The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka Page B

“It’s like tracing any characteristic,” he said. “You look for homology in sister taxa. You organize clades, catalog synapomorphies, identify the out-group.”
    â€œAnd who is the out-group?”
    â€œWho do you think?” Point Machine stopped pacing. “The ability to cause wavefunction collapse is apparently a derived characteristic that arose uniquely in our species at some point in the last several million years.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œIt’s the most parsimonious interpretation. None of our sister taxa have it. This is a uniquely derived trait. An apomorphy. It must have arisen after our split from the other primates.”
    â€œAnd before that?” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œBefore that. Before us.”
    â€œI don’t follow.”
    â€œThose millions of years. Did the Earth just stand dormant as so much uncollapsed reality? What, waiting for us to show up?”

 
    13
    Writing up the paper took several days. I holed up in my lab, organizing the data, putting it into a clear structure that could be read, digested, submitted for publication. The shakes were bad in the mornings, so I took my prescription, washing it down with coffee and orange juice. Once the paper was complete, I wrote the abstract. I signed Satvik and Point Machine as coauthors.
    SPECIES AND QUANTUM WAVEFUNCTION COLLAPSE.
    Eric Argus, Satvik Pashankar, Jason Chang. Hansen Labs, Boston, MA
    Â 
    ABSTRACT
    Multiple studies have revealed the default state of all quantum systems to be a superposition of both collapsed and uncollapsed probability waveforms. It has long been known that subjective observation is a primary requirement for wavefunction collapse. The goal of this study was to identify the higher-order taxa capable of inciting wavefunction collapse by act of observation and to develop a phylogenetic tree to clarify the relationships between these major animal phyla. Species incapable of wavefunction collapse can be considered part of the larger indeterminate system. The study was carried out at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo on multiple classes of vertebrata. Here we report that humans were the only species tested that proved capable of exerting wavefunction collapse onto the background superposition of states, and indeed, this ability appears to be a uniquely derived human characteristic. This ability most likely arose sometime in the last six million years after the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.
    *   *   *
    Jeremy read the abstract. We sat in his office, the single sheet of paper resting on the broad expanse of his father’s desk.
    Finally, I spoke. “You said you wanted something publishable.”
    â€œServes me right, telling you something like that.” The crease between his eyebrows was back again. “This is what I get.”
    â€œNot so bad, is it?”
    â€œBad? No, it’s incredible. Congratulations. This is amazing work.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œStill,” he said. “It’s going to start a shit storm. You must know that.”
    Jeremy looked down at the paper I’d written, his blue eyes troubled. I could see him as a boy, eighteen again, sitting in the university library where I’d first met him. His face smooth and young. The ice storm and sliding truck still two years in his future. The paper that would complicate his life still more than a decade from his desk.
    He looked up from the paper. “But what do these results mean ?”
    â€œThey mean whatever you think they mean.”
    *   *   *
    Things moved fast after that. The paper was published in the Journal of Quantum Mechanics , and the phone started ringing. There were requests for interviews, peer review, and a dozen labs started replication trials, all with a keen eye toward finding the flaw in the procedure. And always it was assumed there must be a flaw. Outside the