Free Regarding Ducks and Universes by Neve Maslakovic Page B

lean countenance and slick black hair made it impossible to pinpoint his age; he could have been thirty or fifty.
    “Never mind that,” she said and reached for a lemon packet from the bowl in the center of the table. She squeezed it into her glass of ice tea. “Pleased to meet you—”
    “Granola James.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Citizen James.”
    “Call me James. Or Granola if you must.”
    They shook hands.
    “I’m Bean. And Felix, we met yesterday of course—”
    I shook her hand, pleased that she had taken the trouble to find out my name. Was there a chance she had been the one who’d called this morning at the Queen Bee Inn looking for me? If so, why didn’t she leave her name? And who was the other mysterious caller, the curly-haired, prominent-nosed fellow described by Franny?
    “At least our quarantine is only forty-some hours,” Bean, examining her soup, was saying, “and not forty days , which is how they used to do it in the Middle Ages. Whole ships kept in isolation to ensure no one on board was carrying the plague. We should be able to do better nowadays, though. Detect diseases rather than have quarantines. It would be an interesting math problem.”
    James and I stared at her. “Math problem, did you say?” I said.
    She took a tentative sip of her soup, then reached for the pepper shaker. “Every problem is a math problem at heart. Some are just trickier than others. Detecting the pet bug—not one of the trickier problems, I imagine—whatever contraption we’d build to do it, what will it measure? A quantity. Body temperature. The number of sneezes per hour, or viruses in a phlegm sample. It would then compare the measured number to a threshold—another number—and make a yes-no decision—a binary one—about whether you have the pet bug or not.”
    “Sounds quite doable when you put it that way, Bean,” said James. “An excellent nature name, by the way. Much better than Granola in every way. So what are you? Coffee, vanilla, jelly, cocoa, green…?”
    “No idea. My parents are Passivists.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked. I shifted my position in the chair as I reached for a rice chip, then had to pull the patient gown down to cover my knees.
    “Passivists believe the branching between A and B was caused by a person.”
    “It was,” I said. “By Professor Singh. He made a copy of the universe in his basement laboratory. Everyone learns that in first grade.”
    “No. I mean, yes, everyone does learn that in first grade.” She dipped a piece of the thin bread in her soup, realized it was too soggy, and left it in the bowl. “Passivists don’t subscribe to the idea that you can make a universe in a lab. According to them, people create universes when they do things without taking into account consequences, like making a careless remark or sleeping in late or running a stop sign.”
    I noticed that James’s fork had paused on its way from his lasagna to his mouth.
    “There were Passivists at the crossing terminal,” I said. I remembered that she had seemed uncomfortable watching DIM officials ask the Passivists to leave the terminal area. “One of them was carrying a potted sunflower. But what does passivity have to do with names?”
    “My parents chose my name by sticking a pin into a list of nature names—the ones for newborn uniques, though usually people go through and choose a name they like. The names are supposed to ‘evoke the sights, scents, sounds, and savories of nature,’” she quoted, stumbling a little over the copious s sounds in the sentence. “I’m the savory. Thyme—my brother—is the scent, and my sister Cricket is the sound. There was no fourth child, but he or she would have been a sight. At least they are all easy to spell. Well, except for Thyme. It’s spelled like the herb.”
    James put his fork down. “Listen—Professor Singh’s work aside, I don’t think it matters all that much. If there are other universes, then successfully