ELECTRIC ICARUS PUBLISHING PRESENTS · NEON THEATER · NEON STAGE · ORIGINAL SERIAL FICTION
THE QUANTUM CONUNDRUM
The doctor is in. Unfortunately, so are several other versions of him.
Episode 002: The Third Signature
Mystery · Sci-Fi · Dark Satire · Paranormal Absurdism
Previously on The Quantum Conundrum: Dr. Locke received an invoice for his own death. Then another Locke arrived with blood on his sleeve. Then came a third knock. Read Episode 001 — The Man Who Knocked Twice.
The voice on the other side of the door belonged to Dr. Elias Locke.
The woman holding the machine did not.
She stood in the corridor wearing a gray overcoat, sensible shoes, and the sort of expression usually reserved for people who had just been informed that the fire escape was decorative. In one hand she carried a leather document case. In the other, a small brass recorder with a speaker grille no larger than a biscuit.
It repeated the message.
“Dr. Locke? I believe we have a problem.”
Locke stared at it.
The other Locke stared at it.
“That’s my voice,” they said together.
The woman pressed a switch. The machine fell silent.
“I’m aware,” she said. “It has made introducing myself rather difficult.”
“Then try using your own,” said the Locke whose coffee cup lay shattered on the floor.
“Agent Karen. The Agency.”
“Which agency?”
“The one that has to come around when certain things happen twice.”
He considered this.
“Would you care to be more specific?”
“No.”
“Marvelous. At least you’re consistent.”
Karen stepped into the office, observed the broken cup, the bloodstained sleeve, and the other doctor, then withdrew a pencil from behind her ear.
“Two living claimants,” she murmured, marking something on a form. “One disputed fatality. One unsuitable beverage.”
“Coffee is not unsuitable,” the first Locke objected.
“Under the circumstances, Doctor, the Agency is treating it as evidence.”
She shut the door.
It knocked three times.
All three of them looked at it.
“Is someone out there?” asked the bloodstained Locke.
“No,” said Karen.
The door knocked again.
“Then who,” the first Locke asked, “has developed such deplorable manners?”
Karen checked a pocket watch that had no hands.
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
The Two Accounts
Karen placed two folders on the desk. They were identical: brown cardboard, black string, red Agency seal.
One was dry.
The other was damp, as though someone had hauled it from a river.
Both bore the same name.
DR. ELIAS LOCKE — TEMPORAL RECONCILIATION
The first Locke picked up the dry folder.
“Am I permitted to read my own file?”
“You are permitted to read a file bearing your name.”
“Is there a distinction?”
“An increasingly expensive one.”
Inside was a single account of the morning.
At 8:13, Dr. Elias Locke had been alive, drinking coffee and reviewing correspondence. At 8:14, an unidentified man had entered his office. The file recorded a broken cup, a disputed identity, and a telephone that rang without being answered.
The second folder described a different morning.
At 8:13, Dr. Elias Locke had died.
At 8:14, the same doctor had been observed in his office, drinking coffee.
At 8:15, a second individual bearing his name had arrived, carrying blood of undetermined origin.
The report concluded with the words:
INCONSISTENCY RETAINED. DO NOT RECONCILE WITHOUT A WITNESS.
The first Locke lowered the paper.
“So according to one folder I am alive, and according to the other I am dead.”
“According to both folders, you’re exceptionally difficult to invoice,” Karen replied.
The bloodstained Locke leaned closer.
“Who wrote these?”
Karen turned each folder over. There was no author named, only a departmental stamp.
“One was delivered to Agent Weller’s office yesterday. The other is scheduled for delivery next Thursday.”
“Next Thursday?” both doctors said.
“Yes.”
“Then where did you get it?” asked the first.
“From the same place I get all my difficult Thursdays. The office.”
The bloodstained Locke began unbuttoning his stained cuff.
“There’s something you need to know about the blood—”
Karen raised one finger.
“You told him it was his.”
“Yes.”
“Have you established that?”
He hesitated.
“I have reason to believe—”
“Then that’s a belief, Doctor, not a test result.”
The first Locke smiled thinly.
“Finally. Somebody around here with a respect for evidence.”
“Don’t sound so pleased,” Karen said. “Neither of you can prove which morning you’ve come from.”
That ended the smile.
A Question of Procedure
Karen arranged three sheets of paper across the desk.
The top of the first read CLAIMANT A.
The second read CLAIMANT B.
The third was blank.
“Absolutely not,” said the first Locke.
“I haven’t asked you anything.”
“You’ve called me a letter.”
“I haven’t assigned the letters.”
“Somehow that makes it worse.”
Karen folded her arms.
“The Agency is not here to decide which one of you is real.”
The bloodstained Locke looked startled.
“Then why are you here?”
“To make certain nobody erases a person merely to tidy the paperwork.”
For a moment, there was no humor in the room.
The first Locke looked at his counterpart. The same eyes, the same familiar furrow in the brow, the same infuriating way of standing as though the furniture had failed to meet an implied standard.
There was blood on that man’s sleeve.
There was a broken cup at his own feet.
Those were facts. Everything else had become a very elaborate argument about what facts ought to mean.
“Suppose,” he said carefully, “we both remember being me yesterday.”
“Then you both remember being you yesterday,” Karen said.
“And if only one of us was there?”
“Then the record is incomplete.”
“And if one of us is lying?”
“Then we investigate the lie. We don’t begin by executing the liar on the strength of a filing error.”
The bloodstained Locke gave a short, unwilling laugh.
“Weller teach you that?”
“Weller taught me to carry two pens. The rest I learned from his expense reports.”
She set a third sheet beside them.
It was a receipt.
Not for a service, but for a transaction.
ACCOUNT: ELIAS LOCKE
DEBIT: ONE LIFE
CREDIT: PENDING
WITNESS REQUIRED
“That,” said the first Locke, “is an obscene billing practice.”
“It’s an obscene accounting system,” Karen corrected. “We have not established that anything is owed.”
The bloodstained Locke stared at the word pending.
“Then somebody is trying to collect.”
“Possibly,” Karen said.
“From which of us?”
She took a long time answering.
“That is the wrong question.”
The Telephone
The telephone rang.
It was an old black instrument with a rotary dial and a long cord. Its cord was currently lying on the desk, unplugged.
The first Locke pointed at it.
“Now that’s discourteous.”
Karen’s face changed.
Not much.
Just enough that both doctors noticed.
“Don’t answer it,” said the bloodstained Locke.
“For once,” said Karen, “I agree with him.”
The telephone rang again.
The first Locke lifted the receiver.
“Elias!” shouted the other.
“I’m tired of being supervised by myself.”
He put it to his ear.
Nothing.
Then a soft metallic click.
A voice said, “Please state the number of doctors in the room.”
Locke looked around.
“Two.”
A pause.
“Please state the number of witnesses.”
“One.”
Another click.
“Response does not match the record.”
Karen snatched the receiver from his hand.
“This is Agent Karen. Identify your department.”
Static.
Then the voice returned, quieter.
“Do not allow the witness to sign.”
The line went dead.
Karen placed the receiver on its cradle.
Nobody spoke.
From behind the desk, the unplugged cord stirred an inch across the wood, like a small animal dreaming of escape.
The bloodstained Locke swallowed.
“Someone knows we’re here.”
The first Locke watched Karen.
“Someone knows what you’re about to do.”
Karen looked down at the third sheet.
The one she had placed on the desk blank.
It was no longer blank.
A signature had appeared across its witness line, dark and glossy as fresh ink.
Dr. Elias Locke.
Below it, in tiny block letters, was a time.
8:12 A.M.
One minute before the death recorded in the wet folder.
The first Locke reached toward the page.
Karen caught his wrist.
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because that ink is still wet.”
“That seems a rather poor reason.”
“It is,” she said. “But I haven’t got a better one yet.”
Behind them, the tall mirror on the wall gave a faint click.
Not a crack.
The sound of a lock turning.
The two doctors looked up.
The mirror showed the desk, the lamp, the broken cup, and Karen standing between them.
It showed both Lockes.
And, just beyond their shoulders, the suggestion of a third figure standing where the office contained only empty air.
Neither man moved.
The figure in the glass lifted a hand.
On its wrist was a watch.
Its hands read 8:12.
Karen slowly opened her document case.
Inside was another folder.
Unlike the first two, it had no name on the cover.
Only a handwritten instruction:
OPEN AFTER THE THIRD SIGNATURE.
The office door knocked three times.
Karen closed the case.
“Well,” said Dr. Elias Locke, though neither doctor was entirely certain which of them had spoken, “I suppose that’s one way to start a Thursday.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
Reality is relative. Competence is optional.
Original serial fiction by Jon LaBelle · An Electric Icarus Publishing production. This Neon Theater episode continues its own developing narrative; conflicting records are part of the mystery, not settled proof of any character’s identity.
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