PREFACE
When Albert Einstein first theorized what is now known as quantum entanglement, it was only to highlight the absurdity of it.
Entanglement is this seeming impossibility, predicted by the equations of quantum mechanics, that every now and then, two particles can be born with an intrinsic connection to one another. Once that happens, they are never again truly apart. You can separate them across galaxies, and the relationship remains: poke one, and the other feels it.
Immediately. With no delay. No matter how far they may have traveled.
To Einstein, this meant quantum mechanics was fundamentally broken, offensive both to the laws of nature and common sense. He derided entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” Surely, there could be no hidden interaction that travels faster than light, which he believed to be the universe’s ultimate speed limit.
And yet, in recent years, quantum entanglement has been verified in laboratories many times, in experiments of increasing elegance and certainty, using both particles and entire systems of particles. Scientists have demonstrated that once you determine certain properties of one member of an entangled pair, you instantaneously and irrevocably change the other. And this mysterious coordination remains intact at every distance yet measured.
In other words, Einstein was wrong. Quantum entanglement really does exist, even if no one understands how it’s possible. It raises all kinds of disquieting questions about the true nature of our universe and about the secrets it may be hiding, not the least of which is:
If this could happen with particles, or even systems of particles . . .
. . . what about human beings?
CHAPTER 1
Had I known about the phone call I would receive at 11:09 a.m., I would have wrapped myself around Matt so tight he never could have left the bed that morning.
Or begged him to take the day off.
Or contrived some clever, wifely way to guarantee he was in a different area code from his laboratory.
But that’s the thing about those 11:09 a.m. phone calls that capsize your existence: life’s biggest waves clobber you when you’re not looking.
So, blithely unaware, I let him slip away before the sun rose, as he so often did. In addition to being a physicist, Professor Matt Bronik was an unreformed nerd, if that’s not too much of a redundancy. At age thirty-nine, he was still so excited by his research he bounded out of bed every morning like a schoolboy—a strapping, six-foot-tall, balding, bearded schoolboy—eager to get off to his lab at Dartmouth College because he just couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.
His area of expertise was quantum mechanics, which I had a hard time describing without making it sound like magic. All those tiny particles, many of them too small to have ever been seen, leaping around willy-nilly, acting in ways that disregarded human logic.
Matt spoke about his work in generalities, knowing the specifics were far too obscure for me—and nearly everyone else. He liked to joke that only twelve people in the world actually understood what he did. “And,” he was always quick to add in his self-deprecating way, “only five of them actually care.”
This, naturally, didn’t make him any less enthusiastic about it.
Being as I didn’t suffer from quite the same level of internal motivation, I lingered in bed for as long as possible, at which point I needed to be shaken out of it.
Quite literally. I have hearing loss. It started in my early thirties, and now, in my midforties, it was profound enough that no alarm clock could break through the bubble of quiet that surrounded me when I slept without my earpieces in. What I had instead was a contraption that began vibrating my bed. The pulses grew stronger until I finally succumbed to its demands.
On the rare mornings when he actually did linger in bed, Matt still whispered in my ear, giving me the pleasure of feeling his breath and the low vibration of his voice. I could no longer hear his gentle North Carolina twang or make out the actual words, but I always told him it was better that way.
What woman wouldn’t like a husband who always says the perfect thing?
Still, I had to admit: Matt did pretty well for himself even when I wasn’t imagining the script. I was five years older than him and was really starting to feel, well, forty-four. My once-lustrous brown hair had become dull and gray streaked. My hourglass figure was sliding south such that it now more resembled a spoon. And I hated what was happening to my neck.
Matt earnestly insisted I was only becoming more beautiful as I aged, which just meant that in addition to his other talents, he was also a gifted liar.
Alas, there was no whispering this morning. Matt’s side of the bed was cold by the time my half began shaking at six thirty. I resisted it as long as I dared, then put in my hearing aids and began focusing on Morgan, our irrepressible nine-year-old.
Matt and I had always planned on having more children until we actually had one. Then we decided that was enough. Being a family of three seemed to fit us. Matt was always reminding me the triangle is the strongest shape in nature.
Once I got myself ready and Morgan off to the bus, I reported to my job at Baker Library, Dartmouth College’s stately main branch. I work in cataloguing and acquisitions, the perfect position for someone with hearing loss, because it doesn’t require a lot of conversation.
It was the first Monday of February—another cold gray day in Hanover, New Hampshire, a place where winter only feels like it lasts forever. A little after ten, I got a text from Matt. He was just getting out of a meeting with Sean Plottner, a rich alum who was considering making a substantial gift to Dartmouth. The meeting had gone a little too well, apparently, because Plottner had taken up nearly an hour of Matt’s day.
Otherwise, I was just sitting at my desk, typing an email, when my phone began flashing, which I saw before the faint ringing sound managed to penetrate my hearing aid.
And because my phone had a digital clock on it, I could tell you with precision:
It was 11:09 a.m.
The call was coming from the main number at the Dartmouth College Department of Physics and Astronomy, which was how Matt’s work number appeared on my caller ID.
Matt didn’t bother calling most of the time. He knew that even though my phone was equipped with captioning, I preferred text or email. He only called when he wanted to say something lovely and endearing.
Or naughty. Which was why I answered with, “Hey, sexy.”
And then I both listened and watched as the screen spit out, “Hello, Brigid, it’s Beppe Valentino.”
I blushed. Beppe was Matt’s department chair, a theoretical physicist whose Italian accent sometimes challenged my phone’s voice recognition software.
“Oh, Beppe, I thought you were—”
“I know. Look, I’m sorry, but something’s wrong with Matt. He’s having some kind of seizure.”
CHAPTER 2
Sean Plottner had never been sure when the boredom set in.
Definitely not during the first billion. He was all in during the first billion.
The second billion had kept his attention as well. He loved the chase, the deal, having his investing talents more widely acknowledged.
Even the third billion had been mildly stimulating, what with how he made it during a recession, when everyone else was recovering from mortgage-backed stupidity.