Fade to Blink - A Quantum Date Ch. 03

He shook his head. "No. We're running this thing off the books, so we don't know how much he knows, but we figure he's aware of something." He pulled up onto his elbows, the inrush of cool air against my breasts puckering my nipples. "It's why we figured he'd recruited you. It's why everyone on the team has been careful about surveillance and bugs." He nodded at my expression. "Yeah, everyone has found some, at some point or another in the past few months. But, it's okay," his attempt to calm my alarmed reaction not succeeding, "they've all gone away. Just like ours."

I wasn't relieved by anything he'd said. "Wait. What?" I dropped my arms to the floor. "Wait. Either the bugs were from Johnstone, which is what we figured, right?" My thoughts returning to Marybeth calling me a bitch after that night in June, "or they're from Hodgson. Which is it?!"

He shrugged, looking away, the movement shifting his penis, thick and warm, against my clit. I jerked. And then held my breath hoping he wouldn't pull away. "We don't know, Annie. I didn't ask if they'd been bugging us. I guess I should have. I just figured, given the committee's hypotheses, that our relationship made us natural candidates. But, like we talked about a couple weeks ago, I'm not sure how 'natural' it was. I think Johnstone must have known about me. I think they just set up the game board and let it play out."

He stared into my eyes and the intensity, the feelings he was emitting...my legs spasmed, jerking my pelvis against him, bumping my clit against his cock, the sensation sending jolts back up my spine, creating a cycle. I closed my eyes as he bent down to kiss me again, and I felt myself letting go, like I had been letting go since...since the beginning.

Eventually he pulled away. "So, yeah. I've got you onto the team," he said, smiling, his fingers pressing into my mouth, my tongue washing me from him. "I told 'em, if they wanted to really make this work, they had to take us together." He shifted his thighs, his cock slipping between my legs, its tip at my entrance. I could tell he wasn't super hard, his shaft bending when he poked at me. I slid my hand down to peel my labia open, slipping my fingers across his head to gently guide him into me; I kept my eyes on his, watching for any sign he might pull away. Only after he had glided into me, when I was certain he wasn't going to tease me, did I truly relax, my shoulders untensing, my eyes closing, relishing the tide of orange-yellow synched to his movements.

"Your first meeting's early next week." His voice, soft in my ear, his cock, now firmer, moving more purposefully, his hands pulling mine above my head, pinning me. Whatever. Not rising to the bait, not worrying about whatever that meant, just letting go. "I said we'd participate. To.geth.er. in. what.ev.er. ex.per.i.ment. they. Need.ed." His thrusts in sync with each syllable. I opened my eyes to stare into his, letting go...letting go...

And then I flickered.

As before, nothing changed for me. I was staring at Jimmie's face, feeling his cock filling and emptying me, pulling liquid onto the blanket, the blob turning yellow in my gut, red around my breasts, and then I saw his face had changed: his eyes widened, his glance looking down to our waists and back again.

"How long?" I whispered, hoping the expression I saw wasn't panic, or disgust, or...I didn't know what the fuck that was.

"Eight heartbeats...roughly seven seconds."

He'd stopped moving, his cock seated deep inside me. He'd raised himself up onto his forearms, his breathing shaky.

"Did you feel anything different? Did my cunt disappear around you?" I squeezed the muscles in my channel to make sure I could still feel him, to reassure me...him?...that I was still really there.

He shook his head. "Nothing changed, feeling-wise. I felt you the entire time. I was kissing you, staring into your eyes and you were...I could see the rug...fuck...I could see my cock...in mid-air..."

I wrapped my legs and arms around him, not wanting him to leave, needing him inside me, needing him to be with me, tears filling my eyes. "Fuckkkkk, Jimmie...!"

Late-September 32

"Thank you for joining us, MTS Anne Scolfield, HQ03.14.30...Anne?" P. asked permission with a gentle smile.

I nodded in his direction, briefly glancing at him before returning my focus to the basket of French fries in the center of the table. That smile... I knew it was way more complicated than it appeared, but fuck me if I could tell more than that. I refilled my plate and, with my peripheral vision, reassured myself, for like the tenth time, that Jimmie was still next to me.

I was barely maintaining. Only five people other than me in the room, four strangers. It wasn't the numbers; it was the crazy protocol we'd taken to get here: screens off, public transportation, arrival times staggered. It was the paranoid spy games. I was at my limit.

We had finished the introductions.

P.: I wasn't supposed to know his name, but someone let it slip. Prasanth. I didn't even know his coordinates. Jimmie told me it was better that way. Regardless, I knew he was highest up. He had a look in his eyes, an intensity I couldn't register. At all. Jimmie told me later it was zealotry. I didn't know zealotry had an expression, and this being my first exposure to the guy, I didn't have enough for a pattern. Zealotry.

To his left, Dir HR Employee Health Kurt Johnstone HQ01.10.02: a sandy haired, clean-shaven white guy with intense blue eyes.

Then Jimmie.

To my right, Dir EngOps Marlene Liu HQ02.02.02: an Asian woman who seemed as uncomfortable being here as I was, and between her and P., Sr. Mgr. SupLog Chauncy Smythe HQ05.10.15: a heavy set white guy with a pasty complexion, reddish cheeks and nose.

"I think it's only fair that we bring Anne up to speed with what we're planning. And," P. paused and looked over at Dir HR Employee Health Kurt Johnstone HQ01.10.02, "a quick summary of what we definitely know, what we think we know, what we definitely do not know."

I shot a glance at Johnstone to gauge his reaction to P.'s agenda. I had sensed a tone, an emphasis suggesting Johnstone needed to be...precise...the word popped into my head. Not that I'd be able to tell anything about Dir HR Employee Health Kurt Johnstone HQ01.10.02's reaction...to anything. But it never stopped me from practicing.

"Kurt...?"

Dir HR Employee Health Kurt Johnstone HQ01.10.02 cleared his throat. "Right. Okay. What do we definitely know...? It's a short list.

"We've documented eight flickers...er, sorry, individuals who we have explicitly documented having faded and resolved...and now, MTS Anne Scolfield, HQ03.14.30, sorry...Anne, presumably..."

I looked up at him, my expression the usual, but the mere motion triggered Jimmie.

"Ahhh, Kurt...I can vouch..."

Johnstone paused and stared at him. "You've verified she's faded; I don't see a report..." he scanned a screen, looking back at him with raised eyebrows.

Jimmie stared him down. "No. I...it was just a couple of days ago...I haven't had time to file it. But," he looked over at me, "I can assure you that Annie very much faded." I could feel the blush rising up my neck. In a minute my cheeks would be burning.

Johnstone made a face I could only interpret as skepticism. But maybe it was judgie; like, a 'why the fuck didn't you file the report?' kinda judgie. My embarrassment was obvious to even me, but Dir HR Employee Health Kurt Johnstone HQ01.10.02 appeared clueless.

And he's an experimental psychologist?

And then his expression changed and he started blushing! Ho hoh! Welcome to the party, Dir HR Employee Health Kurt Johnstone HQ01.10.02!

He cleared his throat again and continued. "Assuming Anne is our ninth individual, she would be the first with nominal exposure to the units. We know these numbers for certain."

I looked up at him again and couldn't stop myself. "Excuse me. Sorry. How many times have the others flickered?"

Johnstone looked over, his face frozen for a second, before returning to his screen. "Of the eight, seven have stated they've faded three times, and in those cases there were witnesses. The eighth has stated they faded four, with only two of those verified."

I shot a glance at Jimmie. He nodded slightly.

"Ummm. Sorry to interrupt again. I'm not sure how much Jimmie has told you, but, as of last week, I have flickered eight times."

I didn't know what reaction I expected, but dead silence hadn't made the list. The clashing of dishes beyond the door, the sounds of the other diners in the main room, all of it filled the void left by the collective holding of breath. I knew whyIwas holding my breath; and I figured it was the same for Jimmie. But fuck if I could understand why all four of them were holding their breath.

P.'s face was locked into that Mona Lisa smile, his eyes boring holes into me. Dir Liu broke the silence by a restrained giggling, and Smythe poured back the rest of his pint. But Johnstone was the oddest: his mouth dropped open and then closed, and then opened again, like a fish, his face red, his eyes squinting at me. I looked over at Jimmie, but he avoided my glance, staring at the table and smiling slightly.

"Well," P. said calmly, "that's a new datum to add to our list." He turned to Johnstone, expecting him to continue.

Johnstone looked at his screen, cleared his throat, looked again and swallowed. "Okay," his voice cracking. "Sorry. Okay. In addition to knowing how many people have flickered..."

And here, Smythe sniggered.

"...we know that the only cases we're aware of are happening at HQ."

I looked up, catching his eye, his expression looking annoyed? "Yes...?" he sighed. Maybe because I was interrupting him? I shrugged mentally.

"Sorry. Maybe you're going to get there, but...where else might they be happening, where we might be aware of them, but not at HQ?"

I saw P. nod slightly at Jimmie, his smile a little broader. I took that as a positive.

"Right," Johnstone whooshed, squeezing his forehead with his right hand. "None of MEI's other facilities are reporting any anomalies or incidents..."

Anomalies. People fucking fading out of existence is an anomaly???

"...gests that it is likely an effect of the Commutator processes, specifically, and not any of the other quantum products we're building."

P. interrupted looking at me. "Hold up, Kurt. I don't think Anne has clearance. Am I right, Anne?"

The only reason that word was in my vocabulary was from theFUCKING blueprint. I nodded, mentally reaching for the 'Student Template,' raising my eyebrows and looking from face to face.

"Clearance," Dir EngOps Marlene Liu HQ02.02.02 muttered. "As if."

Looking over I saw she was staring at me like I was an exotic animal in the zoo. Smythe was nodding, looking between his empty pint glass and P., raising his shoulders.

"Fair enough," P. acknowledged. "You've seen the process rooms, yes?"

"The freezers?" I guessed.

P. grunted a laugh. "Yes. The freezers. The quantum bearings are technically called TauPsi Commutator Bearings. Go on, Kurt."

Johnstone was definitely getting frustrated, his eyes widening as he tried to get back on track. "And, based on the extensive debriefings with the flickers...we've determined that from their perspective, nothing had happened to them: life went on continuously throughout the entire episode. Which suggests that their consciousness remained unaffected. If that's true, and we can't really know to what extent mental processes are impacted without a lot more data, then whatever is going on doesn't negatively impact conscious thought. I assume that is true for you as well?"

I nodded, feeling my face heat up at Jimmie's and my most recent 'episode,' and he went on. "Finally, with respect to what we've gleaned from the humans, we know that none of the flickers have shown any other symptom since we first encountered the effect...over four years ago." He paused before continuing. "And of course, we have substantial data from the experiments with the mice."

He was about to go into all that when Jimmie cut him off, telling him he'd already given me the Cliff notes.

"So," Johnstone trying, and failing, to cover his annoyance and disappointment, "we've captured EKG, fMRI, spectroscopy, mass and dozens of other electromagnetic data from over 20 runs with the mice. We know that when the mice blink out, they leave behind any sensors we'd attached, and even loose hair, dust and dander. Whatever this is, it only seems to take their bodies. Nothing that isn't integrated with them goes along."

"That's what we are confident we know. We have a few conjectures that fall into the 'what we think we know' category.

"We think there's a relationship between exposure and likelihood of flickering, but with only eight, erm, nine data points, the error bar is pretty wide, at least from the human side. We know the mice never flicker unless they're in the Concentrator in the...freezers, and only then under special circumstances.

"We think there's a 'sensitivity factor' as well: depending on their sensitivity some individuals need fewer exposures than others for the effect to happen. Again, nine individuals is too small a set for anything certain. But, from our mice experiments, we do believe there is a strong influence from social power status relationships. We can't say the dominant/submissive hierarchical relationships with the mice are in any way a reliable model for human relationships, but given the data from the 20 runs, we are pretty confident the role that power status plays in the sensitivity factor."

He cast his screen on the wall behind me and I was relieved to cover my blush by turning to look at a scatter plot with eight dots that appeared to follow a linear relationship; a nice straight line sloping from the origin out and up.

"Here's a plot of the eight human flickers. The x-axis is number of exposures, the y is tau, our composite calculation for sensitivity..."

I heard Jimmie softly grunt, too quiet for anyone other than me to hear, his eyes still studying the tabletop, his face...I couldn't figure out his face from my angle, but if I had to guess, I would have said he was struggling to not say something, or laugh, or who the fuck knew? Not me.

"...that the two factors, environmental and human, combine. The size of the dots represent the number of events the individual experienced.

"If tau is accurate, and given what you've just said, Anne, your data point is off by a wide margin...perhaps a factor of two, or perhaps four?" He played around with his screen for a moment and the chart redisplayed. "Given you've only been in the basement twice," he paused, waiting for me to acknowledge that as fact, "and your repeat flickering, we'd put you up there." 'My' dot was hugging the y-axis and way above the next highest dot. Way above. All of the others were scrunched into a nearly flat line near the x-axis. I was Pluto to the other planets, or, I reconsidered, a comet. Way out there and not on the same path. At all. And it was double the size of the next largest one.

"Given this data, and the extensive experimentation with the mice, we're fairly confident the effect is localized to the process area, and that it likely follows an inverse square law. Which, if true, suggests the effect may be like other radiation, even if the source is quantum in nature."

If we'd been in a classroom I would have whispered in Jimmie's ear that this guy was a total dweeb. I thought he was a psychologist, what's with all the physics shit? I raised my hand. Johnstone stuttered to a stop and I thought I heard Dir EngOps Marlene Liu HQ02.02.02 mutter a quiet hallelujah.

"Just so I make sure I'm following: we think there are two factors in play--number of exposures to the process and a sensitivity. But you're suggesting either, or both, are also affected by distance from the freezers?"

Johnstone nodded. I nodded back. He continued. Jimmie was definitely choking back a laugh.

"We think the fading is the result of a shift, or a slide, we're not sure there's a word for it in English, in which light is somehow refracted around the individual, so that whatever they are occluding becomes visible to an observer in front of them."

Shit. This guy couldn't explain why the sky is blue to save his life. Couldn't he have just said: The effect bends light around the person so they look invisible? But then I stole a glance at Jimmy and shook my head slightly. He nodded almost imperceptibly. That can't be right. He could see his penis inside me. That was not a light bending trick.

"Except of course for the mice. The mice do fade, but the readings go discontinuous about three seconds into each run, after which the mice blink out. Naturally we want to understand it all, but given all of our human subjects have simply faded, we're trying to understand that phase first. We're concerned about any of them blinking out, of course, but we're heartened to know that the mice do return. We have two lines of ongoing research: the fade-out effect, and the blink out.

"Both of which lead us to think that the effect is sub-photonic, hence at the quantum level. We're further convinced its quantum primarily based on the stochastic nature of the effect." He finally heard himself and stopped. "Sorry, we believe the effect is quantum-based because the flickers occur spontaneously, and without any apparent physical connection to the...erm...freezers. And they don't appear to be correlated with any immediate triggering event. The mice, of course, are a completely different matter, given they've all only blinked out while in the Concentrator in the freezers." He stopped and looked at me again. "Anne, did all of your flickers occur in HQ?"

I shook my head. "Only two. The others were at home or on the train..."

Gasps from everyone except P. and Jimmie.

"...and no. No one saw me." I quickly added. "Or rather, didn't not see me. Whatever. Anyway, if they did, I'm sure they didn't believe whatever they saw. But, yeah. I get what you're suggesting: the effect is likely at the quantum level because it seems to be 'spooky action at a distance,' it's happening at random, and it affects light, which would have to be pretty damn small, or pretty damn powerful." Except it could be a bunch of other explanations...maybe. Who could know? Definitely not me.

"We're pursuing a line of reasoning, given the above, that implicates the brain as the locus of the effect..."

Jesus. Really. This guy was too much.

"...est explanation that accounts for at least two of the variables: sensitivity and quanta...Yes...?"

I'd had it with Johnstone and had raised my hand again. "How many other lab rats...new hires...have flickered besides me?" That even got a smile out of P. If it annoyed Johnstone, I couldn't tell, and couldn't have cared less.

"One," he responded after a pause, "that we know of. So far." So, Jimmie was telling the truth. I sat back and took a drink of water, giving Johnstone the opening he needed to keep going.

"So, that about sums up what we know, and what we think we know. Which leads to what we don't know anything at all about, but which we have some ideas..."

At which point P. stepped in. "I'll take it from here, Kurt. Thanks."

I glanced at the time: we'd been 'summing up' for a little over 10 minutes and I could see Smythe and Liu shifting in their chairs as P. took over. I guessed I wasn't alone in feeling Dir HR Employee Health Kurt Johnstone HQ01.10.02 was a pompous ass. Within a Gaussian distribution. I stifled a giggle. He def would have said that.