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is the one good thing I have left in my life. I would do anything for her.”
    I smiled and nodded. Karen cocked her head. Then she squeezed Chase’s shoulders and, looking at me with a face somewhere between relief and wariness, said, “I’d do anything for you too, baby.”
    I stood up. “What you’re feeling right now, Chase—that’s what I need you to hold onto. And Karen, you too: hold onto every bit of love and loyalty you feel for Chase. Love is entangled across universes. We’re going to use the love you feel to find good matches for you.”
    “The fuck you talking about?” said Chase, staring at me, hard. I’d exposed his vulnerability, and now he needed to assert himself. He was used to making people look away whenever he wanted these days. A legless man glares at you, you avert your eyes; that’s the rule.
    I didn’t look away. I even smiled a little. One hyena to another.
    “I’m part of a team that’s researching a process calledsuperportation. That over there,” I said, pointing to the 320 sq. ft. gray-concrete cube in the center of the room, “is the heart of what we call our Classical Information Aggregator. ClassAgg for short. It’s where we conduct our experiments.”
    Chase, like any good Pennsylvania farmer, scowled at all that mumbo-jumbo. But to my face he said, “Well, don’t stop now, Egghead. Tell me how it works.”
    “I’d have to lecture you for a year on current entanglement theory to even scratch the surface,” I said. I opened the door to the ClassAgg and flourished like a New York City doorman. “Why don’t I show you instead?”

    I love watching the faces of people when they first get a look inside the ClassAgg. It looked like a homey Pennsylvania efficiency apartment, featuring a 12-point stag-head presiding over the faux fireplace and framed, embroidered psalms hanging on the walls. The quilt on the full-sized bed was a gorgeous example of the local art. On the gingham futon sat an oversized Raggedy Ann. Coffee and whoopie pies—Karen loved whoopie pies—waited for us on the Amish kitchen table.
    “This room is so darling!” said Karen. I’d showed it to her several times back when we were lovers, but she had to sound surprised for Chase. “I want to move in!” she flourished.
    Chase didn’t seem able to see through her lies. Glad I wasn’t theonly one. “This is science?” he asked, not without humor. “How is this science?”
    “Let’s eat and talk,” I said.
    So we dipped our fingers in cream filling and spooned sugar in our coffee while I did my best to explain uncertainty and entanglement in layman’s terms.
    “The room’s a little goofy by design,” I said. “To a lot of Pennsylvanians, it looks like Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and if not, it’s still campy and funny. Either way works for us. For our experiments, we need people to be as relaxed as they can be.”
    “That sounds like something a shrink would say,” said Chase, suddenly suspicious. “Is this all a trick? Are you a fucking shrink? I ain’t going to no shrink!”
    Karen pinched his arm. He turned to her and dared her with a “What?”
    I just kept talking. “We’re not trying to help you get in touch with your inner child here. For superportation to work, we need to get you in touch with the other Chases out there, ones that are similar enough to you so that we can copy information from them.”
    Chase stopped mid-chew. “What do you mean, ‘the other Chases?’”
    “Like that one,” I said, gesturing with my chin.
    I’d gotten lucky; the timing was perfect. I had started the ClassAgg before I entered the chamber, and now, as if on-cue, Chase and Karen looked across the table and saw a silvery, liquidy form sitting across from them. It looked exactly like Chase. It was speaking to someonewe couldn’t see. A second later it started laughing like a silent movie. It was standing on two perfectly healthy legs.
    “That’s me?” said Chase. Then: “That’s not