The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka Page A

Machine ordered pizza but couldn’t finish.
    Across the table, my own stomach twisted, appetite gone.
    â€œWhich ones will it be?”
    â€œThere’s no way to know.”
    â€œIf you had to guess.”
    â€œIt’ll happen somewhere between class and order,” Point Machine said. “The primates for sure.”
    â€œWhat do you think, Satvik?”
    He looked up from his paper plate. “I don’t know.”
    Point Machine drained the last of his Pepsi.
    â€œI’m telling you,” he said. “Somewhere in Primatomorpha. That’ll be our first hit.”
    *   *   *
    We ran the first experiment just after noon. Satvik hit the button. The interference pattern didn’t budge.
    Over the next three hours, we worked our way through representatives of several mammal lineages: Marsupialia, Afrotheria, and the last two evolutionary holdouts of Monotremata—the platypus and the echidna. The zookeepers walked or wheeled or carried the animals to us in cages. One by one, the animals were placed carefully in the wooden box. The machine ran. The interference pattern never changed.
    The next day, we tested species from the Xenartha and Laurasiatheria clades. There were armadillos, sloths, hedgehogs, pangolins, and even-toed ungulates. The third day, we tackled Euarchontogliries. We tested tree shrews and lagomorphs. Hares, rabbits, and pikas. None of them collapsed the wavefunction; none carried the spotlight. On the fourth day, we turned finally to the primates.
    We arrived at the zoo early that day. Zoo staff escorted us through the gate and up the hill. They unlocked the muntjac house and turned on the lights. Satvik provided the zookeepers with the day’s list, which they then discussed among themselves for several minutes.
    We began with the most distantly related primates. We tested lemuriformes and New World monkeys. We put them in the box, closed the door, hit the button.
    Then Old World monkeys. Subfamilies Cercopithecinae and Colobinae. The red-eared guenon and the Tonkean macaque.
    Then a single Sumatran surili, which clung to the zookeeper’s arm, face like a little gremlin doll. A stuffed animal that blinked. Finally, we moved to the anthropoid apes. All failed to collapse the wave.
    On the fifth day, we did the chimps.
    â€œThere are actually two species,” Point Machine told us while the zoo staff prepared the transfer. “ Pan paniscus , also called the bonobo, and Pan troglodytes , the common chimpanzee. They’re congruent species—hard to tell apart if you don’t know to look. By the time scientists caught on in the nineteen thirties, they’d already been mixed in captivity.” Zoo staff maneuvered two juveniles into the room, holding them by their hands like parents leading a child. “But during World War II, we found a way to separate them again. It happened at a zoo outside Hellabrunn, Germany. A bombing leveled most of the town but, by some fluke, left the zoo intact. When the keepers returned, they expected to find their lucky chimps alive and well. Instead, they found a massacre. Only the common chimps stood at the bars, begging for food. The bonobos lay in their cages, dead from shock.”
    The zoo staff led the first chimp toward the box. A juvenile female. Its curious eyes met mine. They closed the door, and Satvik secured the latch.
    â€œYou ready?” I asked.
    Satvik nodded.
    We tested both species. Chimp and bonobo. The equipment hummed. We double-checked the results, then triple-checked.
    The interference pattern did not budge.
    Nobody wanted to speak.
    â€œSo that’s it then,” Point Machine said finally. “Even chimps don’t cause wavefunction collapse.”
    I toggled the power switch and turned the machine off for the last time. The hum faded to silence.
    â€œWe’re alone,” I said.
    *   *   *
    Later that night, Point Machine paced the lab.