Chapter 046 - Skyscraper 06

  If memory served me right, Schr?dinger’s Cat was a famous thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schr?dinger in the 20th century. It had never been intended for real-world testing—just a theoretical exercise meant to illustrate the strange consequences of quantum mechanics.

  The premise was this:

  A cat is placed in a sealed box, alongside a tiny piece of radioactive material and a vial of cyanide. If the radioactive atom decays, it triggers a mechanism that breaks the vial, releasing the poison and killing the cat. But here's the catch—the decay of radioactive atoms is a probabilistic event. There’s no way to know when or even *if* it will happen. Until someone opens the box, the atom exists in a quantum superposition: both decayed and undecayed. And thus, the cat—tied to the fate of the atom—exists in a state of being both alive and dead at the same time.

  That’s the paradox. Schr?dinger’s Cat.

  Alive and dead.

  Neither truly one nor the other.

  Both states entangled—simultaneously existing and not existing.

  Just like those cats No. 25 had seen earlier in the open-air amphitheater—fragmented, bisected, missing parts of their bodies. Or like the people of this city, who had simply vanished into... something. Somewhere.

  “Schr?dinger’s Cat?” No. 25 wrinkled her brow. “Isn’t that the thing people always bring up when they’ve got no idea what the hell is going on? Like, ‘Oh, quantum mechanics, it explains everything.’”

  Elliot: “…”

  Me: “That’s... not entirely inaccurate.”

  No. 25 gave a lazy shrug, waving a hand through the air. “Right, right. So it’s all ghost physics then. Spooky science mumbo jumbo. The whole damn city just disappeared because of... metaphysical nonsense?”

  I sighed, abandoning any hope of a proper explanation. “Elliot, mind giving her the abridged version?”

  Elliot exhaled, shoulders sagging, and began explaining with the kind of patience that only came from long-suffering tolerance. Meanwhile, I kept flipping through the rest of the document. Once I finished scanning the pages, I folded them neatly and slid them into my jacket pocket.

  We stepped out of the chamber into the corridor. The transparent skywalk ahead lit up underfoot as our steps triggered the sensor lights, each glow fading behind us like ripples on water.

  Outside, the city skyline shimmered with a surreal brilliance—buildings bathed in artificial light, streets twisting upward at impossible angles. Elliot slowed, staring at the horizon. He spoke without looking at me.

  “I’ve got a theory. Might be worth testing.”

  “Go on.”

  He pointed toward the glittering urban sprawl and the surreal 45-degree fold that split the earth. “According to the documents, the earliest plans for space colonization were drawn up in ’87—just three years ago. But this quantum experiment? It was proposed only six months ago.”

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  He gestured broadly toward the city, the skyline bending like a warped reflection in a funhouse mirror. “They wanted to colonize space because Earth’s resources were running dry. Too many people. Not enough room. But this quantum project—it wasn’t about rockets. It was about dimensions. Scientists claimed they could unlock parallel realities—stacked layers of existence. Spread humanity across them like data on a server. Infinite space. No more overcrowding. No more shortages.”

  “But the plan was rejected,” I said, already guessing the next part.

  Elliot nodded grimly. “Too ambitious. Too unstable. The government called it dangerous.”

  Below us, the city glittered like a jewel—pristine, perfect, almost too good to be real. A monument to human ambition.

  Arrogance, even.

  We had always believed we could outwit nature.

  That we could bend the laws of the universe to our will.

  That light would keep shining—long after the sun had set.

  What an audacious species we were.

  The pieces began falling into place.

  “So after the rejection,” I said slowly, “Dr. James went rogue. He activated the experiment on his own... and then killed himself.”

  “Maybe he flipped a switch,” Elliot said. “Maybe he activated something. Launched some protocol. Whatever it was—it *worked*. It did *something*—something massive. And now, the entire population has slipped into a quantum flux. They’re still here... and not here. Just like the cat.”

  “Or maybe,” No. 25 added, arms wrapped around herself, “they’re flickering—jumping between layers so fast we can’t even register them.”

  “Or maybe,” Elliot said, thoughtful, “we’re in Dimension 1, and they’re in Dimension 2. Every time we switch, they switch too. Out of sync. Like two pendulums swinging just slightly out of phase.”

  He paused, eyes narrowing. “Back at City Hall—I found a proposal with a location scrawled on the back. Want to know where it pointed?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  He looked between us, then said, “Joint address: National Air Force Base and Quantum Information Laboratory.”

  I froze mid-step. “You’re saying...”

  “I’m saying those two places—on opposite ends of the map—are supposed to be the *same* place. Something—*some force*—ripped them apart.”

  A flash of memory surged through my mind—the city map we’d seen earlier.

  Two halves. Mirror images. Streets perfectly aligned. Buildings duplicated like code copied and pasted.

  What if... they weren’t supposed to be separate at all?

  What if the entire city—this folded, warped landscape—was once a single, cohesive whole?

  A unified reality, torn in two.

  And just then, from the sky above, a mechanical voice boomed overhead, crisp and emotionless:

  > **Ding! Congratulations on partially solving the mystery of the missing humans~~~

  > Folding of the city continues.

  > Please proceed quickly to locate the disappeared individuals.**