In Any Lifetime

Jonas had always seen the gulf between art and science as unbreachable, two sides of two very different coins. Never would he have imagined that paintings and quantum mechanics would find a connection, but Amanda had seen it instantly. Their work, she said, required them each to identify patterns and connections. They both labored to conjure reality—the appearance of it at least—from the speculative. His work and her art (as she practiced it) were even bounded by the same inalterable physics. Light. Perspective. The limits of human observation. They were both in the business of understanding and interpreting the marvels of creation.

“Philosophy tells us that two contradictory things cannot be true at the same time. Physics tells us that two different objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Quantum physics, though, contends the philosophers and the physics experts are wrong.” ... “In fact, entanglement is the primary difference between classical physics and quantum physics. It’s a keystone idea, an idea which makes subsequent ideas possible. One of those ideas is that of quantum computing. Traditional computers are built on a binary architecture, ones and zeros. Each literal bit of data is either one or zero.” ... “But quantum entanglement recognizes a third possibility, that of the one and zero coexisting, being both true and false”—he paused for effect—“at the same time.”

"A life spent wishing things were different . . . isn’t a life.”

Pursuing a vendetta is exhausting business. Vengeance takes its toll on the vengeful.