Superposition (35 page)

According to Schrödinger's experiment, a cat was enclosed in a steel chamber along with a flask of hydrocyanic acid and a Geiger counter. In the Geiger counter was a tiny amount of a radioactive material, small enough that in the course of an hour, one of the atoms of that material might or might not decay, with equal probability. If the atom did decay, the Geiger counter would detect the emission, prompting a hammer to fall and shatter the flask, releasing cyanide gas that would kill the cat. If no atom decayed, no hammer would fall, and the cat would live.

The chance of radioactive decay was not a simple chance in the larger world, like flipping a coin, but a fundamental, subatomic, quantum probability. It meant that if the box were left closed for an hour, the atom would exist simultaneously in both states, decayed and not decayed, in a probability wave that had not yet collapsed. The cat, as a result, would be split: both alive and dead at the same time, entangled in the same probability wave that governed the atom. Until you opened the box.

Schrödinger's thought experiment, ludicrous or not, was exactly the situation my family was now in. Both alive and dead, their probability waves would be indeterminate until I opened the door. The thought crossed my mind that I should stop digging, that it was better to be caught in a state between life and death than to be completely and irreconcilably dead. But that was no argument. The air inside would only last so long, and then there would be no living possibilities.

Eventually, a rescue crew arrived, and the work went much faster. The door was uncovered, the men shouted for anyone inside to stand back, and they smashed it open with a fire axe. A thin swirl of rock dust drifted out of the open doorway. I waited, holding my breath.

Elena emerged, coughing but smiling. “We're all here,” she said. “We're all okay.”

She ran to me, stumbling, and we had our reunion at last, colliding into an embrace despite our injuries and holding on to one another like we would never let go. The children came out next, Claire and Alessandra and Sean, bruised and burned but alive, completely alive. I hugged them each in turn, though as I reached Sean, I could tell that he was about to collapse. His skin was badly burned, and he was just starting to feel the pain, which I knew would get a lot worse before it got better. I held Alessandra close, thinking of Alex lying dead under tons of rock, and knowing that even if Alessandra remembered none of the last few months, she was still the same person I had come to love and admire.

The medics arrived with kits and stretchers. They took Sean and Elena and Marek away, loading their stretchers onto golf carts to take them to the elevators, and from there to waiting ambulances and to the hospital. Claire and Alessandra, unharmed, were left behind with me.

I hugged them both again. “I'm so glad you're safe,” I said.

Claire gave me a tired smile. Somehow, even filthy with dust, she was beautiful. “Will the others be okay?”

“I think they will. Sean might be in for a long recovery, but he'll make it.”

“I don't understand,” Alessandra said. “What happened to Alex? What did she do?”

I explained as best I could about the final sacrifice she had made that had saved us all. I told Alessandra that Alex was dead, but not really dead, because everything Alex had been was part of who Alessandra was. They were the same, both of them, and I praised her for her quick intelligence and willingness to sacrifice herself for her family.

“But that wasn't me,” Alessandra said.

I knew how it sounded, me heaping more praise and affection on a dead girl than I had ever shown to her. It would take time to turn that around. Time for me to demonstrate that I understood her better now, and loved her, not to the extent that she could be like Claire, but for herself.

“It was you,” I said. “It really was. You just don't remember it.”

Though it was strange that she wouldn't remember any of the last few months. I stopped to consider my own memories. I couldn't bring to mind everything about what it was like to live in jail, but I could remember the horror of my first night there. I could remember all the time I had spent with Alex, but at the same time, I could remember enduring the trial from the perspective of the accused. Some of my memories had blown away into the clouds of what might have been, but some, from both sides, were as clear as daylight. Why couldn't Alessandra remember some of those same things? Had the Alex I had known been lost entirely? Did this version of her really remember nothing?

Aid workers brought us blankets and bottles of water. A professional team arrived who regularly dealt with collapsed buildings and cave-ins and knew how to remove debris without risking further collapse.

“How many were in your party?” one of the professionals asked me.

“Six,” I said. “Myself, my wife, three children, and my friend Marek Svoboda. My wife and son were taken to the hospital, and these are my two girls.”

“We found another body in a chamber back that way.” He pointed. “We haven't cleared enough to reach her yet, but she's female, a child about the age of yours. You don't know who she might be?”

I frowned. Alex shouldn't have left a body behind. It should have disappeared when her waveform resolved, just as the other Jacob's had. The truth hit me like a bath of icy water. When my two minds were coming together, and I was glimpsing flashes of both our memories, there was a moment when I felt like I might have resisted, might have held back or even prevented the collapse. It was an odd thought, scientifically, but wave collapse had always shared a strange connection to consciousness. If Alex had resisted collapse, however, then that meant . . .

“That's my daughter, too,” I said. “And she's still alive.”

CHAPTER 41

“A little higher on the left,” I said. Alessandra lifted the left side of the Happy Birthday banner fractionally. “Perfect. Now climb down and help me with these balloons.”

The summer sun streamed through the windows, giving the dining room a bright, cheery air. Alessandra and I untangled the strings of a dozen latex balloons and tied them to the chair backs in pairs: two reds, two blues, two yellows, two greens. Claire walked through with a pile of presents, radiant herself in an orange sundress and ribbons in her blonde hair.

“Tell Sean to come down, will you?” I said. “He can help, too.”

Sean charged into the room at top speed and crashed into the opposite wall to stop his momentum. He had come home from the hospital just two weeks ago, but he was gaining in strength and energy every day. The plastic surgery had made the skin grafts on his face almost undetectable, and the doctors said that, given how young he was, the remaining scars would fade in time.

“Look what I made!” Sean said. He had taped five sheets of paper together and scrawled his own banner that read, “WELCUM HOME!” He had decorated it with pictures of fighter jets and dinosaurs, which was what he used to decorate everything.

“Great,” I said. “We'll hang it up under the other one.”

It had long been a tradition in our house that no birthday was complete without noisemakers, so I distributed horns and whistles to everyone's places around the dining room table. The flowered tablecloth was bright and festive, with colors that matched the fresh blooms in a vase at the center. Everything was ready.

Alessandra threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss. “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

The doorbell rang. “It's them!” Sean shouted and galloped for the front door. I heard him wrench it open, and a brief pang of dread hit me, remembering Elena opening the door for the varcolac. But that nightmare was behind us now, and slowly but surely we were healing from it. Today was a celebration of that.

“It's not them!” Sean shouted at the top of his lungs. “It's only Uncle Marek!”

I went to greet Marek with a handshake so firm it would have crippled another man, and we exchanged looks of satisfaction. There was no need to thank him or say what I was feeling. It was understood. Colin arrived a few minutes later, and the room began to bustle with laughter and conversation.

Our van pulled into the driveway with Elena at the wheel. “They're here, everybody!” I said.

The conversation hushed, and we watched from the window as Elena unfolded a wheelchair from the back and helped Alex transfer into it. Elena took the handles, ready to push, but Alex waved her off. She used the hand controls, and after one bump into the rail, managed to maneuver up the newly installed ramp. Elena held the door open while Alex motored into the house.

“Surprise!”

The clamor startled her at first, but then she looked around at everyone and smiled. Her new skin was still pink—not a graft like Sean's, but a nearly complete replacement. Her hair had only just started to grow back, though it was coming in unevenly, some clumps growing better than others. Almost every system in her body that could go wrong had gone wrong, and she had spent months in the hospital fighting infections that had nearly claimed her life half a dozen times.

But here she was, alive and improving dramatically each day. The most painful parts were behind her, and now, at long last, she was home. Alessandra ran up with tears in her eyes. “Welcome home,” she said and gave her sister a careful hug.

The varcolac had not reappeared, and for all we could tell, both Alex and Alessandra were here to stay. Alessandra had visited the hospital every day, and the two were now as tight as any pair of twins—tighter, even, since they shared so much history that they seemed to read each other's minds. I was still sorting through the task of explaining to the government and our medical insurance how I suddenly had three daughters where I had previously only reported two.

We headed for the dining room, where we had cheesesteaks for lunch (Alex and Alessandra's favorite) and shared stories about the days when the world had gone mad, some of which still hadn't been heard by everyone in the room. For dessert, Elena had made a pair of birthday cakes, one a reverse image of the other. We sang, the girls blew out their candles, and Elena passed around generous slices with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

After dinner, there were presents. Alessandra picked up a blue-striped box and started tugging at the bow, but I waved her down. “Open that one last,” I said.

They took turns opening the other presents: a pair of necklaces from Claire, tickets to a Phillies game from Colin, and a beautiful pair of hand-carved, Romanian crosses from Marek. Finally, I handed them the blue-striped package.

They tore off the wrapping together and shrieked as they saw the familiar
Google
letters with the outline of an apple in place of the red
o
. They knew what it was before they even opened it.

The box was much larger than the actual gift, stuffed as it was with cushioning bubbles and elaborate, decorative packaging. Inside were two new pairs of eyejack lenses, complete with Google Apple's new stereo technology. This allowed a pair of viewers to record viewfeeds of the same event from different angles, and the software would stitch the feeds together into a three-dimensional immersion view. Alex and Alessandra threw the directions out with the wrapping paper, but they soon had their new toys up and running.

Elena and I watched as the two of them circled Claire, recording her as she tickled Sean to the point of tears.

“Hey, don't make him wet his pants,” Elena called.

I put my arm around her and touched my head to hers. “It's a great family you have there,” I said.

“I always knew she needed a friend,” Elena said. “It's perfect, really, how it turned out.” Her forehead creased as she said this, and I knew the statement was intended to convince herself as much as me. She was remembering the horror, and worrying how it would affect our kids' lives.

Alessandra distracted Marek while Alex slipped in and stole his second slice of chocolate cake. They put bites in each other's mouths and slapped hands in a high five. I knew all of the footage they were taking was being simultaneously posted on their joint viewfeed site, which was growing rapidly in popularity, given both the general interest in Alex's recovery from her injuries and the uniqueness of Lifer twins.

“They'll be fine,” I said, giving Elena another squeeze.

Later that evening, when our guests were gone and the kids were finally settled in their rooms, Elena and I sat up in bed, holding hands and talking.

“It's still hard for me to put it out of my mind,” she confessed. “You were exonerated months ago now, but I still keep expecting the police to show up at our door and drag you away.”

“The judge's dismissal was final,” I said. It had been a grueling private hearing, lasting hours, but Officer Peyton had finally convinced Judge Roswell that the police no longer considered me guilty of the crime and had arrested someone else instead. He told her that, in light of the arrest of Jean Massey, the police were ready to drop all charges against me. Considering how seldom the police admitted to a mistake of that magnitude, the judge listened carefully and ultimately dismissed the case. The jury, which had reached the end of its deliberations with a verdict, had been sent home without the opportunity to deliver it.