Chapter Twelve

Smithers Senior gripped Monty's shoulders with insistent fury. "What the hell was he doing here? Why was he using your private trap door? This is your fault, you withered old hobgoblin!" He shoved him back, propelling him to the floor. Burns' eyed widened in fright, but the kernel of truth in the accusation kept him from moving as his old friend and associate advanced on him with a nigh murderous rage. Smithers bent down and grabbed him by the collar, held him up, dangling. Age had not ravaged his physical prowess so nearly as it had for Burns, but his physical advantage alone could only carry him so far. Burns wasn't fighting back. "Tell me!" His voice low and unsteady, he said, "I swear to God, Monty, I'll kill you, if this was your fault. And you know I can tell when you're lying." The employees encircling them fell dead silent as they watched Burns' right hand man threaten him with death.

"I asked him to come here. I wanted his company, and he obliged me."

"Have you been hiring him to come around here, to – to satisfy you?"

"No, I –"

"You know he still had feelings for you, and you exploited him!"

"I did no such thing!"

"Like hell you didn't!" He grunted and smacked him in the face.

"Are you trying to kill me, Smithers?"

"Tell me the truth!"

"The truth is – we were lovers. And God did I love him," he said in an exhalation that devolved into crying, honest and unabashed crying. "My love for him never diminished as I led you to believe."

The choleric tide receded, and Smithers' face grew blank and sunken, his stare capable of penetrating through lead as easily as gamma rays. He loosened his grasp of Burns. "For how long?"

"The better part of a year. We pledged commitment to each other not an hour ago. There's still some champagne left in the bottle." Biting his lip so hard it began to bleed, Smithers stood and walked away, without looking at anyone or saying anything, and started at a sprint. Burns chased him up stairs and through a circuitous path across creaky ladders and catwalks, finally catching up to him when he got to the top of one of the cooling towers. "Waylon, no!" He made his way until he was a foot from him. "Please, Waylon, don't do anything rash."

"I'm beginning to feel like Schrödinger's cat."

"Like what?"

"Schrödinger's cat. A famous thought experiment in quantum physics. A cat is confined within a chamber, and there is a miniscule amount of a radioactive substance in a Geiger counter. If the counter detects a hit, a device unleashes poison and kills the cat. If it doesn't, the cat remains living. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, until the system is observed, the cat is in an indeterminate state – neither alive nor dead until someone – or something – detects it."

It stunned Burns how calmly and lucidly this man who was clearly mad with grief explained the subject, as though he were lecturing in a university hall. "You don't know how apt the comparison is."

"Like that cat, I'm sitting here, perched on the edge of life and death, but I just don't see the point in either." A brief streak of light caught their eyes. "It's the Leonids," said Smithers Senior. "Waylon always loved to watch them with me when he was a boy."

"I know. He told me when we watched the shower last year." A particularly long, bright, and impressive streak of light drew their eyes the other way. "That was a big one." Smithers rocked gently back and forth, eyes closed, as though ambivalent about whether to drop. "Listen, Waylon." He opened his eyes and turned them to Monty. "You need to know how close he came to never having known his father."

"What?"

"When he was just an infant, while you were at the plant, an alarm sounded. I was about to call for you, when... someone slapped his hand over my mouth. And then, most remarkably... I saw myself, Waylon! From the future. And he – I – told myself that you would die momentarily in a terrible accident if I were to alert you. Then Professor Frink sent a robot into the core to correct the problem, and you got to raise your wonderful son."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because if you kill yourself, then his death will have been in vain."

"No, I mean, why are you telling me these lies? To convince me I have some reason to live? Who cares if I have a reason? Me living won't bring him back!"

"True. But what if he would have lived longer had you died that day? If you have to die, my friend, then do so for a reason."

"This is incredible."

"But it's true."

"But it can't be true."

"But what other option do you have but to believe in it? What else could save your son?"

"I knew you could be cruel, Monty, but this... trying to make me believe in the impossible, this is the worst yet. To get a man's hopes up like that..." He headed for the nearest ladder and descended the cooling tower.

Monty bent forward and gazed at the dark cityscape before him, contemplating a drop as a breeze swept him back, and he followed Smithers down the ladder. Monty Burns would live. He had a man's life to save.

And another's to end.