Excerpt from Half-Lives, #2

Today's project was to wonder if some of the strange quantum behaviors of photons and electrons might be reproduced at a larger scale. Say, at the level of an atom or even a molecule. Just as he had all his books open to the right pages, the phone rang again.
"Hello?" he said, shoving the receiver into the space between his head and shoulder, trapping it there with his ear.
"Timothy?"
He did not recognize the voice. "Yes. Who's speaking?"
A burst of static confused the answer. He was sure he heard the name of an unfamiliar woman. Then the rest came in clear. "Are you there? I'm sorry to bother you again, but..."
"Yvonne?"
"Yes, it's me."
"That's funny," Timothy said. "For a moment I thought it was someone else."
"Who?"
"I don't know, there was static on the line. Just my imagination, probably."
"I don't think so," said Yvonne in that tinny, tiny voice, far away. "That's why I'm calling back. I've been so nervous to tell anyone about this, but if I can't tell you, who can I tell?"
"Tell me what?"
"I think I was supposed to die in that accident, Timothy."
"Oh, you can't know that," Timothy said. "There is no such thing as determinism at the middle scale."
"I know, I know all that. You know, those days of hanging around smoking weed, I learned so much from you, and it did a great deal to help me with losing Valery. I feel so close to you. If I was only your age, we might have married."
"But you were old then and older now," Timothy laughed.
"Yes," Yvonne agreed, and Timothy could hear a strained smile. "But something is going on right now, and I need help to understand it. Wherever I go I am not expected. Someone has been there ahead of me, living my life and having my relationships. Sometimes I see Valery's reflection in glass or in mirrors and at first I thought it was just my imagination, wishful thinking, but now I'm sure I'm seeing something real. And some other doctor... people remember her when I'm not around and forget her when I show up. She has a name, and I can't remember it. I wrote it down but the writing disappeared.
"Timmy, Timothy, I'm frightened. Something very strange is going on around me."
"You know how you sound, don't you?"
"Yes," Yvonne said. "I sound crazy."
"You sound scared," Timothy corrected. "Hey, do you have any time off coming? Maybe after Christmas?"
The holiday season was always busy at the hospital and Yvonne preferred to work, giving other people time with their families. "New Year’s?"
"Fine, fine. Do you want to come visit? Stay with me a few days, I'll make room somehow. Visit your brother a little, and tell me more about what's going on. I'll do some reading between now and then, see what I come up with."
"All right, Timothy. I'll think about it. Hey, thanks for listening."
"You got it," he said, and listened as she disappeared from the line for a second time.
Timothy looked back at his work, at the nearest open book. Wheeler, however, does not endorse the hypothesis that the state of the photons is affected by the observation prior to the observation but, rather, that any sort of measurement annihilates the photon itself. As we know, measurement affects the particles being measured, a well-known observation effect sometimes confused with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Equations for the wave form instability...
Those were the equations he wanted, useful even though the book that contained them was written for undergraduate students. "An introduction to quantum uncertainty," was the title.
Something about that passage tickled in the light of the phone call. A simple coincidence? Anxiety?
"No middle-scale determinism," Timothy reminded himself. But somehow his own voice echoing off the bare walls in this drab, lonely apartment was more unsettling than comforting.