Superposition

by David Walton

  Elena started to say something, but Brian held up his hand, and we kept watching. Two minutes went by, and it didn’t slow down. Not even a string-pulled gyroscope went on for that long without losing momentum. Three minutes went by. Four.

  Finally, Elena reached out and snatched the gyroscope, her fingers stopping the spinning wheel. Her breathing was hard, and her eyes bored into Brian’s.

  “Maybe it’s better if you tell us,” she said.

  CHAPTER 2

  DOWN-SPIN

  “All rise!“

  The court officer bellowed the phrase, which he’d probably been calling for most of his adult life. “Court is now in session for the People versus Jacob Kelley, the honorable Ann Roswell presiding.”

  The federal courthouse in Philadelphia was a beautiful building of stone pillars and balconies, only slightly marred by the more functional modern office buildings grafted onto the back. A similar fusion of old and new reigned indoors, with marble staircases adjoining handicapped-accessible elevators. Courtroom five, where the marshals had led me and then removed my handcuffs, was a high-ceilinged space with wood paneling, tall windows, and oil paintings on the wall. After months of procedure by lawyers on both sides, my trial for the murder of Brian Vanderhall was finally about to begin.

  I missed Elena. I missed my children. I wished there was someone in the packed courtroom viewing area who was on my side. I was also tired of waiting, and I was glad it would soon be over, one way or another. It had been four months since Brian had first appeared at my front door in his flip-flops and ruined my life. Now, finally, we would see what a jury of my peers would think of my story.

  My lawyer, Terry Sheppard, sat next to me at the defense table. He had a handlebar mustache and wore leather boots. He looked like he’d be more at home on a horse than in the courtroom, and the truth was, I had no idea if he was any good or not. I’d picked him because, of all the sharply dressed sharks that had paraded through the prison meeting room to show off their sleek folios and tailored suits, Terry Sheppard stood out. He didn’t try to impress me with his resume or his Harvard vowels. He was simple; a straight shooter. I trusted him.

  Judge Roswell was in her sixties, with a kind face and pleasant manner. I wanted to think that was a good sign, but I doubted it. Terry said Roswell had a reputation for being tough, and as a former prosecutor, she wasn’t inclined to sympathize with the defense. For nearly an hour, she talked to the jury about their responsibilities, introduced the two sides in the courtroom, and explained to them that only what was spoken into the record by sworn witnesses—not the opening or closing arguments by counsel—was to be considered as evidence in their deliberations. She was articulate and engaging, but also severe in her warnings that they were to avoid the media in this highly-publicized case.

  Finally, she addressed the prosecutor. “Mr. Haviland,” she said. “Your opening statement.”

  David Haviland stood and faced the jury. Camera flies hovered not far from his face, and I wondered how he resisted the urge to swat at them. He was well-dressed, at ease in a suit, with the voice of a newscaster. Worse, he had the air of a principled man, a man who might have made a killing as a defense attorney but who had chosen to be a prosecutor out of a sense of conscience. I might have been impressed with him myself, if he weren’t trying to get me sent away to prison for life.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, pivoting and raising his hands. “This case is about murder.” The courtroom was packed with journalists and gawkers, but Haviland addressed himself to the jurors, not to the crowd. I studied them—six men and six women of a variety of ages and races—trying to gauge whether they were likely to be sympathetic or not. It was difficult to tell.

  “Murder, pure and simple,” Haviland continued. “The taking of another man’s life. You have never met Brian Vanderhall, and now you will never get the chance, but let us not forget that he was a very real person. Just like your own husbands or fathers or sons. Was he a flawed person? Perhaps. Aren’t we all? That doesn’t mean that at thirty-eight years old, he deserved to have his life torn away from him.

  “Mr. Sheppard is going to try to convince you that this case is about technology. He’s going to make your mind spin with words like ‘quarks’ and ‘leptons’ and confuse the facts with expert testimony about science that only a few people in the world understand. It’s nothing more than a conjuror’s show, designed to distract you from the evidence. And the evidence, ladies and gentlemen, is very clear. The facts will show you that Mr. Jacob Kelley murdered Brian Vanderhall in cold blood.” As he said my name, Haviland leveled an accusing finger at me. I wondered if they taught him to do that in law school, or whether he’d just picked it up from the movies.

  “Your task, ladies and gentlemen, is to find the truth. In our great country, we don’t believe the highly educated or the very rich are more qualified to find the truth than you are. Truth is something we can all recognize and understand. That’s why we choose to put the safety of our homes and neighborhoods in your hands. We trust you to have the courage to convict Mr. Kelley”—the pointing finger again—“of the heinous crime of murder.”

  One juror’s eyebrows furrowed slightly, and I thought Haviland might have gone a bit too far with the word heinous. If he wanted to project himself as a man of the people, he was going to have to keep his vocabulary down.

  “You’ve all heard the term ‘beyond reasonable doubt,’” Haviland continued conversationally, starting to pace a little and rub his chin. “I want to explain to you what that means. Sometimes people get the idea that you can’t convict a man unless there is no possible way he could be innocent. That’s not true. The word reasonable is crucial: Is it reasonable to think that Jacob Kelley is innocent? Given the amount of evidence that you will see, would that evidence be enough to convince you, as a reasonable person, to take action on an important matter in your own life? That’s what the law means, and Judge Roswell will tell you the same thing. Even Mr.—”

  “Excuse me, councilor,” the judge interrupted. “You have a great deal of latitude in your opening statement, but I am going to ask you to refrain from giving my opinion, about which you can have little insight.”

  Haviland was instantly contrite. “My apologies, Your Honor.”

  “Members of the jury,” the judge went on. “I will remind you that opening statements are not evidence, nor are they law. They are an opportunity for the councilors to introduce their cases to you, but you are not to hold their words as having any weight in this case. The witnesses they call will provide the evidence, and I will explain the law.” She nodded at Haviland. “You may proceed.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Haviland said, although he looked like he’d swallowed something unpleasant.

  He continued in the same vein, but with some of the wind taken out of his sails. I worked hard to maintain a grave demeanor. Terry, sitting next to me, apparently had no such scruples and leaned back with a wide grin on his face.

  “Reasonable doubt,” Haviland said. “Let’s think about what it means in this case. Jacob Kelley held the gun. This we can prove. He was angry at Mr. Vanderhall and wanted revenge. This we will also prove. You will hear how Mr. Vanderhall attacked Mr. Kelley’s wife. You will hear about Mr. Kelley’s history of violence and rage, especially when those he loves are threatened. And finally, you will hear about how Mr. Kelley followed his victim to an underground bunker and there shot and killed him. I submit to you that there is no reasonable doubt in my mind, nor will there be in yours once the evidence is presented, that Jacob Kelley”—out came the pointing finger, yet again—“with full control of his senses, did intentionally and willfully take the life of a fellow human being.”

  Haviland sat down, nodding and looking pleased with himself. The gesture looked choreographed to me, and I hoped it did to the jurors as well.

  “Thank you, Mr. Haviland,” the judge said. “Mr. Sheppard?”

  Terry rose to his feet ponderously, as if suffering
from painful joints. “Mark this day on your calendar,” he said. His voice had suddenly grown a Texas drawl that hadn’t been there before. “This is the day when a defense attorney agreed with the prosecution. Everything Mr. Haviland said was correct.”

  He bent at the waist as if he were going to sit down. Despite my determination not to show my feelings in the courtroom, my jaw literally dropped open, and for a split second I thought that was all he was going to say. Then he straightened, and with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Well, almost everything.

  “The part about my client killing Mr. Vanderhall wasn’t true, but we’ll go into that in a bit. For the rest, Mr. Haviland pretty much nailed it. I am going to cover a lot of science in my side of the testimony, and some of it can get a bit complicated. The difference is that, unlike Mr. Haviland, I think you can handle it.

  “Mr. Haviland seems to believe that you’re not smart enough to understand science. He wants to spoon-feed you only the bits he thinks you can grasp. Personally, I find that kind of condescension offensive, but he’s entitled to his opinions. What he’s not entitled to do is withhold from you all the facts of the case. He’s not entitled to decide that there are some facts you’re not qualified to understand.

  “Mr. Haviland apparently thinks that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who can comprehend the really difficult things and those who can’t. And he’s already decided that you’re in that second category. Well, I think that you can understand the evidence in this case. I’m going to give it all to you, not just the parts Mr. Haviland thinks you can follow.

  “At the end of the day, I think you’ll agree with me that not only is there reasonable doubt that my client was responsible for Mr. Vanderhall’s death, but there is good reason to believe he had nothing to do with it at all.”

  CHAPTER 3

  UP-SPIN

  Elena clutched the gyroscope and stared Brian down. I couldn’t think of any scientific explanation for what Brian had just done. A gyroscope stays upright because of its angular momentum. Ideally, it would never fall, since the torque that gravity supplies is not sufficient to offset its gyroscopic inertia. In real life, however, friction gradually erodes the rotation, causing it to precess more and more, until finally the rotation degrades and gravity takes hold.

  This left one of two options. Either Brian had managed to eliminate any appreciable friction from our tabletop—not to mention air resistance—or he had a way to inject more energy into the system without touching the gyroscope, thus overcoming the effects of the friction. I couldn’t think of any way he could do either of those things.

  “Okay, I give up,” I said. “How did you do it?”

  Brian looked grave. “They showed me. The quantum intelligences.”

  “I see. The little fairies are spinning the gyroscope?” I tried not to let the cynicism creep into my voice, but it was hard.

  “Of course not,” he snapped. “It’s ground state energy. The energy of a single particle’s spin. It never stops. It’s an infinite source of power.”

  I hesitated, finding it hard to believe, but at the same time hard to discount the evidence of the gyroscope. “So you took a feature of the quantum world and made it apply in the larger world,” I said.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Brian said quietly. “Gonna change the world.”

  “If it were real, that would be a technology worth trillions of dollars,” I said. “Is that why you’re here? Are there people chasing you, trying to get this from you?”

  “They’re chasing me,” he said, “but they’re not people.”

  I threw up my hands. “You’d better start talking sense.”

  “One more example, then,” he said. He reached under the table, and suddenly there was a Glock 46 in his hand, the barrel pointing at Elena.

  I was on my feet in an instant, my chair toppling over behind me. I held my hands up, palms out. “Put it down,” I said. “Brian, listen to me.”

  Elena stared into the gun’s barrel, motionless, hardly breathing. “Don’t do this,” she whispered.

  “It won’t hurt you,” Brian said. “The bullet will just diffract around you.”

  “You’re talking crazy,” I said. “Look at me.” He didn’t move. “Look at me!” I shouted. He looked. “It’s a bullet, not an electron,” I said. “If you pull the trigger, it will kill her. You don’t want that.”

  He stood. “You won’t believe me unless I show you.”

  I started to ease around the edge of the table toward him. “I do believe you,” I said. “Let’s just sit down, and you can tell us all about it.”

  “No, you don’t. You call them fairies and make fun of me. But they’re real, Jacob. I’m not going to hurt anybody. I just want to prove it to you.”

  “Point the gun somewhere else, then,” I said. “Point it at me.”

  “It won’t hurt her,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

  I grew up in South Philadelphia, no stranger to violence. My father was a petty thief and a drunk who died in prison before I was two. I had two uncles, my mother’s brothers, who took an interest in my life. They were boxers, mostly the illegal, no-holds-barred type, and they taught me how to fight. I was red-haired and freckled in a mostly Italian neighborhood. I did well in school, though I tried to hide it. I learned early in life that on the street smart didn’t matter for much. I was only as good as my fists.

  Besides, it felt good to fight. I was angry all the time, angry at my mother for drinking instead of working, angry at the men she brought home, angry at my father for dying, angry at my teachers for telling me how much potential I had if I would only apply myself. Striking out with my fists relieved some of that pressure, put me in control. Nobody could tell Uncle Sean and Uncle Colin what to do, and I wanted to be just like them.

  By the time I was thirteen, I was boxing in kids’ leagues, but it was just a sport, with gloves and rules and manners. I was bigger than most kids my age by then, and I was constantly getting cited for punching too soon, or too late, or in the wrong part of the body. They weren’t the rage-fueled battles that my uncles’ matches were, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of blood.

  By that age, I knew my uncles were owned men. They were deeply in debt to bosses in suits who quietly ran the books and manipulated the outcomes. They couldn’t stop fighting, not if they wanted to stay alive. Even so, I knew that was my future. It was the only thing that mattered that I was good at. One day, the bosses would own me, and I’d never get out either.

  Then when I was fifteen, Uncle Sean was killed, and everything changed. An opponent kicked him repeatedly in the head when he was down, hard enough to push his brain stem out through the base of his skull. He died on the floor of the ring in vomit and sawdust. No one even called the hospital. The bosses disposed of his body quietly; I don’t know how. I aged ten years that month, and suddenly the thought of staying in that neighborhood and that life was unbearable.

  I stopped boxing and threw myself into my school work. I didn’t know much about life outside of South Philly, but I knew the only way out of that neighborhood was to go to college, and the only way to go to college was to get a scholarship to pay my way. My mind had always held on to concepts like a magnet, but before, it didn’t seem to matter. Now it was everything.

  For three years, I studied harder than I had ever worked at anything, not because I liked school, but because it was my way out. I was angrier than ever, but I learned how to keep it in check—too many fights in school would ruin my chances. Every night, I pounded the speed bag in my basement until my hands bled.

  Physics came as a complete surprise. It was simple and beautiful. It explained the world in clear lines of power, motion, and speed. It wasn’t the violence of it that attracted me; it was the unequivocal nature of it. So much of the rest of my life was complicated. Physics was simple. It was how the world ought to be.

  We’d been learning about Einstein, a relative nobody who, in his spare time as a pa
tent clerk, came up with four papers that turned the world upside down. I thought if he could do that, then I could at least get myself out of Philadelphia. In the spring of my junior year, I applied to Princeton, Berkeley, and MIT. I was lucky enough to match perfect grades with a political academic environment that made it desirable to accept applicants from low-income neighborhoods. I was accepted, with full-ride scholarships, to all three.

  By then, Uncle Colin was in prison, and my mother hardly knew I was alive. I left them behind without looking back, packed most of what I owned in an old suitcase of my father’s, and took the bus to Boston, Massachusetts.

  MIT was mostly what I expected—it seemed like everyone I met was either a rich American kid with a home in the Hamptons and a chalet in the Alps, or else the favored, oldest son of a politically connected family in Korea or China or Vietnam. Nobody’s background was anything like mine, and it was hard to make friends. But the physics! Everything I loved about it was right there, codified in perfect, uncluttered symbols. Torque and inertia, linear motion and angular displacement, force equals mass times acceleration, decisive action with equal and opposite reaction. It made sense. It meant the world made sense.

  The professors treated us like we were the cream of the new generation. There was a spirit of excitement at MIT, no matter where you were from, a sense that we were at the center of the scientific world, a specially chosen elite, given this great opportunity to study with the best in the field. I’d never felt that way before, and I soaked it up. I loved physics more every day.