Free The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka Page B

Gorgeous, in fact.”
    â€œI don’t know about that .”
    â€œNo? You don’t trust me?”
    â€œMaybe I asked around.”
    â€œThen why would you need to ask me?”
    â€œMaybe I was curious what you thought.”
    I took her hand and placed it on my face. “I’m as you see.”
    Her hand was cool on my cheek. After a long silence, she asked, “Why did you come here tonight?”
    I thought of the box and the puppy. The light that went unobserved.
    â€œI didn’t want to be alone.”
    â€œThe nights are hardest for you.” She stated it simply, like a fact. Like fire is hot. Water wet. Nights hardest.
    Here is one advantage when talking to the blind. They can’t see your expression. They don’t know when they’ve struck bone. “What is your work?” I asked, changing the subject. “You’ve never said, specifically.”
    â€œYou never asked, specifically. Call it acoustical fabrication.”
    â€œAnd what is that?”
    â€œYou start with wide, white-frequency tone, and then you remove everything you don’t want.”
    â€œRemove?”
    Her slender arm curled behind my neck. “Sound can be a flexible tool. A catalyst for chemical reaction or an inhibitor. Start with a maximum frequency density and then carve away those parts that you don’t want to hear. There’s a Mozart concerto hidden in every burst of static.”
    Again, I couldn’t tell if she was joking.
    I sat up in the lightless room. At that moment, in the dark, we were the same. Only when I turned the light on would our worlds be different.
    â€œMornings are hardest,” I told her.
    In a few hours the sun would rise. The sickness would come or not come. “It’s time for me to go.”
    She ran a hand along my bare spine. She didn’t try to get me to stay.
    â€œTime,” she whispered. “There is no such beast. Only now. And now.” She put her lips against my skin.
    *   *   *
    The next day, I left a message with Jeremy’s secretary, asking him to come by room 271.
    An hour later, there was a knock on the door, and he stepped into the room.
    â€œYou’ve made a finding?” he asked. He still had his suit jacket on. It would be a day of meetings for him, I knew. It was how you told the scientists from the managers. The color of their coats. Satvik and Point Machine stood behind me.
    â€œWe have.”
    His face showed confusion. “A new finding, the message said?”
    â€œJust watch.”
    Jeremy observed while we ran the experiment. He looked in the box. He collapsed the wavefunction himself.
    Then we put the puppy in the box and ran the experiment again. We showed him the interference pattern.
    Again, his face showed confusion. He wasn’t sure what he’d just seen. “Why didn’t it work?” he asked.
    â€œWe don’t know.”
    â€œBut what’s different?”
    â€œOnly one thing. The observer.”
    â€œI don’t think I understand.”
    â€œSo far, none of the animals we’ve tested have been able to alter the quantum system.”
    He scratched at the back of his neck. A line formed between his eyebrows. A single line of worry on his unlined face. He was silent for a long time, looking at the setup, thinking things through.
    I let him get there on his own.
    â€œHoly shit,” he said finally.
    â€œYeah,” Point Machine said.
    â€œThis is repeatable?”
    â€œAgain and again,” I said. I stepped forward and turned the machine off. The hum faded.
    â€œStay here.” Jeremy strode out of the room.
    Point Machine and I looked at each other.
    Jeremy was back a few minutes later, this time accompanied by another man in a suit. An older man, white haired. Upper management. One of the names behind the quarterly evaluations. One of the names who would be firing me.
    â€œShow him.”
    So I did.
    Again came the