Submitted by Dave Chua
on January 08, 2024
** QUANTUM SHORTS 2023/2024: SHORTLISTED
>> Read an interview with the author
She studied the cabinet-shaped dollhouse. It was double-storied with pink plastic windows and a welcoming sea-green door. Clare’s family of anthropomorphic squirrels still dwelled within. She recalled her daughter’s eager explanation about which room was for which of the thumb-sized figures.
“Maybe it can fetch a good price,” Lee said, breaking her trance.
“I don’t have the heart to sell it,” she said. “The back and forth and telling people why…”
“We can’t keep everything. Something has to go,” he said.
She became silent. No one was going to be using this room; but maybe this was his way of coping.
“Let’s handle the cleanup another time,” he said and stomped downstairs.
Left alone, she looked through the certificates and trophies that Clare collected. So many science fair awards. Next to her sketch of Marie Curie and Chien-Shiung Wu was a prism from Clare’s internship days. Melissa picked it up, letting it catch a splinter of light.
Clare showed her the prism, cupped in her hands like it was a newly hatched bird.
“Looks like something from the cover of a Pink Floyd album,” she said.
“You know that image isn’t accurate right? It’s a gradual shift in colour, not bands. Anyway, it’s a gift from the lead scientist. They used it for experiments on quantum entanglement; that something that occurred in one place could affect something else in another.”
“I don’t like where this is going…” Melissa said. When Clare was enthused, she couldn’t stop trying to explain things.
“What’s more amazing is that the refractive index is less than one! So light goes through it faster than..”
“Tuning out. Clare, please come back to earth!” she said.
“They were trying to demonstrate strangeness,” Clare said, trying another tactic.
“Everything about the world is strange,” she looked up from the spreadsheet and studied the prism, trying to find the sweet spot between her work and her child’s interests.
“Not all the prisms were used though. They’re not even sure if this one was,” Clare added.
“That is quite something,” Melissa said, trying to sound excited.
“So there’s a bit of the uncertainty principle. Was THIS glass used?”
“If it is, can we sell it to fund your studies?” She jibed.
Clare laughed with an unguarded smile that made Melissa want to bottle it up and carry to the end of days.
Melissa was putting the prism away when she moved it over the dollhouse. The windows were all closed, but through the prism, for a brief second, the first, second and third windows were open. She rubbed her eyes and moved the prism again. The same windows were open, and then the glass showed them shuttered, just as they were in reality.
Lee honked the car horn and it startled her. They were due to go to a jazz concert in their attempt to rediscover normalcy.
She made a note about the windows before rushing off to change and put on a brave face.
The next day, before work, she inspected the dollhouse through the prism and noted that once again the window’s positions had shifted. The second and third windows were open.
This meant something; but what? Are you trying to tell me something, Clare?
She dug into the cupboard and found a laminated sheet of the Morse Code from Clare’s Girl Guide days. Could this be it? Clare or someone was sending a message.
Waiting for each letter to verify her theory was excruciating. Nobody said this was going to be easy. It took a week to form a word. She assumed each arrangement translated to a letter.
After the first four days. OWRU. How are you? She missed the first H. Surely this couldn’t be a coincidence?
More letters came. Yes, there was someone communicating. The letters became words and then sentences. I AM FINE SCHOOL IS HARD MRS YING IS STLL TEACHING MATH
A thought came to Melissa. Maybe Clare could also use the prism in her world to see the windows of this dollhouse. She carefully opened them, hoping that this would not break the prism’s power. Clare sent back I CAN READ YOU. They could communicate, even if it was just a letter a day. It had to be enough.
Perhaps the light from the dollhouse, as it moved through the prism, caught the light from the alternative universe. A superposition that gave a brief glimpse of its state in the alternate world.
As they communicated, Melissa started to dig herself out of the well of grief that had swallowed her. She was comforted that in some universe Clare still lived; still kept her hair up with chopsticks, learned the accordion, and folded complex origami animals. Why couldn’t it be so? The accident was an anomaly; her being at the wrong place at the worst time.
When Melissa heard about the accident she blamed herself. Some days it seemed she had lost the ability to speak and functioned out of muscle memory. One morning, her husband found her trying to make an omelette with ice cubes and salad cream.
Should she tell her husband about the prism? No. He had moved on; always in motion, his grief morphing into logistics and busy work. She could predict his dismissive response.
For four more months, the prism caught the shift in the windows. However, the period it functioned was diminishing. From a moment to a flash to a flicker. She knew she had to let go of her daughter again.
GOODBYE, she said, wondering how many letters would be received through.
ILO were the last three letters she received. After that, no matter how she held the prism, the windows remained unshifting. Perhaps this universe and the one where Clare survived had diverged too much. Melissa clung on to the words that had reached her.
She left the prism where it was, and when the sun shone through the windows it would send a band of refracted light onto the empty bed.
About the Author:
Dave Chua’s first novel, Gone Case, received a Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award in 1996. It has been adapted into a graphic novel and a mini-series. His short story collection, The Beating and Other Stories, was longlisted for the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story prize.
