Robert Sawyer - Quantum Night

After that, Menno and I drove the rest of the way in silence; I took him directly to Rebekkah’s house. It hadn’t dawned on me that Ryan might be there, too—but she was; Kayla had been stuck in traffic for hours, thanks to gridlock caused by yet more rioting. As we entered, Ryan squealed in delight at the sight of the German shepherd. “Oooh! What’s his name?”

“Her name,” said Menno. “Pax.”

Rebekkah, who was meticulous about her housekeeping, was scowling, and I realized I should have told her in advance that Menno would be accompanied by a dog.

“Can I pet her?” asked Ryan.

“She’s a very special dog,” Menno said. “She won’t be happy until she gets me to where I’m going. But when I’m settled in, I’ll take off her harness. That tells her she’s off-duty, and then, yes, she’d enjoy being petted.”

Ryan seemed fascinated by these revelations, but Rebekkah said, “It is getting on, and Travis still tires easily.”

There were three steps up to the main floor of Rebekkah’s house—the reason Travis hadn’t yet joined us. We climbed them, Ryan bounding ahead. A short corridor came off the living room, with a washroom on one side, and, on the other, what had once been Rebekkah’s graphics studio but had become Travis’s room.

“Give me a second with him,” I said. I went in on my own, closing the white-painted door behind me. “Travis,” I said, “Professor Warkentin is here. I just wanted to prepare you. He’s blind.”

He looked up at me. Solid food was doing wonders; his face had filled out since I’d last seen him.

“Oh,” he replied, his tone flat. But then he nodded. “Okay, send him in. There’s something I have to tell him.” He rolled his motorized chair half a meter forward and added, “Alone.”

The drama Travis had been hoping for wasn’t going to occur. He’d wanted a “Look at me!” moment; he’d wanted Menno’s jaw to drop in shock at what he’d reduced a once-great athlete to. But Menno just stood there, the mountain come to Mohammed.

“Hello, Professor,” Travis said.

“Please, call me Menno.”

Travis had his own agenda, but one thing he remembered from his Q2 days was to always let the other guy show his hand first. “Jim said you had something you wanted to say.”

“Yes.” Menno’s features worked, as if he were trying to come up with the right words, then, with a little shrug, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Well, see, you were knocked into a coma by an experiment that Dominic Adler and I were doing, and you—”

“I remember,” said Travis.

Menno tilted his head. “But Jim said you couldn’t recall the day we knocked you out.”

“I lied,” said Travis, and he gave a little shrug of his own, then operated the control to roll the wheelchair back a little. “Old habits die hard.”

“But—”

“It was kind of my first impulse for so long, you know? Are you up to speed on all this Q1-Q2-Q3 shit?”

“Yes.”

“And what did Jim tell you about me?”

“You started as a Q2, then rebooted as a Q3.”

“Yeah, exactly. And about himself?”

“He started as a Q3, and then rebooted the first time as a Q1.”

“Right, right. And has he told you about memories and stuff? The indexing schemes?”

Menno nodded.

“So, my sister explained it all to me. When Jim changed quantum states, he also changed indexing schemes: he went from verbal to visual. But I didn’t; adult Q2s and Q3s index memories verbally, unless they have a certain kind of autism, right? So, no change for me. I didn’t have any trouble remembering coming to your lab, putting on that damn helmet. I knew you were responsible.”

Astonishment was plain on Menno’s face. “Then why didn’t you tell Jim?”

“I’d just woken up. Playing things close to the vest had always served me well before; never let your opponent—and, man, I’d thought everyone was my opponent—know what you know.”

“Ah,” said Menno. He spread his arms. “Anyway, look, I’m old, I’m diabetic, I’m blind, and they’ve more or less put me out to pasture at the university. And, well, before I go, I just wanted to say I’m sorry—so, so sorry—for what I did to you. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. You have no idea how it’s eaten at me all these years. Not a day has gone by when it hasn’t haunted me; not an hour.”

Travis rotated his chair around so he could look out his window. He’d seen technological miracles aplenty since his revival, but from here, the view of the backyard—grass that needed mowing, powder-blue sky, petunias and portulacas, a weather-beaten picnic table—could have still been 2000, or 1950 for that matter. “I hate that,” he said softly.

Menno was standing just inside the doorway. “Hate that I’ve felt guilty?”

“No, no,” said Travis. “Not you. I hate having that feeling myself. Guilt. Remorse. Regrets. Second thoughts. Reliving things over and over again. Agonizing over the past. I hate it.” He looked at Menno. “You want absolution? Fine, sure, what the hell; you’ve got it. Fucking world looks like it’s about to come to an end anyway, right, so why the hell not?”

It was killing me being in Saskatoon and not seeing Kayla. Oh, she must have known I was in town—after all, I’d already seen every other Huron—but I had to respect her wishes.

I knew what it was like to lose half your friends in a divorce—they make you pick a side in the church when you get married, and those lines pretty much stay intact afterward, too, I discovered. And I had no doubt that Victoria knew that Kayla had dumped me, even if Kayla hadn’t yet broken the news to her mother or daughter. I was nervous calling Victoria for personal reasons—I didn’t want to be chewed out—and even more so because everything now hinged on Vic’s cooperation. While Menno was talking to Travis, I went across the hall to the washroom and called her.

“Jim!” she said by way of hello. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Rebekkah’s place, visiting Travis.”

“So you’re back here in Saskatoon?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not sure Kayla wants to see you.”

“I know,” I replied, “but”—and this was agonizing to say—“that’s not the most important thing right now.”

There was a whole world of sadness in her simple reply. “Yeah.”

“So, about what we were discussing, you know, at Kayla’s place…”

“Yes?”

“You’ve been watching the news, right? You know what’s going on.”

“It’s awful,” agreed Vic. “They’ve got to be at fucking DEFCON One by now.”

“And, so, look: using the beamline, shifting one person to shift everyone. Vic, you’ve got to see it, right? It’s the answer.”

“I told you, pumping that much power into someone’s skull will likely kill—”

“I have a volunteer with me. Where are you?”

“Um, at the Light Source. I was finally about to leave.”

“Stay there. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”

“No, there’s no point. There’s scheduled maintenance tonight. The system is going to be offline for eight hours; they’ve already initiated the shutdown.”

“Oh, shit. Okay. Can you sneak the quantum tuning fork out?”

“Uh… sure. Yeah. I guess.”

“Do so, please. Where can we meet?”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’ll find a hotel.”

“Oh, screw that. Come to my place—they say the police have finally cleared the roads. You know where it is?”

I’d never been inside, but I remembered the approximate location from that night we picked Vic up at the airport and took her home. “More or less. Give me your address; my phone can find it.”