet the Primes?”

“What? You mean Wilde and company? Well…” Nordhausen rolled his eyes, thinking. “I was about an hour just taking things in until I got to my hotel room. Then another three hours until I made it to the Opera house. The performance was two hours or so, and I suppose I met Wilde an hour later in the club.”

“That’s seven hours—in that milieu, correct?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But what is this all about?”

Paul squinted, slowing to round another tight curve. “Well that’s odd,” he said. “The alarm went off at three minutes after four—exactly—just a few minutes after you opened the continuum, in our time line.

“Yes, I know,” Nordhausen admitted with a shrug. “I forgot about Kelly’s Golems. I mean, there hasn’t been an alert since your inadvertent fall into that nest of Assassins at Massiaf. I completely forgot that my mission would set off the alarm. Stupid of me.”

“Wait a second,” Paul stopped him. “Hear me out. The timing on these things is critical. The Golems call home the instant they detect a variation. The first call came in at four-oh-three. That’s three minutes after you breached the continuum—our time—but that’s almost five hours at your target milieu.”

“Five hours? How can you know something like that?”

Paul thought for a second. “Four point eight hours, to be a little more precise. If you were running a 48 hour breach over 30 minutes lab processing time, then each minute here was 96 minutes there. See what I mean?”

“I suppose so, but—”

“Well, what were you doing five hours into your mission?” He went over the professor’s story again in his head, vocalizing events and looking to Nordhausen for confirmation. “An hour futzing about, three hours in your room… Why, that would put you at the opera when the alarm came in.”

“Yes, right in the middle of the performance, I suppose.”

Paul brought the car to a halt at a stop sign, taking advantage of the brief break from driving to hone in on something. “Think now, Robert. Did you have any significant contact with locals during the opera?”

“Not that I can recall. I was so thrilled with the performance that I was totally wrapped up in it. Why, I didn’t say a word to anyone.”

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely. I just sat there.”

“You didn’t try to pull anything like you had planned for the Shakespeare play, right? You didn’t go back stage…”

“Not at all. What are you getting at?”

“The alarm went off before you encountered the Primes at the club.” Paul started off again, adjusting his windshield wipers against a blowing squall of rain.

Nordhausen stared at him, the implications of Paul’s statement finally hitting home. “Very clever,” he said, feeling a bit relieved, but still somewhat confused.

“Assuming your estimate of the time is accurate.”

“The show started at 8:00pm, promptly. I looked at my watch when the curtain rose.”

“Too bad you didn’t do that when you arrived. Then we’d have a real good time reference.”

Nordhausen’s eyes widened with a sudden recollection. “The bells!”

“What?”

“Oranges and lemons, sing the bells of St. Clements… The bells, Paul! I heard them ring the very moment I arrived. Why, I counted four—yes, exactly four PM—just a few seconds after I got there.”

“Good for you! That nails down the time, so it looks like the contamination happened while you were at the opera.”

“But I wasn’t doing anything. I was just delighted to watch the play. What harm could I have caused by just sitting there?”