Chapter 5
It is said that the only thing certain in life are death and taxes. What this fails to take into account is that to pay taxes you have to earn money, and that need waits for no one. And so, in spite of the tumult of the previous evening, I still woke up to my alarm, got breakfast ready for Marcus, made sure he had everything he needed for school, hugged him goodbye at the door, and then walked myself onto the bus that would take me to work. “And you say it's gotten worse?” My pen stopped moving and I looked up. Isabelle Crane – Izzy – stared at me over the tops of her horn-rimmed glasses. “That's what it seems like, anyway. Now that Marcus has lost awareness of her I'm wondering what's going to happen next.” “Assuming that things continue happening the way that they have been then the only logical conclusion is that eventually she'll be forgotten by everyone – a living ghost.” “I've heard of 'the living dead' before, but I'll confess that you just gave it a chilling new take. Also I'll remind you that this is Alice we're talking about. My wife.” “You act as though I'm a soulless, heartless statue that wouldn't care if her own parents were pushed off of a cliff in front of her.” “Your monotone delivery doesn't really convince me otherwise.” “How rude. I'd miss Alice very much if I forgot about her. Her roast at the very least should be considered a national treasure. I still don't know how she gets it so juicy. I'm not sure what I'd do if I forgot that.” “I suppose that would be the blessing of forgetting – you wouldn't remember what you had lost.” Isabelle had been a friend of the family for several years – she and Alice had been friends in school and they had just continued to keep in touch. Me working with her had been a stroke of serendipity. I sighed, shaking my head, then returned to the paperwork in front of me, but I couldn't bring myself to focus on it. “I've tried to think about what this could be, but I haven't found anything that could even be considered a hint. I'm trying to not lose hope, but I also don't have anything to go off of.” Isabelle stopped pretending to work and pushed away her suspiciously incomplete stack of paperwork. “Not to state the obvious, but it sounds like it's simply a matter of perception.” “Come again?” “Perception. To perceive. To see.” “Thank you for the language lesson. I'm indebted to you for your bottomless wisdom and guidance. What do you mean by perception?” She thought for a second, thinking about how to phrase her answer. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” “Of course it does. After all, the tree doesn't know that there is no one to hear it, so it would need to make the sound every time just to be safe.” “A fair point. Uncertainty brings about a certain consistency. But let's take a scenario where the tree is certain that no one is around.” “In that scenario we cannot be certain since there is nobody to measure anything.” “So we must conclude one of two choices: Either it has made a sound, or it has not made a sound.” “Why are you starting to sound like a philosophy professor? Yes, two choices. Each one mutually exclusive to the other.” “It was my other choice for a major. So not unlike Schrödinger's famous cat, we can only conclude that it has done both until we prove otherwise.” “Are you trying to mess with me right now?” “That's just a bonus. But think for a moment if you will that rather than hearing something we are perceiving something, or in this case someone. One person fails to perceive someone. Not an uncommon occurrence. But what if that number began to grow – the lack of perception turning into something almost like a pandemic. They do not perceive her, therefore as far as they are concerned, she does not exist. Yet you perceive her, therefore she also exists. Two separate states happening at the same time, and neither one is stable because no one has confirmed one or the other.” There was a moment of silence as I stared at Izzy that was only broken by the clattering of my pen as it slipped from my fingers onto the desk. “You're saying that-” “I'm not saying anything. This is just a hypothesis. Granted, it's a hypothesis from me so the baseline accuracy is abnormally high.” “Fine. So you're hypothesizing that if I ever find myself in a situation where I.... what, overlook her? If that happens then I'll just completely forget about her?” “I think it's more accurate to say that her existence will become more nebulous, but sure, that's more or less accurate.” My mind start rapidly shifting gears, trains of through slamming into each other and the force of it was enough to make my eyes start losing focus. I had to get home. With even Marcus having forgotten her now, I was one of the only people left that remembered her and I needed to do everything I could to keep on remembering her. “Izzy, I need you to try to keep on remembering Alice. Whatever it takes, keep on remembering her.” “Go on, I'll take care of things here.” I grabbed my coat and it took everything I had not to run like a madman through the office on my way back outside.