Chapter Two #2
“You’re losing me again.”
“You know what? Forget all the quantum physics for why this is possible. It’s easier if I just show you what it is . Put that on.” He pointed to what I’d assumed was a VR headset. “Make sure it’s on tight, and put it right against your forehead.” He mimed brushing my hair out of the way and I picked up the headset. It was shockingly heavy, and I could see a shimmering network of wires running across the inside of the device. Instead of a strap to tighten it around my head, the entire rig was attached to what looked like a swim cap, with an intricate maze of wires that ran from front to back, like a circuitry mohawk.
“Are we gaming?”
“I’m going to show you a demo we captured the last time I was testing the software. The AI is robust enough to let you explore it on your own. Ideally I’d let you have your own from-scratch experience, but it takes a while for the software to calibrate to the user. Though the AI is getting faster at that every day.”
“Calibrate how? Like…adjust to my height?”
“Confirm that it’s correctly reading your brain waves so it can continuously interface with them. Cortical motor stuff is easy, but when we’re talking about playing out all the possible outcomes of a particular inflection point in your life, well”—he flashed his teeth in a brief grimace—“that’s a little trickier for the AI to perfectly recreate. But forget about that for now, it’s not relevant.” He flicked his hand at the headset again, obviously impatient. “Go on. I promise it’s safe, everyone on the team has done this dozens of times.”
Heart beating faster, I positioned the headset against my forehead, letting Drew help me tug the snug cap into place. The screen surrounding my eyes was dark, and I could hear Drew typing rapidly next to me. Suddenly it flared to life.
“What are you seeing, Laurel?”
“It looks like…a cornfield?” I turned my head slowly, eyes adjusting to the twilit scene. As I moved, the vista changed seamlessly, the illusion of immersion total. I was on a path in the middle of the field, huge stalks towering to my right and left. I reached out to one of them, momentarily forgetting that the experience was visual—Iwouldn’t be able to feel the silky green leaf.
Except that I could. I yelped, startled.
“What’s going on?” The worry in Drew’s voice perversely helped ground me.
“I can feel the cornstalk, Drew.”
“Oh, right. Good. You don’t need to actually move your arms, by the way. Just…imagine your arm moving.”
I did as he said, and for a split second I could feel both of me, the one sitting in a chair in the Pixel offices, motionless, and the one whose arms were lightly trailing the tips of the vivid green leaves. But as soon as I stopped focusing on my physical body, it seemed to melt away.
“Why can I feel the cornstalk?”
“I told you, the device is interacting with your brainwaves. Your neurons have to interpret touch like anything else.”
“Right. Of course.” I swallowed hard—there was something exceptionally eerie about knowing that this headset was making me feel the leaf. If I wanted to walk, could I…
And then I was walking.
“Okay, so, when you get to the fork, go right.”
I did as I was told, moving through the field at a comfortable pace, aware that my physical body was still stationary but nonetheless feeling the motion of my legs, the tips of my fingers grazing the stalks as I moved past them. Before long, I reached the first fork in the maze and turned right. After about fifty feet, the path spiraled to the left, and at the end of the corn nautilus was a towheaded boy in jeans and a rugby shirt, maybe eight years old, sitting cross-legged on the dirt, crying softly.
“You okay, bud?” I asked. He looked up, startled.
“You found me? I thought I’d be lost in here forever.” He sniffled and wiped the back of his hand roughly across his snub nose, coating his freckles with a smear of dust.
“I bet we can find our way out. We’ll do it together, yeah?” He nodded, pushing himself up and reaching for my hand. I was just turning to go back the way we came when the screen went dark again.
“Drew?”
“One sec. Just let me…Okay, there.”
I was back in the middle of the same corn maze, surrounded by the same rosy evening light.
“This time turn left,” Drew said. I nodded and started down the path again, turning left this time, then continuing through the maze, stopping at the intersections to read the laminated signs posted on stakes, subtle hints like Don’t get LEFT behind this Halloween! hand-lettered onto them. Someone must have forgotten to place one at the first juncture. After a couple minutes I saw the end of the maze, a bored, floppy-haired teenager sitting on a stool at the exit with a half-eaten apple in his hand. He glanced up as I emerged, clicking a counter nestled in his other palm.
“I hope you enjoyed Wilkington’s corn maze. Cider and baked goods are available for purchase at the country store,” he rattled off rapidly, then turned to yell at a girl sitting twenty yards away, near a gap in a rustic split-log fence. “That’s the last one!”
The fence watcher jumped off her stool and started tugging a gate across the dirt path.
“Wait…I’m not the last one,” I said, frowning.
“Excuse me?”
“There’s a little boy in there. In the maze,” I said, pointing back at the cornstalks.
“You left your kid in the maze?” He frowned at me.
“Not my kid. Just…There’s a little boy there, he got lost.”
“I’ve done the count.” The teenager narrowed his eyes at me, raising one long, skinny arm to show me the metal device. “It matches the entries. Besides, we only let kids go in with an adult.”
“Maybe he snuck in, or…I don’t know, I’m just saying he’s there . He’s still in the maze, and he’s scared.”
“If you say so,” the teenager muttered, grabbing a walkie-talkie off his belt loop. “Mary? There’s a lady here who says she saw a kid in the corn maze. Is anyone looking for a kid?”
“Oh thank god, I’ll tell the mother we found him,” came back over the walkie. The teenager’s eyebrows shot up and he turned to me, blushing slightly.
“Uh…thanks.”
The screen winked out again.
“Okay, that’s it for now. Take off the headset.”
I tugged the cap up, blinking as the Lightning offices came back into focus.
“What was that?”
“That was the time my sisters left me in a corn maze and didn’t tell my mom because they thought they’d get in trouble. Or it was the time a nice lady found me in a corn maze.”
Drew’s eyes sparkled.
“So we’re…watching your memory?”
“No, we’re experiencing an event that happened in this universe…and variations that presumably happened in various other universes,” he said.
“But we just made that happen.”
“Every possible outcome that could exist within the laws of physics does exist in some universe.”
“But then…what changes in the universe where you’re found? Where he’s found?”
“I wish I knew.” Drew’s shoulders slumped slightly, his bright blue eyes clouding with frustration. “We’ve managed to get the program to where we can glimpse alternate possibilities based on the user’s input—what if I’d been at this intersection just a minute sooner, or what if I’d stopped that fight?—but we’d need a quantum computer with ten x the linked qubits to observe an alternate timeline in any kind of sustained way. Which is why I’m so worried.”
“Worried about what? The butterfly effect?”
“No. Like I said, every possible outcome—”
“Right, right. The universe already exists somewhere.” I shook my head, still not quite able to grasp the concept. “Then what are you worried about?”
“Whatever Jim’s gonna say at the board meeting that will throw me off my game. I mean…sure, we’ve got the program running on a basic level, and the headset only glitches maybe one time out of ten, but we’re still years away from a meaningful user-facing product. What if he calls me out in front of everyone? Like…what do I even say this is for ?”
“What this is for? Drew, you just showed me a literal alternate universe .”
He blinked at me, then a slow smile softened his face. I’d never really noticed how strong his jaw was when he wasn’t smiling.
“It is pretty cool, right?”
“It’s like something out of a sci-fi novel.”
His smile widened, cheeks pinking slightly at the compliment.
“I mean…that’s the goal. But right now there’s just so much we don’t know. Like, even on the most basic level, it’s unclear whether we’re somehow accessing the universes or whether the computer is just managing to simulate them based on user input and the AI framework we’ve built for it. Plus the processing power, obviously. None of this works without that, and the limits are still…” He exhaled heavily.
“So you’re telling me it’s possible you only managed to show me what would be happening in an alternate universe, based on exactly what you wanted to find out about what might happen in that universe.”
“Pretty much.”
“If Jim has any dumbass questions about whether what you’re doing is worth Pixel’s time and money, tell him that. Though, honestly? I think even Jim Donovan will realize that this is next-level incredible. Like…potentially change-the-world incredible.”
“You really think so?” That painfully shy smile quirked the corner of Drew’s lips as he glanced up at me, need plain in his wide blue eyes. Something skipped in my chest, and I blinked, startled. Was I thinking about Drew…like that ? Obviously he was attractive, sneakily broad-shouldered and fit beneath his tech uniform of T-shirts and hoodies—I’d seen him poolside at company events, his washboard abs were like some Easter egg he’d inserted into his personal code. But plenty of people were objectively attractive; that didn’t mean anything. It was normal to worry about a friend, right? And he had always been such a good friend to me. That had to be all that was going on here…
My phone trilled in my pocket and I jerked backward, startled less by the text notification than by the unexpected turn my thoughts had been taking. Today of all days, when I woke up to a ring in Ollie’s drawer, I’m going to start having palpitations over Drew?
Okay… start wasn’t precisely true, it wasn’t the first time I’d ever wondered whether Drew and I might have worked as something more. Jesus, what did that say about me? Yes, fine, the idea of forever was scary, but that was normal, right? But thinking about another guy when you have every reason to be happy….
That was just like my mother. I swallowed the rush of sweet saliva flooding my mouth. Guilt curdled even further as I saw the name on the screen. Ollie . Could he smell me thinking bad thoughts? But the message was anodyne: Already dreaming about the fried squash blossoms. Do you think they’d look at me funny if I ordered three plates instead of an entrée?
Normally the evidence that Ollie was thinking of me—and my favorite appetizer, he could pretend he loved the squash blossoms more than life itself, but if he had his way we’d start with steak tartare every time—would have given me a momentary burst of happiness. Or at least contentment. At this particular moment, it just made me feel queasy with panic.
It’s our anniversary and there’s a ring in his drawer.
The thought made my breath come short. Somehow the focus I’d needed for the morning’s meeting had pushed that little nugget of pure anxiety to the back of my brain until now.
“Once I pull together the presentation, would you mind giving me notes? I know I tend to get a little…in the weeds with the tech and physics side of it, when I should really be selling AltR to the board as a product.” Drew nibbled his lower lip. I just blinked at him, not quite able to process what he was saying. “Hey…are you alright? You look pale…”
“I’m fine, just…” The room went spinny around me and I gasped, really panicking now. Was I so scared of commitment that it could literally knock me out cold? Jesus, how messed up was I?
“Fuck. I should have warned you, the first time you use the program can be a little disorienting. Here, just put your head between your knees.”
I bent over as instructed while Drew dashed off, returning a few seconds later with a cup of water.
“Small sips. Just breathe. I promise it will go away soon.” He moved his chair next to mine, hand moving over my back in slow, soothing circles. After a few seconds I could feel my heart rate returning to normal, my vision unblurring…and the gentle pressure of his hand on me. I breathed in sharply and pushed myself upright, trying to ignore the pang I felt as Drew’s hand fell away. He’s just a friend. An attractive, incredibly intelligent, caring friend.
“Thanks. Sorry about that, usually I have a pretty strong constitution.”
“I should be the one apologizing,” Drew said.
He was close, worry in his gaze, and the pull in my chest was so deep it felt almost physical, like a hook under my ribs.
“I should go,” I murmured, rooted to the spot.
“Right. I’m sure you have a ton on your plate,” Drew said, eyes drifting to my mouth.
We sat there, held in each other’s orbits for a long moment, until the door creaked open and his staff started streaming back in. Finally I managed to stand up.
“Let me know when you want to run through things, we can book a conference room.”
“Awesome. Thank you. And if you ever want to play around with the program again, just say the word. Or even just pop by when you have a spare minute. We’re always happy for a new user to train the AI on.”
I nodded and, before I could get sucked into those soulful eyes again, hurried out the door and down the hall.
All afternoon I kept returning to the strange experience, trying to understand the complexity and immensity of the program Drew was building behind the frosted doors of the Lightning division. I should have been focusing on the broader implications, thinking of ways to market it as a product, or even just how to link it to our existing suite of services, anything that might be useful to me, or to my friend.
But the only thing that I could think of, the thing running through my head on repeat, was what if…
What if the reason I was so terrified of the ring was that some part of me knew Ollie and I weren’t meant to go the distance?
What if I should have given Drew a chance all those years ago?
What would my life be like if I’d made a different choice?