When my eyes find Omar’s again, the concern etched in them is impossible to ignore. He’s furious I ditched the conference, but underneath all that, he’s just worried. And he’s using the conference as a reason to talk about the bigger issue at play here.
I’m not ok.
But that has nothing to do with any of this. And I don’t need help.
“Omar,” I say calmly. “We both know my work is not affected. My students are supported, my lectures are delivered, and I advance research in my field. I bring in funding, I meet deadlines, and I play the part.” I push to my feet, slinging my bag over my shoulder as I look down at him. “What I do beyond these walls, and what I do with the Basin Kings, isn’t yours to manage. If youdowant to hang me over one conference, then call it what it is. It’s optics, not substance.”
I pause, giving him the space to tear me a new one if that’s what he needs to do.
But he just stares up at me, with a war playing out behind his eyes, telling me he doesn’t know what to say or do.
Perfect.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” I say, turning towards the door, “I have responsibilities to fulfill.”
As I grab the door handle, I expect him to stop me and throw out one last attempt at a lifeline.
But silence remains.
So I pull the door open and head into the hallway… and try to ignore the sting of disappointment.
“So when the potential barrier is infinite, the particle doesn’t tunnel. It doesn’t transmit, it doesn’t even try. It stays confined.”
I click to the next slide and pick up my mug, taking a long drink of straight rum. It burns down my throat, and finally, the buzz starts to kick in. I set it back on the table and sigh asan infinite potential welllights up the screen.
“Here, the particle is trapped with absolute certainty. No probability of escape, no matter how much energy is thrown at it. It ricochets endlessly between the walls, remaining trapped.”
A hand lifts in the front row, and I sigh again, pointing at the confused-looking girl.
She tentatively lowers her hand while watching me. “Uh, sorry, I… was just wondering, doesn’t the particle still technically have energy inside the well?”
For fuck’s sake, did I not already say this?
I click back to the previous slide and point at the diagram of the standing waves. “These are quantized energy states. The particle always has energy, but it’s locked in here. That’s the point. What wasn’t clear?”
Her eyes widen as they dart between me and the screen, and she just shakes her head and lowers her eyes to her computer.
I turn and grab my mug again, draining the last of it. I need this day to hurry up and fucking end.
As I turn back to the room to continue drilling information into the half-asleep students staring back at me, I pause.
How long has he been here…
Alder sits in the same seat he was in the last time he showed up here, sprawling into it like he owns the whole row, with his arm hooked lazily across the back of the chair beside him. His eyes are fixed on me, with his brows drawn together, carefully observing me… like he’s looking for something.
I clear my throat as I shift my gaze away from him and click forward to the next slide. “This is where the particle spends most of its time. The peaks are where it exists, and where you can actually find it. And between those peaks are the nodes, which are gaps of nothing. Regions where the probability of finding anything is zero.” I pause for a moment as my eyes roam over the slide, taking in the nodes and noticing the way my pulse rises a bit with each one. “And without those peaks, where the wave actually rises… It’s like nothing exists at all.”
Turning back to the class again, I look right at Alder.
His head tilts slightly, waiting for me to say what I’m going to say.
“But a wavefunction with no peaks that’s just flat and empty… means there’s nothing alive in it. There’s nothing to feel.”
His chin lifts a little as he watches me, and his brows furrow more.
“So without at least one peak, the entire wavefunction collapses into nothing. It has no presence, and no existence at all.”
Alder’s features soften slightly as his gaze zeroes in on me, attempting to strip away every layer I keep between myself and the world. And for a moment, I let him. I let him see straight through me.
