by Jan Kopia
“What’s wrong?” Antonia asked, getting to her feet.
“Uh, James is here—
“Again?” Antonia sighed. “The guy can’t take a fucking hint.”
“He claims he’s here on business,” Rebecca said. “He has a press pass and he wants to talk to the lead scientist.”
“Lucky me,” Antonia hissed. “Did you try to get rid of him?”
“Caleb and I both did,” Rebecca said. “He’s not budging. He wants to know if we’ve found anything important.”
Antonia’s head turned to the cabinet where all the pertinent information about the screaming souls was stored: everything from sound files and resonance graphs to wavelengths and locations. She'd purposefully sat on the information, unwilling to publish anything that she couldn’t definitively corroborate. So far no one else had come across this phenomenon, and Antonia was secretly glad. With all the chaos in the world, she didn't feel like adding to it.
“Fine,” Antonia said. “I’ll deal with him myself.”
She walked out into the main lab where James was standing staring down at one of the monitors. He straightened up the moment she walked in.
“Antonia,” he smiled. “You’ve been busy. I’ve visited three times in the last week, and this is the first time I’ve managed to meet you.”
“If you haven’t noticed, the world is going nuts,” Antonia said politely. “I have work to do.”
“But no findings?” James asked, a hint of a challenge in his tone.
Antonia refused to take the bait. “It’s not a race.”
“Actually, considering everyone believes the world is ending, maybe it should be.”
Antonia sighed. “James, if you’ve come here for a story, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you.”
“Actually, I came because I need a few questions answered,” James said. “And you’re the smartest person I know.”
Antonia wasn’t sure if he was still trying to flirt with her or if he actually meant that. Either way, she decided the best way to get rid of him would be to answer his questions and get it over with.
“Okay,” Antonia said. “Shoot.”
“Great,” James said, pulling out his tape recorder. “This is going to be on the record… you okay with that?”
“I suppose,” Antonia nodded.
“Excellent, now tell me, Antonia, what is quantum entanglement?”
Antonia had to hand it to James: he had good instincts. Of all the theories explaining the Earth’s upheaval, he'd managed to stumble on the one that Antonia actually thought plausible.
“What made you pay attention, James?” Antonia asked. “The logic behind the theory, or the pretty face in front of it?”
James cocked his head to the side. “Victoria Bader? I’m not going to lie,” he said, “she’s attractive and that’s initially what caught my notice. But that’s not all.”
“No?”
“I’ve been doing research into her background,” James said. “There isn’t much information about Victoria Bader. She’s never published any papers or given any lectures. It’s almost like she just surfaced now, for this one significant moment in time. Had you heard of her before her interviews on BBC?”
“No, I hadn’t.”
“And what do you think about her theory?” James asked.
“It’s the best I’ve heard so far,” Antonia admitted, thinking about Diane’s story and wondering if there was a link there.
“Which leads me to ask again: what is quantum entanglement? I don’t speak science, so please keep it simple.”
Antonia smiled despite herself. “It works under the premise that when two systems interact, they end up with particles that have correlated properties. What that means is the property of one particle depends on the property of another particle… and it doesn’t matter how far apart they are.”
“Umm…”
“We’re applying only the theory of quantum entanglement here,” Antonia explained. “Not all the rules will apply the same way. Obviously, we’re dealing with subject matter that we have no precedent for. But if this theory holds true, we’re operating under the assumption that our planet has connected with something,” Antonia said, trying to simplify it as far as she could manage. “Something it has become quantum-entangled with. And the effects of that contact are exhibiting itself on Earth now.”
“By that logic, the only way to stop what’s happening to Earth… is to find the correlated other?”
“Well, yes—
Antonia stopped short as a memory jumped into her head — a memory from three weeks ago. She'd been sitting in front of Diane, trying not to roll her eyes. Diane had said the Titans feared they'd done damage to themselves as well as to humans. They'd agreed they should return to Tartarus for good.
“Antonia?”
She wondered if it could be true. Could it be? Diane had told her to open her third eye, but she felt more blind than ever. Diane was gone, so was Patrick, and all she had left was… science.
“Antonia?”
“Sorry,” Antonia said, snapping herself back to the present. “I, um… what were you saying?”
“I wasn’t saying anything,” James said. “You were talking and then you just kind of stopped.”
“Um… sorry,” Antonia said again. “I just remembered something.”
“A breakthrough with your research?” he asked hungrily.
Antonia focused on his alert eyes, his animated stance and she tensed. “My dry cleaning,” she said flatly. “I just remembered I need to pick up my dry cleaning on my way home from work today.”
She saw a flash of irritation weave through his eyes. He knew she was lying; he was nothing if not observant. But all Antonia wanted to do now was to get rid of James so she could lock herself in her office and try to remember every detail of the story that Diane had told her and Patrick.
Thankfully, Antonia saw Caleb appear at the door. He was signaling with his hands and his eyes were wide with excitement.
“Uh, excuse me for a moment,” Antonia said, before walking to the far end of the lab. “What is it, Caleb?”
“There’s someone here to see you,” Caleb said.
Antonia frowned. “I’ve just had something of a realization and I need to—"
“Trust me,” Caleb said, cutting her off. “You’re going to want to meet her.”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“Victoria Bader.”
Antonia just stared at Caleb for a moment. “Are you joking right now? Because if you are –
“I’m a hundred percent not joking,” Caleb insisted. “Rebecca is upstairs with her right now. We didn’t think you’d want James to see her.”
It slowly sunk in that Caleb was telling the truth. With her heart beating fast, Antonia nodded. “Okay. You’re right. Come on, let’s go.”
“Wait, what about James?” Caleb asked, glancing back down the lab.
“Forget him,” Antonia said. “He’ll putter around here, then leave when he gets bored.”
She didn’t even bother saying goodbye to James. She just headed upstairs, with Caleb trailing after her.
“First door on the right,” Caleb instructed as they reached the landing.
Antonia walked through the door without hesitation and found herself face to face with Victoria Bader. Was it possible that she'd been staring at this face only moments ago on the television? She was more beautiful in person. Her hair the color of gold streaked with honey, and her eyes were a bright hazel green.
“Doctor Bader,” Antonia said, in amazement.
“Victoria, please,” said Dr. Bader, extending her hand. “And you are Dr. Lark?”
“Antonia.”
“Antonia,” Victoria nodded. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I, well, the feeling is mutual,” Antonia said. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t understand. What brought you here?”
“I’m like you: a scientist in search of answers,
” Victoria said. “And so far no one in the scientific community has been willing to help me. My ideas are too radical, they say; my suppositions too extreme, my theories too fantastical. I need someone who can help me find answers, so that I can prove my theory is the right one.”
“Do you mean me?” Antonia asked. “How did you find me?”
“I consulted someone with special abilities.”
Antonia felt Rebecca and Caleb exchange a glance, but she ignored that. She was no longer interested in writing off the things she didn’t understand or agree with. She'd done that with Patrick, and had lost him and the key. She wouldn't make that mistake a second time.
“Someone with special abilities?” Antonia repeated.
“A psychic,” Victoria said bluntly. “The one I consulted told me to find you.”
Antonia felt her heart beat unevenly. There was no such thing as coincidence. She took a deep breath and reminded herself of Diane’s advice.
She needed to trust her instincts and open her third eye.
Chapter Eleven
One Week Later
Ethan lit a cigarette and held it up to his lips. The wispy fingers of smoke coiled around his hand and made him feel calmer. He knew it was only a temporary fix, but it beat sitting around those claustrophobic meeting rooms trying to mediate between all the competing egos.
You’d think people would band together in times of crisis, but as far as Ethan could tell, disaster situations only seemed to create more chaos, more confusion and more panic. At least this one certainly had. He took one more drag of his cigarette and then snuffed it out on the railing of the rooftop balcony.
Two seconds later, his fingers were itching to light up another one. “Goddammit,” he said.
“Mr. Richardson?”
Ethan turned to see Midge Avery walking towards him. He didn’t know her very well, but their interactions together had been smooth. Ethan couldn’t say the same of every person he'd met on this initiative.
“You can call me Ethan.”
She nodded as she joined me by the balcony’s edge. Her hair was a dark brown and her face had a distinct pattern of freckles that crossed over the bridge of her nose. Her official title was 'Head of Risk Management'. Ethan's was 'Head of Military Personnel'. He had no clue what either one of them was meant to be doing.
“Needed a break, huh?” she asked.
Ethan’s hand twitched instinctively towards the cigarettes in his breast pocket. He resisted the urge and nodded.
“It’s been a stressful morning,” he replied.
“When I was called in for this… initiative_” Midge paused on the last word, as though she were unsure it was the right one. “I think I imagined something different.”
“Something a little more organized?” he said.
She smiled. “I think today just reinforced the fact that none us really know what to do.”
“Did you understand what Lebedev and Petrov were talking about?”
“All the science jargon goes right over my head,” Midge replied, and Ethan was glad to know he wasn't the only one. “All I know is what I see. And I see the world spinning into disaster. They talk about quantum physics and electromagnetic energy and whatever else they’ve been trying to decipher. But to me, it’s white noise; it's trying to explain the unexplainable.”
“I’m a soldier,” Ethan said. She was the first person he'd actually talked to, out of the entire 'Global Initiative' full of suits. “My purpose is to rid the world of terrorists and enemies who want to destroy us. The word ‘war’ was thrown around in that room this morning… but who are we fighting against? I can see no enemy. I wish I did, because then I would know what to do.”
She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking out at the skyline stretched before them. It was midday. The sun should have been bright in the sky; the glare should have demanded sunglasses. But it felt more like late evening; the rays of sunlight were feeble at best. Ethan didn’t even have to squint when he looked up now.
“The world is turning on us—”
“I understand the effects of global warming,” Ethan said. “That's not what this is — and everyone in there knows it. They just don’t want to admit it.”
Caving into his cravings, Ethan pulled out his cigarette pack. He could feel Midge’s eyes on him, but he was too stressed out to care. He lit his cigarette and then offered her the pack.
“No, thank you,” Midge replied. “I don’t smoke.”
“I’m not supposed to be smoking either,” Ethan replied. “I quit four years ago.”
Midge looked at him with understanding. “I took a sleeping pill last week,” she said. “It was the first sleeping pill I’ve ever taken in my life. I just couldn’t handle the exhaustion anymore, and I really didn’t want to dream. We all have our ways of coping, Ethan.”
He turned to her and saw the deep ridge of her forehead. The events of the last few months had affected her in a personal way… much like it had done to him.
“Did you lose someone?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
Midge turned to him with a deep pain in her eyes and Ethan shook his head. “I’m sorry, that was a really personal question.”
“No it’s okay,” she said, after a moment. “I just… I wasn’t expecting to talk about it so soon. My sister and her husband lived in Chicago.”
Ethan knew what she was about to tell him. There had been a huge tornado that had ravaged the city. More than four hundred people had been killed and more than seven hundred had been injured. Several thousand had lost their homes and the city was undergoing a severe support crisis.
“She was my younger sister,” Midge continued. “She was only thirty-three. They didn’t recover her body for five days after the tornado hit. We spent five days hoping… praying that she was alive somewhere. They found her under a pile of rubble near her apartment building. My brother-in-law was found alive the day after the tornado. He died three days later.”
Ethan reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “That must have been… no one would blame you for taking time off work.”
“Oh I was actually advised to,” Midge told him. She sighed deeply. “But working is the only thing that keeps me sane. If I stop working— I won’t be able to deal with any of this.”
Ethan nodded. “I understand. I felt the same way when—"
He stopped short as a lump rose in his throat. It was still hard to talk about. Midge seemed to understand that, because she didn’t push him to speak. She just stood next to him and waited.
“Sorry,” Ethan said, without meeting her gaze.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Midge replied. “I know what it feels like to lose someone…”
“I didn’t lose her,” Ethan blurted out.
Midge turned her head in his direction but didn’t say anything. Ethan let his breathing calm, puffing out a billow of smoke. He hated himself for succumbing to the temptation, but there were moments when a good smoke felt like the only thing that would help.
“It’s my mother,” Ethan said softly. “She was in the supermarket when she had this massive seizure. Someone called nine one-one and I got a call from the hospital a few hours later. The doctors couldn't find any medical reason for the seizure. Nor could they explain her symptoms.”
“I heard the news reports,” she said. “They… they don't even feel real.”
Ethan shook his head slowly. “None of this feels real. My mother, she was a force of nature. She raised my brother and me single-handedly after our father died. She went back to school when Rory and I were in high school, and she finally got her diploma. She remarried her best friend when I was in college, and then seven years later she buried him, too. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years ago and she beat it. She's a real life superhero, and now… she’s gone.”
“Gone? Is she—?"
“She’s not dead,” Ethan interrupted. “But she might as well be. She sits in b
ed most of the day with this vacant look in her eyes. She stares out the window and says things that I don’t understand. She just babbles. Three days ago she told me the world was going to end soon.”
“I’m sorry Ethan,” Midge said quietly. “I— I don’t know what to say.”
“What can you say?” Ethan asked. “There's nothing to say. This isn’t global warming. This is retribution.”
“Retribution?”
Ethan nodded. “Someone is punishing us.”
“For what?”
“For all our sins?” Ethan shrugged.
She looked at him with more than a little alarm, and he sighed. “Do you believe in God, Midge?” he asked.
Midge hesitated. “I… I lean more towards Agnosticism.”
“I’ve always been an atheist,” he admitted. “There was never a doubt in my mind. Of course there was no such thing as God. I mean, it always sounded like some far-fetched fantasy that people had created out of a need to explain our existence on Earth. Or at the very least, it was a way to entertain themselves.”
“And do you still feel that way?” Midge asked.
Ethan glanced towards her. “My mother talks about God all the time,” he said. “Actually she talks about Gods, plural.”
“What does she say?”
“Nothing that makes sense,” he said. “The doctors have diagnosed her as clinically insane. I was in denial for days after they told me. But all you have to do is look at her to see it. The woman who brought me up is gone. She survived so much. I just can’t believe this is how it ends.”
“It’s not over yet,” Midge said gently. “Your mother is still alive.”
“What use is a body?” he said, more harshly than he'd intended. “What use is it to breathe and sleep and eat and talk, if everything that made you who you are is gone?”
He threw his cigarette on the ground and brought the toe of his shoe down on top of it, snuffing out the last few embers. “I’m a soldier, I follow orders and that’s why I’m here today. But this initiative, this so-called 'Global Safety Initiative', is a farce. No one in there knows what the hell is going on. It’s like fighting an enemy when you’re blind, deaf and dumb.”