Page 24 of What If It's You?

“Really? I mean…I get general interest in the industry, but it’s not like you’re looking for a new role…right?” He blinked at me, clearly still stunned. Maybe the reason I didn’t like him to “get in the weeds” was his assumption that I would immediately lose track of him. I tried not to feel smug. Knowing a couple talking points didn’t mean I really understood this.

“Not at the moment.” His eyebrows crept toward each other. “Honestly…I just haven’t been able to get this stuff out of my head. I think…maybe I want to write a book about it?” I winced. Sure, that sounded plausible.

But Drew grinned hugely.

“Seriously? I thought you were working on yet another romance.” He chuckled lightly. My shoulders tensed.

“What’s wrong with writing a romance?”

He glanced up, clearly startled by my sharp tone.

“Nothing! Anything you want to write will be as brilliant as you are. Which, if it’s not clear, is saying alot.” He reached for my hand, the gentle, loving look in his eyes lowering my hackles some. “Sorry if that came out wrong. I just know you’ve been struggling a little to find the right idea. And selfishly? I like seeing you get so inspired. Especially by something I’m working on. It’s like seeing Hemingway watch his first bullfight or something.”

I took a deep breath. It was possibly—okay, almost definitely—the case that the lack of anything resemblinganygenre of book on my laptop had me a little…defensive about the writing thing.

“So…can I pick your brain a little more?”

“Absolutely. As long as you promise to thank me first in the acknowledgments.”

“Joke’s on you, that was already the plan.” I tilted my head to the side pertly and he laughed.

“Touché. So? What do you want to know?”

“Why can’t your computer physically run the program indefinitely?”

“Because we haven’t linked enough qubits.” I frowned and he dropped his elbows to the table, making parentheses with his hands between us. “Abig enoughquantum computer could do that. But ours doesn’t even have a fraction of a percent of that kind of computing power. All this tech is still in its infancy.”

“How infant are we talking?”

“You know inMad Men,when they get a computer and it fills like…half a floor of their office and basically it’s a glorified calculator?”

I could feel my whole body going slack, mouth dropping open—how many years after that had it taken for computers to become…actual computers? If a “glorified calculator” had somehow booted me into the wrong life…how could I possibly usethatto get me back? Drew laughed at my obvious shock and stabbed a chopstick through the center of a piece of salmon sashimi.

“Someday we’ll get to the everyone-has-a-smart-phone stage of quantum computing, but we areyearsaway from that.”

I took a long sip of water. Hopefully Drew couldn’t see how hard my hand was shaking as I carefully replaced the tall, slim glass on the table. As much as I loved the stunning condo, the idea that I’d found a way to fully pursue my writing dreams here—even if the pursuit hadn’t landed me any quarry yet—I realized suddenly that I had always assumed I would eventually get back to my real life.

“So if the programwereto keep spinning out the possibilities ofone of the…‘inflection points’ you inputted. Like…to train the AI, say…”

Drew tilted his head to the side, gaze drifting to an upper corner of the room as he considered.

“I guess that would be possible if the computer just stopped trying to superpose the two states.”

My stomach dropped through my asshole so fast it had to have left a hole in the booth bench.

“Just to make sure I’m understanding what you’re saying…a timeline might be able to run longer than what you’re seeing right now…”

“If it were just one timeline, yeah.” Drew nodded. “Holding both states is the hard part.”

“Right…that makes sense.” My whole body was numb, too heavy and too light at the same time, one part of me rooted to the seat and another floating away. I bit back a hysterical laugh—howquantumof me. When I glanced up, Drew was looking at me expectantly. With a monumental effort of will, I forced myself to bite into a piece of fish in an attempt to appear nonchalant.

The conversation moved on from there, the two of us easily falling into a patter that was blessedly familiar from years of friendship, enough so that I could almost do it on autopilot. Which was lucky—anything that required more focus would have shorted out my massively overloaded mental circuits.

They were entirely consumed by one thought, its bass drum rhythm growing louder and more insistent with each passing second, reverberating through my core until I couldn’t just hear it, I couldfeelit taking hold of me, thethump thump thumprattling my vertebrae, making my teeth knock against one another spastically.

Just one timeline. Just one timeline.

If the computer could handle only one timeline, and I was currently inhabitingthisone…then it didn’t matter whether this was my “real” life or not. If what Drew said was true, there was no way to get back.

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