“You are so hot,” I said.
“How hot?” she asked, still toying with the hem of the shirt.
“Ionizing radiation hot,” I said. “Neutral pion decay hot.”
Elena snorted. “You’re such a romantic,” she said. Then she pulled off the T-shirt, and we both stopped talking for a while.
Afterward, Elena settled in with a computer on her lap to work on our finances a little before bed. Despite my background in math, I’m no good with a budget, and she’s always managed the money side of things. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, tired but wide awake, still unable to put the day’s events out of my mind.
Brian’s research at NJSC had to do with quantum computing, a concept that was getting close enough to reality that large manufacturers were starting to invest heavily in it. It was just the sort of thing the NJSC was willing to prioritize: promises of breakthroughs right around the corner that would benefit everybody, with significant grant money available to be claimed. What was lacking to make it a reality was the ability to connect quantum effects to large mechanical objects (large in this context meaning at least ten micrometers across) without storing those objects at near absolute zero. Any warmer and the natural vibrations of the atoms in the material tended to drown out any quantum effects.
We knew it was possible, because birds did it. When photons struck their eyes, entangled electrons were scattered and forced to spin in different ways depending on the Earth’s magnetic field. The change in electron spin subtly changed the chemical state of the molecules, which in turn altered the flow of cellular signals through the bird’s eye. The result was that the bird could actually see the magnetic field, and thus know which way was north, regardless of where it was or what the weather was like. The bird’s eyes weren’t cryogenic, though. So we knew it could be done.
It seemed that Brian must somehow have succeeded, far beyond anyone’s expectations, and found a way to have quantum properties affect the everyday world. An electron never stops spinning; it’s a perpetual motion machine, moving endlessly without any loss of energy. A particle fired at an atom might have a wavelength larger than an atom; it has a pretty good chance of passing right through it without hitting it. To apply these principles to gyroscopes and bullets was crazy, though. A bullet is made up of trillions of atoms, and although it did technically have a wavelength, it was something like ten to the minus thirty-four meters long, so it shouldn’t be able to diffract around anything.
“It’s eating you up inside, isn’t it?” Elena said.
I sighed and nodded. “It bothers me. It shouldn’t be possible, and if it is possible…”
Elena finished my thought. “Then the world isn’t as stable as you want it to be.”
She was right. To Elena, it didn’t make any difference if the world was made of quarks or superstrings or tiny elves. She cared about her children and her husband and exercise and eating well and whether Penn State beat Purdue. But it made a difference to me. I needed to know if the world was inherently predictable or chaotic, whether the random outcome of trillions of probabilistic encounters ultimately resulted in order that I could control.
Elena sighed. “I think you should take Marek with you.”
“What?”
“When you go out to the NJSC tomorrow. Take Marek with you.”
I pushed up on one elbow. “Who says I’m going to the NJSC?”
Elena gave me a look. “What have we just been talking about? Go find out what Brian was researching; get it settled it in your mind.”
“I can’t leave you alone here. What if Brian comes back?”
“There are police swarming around this whole neighborhood.” As if to emphasize her words, we heard a helicopter chattering overhead. “He’s no secret agent. They’ll find him soon enough.”
“Since I left Philly, I’ve only punched another person three times. Two of those times, it was Brian,” I said.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I don’t need you hovering around protecting me. He’s not going to come back and shoot me again.” I leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. She punched me good-naturedly. “We already did that, you great brute. Go to sleep.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I know how it is with you,” she said. “You get something stuck in your mind, and you can’t let it go. Better just to go get it settled.”
I fell back onto my pillows, feeling suddenly exhausted.
“And Jacob?” she said.
“Mmm… yes?”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
CHAPTER 6
The wooden spectator benches in courtroom five were hard and low and looked like they dated from Colonial times. Despite this, the crowds who gathered to see me humiliated had not abated, though they did tend to fidget in the uncomfortable seats as the afternoon wore on.
“Officer Lin, what is your profession?” Haviland asked, in a ringing voice that suggested that her profession would be the key to the whole case.
Brittany Lin was a pretty, dark-haired, Asian policewoman in a smart jacket and skirt and glasses like flat ovals. She was fit and athletic, and I guessed her age at about forty. “I’m a senior forensic analyst with the New Jersey State Police,” she said. Her voice was low pitched and no-nonsense.
“And your time in that position?”
“I’ve been a police officer for fourteen years and a forensic specialist for ten of those years.”
“Then it’s safe to say you are an expert in your field.”
“I know my business, Mr. Haviland.”
Haviland went on to establish her certifications as an investigator and the status granted her as an expert witness in various other courts. She had led the forensic team that had processed the crime scene in the underground bunker.
“At the time you were called to the scene, were you aware that police had been searching for Mr. Vanderhall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why didn’t the police find him?”
“The bunker was two hundred feet underground, in a supposedly abandoned experiment room. No one even knew to look for him there.”
“Except for Jacob Kelley?”
“Objection,” Terry said. “Assumes facts not in evidence.”
“Sustained,” Judge Roswell said. “Mr. Haviland, please limit your questions to those about which the witness can have knowledge.”
“I apologize, Your Honor,” Haviland said. “Ms. Lin, what did you find when you entered the bunker?”
“I found a dead male, mid to late thirties, with a gunshot wound to the chest as the apparent cause of death. The victim had been dead approximately twelve hours,” Lin said.
Haviland made a note on his legal pad, as if this was a new piece of information he needed to write down. “How was time of death established?”
“The level of decomposition, given the warm temperature in the bunker and the mass of the victim, limits the time to no more than twelve hours, while the presence of firmly established livor mortis suggests at least that long.”
“What time was this analysis made?”
“At four o’clock in the afternoon on December third, placing the death at approximately four o’clock in the morning.”
Haviland held up his giant whiteboard timeline. “Permission to approach the witness, Your Honor?”