The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka Read Free Book Online

were hunting birds.”
    â€œBirds,” I said, tracking his change of subject.
    â€œYes, and up in the trees, they see one, a beautiful bird with bright feathers. The first prince said, ‘I will shoot the bird,’ and he pulled back on his arrow and shot into the trees. But his accuracy failed him, and the arrow missed. Then the second prince tried to shoot, and he, too, missed. Then the third prince. Finally, the fourth prince shot high into the trees, and this time the arrow struck and the beautiful bird fell dead. The guru looked at the first three princes and said, ‘Where were you aiming?’
    â€œâ€˜At the bird.’
    â€œâ€˜At the bird.’
    â€œâ€˜At the bird.’
    â€œThe guru looked at the fourth prince, ‘And you?’
    â€œâ€˜At the bird’s eye.’”

 
    8
    Once the equipment was set up, the alignment was the last hurdle to be cleared. The electron gun had to be aimed so the electron was just as likely to go through either slit. The equipment filled most of the room—an assortment of electronics and screens and wires. A mad scientist’s chamber if ever there was one.
    In the mornings, in the motel room, I talked to the mirror, made promises to gunmetal eyes. And by some miracle did not drink.
    There were pills in my suitcase—a half-finished prescription to ease the shakes. But I’d never liked how they made my head feel. I popped two pills in my mouth.
    One day became two. Two became three. Three became five. Then I hadn’t had a drink in a week. The ravening thirst was still there, just under my skin. My hands still shook in the morning as I gripped the cool porcelain. But I did not drink.
    I have a project , I told myself. I have a project .
    It was enough.
    At the lab, the work continued. When the last piece of equipment was positioned, I stood back and surveyed the whole setup, heart beating in my chest, standing at the edge of some great universal truth. I was about to be witness to something few people in the history of the world had seen.
    When the first satellite was launched toward deep space in 1977, it carried a special golden record. The record held diagrams and mathematical formulas. It carried the image of a fetus, the calibration of a circle, and a single page from Newton’s System of the World. It carried the units of our mathematical system because mathematics, we’re told, is the universal language. I’ve always felt that golden record should have carried a diagram of this experiment, the Feynman double-slit.
    Because this experiment is more fundamental than math. It is what lives under the math. It tells of reality itself.
    Richard Feynman said this about the slit experiment: “It has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In truth, it contains only mystery.”
    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.
    â€œSo it’s true then,” he said. He smiled and stepped farther into the room. “They told me you signed up for lab space.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhat is all this?” he said, looking around.
    â€œJust 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?”
    â€œA 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?”
    â€œGood science is