JOAN'S FLASHFORWARD

Chapter 8 Luke's Cat

As Luke came to, he heard his sister and his brother-in-law arguing about whether to take him to the emergency room. Joan was in favor; Adam said he would ordinarily agree, but at the moment the hospital would be swamped with accident victims.

Luke found his voice. "I don't need to go. It's under control."

"Luke," said his sister in concern, "you should have told us that you got injured during the Flash."

"I wasn't. I cut my arm on purpose."

"What? Whatever for?"

"To prove that I can save Grace."

Adam stared at Luke before looking at his wife. "He's delirious. You're right, we should take him—"

"No, no. I knew what I was doing," Luke insisted. "Let me stay lying down, and I'll explain."

"I'm going to fix some food, and get something for you to drink," said Joan, feeling a little shaken. "Losing that much blood is not good, no matter what you thought you were doing. I can hear you talk from the kitchenette." She walked into the area.

"Okay. The basic idea is that I don't think what we saw was THE future. I think it was a version of the future. We can change it by our actions."

"Because God gave us free will?" asked Joan. She thought about the ripples and the whole Ramsey situation. Things definitely could have gone differently; God had showed her the outcome that would have occurred had Joan not intervened.

"Well, yes, but I was thinking it through from the scientific point of view. Science is testable, whereas God is working in mysterious ways at the moment."

"I can agree with that," said Adam ruefully.

"Remember Ms Lischak talking about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in AP Physics?"

"Vaguely," said Joan. "Like I remember high school French."

In other words, not much, thought Luke sardonically. Then he recalled that that particular school quarter was sandwiched between Crazy Camp and the death of Judith. Joan definitely didn't want to remember that time.

"The basic idea is that, at the subatomic level, you can't predict exactly how particles will behave. It's not just a lack of information – it's the particles themselves that are unpredictable."

"You're saying the PARTICLES are unpredictable," pointed out Adam. "What about bigger stuff?"

"Particles can affect things on a bigger level. A physicist named Schroedinger published a famous line of reasoning. Suppose you take an atomic reaction that can go two ways, and you can't predict which. Suppose you create a box designed to release some poison if the reaction goes one way, and stay safe if it goes the other way. Then you put a cat in the box."

"Gross."

"It's a thought experiment, Joan; he wasn't trying to kill a real cat. His point was that you couldn't predict whether the cat would live or die, so the Uncertainty Principle can affect events on our scale. It's called the Schroedinger's Cat argument."

"I see," said Adam. "With visual images, it's easier for me to follow."

"What does this have to do with Grace and your arm?" demanded Joan.

"If there is only one possible future, and we can see into it, then everything becomes predictable. The Uncertainty Principle says that can't happen. So more than one future is possible, and I think we can determine which one happens. What we saw in the visions is probably what science would call the 'default' future – the one that will happen if we don't will to change it."

"And scientists are sure about this?" asked Joan.

"Frankly, no," admitted Luke. "Einstein hated Heisenberg's theory, he called it 'God playing dice with the universe'. But all the experiments on the matter have favored Heisenberg and disproved Einstein. To be sure of it, I did an experiment of my own, on my arm. You see, I happened to see my arm during the vision, and there was no scar. Now there is. If I can change the future in small ways like that, I may be able to save Grace. It was worth hurting my arm, to know that. Actually I didn't intend to hurt it this bad; the bandage got loose and it started bleeding again."

Joan served the food. "I don't want to sound insulting but it still sounds very iffy to me."

Luke dug into the food with relief. "I'm not insulted, Joan; challenging theories is part of the scientific method. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. I just want it to be true for Grace's sake."

" I love Grace, and of course I want her to survive. But have you talked with any other scientists about this?"

"No. Everything was too chaotic at Harvard."

Adam seemed to think. "Maybe you could talk to a physicist here at Baconia."

Joan and Adam managed to arrange an appointment for Luke that afternoon with a Professor Mahadenka in the Baconia University Physics Department, even though things were still chaotic. Ordinarily getting a time might have been difficult, but classes had been cancelled, and perhaps being a Harvard science student gave Luke a certain prestige. The professor would know that he wasn't just a crackpot wandering off the street. In return, Joan also demanded that Luke get his arm examined once the crunch in the hospitals had lessened.

Luke visited the Professor and described his ideas, purely as a theory. He definitely didn't admit to cutting his arm on purpose.

"It's interesting reasoning, Mr. Girardi," said the Professor. "But I don't know if it's an accurate description of the universe."

"You don't?"

"The Uncertainty Principle isn't an absolute law. It's a hypothesis. A hypothesis strong enough to stump Einstein and supported by decades of experiment, but still a hypothesis. Now we have a completely new phenomenon, a vision of the future. We still have no idea how it worked, scientifically speaking. Does the Uncertainty Principle apply in this circumstance? We don't know. It may take years to come up with a theory. "

Luke frowned.

"As an analogy," said the professor, "consider the matter of motion. Aristotle taught that all moving objects eventually come to a stop, and that certainly matched what everybody observed. The philosopher had no way of knowing that a moving object would keep its velocity forever in a frictionless vacuum; that was beyond the technology of his day. So hypotheses based on limited circumstances can turn out to be wrong."

"I see," said Luke, disappointed. "Thank you, professor." He got up and started for the door.

"Excuse me if I am prying, Mr. Girardi, but you seem to have a personal stake in this, not just a matter of having the right theory. Lots of people saw visions that affected them deeply."

"I saw my girlfriend dying. I want to know if it can be stopped."

"I'm sorry. Let me point out that I didn't say that your theory was wrong, only that it is unprovable at the moment. So, don't lose hope for your girlfriend."

"Thank you." But I think I've got a proof that the future can be changed. I've got a scar on my arm that proves it.

Joan and Adam had given Luke a spare key, in case they went out. They were doing charitable work with a girl called Ellie Himmel, helping victims of the Flash, and they couldn't predict when they might go out. So Luke let himself in.

The couple WERE there, in the living room. Adam was in the far corner with a sketch pad. Joan was kneeling in a rather awkward pose, looking upward, and she had no clothes on.

"Joan!" Luke looked away quickly, embarrassed.

"Ulp!"

Adam hastily put down his pad and fetched a robe from a nearby chair for his wife to put on.

"I'm sorry, Joan," said Luke, flustered. "I didn't think you'd be, um, unclad in the living room."

"It's all right. I was posing for a picture."

All the same, Joan was a lot calmer over the mishap than she would have been, say, four years ago. In high school she might have gone ballistic over the possibility that her brother had seen her butt. Brother and sister had matured over the years.

"Um, what's the picture?" asked Luke, anxious to change the subject.

"It's something I saw in my Flash vision," explained Adam. "It was called the Visionary."

Luke thought over it. "That's weird."

"My painting?"

"The cause and effect. You're copying a painting that you saw six months from now. But the picture you saw was drawn by you, based on—"

"—a painting I saw in the Flash, six months from now," mused Adam. "That IS weird. Where did the original idea come from?"

"It's called a Strange Loop," Luke went on, "and it's used in a lot of science fiction stories, like THE TERMINATOR. I just never expected to come across it in real life. But could you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Do something different in the copy. Prove that things can be changed this time around. For Grace's sake."

"OK."

"It beats cutting your arm," admitted Joan. "What next?"

"I'll try to talk to Grace," said Luke. "I don't know what her illness was or where she caught itt, but maybe it was in one of the impoverished regions she works in. Bad sanitation, lack of antibodies. Maybe I can persuade her to come back to the States for a while, until the danger is over."

"I managed to catch Lyme Disease in Arcadia," Joan said ruefully. "But yes, saving Grace's life is worth a try. Maybe some good will come out of this!"

TO BE CONTINUED

(Author's Note: In the original FLASHFORWARD novel a scientist did suggest creating a scar to test the changeability of the future. I wanted to give credit where it is due)