“I mean, I’m skipping around and simplifying. And physicists disagree about whether the wave function is a mathematical tool or real—for lack of a better term. If probability collapses, or if a separate, alternate universe exists for every possible position of the electron. A universe where the electron ended up over here or over there. An equally valid universe for every possible outcome, branching out into infinity. In Oxford, enough of us would pile into a pub after classes and bicker about epistemology or ontology. And a couple of pints in we’d all start railing about how nothing is real unless it’s experimentally useful. And sometimes I get stuck on things, or decisions because it’s like I can see every outcome and everything seems equally important. Or unimportant or…” He faltered. “I’m not doing this right.”

Another broken-winged bird flap of my heart. I squeezed his hand, my YOU ARE HERE tattoo down my thumb anchoring us in one spot.

“Nah, I got you.”

“What I’m trying to say is that when I’m around you, things feel more solid. Fixed.”

After he gushed out the rest of his breath, he screwed his mouth up into a smile.

“Me too.”

We could’ve hit a landmine and I wouldn’t have noticed, with how I was floating to the car’s ceiling. Any words I had flew out the window. Because out of all the infinities out there, I was there in a car with him, following the black thread of the road ahead, and that was all I needed.

*   *   *

I watched Kaori in the days after our trip, hanging with her and the Envisioner at night, snooping for clues from the machine and what she knew. I felt the invisible spotlights and tried to act like myself. The role of Hayes Figueiredo will temporarily be played by…

Two days trickled away, with Yusuf his normal, quiet self. I could almost convince myself that the guillotine drop wasn’t coming, and I was just overanalyzing like I always did. Until the all-hands-on-deck meeting Kaori called on the third day after our trip, when I jostled out of the Footage Farm with the others, wishing that there was just another breakthrough. Even as my feet hit the steps outside the Footage Farm, I knew what was happening.

Before the crowd in the Theater, Kaori twiddled dials on the machine and asked it questions while three of her white coats floated nearby. Will it rain in Paris tomorrow? When will Hurricane Verona make landfall? Will the levees break? I swear she was hamming it up, with the unmoving gold mask of her face like any other day.

When she turned to us, her chin was level with the ground, her eyes a steady searchlight beam sweeping the room.

“I have one of you to thank for this,” she said, so softly—she never yelled—that everyone had to lean in.