“Whoa!”
“It’s an open-source animation software with a sophisticated physics engine that can accurately simulate the real-world conditions of our coaster.” Calvin clicked the touchpad, and we watched as the wire-frame car—complete with little wire-frame people—shot up the first hill and proceeded to fly through the loops and turns. When it reached my addition, the car broke away from the track and careened into empty space.
“See,” Calvin said. “The cars are entering your roll too fast. Since we don’t have time to design brakes, maybe we should find a better spot to include it.”
We worked for the next hour, rearranging the track, experimenting with different configurations. It took some rejiggering, but we finally squeezed my barrel roll into the ride without killing the passengers. Though, based on the information provided by Calvin’s program, our coaster still exceeded safe speeds. The cars remained on the track, but the theoretical g-forces could cause sensitive passengers to black out. Ms. Fuentes would definitely ding us for a car full of unconscious imaginary riders.
I stood and stretched my arms over my head. “This is tough. I’m pretty sure Fuentes is a sadist.”
“We’ll solve it,” Calvin said.
I pointed at the corkscrew on the screen and said, “Removing part of this would reduce the speed.”
Calvin shook his head. “We’ll never get an A taking the safe route.”
“I thought you didn’t care.”
“I don’t.” He kicked off, spinning on his stool.
The thing was, I didn’t believe him. His Fortress of Apathy felt manufactured.
“What happened to you, anyway?” I asked.
“Come again?”
“You used to have a boner for school and homework, and now you’re kinda limp.”
Calvin stopped spinning. His shoulders slumped like I’d flipped a switch and shut him off. I prepared to change the subject, but he said, “When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first stood on the moon, they looked at Earth and realized our wars and petty issues were pointless. Experiences like that change people. They realize the things they believed mattered are actually inconsequential. That they are inconsequential.”
“Is that what you think? That we don’t matter?”
Instead of answering, he said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Only if you agree to answer one first.” Calvin nodded, which I took as agreement. “Why were you cutting yourself? And don’t give me that bullshit about your amygdala again.”
Calvin licked his dry lips. He touched his arm absently, ran his finger over one of the scabs. “Feelings are intangible,” he said. “You can’t see them, can’t touch them. You can hurt and no one would know. But physical pain is real. You can see blood and broken bones. It’s simple in a way feelings are not, and cutting makes the abstract pain of feelings substantial.”
“But it’s messed up,” I said. “You get that, right? It’s seriously dangerous, and what if you cut too deep?”
“I won’t.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe you?”
“Yes.”
Only, I didn’t believe him, and I wasn’t going to give up trying to convince him not to cut himself anymore, but I didn’t want to push him too hard when we barely knew each other. So I said, “All right. For now.”
“My turn,” Calvin said. “Why were you on the plane that crashed?”
I liked that he said “crashed” instead of some stupid euphemism. “I already told you: I was going to find Tommy.”
“The boyfriend who vanished?”
“We only agreed to one question.”
Calvin nudged me with his bare foot. “You got to ask more than one.”
Wasn’t talking about Tommy why I’d wanted to go to his house in the first place? I hadn’t even needed to maneuver him into the conversation. Calvin wanted to know. But I hesitated. Not just because Calvin had basically admitted he cut himself because he was burdened by emotional pain too big to cope with, but because we were starting to get to know each other, and I didn’t want him to judge me. For some reason, his opinion mattered more than I’d expected it to.
But I needed a confidant as much as Calvin seemingly needed to cut himself.
“July third, Tommy was my boyfriend. July fourth, he ceased to exist. And not like he died or ran away; he just vanished and no one remembers him other than me.”
“How is that possible?” Calvin asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Got any theories?”
“Yeah. I doubt you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
I stared into Calvin’s eyes, looking for some indication of his motives. Was I merely an oddity to study, or something more? But his eyes, his face, gave nothing away.
Then he said, “I don’t have anyone to talk to either.” And that simple statement changed everything. He’d seen through my bullshit story about wanting to work on our project right to the truth of why I’d called, and he was still there; he hadn’t kicked me out. That had to count for something.
“Remember Fuentes’s lesson on particle-wave duality?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my hands together, trying to organize my thoughts. I’d never said any of this out loud to anyone that mattered—my shrinks didn’t count—and I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed to until the words came pouring out. “So we know that photons can act as either particles or waves depending on observation. That video Fuentes showed us about the double-slit experiment proved photons act as particles when no one’s watching, and as waves when they are.”
“Did you hear about the scientists in Australia who took the experiment further?” Calvin asked.
“No.”
“They ran tests using helium atoms proving that not only are objects affected by observation, but that observation can cause them to transmit information backward through time to change their behavior in the past.”
Yeah, Calvin was definitely smarter than me. I’d read a few books on quantum physics, though little had made sense, but Calvin seemed to actually understand it.
“Anyway,” I said. “So we know this stuff, right? But we don’t know why atoms act this way.”
“There are theories,” Calvin said.
“Well, my theory is that particle-wave duality is a shortcut.”
“A shortcut for what?”
“Have you ever played Alien Worlds: Kill ’Em All?”
“No,” Calvin said. “But I’ve heard of it. It’s an MMORPG, right?”
I nodded. “My brother’s a fanatic. The game is made up of hundreds of planets, divided into different solar systems. At any given moment, there are thousands of players exploring those worlds, killing the aliens they find. But they can’t be everywhere all the time. Still with me?”
“I think so.”
I cleared my throat. The theory sounded even crazier when I said it out loud. “What happens to those solar systems and worlds when no one’s in them? Time still moves forward in the game, but what players see when they enter them changes depending on their circumstances.”
“Yeah,” Calvin said. “Now I’m lost.”