Coin #2 - Quantum Coin (26 page)

“Since we're safe for the moment, right now our most pressing problem is ignorance. Simply put, we need more information. Fortunately, this is also the easiest problem to solve.

“I reviewed the reports that Nathaniel and Ephraim made on their experience in my universe when realities converged and altered the world of 1954 around us. What I found fascinating was the fact that I was completely unaware of any of these changes—I have to take their word for it that the Graduate College shifted location to the main campus at Princeton. I don't remember it any differently.”

He paused to draw a cigarette from his breast pocket. Dr. Kim lit it with her silver Zippo. Hugh took a thoughtful pull on his cigarette.

“Think about that: An entire universe reshaped itself around me, and me with it,” he said. “That realization is sobering. It also doesn't rule out the possibility that this sort of event has happened before without anyone noticing. Perhaps it is even a frequent occurrence.

“In fact, my theory is that very similar realities must merge once some sort of consensus has been reached—as a way to prune the branches of the growing multiverse, as it were. To test this supposition, I intend to initiate this process artificially.”

Zoe sucked in a sharp breath.

“Is that a good idea?” Jena asked.

“Dr. Kim has convinced me that it is,” Hugh said. “We need to observe this decoherence effect for ourselves in order to understand it, but our monitoring equipment—the coherence technology—prevents it. The presence of even the portable so-called Charon device makes it impossible for the universe to branch, which accounts for the relative lack of other universes where one of my analogs has developed the technology to visit other universes. And although the smaller units can't generate the same cancellation field that the LCD does, they do disrupt incoming waves enough to limit decoherence.”

“Which means what?” Jena asked.

“You want to turn them all off,” Zoe said. “Hugh, you
can't
.”

Hugh pulled off his glasses and blinked at the camera.

“Of course not. That would be suicide.” He chuckled. “Quantum suicide. That's an interesting thought.”

“Then what are you proposing?” Zoe asked.

“Last night, Jena and I devised a startling experiment,” Hugh said.

Ephraim looked sharply at Jena. She nodded in Dr. Kim's direction and shrugged.

“I barely had anything to do with it,” Dr. Kim said humbly. “I just offered a few suggestions.”

“I think best when voicing my ideas aloud,” Hugh said. “An open ear can't be valued too much. Especially ears as lovely as yours,” he said.

He glanced at Jena and smiled. “Yours as well.” He turned to Zoe next. He turned away quickly when he saw her dour expression.

He returned to his starting point in front of the LCD. Nathaniel readjusted the camera.

“In fact, the idea had come to me earlier, but my subconscious needed some time, and the right words of inspiration, to work it out. What if we can filter selected universes out of the noise of the multiverse?” He let that question hang in the air for a moment. The LCD screeched behind him, and he flinched.

“What, indeed?” Ephraim murmured.

“Exactly,” Hugh said.

“What?” Zoe said.

“Like tuning a radio to a certain frequency?” Jena asked.

“Yes! That's it exactly,” Hugh said.

He whirled around and spread his hands wide in front of the LCD.

“Do you think he practiced this?” Zoe asked.

“Several times. Naked, in front of the mirror,” Nathaniel said.

“I didn't need that image,” Zoe said.

Jena blushed.

“Isn't the camera recording everything we say?” Ephraim asked.

“I hope so,” Zoe said. She leaned close to the microphone and whispered, “Hugh Everett is a wanker.”

“The idea is to isolate a single universe,” Hugh said. “To allow it to interact with this one so we can observe what happens.”

“No
,” Nathaniel said. He strode past the camera toward Hugh. Dr. Kim intercepted him and placed a hand on his chest.

“You said you weren't going to turn off the LCD,” Ephraim said.

“There's no need for such a drastic measure. I've modified the LCD's software so we can select one universe in our database and allow its wave function to interact with this universe, while continuing to block out the rest.”

“How did you reprogram software you were introduced to only a few days ago?” Zoe asked.

“His analog designed it in the first place,” Nathaniel said.

“He was very organized. He left remarks throughout the code explaining every function. It was easy to pick up,” Hugh said.

“This sounds dangerous,” Jena said.

“If we can determine how the universes combine, learn how to control the process, we'll be one step closer to discovering a way to prevent it from happening. Permanently,” Dr. Kim said.

“Trust me,” Hugh said.

“You think this will work, Doc?” Nathaniel asked.

“I have complete faith in Hugh's expertise,” Dr. Kim said.

“No offense, Hugh,” Ephraim said. “But I think you're bluffing. When you first got here, you stood right where you are now and confessed that you have no idea how the LCD works or why any of this is happening. If you aren't absolutely sure of what you're doing, then we're taking an unnecessary risk.”

“I'm prepared to give Hugh the benefit of the doubt,” Jena said. “We have to try
something.
What could possibly go wrong?”

Ephraim, Zoe, and Nathaniel stared at Jena in shock.

“Why would you say something like that?” Ephraim asked.

“Amateur,” Zoe said.

“In any event, it's too late.” Hugh tugged the bottom of his suit vest to straighten it. “The experiment is already in progress.”

He pressed a button on the controller, and the LCD shuddered to a halt. First the inner ring slowed to a stop, then the outer ring, with a horrible rending of metal against metal.

“I'd better take a look at that,” Nathaniel said.

The sudden silence in the atrium was startling. When his ears adjusted, Ephraim heard only the tiny whirring of the camcorder.

They all looked around, waiting for something to happen.

Hugh walked toward the camera. “No, look at it through the camera. And keep rolling.”

The six of them crowded around the camera as best they could, with Hugh, Nathaniel, and Dr. Kim in front. Jena leaned up on her toes with one hand on Hugh's shoulder. Ephraim and Zoe were able to snatch glimpses of the small screen by craning their necks to peer between the heads of the others.

Hugh extended the controller to Dr. Kim, and she pressed another button with a smile.

The shrieking sound of the LCD began again. Ephraim heard something crack and ping, and a gear dropped from somewhere and settled between Atlas's feet. Nathaniel looked at it worriedly.

“It'll hold,” he said under his breath.

The disc in the center of the LCD laboriously turned itself over until the Everett Institute logo was facing down instead of up, and the rings began to rotate again, in opposite directions to each other. Soon they were moving quickly enough that Ephraim couldn't tell which way they were going. A breeze picked up, but it didn't seem related to the spinning bands of metal.

Ephraim smelled water and honeysuckle. It helped to calm the growing queasiness beginning in his stomach, which the others were also experiencing to varying degrees. Hugh was extremely pale, his face beaded with sweat and his shoulders slumping miserably.

The screen of the camera no longer showed the LCD but a smaller version of Atlas, supporting a basin that spilled water into a fountain. Ephraim looked around the atrium, but he couldn't see any quantum phantoms or images from the other universe with the naked eye.

“The Memorial Fountain,” Jena said. “It's Greystone Park.”

A figure wandered into frame.

“Ephraim…” Jena said.

Nathaniel and Jena moved aside to give Ephraim a better view of the screen. He leaned forward and saw a man approaching the fountain. At first he thought it was his father, but then the man turned his face, and Ephraim recognized it as an older version of himself.

Dr. Kim zoomed in the camera. The analog looked about twenty years older, hair thinning, a bit heavier, and with a scraggly beard.

“It's Ephraim,” Dr. Kim said. She touched his face on the screen, and the display was momentarily obscured by a warped circular rainbow as she pressed her fingernail against it. She drew her hand back quickly as though she had been shocked.

The older Ephraim turned to look at them. Nathaniel zoomed the picture out again, and they saw that the analog was looking at someone else offscreen. The picture went black for a moment as the lens was obscured by a figure moving through it. Kim shivered as Ephraim was joined by another Jena Kim—the same age as the doctor. She was slimmer, in a pretty yellow sundress, and her long hair was pulled up in a high ponytail. She was laughing.

“Sound,” Dr. Kim said.

Nathaniel pressed some buttons, but all they heard was a murky, garbled noise from the camera's small speaker.

“It's working,” Hugh rasped. Ephraim heard surprise in the man's voice, and he gritted his teeth. Hugh hadn't been certain this was going to happen.

Hugh took quick, shallow breaths, his right hand clutching his stomach in pain.

“What are we looking at?” Zoe asked.

“This is a single universe overlapping with ours. We wait to see if anything changes,” Dr. Kim said. “Here or there.”

She fiddled with the controller, and the pitch of the spinning LCD changed subtly. Ephraim's stomach untwisted itself, and Hugh straightened, groaning with relief.

The older Ephraim put an arm around his Jena. Zoe drew a little closer to Ephraim, and he resisted the urge to mimic the motion. His analog reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. He flipped it into the fountain.

“Make a wish,” Zoe said. Her words matched the movement of the older Jena's lips.

A little boy with a bright-blue balloon appeared onscreen, walking along the edge of the fountain, his arms extended like airplane wings for balance.

“Oh,” Jena said.

Ephraim's analog picked up the child, lifted him over his head, and lowered him between him and the other Jena.

“Shut it off,” Dr. Kim said hastily.

“What, dear?” Hugh asked.

She brushed past him and walked toward the LCD. She stood in front of it, exactly where her other self stood. She reached out a hand toward where the other Ephraim's face would be if she could see him.

“Shut it off,” Dr. Kim said again.

“Which? The camera or the LCD?” Nathaniel asked.

“Don't switch off the drive!” Zoe said with alarm.

Hugh pressed a button, and the rings on the LCD slowed. As the central disc turned over slowly to its original position, the outer ring screeched to a stop, then reversed direction to match the inner ring. Atlas shuddered from the sudden shift in balance and speed. It looked like the golden giant was shaking himself awake.

“That was interesting,” Hugh said.

They watched the screen as the image from the other universe faded and the LCD and Dr. Kim took its place. And someone else.

“Um,” Ephraim said. “I think—”

He was drowned out by a high-pitched scream. A child's shriek reverberated through the atrium. Ephraim clapped his hands over his ears and looked at the LCD.

The boy stared at Dr. Kim in terror. His blue balloon drifted up and toward the LCD. Somehow it navigated between the slowly turning rings without getting battered, crushed, or tangled. Its string caught for a moment, but the balloon tugged free again and continued its long, meandering journey up, up, up.

As the boy continued to scream, Ephraim tilted his head back and followed the balloon's course. It hit the skylight above them and bobbed around lazily until it settled in its exact center. The glass was pointed like a pyramid, Ephraim realized, not a flat square pane like he'd thought it was.

The boy bawled, backing away from Dr. Kim. “Mommy!” he cried.

Dr. Kim stood there stiffly, looking at the spot where Ephraim's older analog had been only a universe away. She didn't seem aware of what was going on.

Jena rushed over to the little boy, and his screams got even louder.

“Shh,” Jena said. She crouched and opened her arms, making calming sounds. After a moment he allowed himself to be enfolded.

The boy quieted down, alternately gasping and sobbing. He buried his face in Jena's chest.

She rocked him gently from side to side, eyes closed. “It's okay. It'll all be okay,” she said.

“That's a lie,” Nathaniel said.

“Well, I'd call this a success,” Hugh said.

“I do not think that word means what you think it means,” Zoe said.

She joined Jena, and the boy looked between the two of them in wide-eyed wonder, still sniffling.

“What is this?” Dr. Kim asked, suddenly aware of the little boy standing at her feet.

The boy looked at her and screamed again.

“I am not your mother,” she said. She looked up and repeated it more loudly. “I am not his mother.”

“I think you'd better go,” Zoe said. She crouched on the other side of the boy.

Dr. Kim nodded and walked toward the entrance to the Institute.

“What's your name, sweetie?” Jena asked.

“Doug,” he said. He grabbed for her glasses. “Doug Kim Scott.”

“Holy shit,” Nathaniel said. His voice echoed loudly in the courtyard, even over the labored helicopter sound of the LCD.

“Language,” Zoe said.

Ephraim approached them slowly. Up close, he noticed the boy had dark-brown hair like his and his mother's eyes. He looked about three or four years old. Doug looked up at him and screwed up his face.

“Daddy?” Doug said.

“Oh, boy,” Ephraim said. He prepared for the boy to let loose another flood of tears, but Jena and Zoe kept him calm, while looking at Ephraim accusingly.

“Mazel tov,” Nathaniel said.

“You know he isn't really my son,” Ephraim said.

Zoe smiled. “Right, because you're a vir—”

“Daddy!” Doug said more confidently.