The Flicker Men (6 page)

Room 271 contained two chairs, a marker board, and two long lab benches. The setup itself sprawled across the length of the room, covering the tables. Two slits had been cut into sheets of steel that served to divide the areas of the setup. At the far end, the phosphorescent screen was loaded into a small rectangular slot behind the second set of slits. Where the photons hit the screen, the screen would glow.

Jeremy came by a little after 5:00, just before going home for the evening.

“So it's true then,” he said. He smiled and stepped farther into the room. “They told me you signed up for lab space.”

“Yeah.”

“What is all this?” he said, looking around.

“Just old equipment from Docent,” I said. “The Feynman double-slit. No one was using it, so I thought I'd see if I could get it to work.”

His smile faded. “What are you planning exactly?”

“A replication trial.”

I could see the disappointment as he weighed his next words. “It's good to see you working on something, but isn't that a little dated?”

“Good science is never dated.”

“I understand the sentiment, I do, but I have to be honest with you. I don't think this is the kind of thing that will change the review board's mind.”

“That's not why I'm doing it.”

“Then why?”

And how could I explain the need? A thing I barely understood myself—the rightness of that moment when I opened the crate and saw what was inside: the experiment that physics had been living in the shadow of. As if I was meant to see it. The gulf between the quantum world and relativity that physics could not cross.

When I didn't answer, he walked over to a stool and sat. “Please,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “I've been wanting to talk to you.” His expression was solemn.

I sat.

“Eric, I don't normally do this, but I wanted you to know that I've made a few inquiries on your behalf.”

So the visit wasn't so random after all. “You didn't have to do that.”

“It turns out there are projects already in place here that could use a good researcher like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“For the most part, we hire people who drive their own paths here, as you know, but sometimes a project will grow beyond expectations, and researchers start looking for good team members. There's a small team in South building that could use another body.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Lee. He already has two other researchers working with him.”

“And I'd be the third wheel, is that the idea?”

“Well, fourth, technically, counting him. He said he could plug you right in. He welcomes another set of gloves on the project. His words exactly.”

“He doesn't know me. Why would he say that?”

“Because I lied and told him you were easy to work with.”

“You mean, you asked him for a favor. Did you tell him I was charming, too?”

“My dishonesty goes only so far.”

I took a moment, imagining how that conversation might have gone.

“You don't need to do this,” I said.

“We all need favors from time to time. Favors are what make the world go round.”

And I could see he believed it. Or wanted to. “I already owe you,” I said.

“It will still be tricky, but there's a chance, if you worked with Dr. Lee…” His words trailed off. I realized he couldn't even bring himself to say it.

“The review board might overlook my lack of productivity?” I asked.

“It's possible. Like I said, it's just a chance. I don't want to make any promises.”

“And what chance would you be taking, playing favorites like that? You have bosses, too, isn't that what you said to me?”

“Let me worry about that.”

“I'm not letting you risk your own position to help me.”

“The risk is small.”

I studied his face, looking for the lie. I didn't trust his evaluation of risk. He'd put himself in harm's way before. And it had cost him.

“You haven't even mentioned what Dr. Lee is working on,” I said.

“Does it matter?”

I stared at him.

“Macrophages,” he said.

“You've got to be kidding.”

“You're too good for macrophages?”

“Hardly,” I said. “I don't know anything about them.”

“What's there to know? Besides, you're a quick learner. He needs assistants, not PhDs.”

“It's not my area. It will quickly be apparent to everyone involved that it's not my area.”

“Then what
is
your area, exactly?” He snapped. He hadn't expected this resistance. It was the outrage of a man who'd just thrown a life ring, only to see the drowning man paddle in the other direction. “You turned your back on all the work you did at QSR.”

“I had my reasons.”

“What reasons? You still haven't said.”

Because a single unfinished formula can break you.
I shook my head. “It hardly matters now.”

“It matters a lot, unless there's a secondary market for ex-quantum theoreticians that I'm unaware of. If you won't continue your previous research, where does that leave you?”

“Maybe nowhere.”

“Then
take
the position.”

And I wanted to.

I wanted to say yes. It was on the edge of my tongue. I could picture myself forming the words, telling him what he wanted to hear. I could picture myself learning everything there was to learn about macrophages. Diving into a new subject.
A new start
, my sister had said. Laboratory assistant was a long step sideways, but it would be work. Employment. Some kind of usefulness. I could do it. I wanted to do it.

Instead I said, “I have a project.”

“This?” Jeremy gestured to the setup, the crazy equipment. “This won't get you through review.”

I thought of Jeremy's bosses. The ones who might not like him playing favorites. Careers had been damaged by less. A knot tightened in my stomach. “So be it.”

He threw up his hands. He scowled at me long enough that I knew it wasn't me at the other end of his stare but himself. Or maybe his father—the corporate goon with the giant desk. A man who'd never budged an inch.

When he finally spoke, his tone was measured. “Eric, you and I go way back. As far back as I go with anyone. I don't want to see your career end like this. What are your plans when you leave here?”

How to answer that one? How do you tell someone that you have no plans? That your plans come to an abrupt end a few months into the future.
I thought of the gun, and its name rose up—Panacea—christened one drunken night as I marveled at the slick coolness of the trigger. Maybe that was how this ended. How it was always going to end, since those bad days in Indianapolis.

“Do you want to stay here and work?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Then
do
that. Take the favor.”

I looked at him, my old friend. In college his sophomore year, he'd pulled over in an ice storm to help a stranded motorist. He did things like that. It was on the way back to school after Christmas break. While helping to change the old woman's tire, he'd been struck by a pickup truck that slid on the ice. He'd spent the better part of a month in the hospital—broken bones, a torn spleen. It had also cost him a whole semester of classes, and he'd graduated behind everyone else. Most people would have seen that stranded motorist and kept on driving, but he'd pulled over and climbed out. That's just how he was, always wanting to help. And here he was again. But I knew the feel of ice under my wheels.

“Not like this,” I said. “I can't.”

He shook his head. “I want to be clear,” he said. “If this is your project, I can't save you.”

“It's not your job to save me,” I said. “This is enough, right here. The double-slit. I
need
to see it. I can't explain it better than that.” And how could I? How could I tell him that I hadn't had a drink in days? How could I tell him of the miracle of that? “I think I was meant to see it.”

“
Meant?
Now you sound crazy.”

My mother's eyes flashed in my head.

“There is no meant,” Jeremy continued. But there was resignation in his voice. He'd seen the drowning man slide beneath the waves.

“Once you believe in quantum mechanics,” I said, “it's hard to rule something out merely because it is impossible.”

He glanced toward the apparatus. “But what are you expecting to prove?”

“Just one thing,” I said. “That sometimes the impossible is true.”

 

9

The day we ran the experiment, the weather was freezing. The wind gusted in from the ocean, and the East Coast huddled under a cold front. I got to work early and left a note on Satvik's desk.

Meet me in my lab at 9:00.

—Eric.

I did not give any details. I did not explain further.

Satvik walked through the door of room 271 a little before 9:00.

“Good morning,” he said. “I got your note.”

I gestured toward the button. “Would you like to do the honors?”

We stood motionless in the near darkness of the lab. Satvik studied the equipment spread out before him—sheets of steel and the long silver barrel of the thermionic gun. Electrical wiring ran the length of the table. “Never trust engineer who doesn't walk his own bridge,” he said.

I smiled. “Okay then.”

It was time.

I hit the button. The machine hummed to life.

We watched it.

I let it run for a few minutes before walking over to check the capture screen. I opened the top and looked inside. And then I saw what I'd been hoping to see. The distinctive banded pattern, an interference signal on the screen—the regular arrangement of dark and light. It was there, just as Young and the Copenhagen interpretation said it would be.

Satvik looked over my shoulder. The machine continued to hum, deepening the pattern by the second.

“Would you like to see a magic trick?” I asked.

He nodded solemnly.

“Light is a wave,” I told him.

I reached for the detector and hit the
ON
switch—and just like that, the interference pattern disappeared.

“Unless someone is watching.”

*   *   *

The Copenhagen interpretation proposes this fundamental incongruity: Observation is a principal requisite of phenomena. There is nothing that exists until it is first witnessed to exist. Until then there are only probability waves. Statistical approximation.

For purposes of the experiment, the behavior of the electron is probabilistic—its specific path not merely unknown but theoretically unknowable, manifesting as a diffuse probability wave front that passes through both slits at once. Beyond the slits, these waves interfere with each other as they propagate, like two snakes traversing a pond, the ripples crossing and recrossing each other as they expand outward, forming a diffraction pattern on the capture screen.

But what if detection by an observer were possible at the slits? What if you could prove which path the electron took? In this case, its movement would no longer be subject to probabilistic forces. Here probability collapses. Becomes certainty. Becomes measured fact. If a particle is shown to pass through only one slit, then rationality dictates that it can't interfere with its own propagation. And yet it remains, if you shoot light through two slits, the pattern will form. Slowly, photon by photon. A single experimental setup with two different theoretical outcomes. This incongruity would seem self-contradictory, except for one thing. Except that the interference pattern disappears if someone is watching.

*   *   *

We ran the experiment again and again. Satvik checked the detector results, being careful to note which slit the electrons passed through. Sometimes the left; other times the right. With the detectors turned on, roughly half the electrons were recorded passing through each slit, and no interference pattern accrued. We turned the detectors off again—and again, instantly, the interference pattern emerged on the screen.

“How does the system know?” Satvik asked.

“How does it know what?”

“That the detectors are on. How does it know the electron's position has been recorded?”

“Ah, the big question.”

“Are the detectors putting out some kind of electromagnetic interference?”

I shook my head. “You haven't seen the really weird stuff yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“The electrons aren't really responding to the detectors at all. They're responding to the fact that you'll eventually read the detectors' results.”

Satvik looked at me, blank-faced.

“Turn the detectors back on,” I said.

Satvik hit the button. The detectors hummed softly. We let the experiment run.

“It is just like before,” I told him. “The detectors are on, so the electrons should be acting as particles, not waves; and without waves, there's no interference pattern, right?”

Satvik nodded.

“Okay, turn it off.”

The machine cycled down to silence.

“And now the magic test,” I said. “This is the one. This is the one I wanted to see.”

I hit the
CLEAR
button on the detector, erasing the results.

“The experiment was the same as before.” I said. “With the same detectors turned on both times. The only difference was that I erased the results without looking at them. Now check the screen.”

Satvik opened the slot and pulled out the screen.

And then I saw it. On his face. The pain of believing something that can't be true.

“An interference pattern,” he said. “How could that be?”

“It's called
retrocausality
. By erasing the results after the experiment was run, I caused the particle pattern to never have occurred in the first place.”