Robert Sawyer - Quantum Night

“Oh, that must be handy, having her live with you.”

“My mom? No, no. She’s just sixty-two. She’s got her own place. She’s a freelance graphic designer; works out of her house. But Travis is in a facility. I visit him every Saturday morning, sit with him for an hour.” She smiled ruefully. “It’s almost like therapy. I talk about my week, natter on, say whatever comes to mind. I long ago gave up any hope that he’s going to respond, but…”

“Sure,” I said. “And, yeah, I’d be happy to keep you company on Saturday, if you’d like me there.”

“Thanks. I know it doesn’t make any real difference if I go or not, but, well…” She shrugged. “It’s something I have to do.”

I nodded. “Some people in minimally conscious states or with locked-in syndrome are aware of, and do appreciate, visitors, even if they can’t respond.”

“And doubtless some of those at the facility are minimally conscious. But not Travis.”

“Oh?”

“I had an ambulance service bring him to the Light Source a while ago. Took him on a stretcher down to the SusyQ beamline; that’s short for ‘superpositioned systems—quantum.’ Vic ran our process on him.” Kayla let out a small sigh. “Might as well have put a hunk of granite in front of the emitter; they both would’ve shown the same thing.” She shrugged. “Scientist first, little sister second, I guess. Anyway, that’s how we confirmed our notion about the classical-physics state: no superposition means a complete lack of consciousness.”

I didn’t want to seem insensitive, but, well, the utilitarian position would be clear in a case like this. “So then, ah—”

“Why don’t I pull the plug?”

“Well, yeah.”

She shrugged a little. “He’s my brother.” I couldn’t think of a good response, so I remained silent. But after a time, she went on. “I know he’s not suffering; he can’t be in any pain. And, well, where there is life, there is hope.”

I peered out the semicircular window, radial slats making it look like a half-submerged captain’s wheel. The immaculately groomed waiter deposited the bill, then disappeared; I paid, since Kayla had gotten lunch. Kayla was staying at Inn at The Forks, which is why I’d chosen Sydney’s. I walked her the hundred meters or so to her hotel.

The Inn was five stories tall, and apparently pretty upscale. I’d been to the lobby a few times but never to the rooms—and it didn’t look like that was going to change this evening. The elevators were close to the front desk, affording little privacy, although an indoor waterfall provided some masking white noise.

“You really want to come to Saskatoon?” Kayla asked, facing me.

“Absolutely,” I said. “And—oh, shit.”

“What?”

“I forgot. Damn! I have to make an appearance at the CMHR Thursday at four.”

“At the what?”

“The Canadian Museum for Human Rights.” I pointed at the north wall, hoping she could visualize what was on the other side of it. “It’s that round, glass-and-steel building just over there. They’re having a reception to kick off a lecture series, and I’m on the board of directors, so…”

“Can you bring a date?”

My heart skipped a beat. “Um, sure. Sure, yeah.”

She pushed the up button. “I was hoping to get to visit that museum on this trip, but haven’t had a chance. Okay; let’s do it. We’ll hit the road right after the reception.”

“Wonderful! Thank you.”

The elevator arrived. She hesitated for a moment, leaned in and gave me a quick hug, then entered the car.

I headed out the sliding glass doors into the summer evening. I didn’t often get down here to The Forks, but whenever I did, I made a point of walking around the Oodena Celebration Circle, an amphitheater sixty meters across and 2.5 meters deep. Equidistant around its perimeter are eight steel armatures that look like cyborg lizards with long tails curving up toward the sky. Each tail has several sighting rings mounted on it, which encircle specific stars at dates and times specified on accompanying plaques. The west armature, for instance, can be used to find Altair, Betelgeuse, Regulus, and Procyon. Meanwhile, gaps between red stone monoliths frame the rising sun on the solstices and equinoxes; I’ve sometimes been on hand with members of the RASC to explain things to tourists. Here, in the dark, the place had a wonderfully spooky quality; it had often been the meeting-up point for Winnipeg’s annual Zombie Walk.

I strolled around the grassy circumference, hands shoved in my pockets, thinking.

Kayla had said I’d hit her. Me. I’d never hit anyone, not as an adult. Even as a kid, it wasn’t in my nature, not since—

Yeah.

When I was eight or nine, I’d been in a fight in the parking lot of my school, with Ronny Handler, a kid my age who’d attacked me for no good reason—really, what utter bullshit it was for the teacher to say it takes two to start a fight—and, to my surprise, in an adrenaline-fueled rage, I’d been able to knock Ronny down, and I was so furious, so incensed, so livid at the unfairness of not being able to walk to school without being picked on because of—what? My shorts? My buzz cut? My ears? Who the hell knew?

When Handler was down, I leapt up and assumed a crouching posture in mid-air, my knees together but bent, and I was ready to come down hard on his head, which was sideways on the pavement, and I knew—eight years old, and I knew —that if I continued what I’d started, if I let the trajectory run its course, my knees would smash into him, and I might well fracture his skull, and maybe even kill him.

And, in that split second, still in the air, I changed my posture, altering my course. My bare knees crashed into the asphalt right beside Ronny’s head, the impact excruciating, my skin being brutally scraped—but Handler survived. I hadn’t been worried so much about him as about the consequences for me if I’d followed through on what I’d begun, and I’d known that shouting “He started it!” would do no good at all if he were lying there bleeding. I remembered thinking this was a moment that could have changed my life, and I’d done the right thing, just in the nick of time.

That was, I supposed, one of the first times that my reason had overcome any baser instincts I might have had. And it—my reason—had held sway ever since.

Except for near the end of my dark period, apparently.

I was passing the northeast armature, a great beast hovering above me, the long tail fading up into the night. I pulled out my phone, looked at the glowing digits. It was after 10:00 P.M., which meant that the psychology department would be deserted, and so I could—

But no. No, that would be crazy.

And yet—

And yet, apparently, it wouldn’t be the worst thing I’d ever done.

I passed a couple of grad students and a janitor as I made my way down the corridor. Being assistant department head was mostly an administrative pain in the butt, but the job did come with a master set of keys. When the coast was clear, I let myself into Menno’s office.

Four avocado-green filing cabinets lined one wall. I was afraid they might be locked, but they weren’t. Menno himself probably hadn’t been in them for years; paper files were of little use to a blind man, I supposed, but perhaps teaching assistants or grad students maintained them for him. I quickly found the “L” files, but there were none about Lucidity, and so I started at the top drawer of the first cabinet, and looked at every file in turn.

I almost skipped by one labeled “DoD,” but was intrigued. Was it really the American military? And indeed it was—and related to Project Lucidity, to boot. I laid out each page on the floor and snapped photos of them with my iPhone. I thought about leaving, but there was a touch of Pavlov’s dogs in me, I guess; I’d been rewarded once, and I wanted to see if I’d be rewarded again. I continued on past D, through E, F, G, and so on, betting against myself that there’d be no X or Z files… and there weren’t; the last paper file was labeled “Yerkes-Dodson handout.”