Entanglement

He was driving home in the rain when it hit him.

“This is ridiculous.”

They knew this would happen. The project meant he had to be away from her for many months, doing things that seemed like gibberish to everyone.

“He smashes things,” she would tell her friends.

And he did. Small things. Things so small, it’s hard to tell if they exist until they collide.

…sharing different heartbeats…

He pressed the button on his phone and let it record for a beat.

“This song came on and made me think of you.”

He recently discovered voice memos and he had something to say on this long ride home, under the pouring sky.

“Tomorrow will be half a year since we last met and I’m falling apart.”

He pauses as an oncoming car blinds him momentarily.

“I wish I could share this car ride with you, along with this dark sky.”

He turns down the volume of the song.

“I still feel you, 10,000 kilometers away. Maybe your taking a nap right now and tracing my path home from another space.”

The rain beats down harder.

“I visit you when I dream. You’ll tell me to wipe my nose and then we would sit in your room and watch the Milky Way rotate outside your window.”

He looked at the sky.

“When I wake, your still in everything I do.”

He passes by a coffee house with a few night owls perched at the counter.

“Every reminder of you – a song playing in a cafe, a scene in a film – cuts a small wound and slowly bleeds me to death. If you feel a fraction of the same pain, guilt shoots through me like lightning.”

He slows down as he crosses a puddle the size of a small ocean.

“Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

He glances at the papers in the passenger seat.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that question and also another question we’ve been trying to answer on this project.“

He rubs his hands along the steering wheel.

“There are these two particles that have become linked somehow. Whatever we do to one, it affects the other, even across long distances. We shot one to a lab on the other side of the world, and when they spun it one way, we see the paired particle spin the other.”

The chill in the car bites him. He turns on the heater.

“If what we’re observing is true, even if we separate them by an entire universe, they’re still connected. These particles are bound by something unseen, something profound, something we’re only beginning to understand. It’s like crazy.”

The familiar old brick façade of the hotel comes into view.

“I know you nod off when I talk about work, but all these questions in my head are starting to blur together. I miss you terribly. See you soon.”

He taps his phone.

He ponders the rain and the view of the parking lot from his rental car.

He climbs the stairs to his empty room.