“Okay, so what really happens? Does the tennis ball—the electron—fly right through? Or go around? I’m losing the thread here.”
I stepped in. “The point is, electrons and protons and neutrons are very different than tennis balls. The tennis ball is made out of them, but they’re not the same thing at all. The electron isn’t bouncing back and forth, not really. It exists everywhere between the two barriers at the same time, at some probability. This is the probability wave—the chance that it will be in any given spot when you look at it. The tennis ball has a probability wave, too, only its wave averages out to be consistent with how we experience the world. The electron’s probability wave doesn’t make any normal sense at all.”
“That’s the concept of superposition,” Jean said. “Being in more than one place, or more than one state, at the same time. You can overlay multiple probability waves on this poor electron, like overlapping wakes from two different boats on the ocean, changing the probability that it will or will not be in any given place.”
“So, the coin?” Terry said. “You were explaining why it wasn’t really heads or tails until I looked at it.”
“Right,” Jean said. “Just like the tennis ball. It’s everywhere at once along its path, with varying probability, until the moment at which you take a picture. Then the universe rolls a giant pair of dice, and bam—the tennis ball is there. That’s not how it works with tennis balls. Tennis balls really are in one place at one time, whether you’re looking at them or not. But an electron isn’t. It’s smeared out over a whole area, with a certain probability. Or, like the coin, one of its characteristics—heads or tails, or which way it’s spinning—is similarly smeared.”
She waited. Terry nodded, but whether it was because he understood or because he’d given up, I wasn’t certain.
“Now, entanglement”—Jean cracked her knuckles loudly—“this is where we really start to blow your mind.”
She moved to flip the coin again, but she was interrupted by a tinny orchestral version of “The Hall of the Mountain King” coming from somewhere under the table. “Excuse me,” she said.
She lifted her purse, a massive black handbag that could have stored a collapsible tent and still had room for a sleeping bag, and began rummaging through it, trying to home in on the song, which was steadily increasing in volume. Finally, she found it, glanced at the display, then flipped it open and held it up to her ear. “I’m busy, Nick.” She retreated to a corner of the tiny room, facing away from us to imply some measure of privacy.
“Is this all for real?” Terry said.
“It’s how the world works,” I said. “Everything you do, every day, is governed by this science. It doesn’t usually matter to you, and it’s operating on such a small scale that you never see it. But the reason you can see me right now is because the electrons in my face can absorb and then emit photons, which the electrons in your retina can absorb in turn. There are trillions of particles being annihilated and created in your cells every minute, allowing the electrical interaction necessary for their survival. So yeah, it’s for real.”
“But the whole bit about the coin being both heads and tails, until you look at it? It sounds ridiculous. How can my looking at something affect what it is?”
“In the macro world, not so much,” I said. “But you have to remember that in an electron’s world, a single photon is a pretty big deal. ‘Getting looked at’ to an electron means getting whacked by a photon. At that small a scale, looking at something does affect what it is.”
“I can’t talk right now, okay?” Jean said. “I’ll be there when I can. This is important.” A pause. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be doing this to me. Yeah, okay. Bye.”
She shut the phone with a snap and tossed it back into her cavernous bag.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Do you need to go?” I asked. “We could try this again later.” Terry looked sour at the suggestion, but I ignored him.
“No, it’s nothing,” Jean said, sounding irritated. “I’m staying here as long as I need to, and Nick can just… forget it. Let’s get back to work. Where did I put that coin?”
She found the penny, flipped it, and covered it again. “Okay. This is an electron’s spin state. As we said before, at this moment, since we haven’t looked at it, it’s both heads and tails. Undetermined. Or, for the electron, both up and down. You with me so far?”
Terry gave an uncertain nod.
“Let’s say that, without looking at the coin, I make a wax impression of both sides. I give one impression to Jacob”—she mimed handing me something which I pretended to take without looking at it—“and I put one in my pocket. Now, which do I have in my pocket, heads or tails?”
“Both at the same time,” Terry said. “With some probability wave.”
“What about him?”
“Same thing.”
“Very good! He can be taught.” She stood and walked over to the corner of the transparent room. “I take my wax impression to Paris. Jacob takes his to Seattle.”
“Why can’t I go to Paris?” I asked.
“You’ll be lucky just to get out of jail,” she reminded me.
“Good point. Seattle it is.”
“Now, I pull out my wax impression and look at it.” She pretended to do so. “It’s tails. The probability wave collapses. Now what about his?”
Terry shrugged. “It collapses too?”
“Yes. By looking at my wax impression, I caused his to become heads, from the other side of the world. I sent information around the world faster than the speed of light.”
Terry was shaking his head. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “You didn’t change anything. It was heads to begin with.”
“No,” Jean said firmly. “Remember the tennis balls. This is the quantum world. These are particles, not coins.”
He kept shaking his head, sadly. “That may be. But I don’t know how you expect me to convince a jury.”
Jean made an aggravated huff. “I’m doing the best I can here. Tennis balls, coins—these are everyday objects. If we use subatomic examples, it’ll only get worse.”
“They just need to get the idea that something can be in two states at once,” I said. “They don’t have to understand it entirely, but they have to believe it as a thoroughly tested and noncontroversial finding of modern science. So how do we do that? Quote Einstein? Cite polls of leading scientists?”
“None of that matters to a jury,” Terry said. He pointed at Jean. “What matters is her. If she can sell it, and not let Haviland talk her in circles or undermine her credibility, then they’ll accept it as fact. So let’s do our role playing again. I’ll be Haviland on cross-examination. Act naturally, take your time, don’t try to anticipate my questions, and especially—especially!—only answer the exact question I’ve asked.”
Jean ran a hand through her hair and grimaced. “I’m going to be here all night again, aren’t I?”
“Probably,” Terry said.
CHAPTER 11
Marek’s scream pierced the air. More than anything, I wanted to see what was happening to him, but once I did see, I almost wished I couldn’t. Marek was in pieces on the ground. His arms and legs and hands and fingers had been torn apart. Incredibly, there was no blood. It was like an old Saturday morning cartoon where the hapless villain is shredded in a propeller or flattened under a steam roller, but he gets up, shakes it off, and is as good as new.
In fact, as I watched, the man with no eyes put Marek back together again, piece by piece. He did it with meticulous care, as if assembling a model airplane, pausing to peer—with no eyes—at the result. It was almost as if the man wanted to see how a human being was assembled. I reached out tentatively and realized that the air above the cables was no longer electrified. Perhaps the thing could only perform one miracle at a time—or was just distracted. I stayed where I was, however, afraid to move lest it disappear and leave Marek spread out in pieces on the floor. Though how Marek could possibly survive the encounter, I didn’t know. Finally, when the man finished the last piece of his gruesome puzzle, he stepped back as if to admire his handiwork. Marek opened his eyes. Incredibly, he seemed alive and perfectly whole. He felt his head, his arms, his legs. He said something that sounded like varcolac and crossed himself.