"It was meant to make fun of quantum superposition as applied to subatomic particles like electrons and photons, by applying it to a macro-scale object and illustrating that it is counter intuitive, as if that is an argument against the truth - "

"Anyways. I proved that electrons behave in a way consistent with quantum superposition."

"Alright. So. Say this is true. How does this then relate to what's happening here?"

"I figured out how to get both cats out of the box. Rather than a particle collapsing the wave and hitting only a single target, the image it… It made the wave collapse multiple times. Possibly its shape was reflecting some… I don't know, some fundamental pattern that we haven't discovered in the movements of subatomic particles. Or something. It didn't matter."

"It didn't matter? What are you talking about, how could it not matter - "

"I didn't understand it, not entirely, but it was happening. It was observable, and repeatable, and so it had to be accounted for. Maybe I couldn't get the math to work out, or figure out how to answer all the questions it raised, but it was real!"

"I tested it, I tested it a lot but I kept getting different results. The image created energy, but how much and how quickly? I didn't know. It was very frustrating. My equipment kept screwing up. My first meter burned out with only two days of testing and my backup not much later. It was only when I borrowed some more sensitive equipment and got a proper apparatus up and running that I started getting consistent results."

"It turned out that the size of the image didn't matter, provided that the lines were clearly delineated. That was important. I theorized that you could make one very small, perhaps small enough to fit inside a pocket, if you could get the engraving fine enough. The size of the slits? They needed to be placed at a wide enough angle for the image to be entirely visible, and to be narrower then the wavelength of the light used to view it."

"But that wasn't the most interesting thing. The amount of power acquired from a single viewer was tiny. Enough to build up tiny spark over an extended time perhaps, but not enough to do actual work. A single viewer was almost unmeasurable while it was happening. I had to get special equipment from the university."

"But when viewed by two people at the same time, the effects doubled!"

"And if you added a third? Not tripled, but quadrupled! It doubled again!"

"Don't you see!? Twice a spark isn't still isn't much, neither are three sparks, or a hundred sparks! You'd need an entire city to power a building. But doubling every time? You only need eight people and that spark becomes two hundred and fifty six sparks. Twelve people? Over four thousand sparks. My first test with ten people melted to the table."

"My husband, after the incident with the table, he asked me, hesitant you know, as if it were beyond the realm of possibility, if we might, one day, use it to power the factory! Hah! Power the factory!? He didn't understand either! Don't you see? With only seventy three people, I could provide infinite free power to the entire nation! With seventy seven? The entire planet!"

"Josephine!" Bina shouts, having tried to speak up several times during the rant and failed. "That's great, but you're missing something. If it's a fundamental property of the universe, why does it need people to work?"

Josephine seems taken aback - 

And for a moment, so fast it's barely noticeable, the sky isn't so perfect anymore. Is dark and yawning like teeth - 

And then the sky is blue and lightly clouded again. Like it always was.

Ant glances up, and then back down, shaking eir head. "Bina's not wrong. That seems... Too easy."

"It requires people because that's what made the effects work."

She seems to be getting frustrated, or perhaps angry, shoulders tight and jaw tense.

"But there haven't always been people so-" Ant has no idea where ey was going with that, but it seemed important.

"Look, I don't know, okay? I don't know! And I don't appreciate being lectured on it! The other Bina got quite huffy with me as well..."

She crosses her arms over her chest and looks away. She seems upset, now, like she doesn't know whether to start shouting or to cry.

"Thought I was the teenager," Ant mutters to Bina.

Josephine gets up and walks away, staring into the distant sky.

The air's still and heavy and hot, almost liquid, and the engines have developed a soft, high pitched whine.

Bina sighs and drags a hand down her face. Gives Josephine a moment, but - 

This is coming to an end.

She's developing a sense for this now.

"Forty watts," she says. "You said the experiment would get only forty watts, when we talked. A whole crowd for a lightbulb."

"Don't you know how exponents work, dear? Forty-seven people is forty watts. Forty-eight would've been eighty - why I didn't look. Forty-nine, and you have a hundred and sixty. Seventy three people? Over two and a half gigawatts. Sixty seven million lightbulbs. It'd be an easy job, too, for those seventy three. Just staring. They could work in shifts. Power the entire world."

"-Almost too good to pass up."

"I couldn't! Imagine it, clean energy, easily more than we could ever use! It'd be enough to end scarcity, to launch us ahead into a new age - "

"...To get the botfly's image in every science textbook," Bina says, mouth dry.

"Alien space bug. Ruling the human race. Or eating it."

"Oh, I'm sure that's not how it'd go - " she says, voice far away and almost dreamy.

"Wait - No. Look." They're low on time. Either Bina's about to wake - or she should wake - and: "You've spoken to Three, and to the others. You remember the other loops? Have you talked to them?"

"Oh. No. Maybe. Your Three, she pulled me forward, but this is my first time in this dream... You anchored me here. Gave me this." And she touches the red scarf around her neck. "You left it behind this time. In two pieces. You don't, usually. I gave you one back, with the note. I kept the other, for a time..."

She seems vague, eyes unfocused.

"That doesn't actually explain anything!" she shouts, then - 

There's a growl.

It's not the engines.

It's the sky above them.

A cloud splits, grows teeth, turns into a gaping green maw - 

There's no time left, but Bina has one last question.

"Josephine!" she shouts over the wind, over the dying engine. "You have to tell me how you died!"

"Oh. It's the funniest thing. I don't remember."

And her smile is a skull's smile, her flesh gone, her clothes except the brilliant red scarf long rotted rags - 

Ant grabs Bina's hand again, staring up at the sky.