The Flicker Men (8 page)

“Waves to images.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“For me, it was the challenge. To see if it could be done. For the others, there were more practical reasons.”

“Like?”

“Pushing past the system's polygon budget. It was a way to render 3D space efficiently. Stuart was into hardware improvements. Modeling design. Starting his own company. Things that were actually useful.”

“Did it work?”

“The company? Yeah, it's still based in Indiana.”

“No, the computer.”

“Oh that. Kind of. We reached a sixteen-coherence state and then used nuclear resonance to decode it.

“Why only kind of? So then it
didn't
work?”

“No, it worked; it definitely worked,” I said. “Even when it was turned off.”

*   *   *

It took Satvik two days to rig up the light while I built the box.

Point Machine brought the frogs in on a Saturday. We separated the healthy from the sick, the healthy from the monsters.

“What is wrong with them?” Satvik asked.

“Pollutants.”

One frog was spiderlike—a phalanx of pale and twisted legs sprouting from its rear quarter. The legs twitched when Satvik picked it up. Another leg flexed and straightened.

“Pollutants do this?”

“To amphibians, yes. The more complex a system, the more ways it can go wrong. Amphibians are very complex.”

“Poor bastards,” Satvik said. He dropped the frog into the other aquarium with a loud plop.

Joy was next door, working in her lab. She heard our voices and stepped into the hall.

“You working weekends?” Satvik asked her when she appeared in our doorway.

“It's quieter,” Joy said. “I do my more sensitive tests when there's nobody here. What about you? So you're all partners now?”

“Eric has the big hands on this project,” Satvik said. “My hands are small.”

“Ah, so you have Eric to blame for your lost day off?” She followed Satvik's voice deeper into the lab, fingers trailing the wall.

“So it would appear,” I said. I hammered the last nail into the corner of the box. It was a flimsy thing of plywood two feet square, into which a small light had been wired—the bulb scavenged from a small chandelier at Satvik's house.

“I'd heard you were going to be leaving here.” The statement was pointed at me.

There was an awkward moment. Point Machine glanced up from his aquariums.

“Not quite yet,” I said.

“Then what are you working on?” she asked.

Satvik shot me a look, and I nodded.

So Satvik explained it the way only Satvik could. It took five full minutes, as he went over every detail, and she never interrupted him.

“Oh,” she said, finally. She blinked her empty eyes. She stayed.

We used Point Machine as a control. “We're going to do this in real time,” I told him. “No record at the detectors, just the indicator light inside the box. When I tell you, stand there and watch for the light. If the light comes on, it means the detectors picked up the electron. Understand?”

“Yeah, I get it,” Point Machine said.

Satvik hit the button, firing a stream of electrons. I watched the phosphorescent capture screen while an interference pattern materialized before my eyes—a now-familiar pattern of light and dark.

“Okay,” I told Point Machine. “Now look in the box. Tell me if you see the light.”

Point Machine looked in the box. Before he even spoke, the interference pattern disappeared. “Yeah,” he said. “I see it.”

I smiled. Felt that fine edge between known and unknown. Caressed it.

I nodded at Satvik, and he hit the switch to kill power to the gun. I turned to Point Machine. “You collapsed the probability wave by observing the light, so we've established proof of principle.” I looked at the three of them. “Now let's find out if all observers were created equal.”

Point Machine put a frog in the box.

And here it was—the stepping-off point. A view into the implicate.

I nodded to Satvik. “Fire the gun.”

He hit the switch, and the machine hummed. I watched the screen. I closed my eyes, felt my heart beating in my chest. Inside the box, I knew a light had come on for one of the two detectors; I knew the frog had seen it. But when I opened my eyes, the interference pattern still showed on the screen. The frog hadn't changed the system at all.

“Again,” I said.

Satvik fired the gun again.

Again. Again.

Point Machine looked at me. “Well?”

“There's still an interference pattern. The probability wave didn't collapse.”

“Meaning what?” Joy asked.

“It means we try a different frog.”

We tried six. One after another. Pulling them from their aquarium and putting them in the box. None changed the result.

“They're part of the indeterminate system,” Satvik said.

“What does that mean?” Point Machine asked.

Satvik didn't answer, just pulled at his ear, lost in thought.

I watched the screen closely, and the interference pattern suddenly vanished. I was about to shout, but when I looked up, I saw Point Machine peeking into the box.

“You looked,” I said.

“I was just making sure the light worked.”

“It worked. I could tell the moment you saw it.”

We tried every frog in his lab. Then we tried the salamanders. None collapsed the waveform.

“Maybe it's just amphibians,” he said.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I haven't the slightest idea.”

“How is it that we affect the system, but frogs and salamanders can't?”

“Maybe it's our eyes,” Point Machine said. “Quantum coherence effects in the retinal rod-rhopsin molecules themselves.”

“Why would that matter?”

“Optic nerve cells only conduct measured quanta to the visual cortex. Eyes are just another detector.”

“It's more than just our eyes.”

“You don't know that.”

“Frogs have eyes. They have a cortex.”

“Can I try?” Joy interrupted.

We all turned to look at her. A brown lock of hair had fallen loose from its place behind her ear and now dangled across her cheek, pointing to her mouth. Her expression was serious.

“Yeah,” I said.

We prepared the experiment again, this time with Joy's empty eyes pointed at the box.

“You ready?”

“Yes,” she said.

Satvik hit the button.

The machine hummed. We let it run for ten seconds. I checked the results.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” The interference pattern hadn't collapsed. Instead of two distinct points, the screen still showed the intersecting waves.

“It was worth a try,” Point Machine said.

*   *   *

The next morning, Point Machine met Satvik and me in the parking lot before work. We climbed into my car and drove to the mall.

We went to a pet store. I bought three mice, a canary, a turtle, and a squish-faced Boston terrier puppy. The sales clerk stared at us.

“You pet lovers, huh?” He looked suspiciously at Satvik and Point Machine.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Pets.”

The drive back was quiet, punctuated only by the occasional whining of the puppy.

Point Machine broke the silence. “Perhaps it takes a more complex nervous system than amphibians.”

“That shouldn't matter,” Satvik said. “Life is life.”

I gripped the steering wheel, remembering a dozen late-night arguments back in college. “What's the difference between mind and brain?”

“Semantics,” said Point Machine. “Different names for the same idea.”

Satvik regarded us. “No, it's more than that.”

“It's like the old question about the guitar,” I said. “Do you play the guitar with your fingers or with your head?”

“Brain is hardware,” Satvik said. “Mind is software.”

*   *   *

The Massachusetts landscape whipped past the car's windows, a wall of ruined hillside on our right—huge, dark stone like the bones of the earth. A compound fracture of the land. Somewhere to the east was the ocean. Cold, dark water. We drove the rest of the way in silence.

Back at the lab, we started with the turtle. Then the canary, which escaped afterward and flew to sit atop a filing cabinet. Then the mice. None of them collapsed the wave. The final mouse, white with red eyes, the classic lab mouse, moved cautiously across the table, whiskers vibrating, before Satvik caught it by its tail and put it back in its cardboard travel carrier.

“Time for the dog,” Point Machine said.

The Boston terrier looked up at us, googly-eyed, from its spot on the floor. It whined, tilting its head to the side.

“Are its eyes supposed to look like that?” Satvik asked.

“Like what?”

“You know, in different directions?”

“It's the breed, I think,” Point Machine offered. “A lot of them are like that.”

I lifted the black-and-white puppy and placed it in the box. “All it has to do is sense the light. For the purpose of the test, either eye will do.” I looked down at man's best friend, our companion through the millennia, and harbored secret hope.
This one
, I told myself.
This species, certainly, of all of them
. Because who hasn't looked into the eyes of a dog and not sensed something looking back?

The puppy yelped in the box. There wasn't much room to spare; the lightbulb jutted into the box near its head.

Satvik hit the button and ran the experiment.

“Well?”

I leaned over, looking down at the capture screen. The interference pattern was clear and steady.

Inside the box, I knew, the light had come on. But from the perspective of the universe, it had not been observed.

“Nothing,” I said. There was no change at all.

 

12

That night I drove to Joy's. She answered the door. Waited for me to speak. “You mentioned coffee?”

She smiled then, pretty face framed in the doorway, and there was another moment when I felt sure that she saw me. She stepped back and opened the door wide.

“Come in.”

I moved past her, and the door clicked shut.

“I don't get company often,” she said. “I apologize if the house is a mess.”

I glanced around, unsure if she was making a joke. Her apartment was small and orderly. I didn't know what I was expecting. Maybe this, exactly. Bare, pictureless walls. A couch. And then later, a bed.

It started with a silence. Then a touch.

A kiss soft, unsure of itself.

On the sheets, she arched her back. Skin like silk.

Living in sound and touch. Covers pooled on the floor. Her hands clutching tightly behind my neck, pulling me closer—a voice in my ear as our slick bodies slid past each other.

Afterward, in the darkness, we lay for a long time without speaking.

*   *   *

When I thought she was asleep, her voice surprised me. “I usually know them better.”

“Who?”

“The ones who steal the covers.”

“Borrowing,” I said. “I'm borrowing the covers.” I reached down and grabbed the blanket from the floor and draped it over her naked shoulder.

“Are you good-looking?” she asked.

“What?”

“I'm curious,” she said. Her hand reached out in the darkness and found me. She ran her fingers through my hair.

“Does it matter?”

“I have standards.”

Despite myself, I laughed. “In that case, yes. Gorgeous, in fact.”

“I don't know about
that
.”

“No? You don't trust me?”

“Maybe I asked around.”

“Then why would you need to ask me?”

“Maybe I was curious what you thought.”

I took her hand and placed it on my face. “I'm as you see.”

Her hand was cool on my cheek. After a long silence, she asked, “Why did you come here tonight?”

I thought of the box and the puppy. The light that went unobserved.

“I didn't want to be alone.”

“The nights are hardest for you.” She stated it simply, like a fact. Like fire is hot. Water wet. Nights hardest.

Here is one advantage when talking to the blind. They can't see your expression. They don't know when they've struck bone. “What is your work?” I asked, changing the subject. “You've never said, specifically.”

“You never asked, specifically. Call it acoustical fabrication.”

“And what is that?”

“You start with wide, white-frequency tone, and then you remove everything you don't want.”

“Remove?”

Her slender arm curled behind my neck. “Sound can be a flexible tool. A catalyst for chemical reaction or an inhibitor. Start with a maximum frequency density and then carve away those parts that you don't want to hear. There's a Mozart concerto hidden in every burst of static.”

Again, I couldn't tell if she was joking.

I sat up in the lightless room. At that moment, in the dark, we were the same. Only when I turned the light on would our worlds be different.

“Mornings are hardest,” I told her.

In a few hours the sun would rise. The sickness would come or not come. “It's time for me to go.”

She ran a hand along my bare spine. She didn't try to get me to stay.

“Time,” she whispered. “There is no such beast. Only now. And now.” She put her lips against my skin.

*   *   *

The next day, I left a message with Jeremy's secretary, asking him to come by room 271.

An hour later, there was a knock on the door, and he stepped into the room.

“You've made a finding?” he asked. He still had his suit jacket on. It would be a day of meetings for him, I knew. It was how you told the scientists from the managers. The color of their coats. Satvik and Point Machine stood behind me.