The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka Read Free Book Online Page B

reasons? You still haven’t said.”
    Because a single unfinished formula can break you. I shook my head. “It hardly matters now.”
    â€œIt matters a lot, unless there’s a secondary market for ex-quantum theoreticians that I’m unaware of. If you won’t continue your previous research, where does that leave you?”
    â€œMaybe nowhere.”
    â€œThen take the position.”
    And I wanted to.
    I wanted to say yes. It was on the edge of my tongue. I could picture myself forming the words, telling him what he wanted to hear. I could picture myself learning everything there was to learn about macrophages. Diving into a new subject. A new start , my sister had said. Laboratory assistant was a long step sideways, but it would be work. Employment. Some kind of usefulness. I could do it. I wanted to do it.
    Instead I said, “I have a project.”
    â€œThis?” Jeremy gestured to the setup, the crazy equipment. “This won’t get you through review.”
    I thought of Jeremy’s bosses. The ones who might not like him playing favorites. Careers had been damaged by less. A knot tightened in my stomach. “So be it.”
    He threw up his hands. He scowled at me long enough that I knew it wasn’t me at the other end of his stare but himself. Or maybe his father—the corporate goon with the giant desk. A man who’d never budged an inch.
    When he finally spoke, his tone was measured. “Eric, you and I go way back. As far back as I go with anyone. I don’t want to see your career end like this. What are your plans when you leave here?”
    How to answer that one? How do you tell someone that you have no plans? That your plans come to an abrupt end a few months into the future. I thought of the gun, and its name rose up—Panacea—christened one drunken night as I marveled at the slick coolness of the trigger. Maybe that was how this ended. How it was always going to end, since those bad days in Indianapolis.
    â€œDo you want to stay here and work?” He asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen do that. Take the favor.”
    I looked at him, my old friend. In college his sophomore year, he’d pulled over in an ice storm to help a stranded motorist. He did things like that. It was on the way back to school after Christmas break. While helping to change the old woman’s tire, he’d been struck by a pickup truck that slid on the ice. He’d spent the better part of a month in the hospital—broken bones, a torn spleen. It had also cost him a whole semester of classes, and he’d graduated behind everyone else. Most people would have seen that stranded motorist and kept on driving, but he’d pulled over and climbed out. That’s just how he was, always wanting to help. And here he was again. But I knew the feel of ice under my wheels.
    â€œNot like this,” I said. “I can’t.”
    He shook his head. “I want to be clear,” he said. “If this is your project, I can’t save you.”
    â€œIt’s not your job to save me,” I said. “This is enough, right here. The double-slit. I need to see it. I can’t explain it better than that.” And how could I? How could I tell him that I hadn’t had a drink in days? How could I tell him of the miracle of that? “I think I was meant to see it.”
    â€œ Meant? Now you sound crazy.”
    My mother’s eyes flashed in my head.
    â€œThere is no meant,” Jeremy continued. But there was resignation in his voice. He’d seen the drowning man slide beneath the waves.
    â€œOnce you believe in quantum mechanics,” I said, “it’s hard to rule something out merely because it is impossible.”
    He glanced toward the apparatus. “But what are you expecting to prove?”
    â€œJust one thing,” I said. “That sometimes the impossible is true.”

 
    9
    The day we ran the experiment, the