He called it the observer effect... when you observe something, and it changes because you observed it...

       Jane weaved through the crowded subway station with her phone clenched in her fist, lighting up the screen to steal glances at the battery display. 10%. 9%. She was expecting a call--a call that would validate her tireless efforts, give meaning to all the sacrifices she had made: her marriage and so many missed moments from her son's first steps to countless first days of school, her mother-in-law's funeral--7%.
       She arrived at the platform for the uptown 4. No train. She'd been running in The Battery (the irony was not lost on her) on the southern tip of Manhattan, attempting to channel her nervous excitement into a few hundred calories burned when she remembered that it was her day to pick up Leo from school, and she was late again. The last time this happened was strike two, and the principal had called her and her husband in to ask if everything was "okay at home," to which Saiid said, "Everything's okay at my home."
       Their separation was still a fresh wound, loosely stitched together by sporadic sessions with a highly recommended (and highly priced) counselor, forced family movie nights, and increased work/video game consumption for Jane and Saiid, respectively.
       Saiid proposed the separation six months ago, two years after Jane had been hired as a designer for Beaulieu, her dream job--at which, any moment now, she would receive the call to be offered the position as lead designer for their most high-profile contract, the largest tour ever mounted by one of the most famous pop singers of their generation--the contract that would make her name in fashion history--
        5%. Still no train. Still no call.
       Though Jane often explained the dissolution of her marriage to her colleague-friends by saying something along the lines of: He just can't support me and my work, or, He is jealous of my success, or perhaps most accurately, You know me, I'm married to my work... But deep down, she knew the truth that despite her famous attention to detail, somewhere along the line, she stopped seeing her husband, noticing the small moments of joy they used to share together, and he stopped noticing her.
       3%. "Fuck!" she cried, attracting glances throughout the station. She turned sharply, feeling eyes on the back of her neck, prepared to return the collective stare. By then, each set of eyes had lowered, shifted away, or past her. All except for one: a woman wrapped in worn blankets, sitting on the ground and rocking gently.
       The woman appeared catatonic, staring with striking auburn eyes at Jane and through her at the same time, gazing nowhere and somehow everywhere at once. Her complexion was pale and freckled, hair greying at the roots. Beside the woman was a Styrofoam cup half-empty with change. Hoping to shake off the woman's unsettling stare, Jane fished in her purse, retrieved a jingling of coins, and dropped them in her cup. At that moment, the woman whispered in her ear, "You drain the battery every time you check for the call."

...but the observer effect is more than that... he told me about something called quantum mechanics, and the double-slit experiment, when these physicist guys shined a light through a board with two slits in it... when they watched, the light went through one slit or the other, but when they looked away it went through both... like a wave, he said, in a state of unsettled probability... at first, some of the physicist understood that observation by a conscious mind affects reality, that the act of observation changes unsettled probability into settled stuff, matter, moments... but then the physicists started replicating the experiment with computers, unconscious machines, and the experiment still worked... when the machines watched, particle, when they didn't, wave... he asked me if this disproves that conscious affects reality, and I was confused... I asked, 'What does it mean to be conscious?' And he laughed, bearing his big crooked teeth...

       Jane stood abruptly, nearly losing her balance at the platform edge.
       The woman continued to stare outwardly.
       "Excuse me?" she said, catching her breath, "Have you been looking at my phone over my shoulder?"
       The woman said nothing; she barely appeared to be breathing. Jane almost let it go when the woman spoke again: "Your son is worried."
       "What?"
       "About you." Her voice was frail and devoid of inflection or intent.
       Jane took a deep breath, smiled politely, then turned away, checking her phone again. 2%.
       "Leo." The woman said. Jane's heart nearly stopped. "Leo doesn't know where you are."
       Jane instinctively backed away. "Who are you?" She quivered. "How do you know my son's name? Have you been reading my phone?" Jane knew that even if the woman could have glimpsed her phone, nothing on the screen since she'd arrived at the platform could have revealed her son's name or predicament, though she was desperate to convince herself otherwise. She turned away and began to text Saiid.
       As she typed, she heard the woman speak: "Sai. There. Are. No. Trains. At... Chambers." Jane's thumbs trembled over the keyboard. Before she typed another letter, the woman continued exactly as she would have herself: "There is a crazy woman here at the station. I am scared. Please get Leo. Please help."
       The woman stole the words right out from under her fingertips, from her own mind. Jane looked back at the woman, now staring at her--not through her, not blankly in all directions, but directly at her--as if there was no one and nothing else around them.
       As the woman focused upon her--stared into her--Jane watched as everyone else on the platform, as the platform itself, began to vibrate. She felt dizzy and sick; she thought that it--all of it--the woman, the vibration, the dizziness--must be some sort of stress-induced hallucination. No one else seemed to be reacting.
       Suddenly, the train rattled into the station. She looked toward it and did an immediate double-take. The train was flickering in and out of existence like the flip books Leo draws, or an old film with a frame rate too slow to fool the human eye.
       Jane stumbled into a neighboring commuter, reached for his shoulder and then fell right through his body. From the ground, she looked up at the man looking down at her aghast, only he appeared the way light does in a dusty room. Dust swirled violently where his mouth should have been as he spoke, but no sound came, at least not in the way she expected. Sound came from everywhere, deep and rumbling. But she felt his words as if she were reading the movement of air landing upon her skin: Are you okay?
       Jane's instinct was to reach for her phone. She found it lying beside her on the shimmering, shivering cement and clicked the home button only to find that it had died at last. At that moment, the phone dissolved, slipping through her fingers in a soft, warm burst of light.
       Jane looked back at the woman, who remained the only other solid person on the platform beside herself (so she assumed), still staring at her.
        The woman smiled and said, "Wake up, Jane. It's time to wake up." Then she closed her eyes and collapsed onto the floor.
       Gusts of human-shaped light ran toward the woman; one reached out to feel for her pulse. Jane heard their calls--no, felt them--tasted them--experienced them like thoughts from outside her head.
       Everything was still vibrating. She saw the figure of one man split in two, one part running and shouting for help, the other reaching for a phone and dialing 9-1-1. She saw--felt--the radio signals leaving the phone and reeling up into space to be reflected back down miles from where she lay.
       Other figures split into two or three or ten. At times, it was only their limbs or facial expressions that split. Intuitively, Jane understood that she was witnessing all the possibilities of the moment before it became. She heard the ambulance siren from miles away and felt a city of heads turning, wondering what had happened, swallowing pangs of their own mortality: cause and effect erupting outwardly--inwardly--endlessly, then coagulating into a single moment like a scab.
       Then she saw the man with dark, leathery skin and a bushy white beard and the characteristic rectangular backpack of a GrubHub or UberEats delivery person. He arrived into the chaos of the platform, the only other solid body among so many of ghostly light. He looked at Jane, gave her a gentle nod, then--
       Snap.
       The world gathered itself into being again. Jane's perception shrank back down to the humble reach of her five human senses. Then to nothing.

...the next day, he told me about the Inbetween, mythological beings with the ability to perceive the probability of worlds... to see beyond sight, and hear beyond sound, and feel beyond touch... and by perceiving it, they make it real...

       "Sai," Jane said. He was the person she saw first when she awoke in the hospital. "Did you pick up Leo?" she added in a sudden panic.
       "Don't worry. He's with Alycia." Saiid seemed to want to reach for his wife's hand, but held his own in his lap. "Do you remember what happened?"
       Jane looked back at him, frightened. She did remember but feared that if she said it aloud, she would be hauled off to the psychiatric ward--was she already there?
       "No," she said.
       "You collapsed on the platform at Chambers. It's a good thing that the paramedics were already on their way to treat a homeless woman; they were able to treat you, too. They said it could have been some sort of stroke or aneurysm and rushed you into an MRI. The results were negative--thank God--"
       "What happened to the woman?"
       "What woman?"
       "The homeless woman, at the station?"
       "Oh, um. Well, I overheard that she died--"
       "How?"
       "I--I have no idea--I'm sorry, I was a little preoccupied worrying about you."
        To that, Jane let herself smile. "Thank you," she said. "So what? I just fainted?"
       "They're not sure. They said you should stay and finish these fluids, then check in with your primary doc." Saiid nodded toward her IV bag. "Before you say anything, I just want to say that I want you to stay with me--I mean us--Leo and I. We don't want you to be alone until we know what this is." Before Jane noticed any feelings at all--happiness, sadness, relief--stirring inside her, she started to cry. Saiid watched her, holding his own hand tightly.
       Jane had forgotten all about the call for the Beaulieu contract. She closed her eyes and recalled the face of the bearded delivery man, felt his gentle eyes somewhere, far away, watching.

...today, he asked me another riddle, though he wouldn't call it that... he said, If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?...

       Three weeks passed and Jane felt well, better than she had in a long time. She was still staying with Saiid and Leo, and had even moved back into her old room, sharing her old bed again with her husband, though technically it was the other way around. When Jane came back from the hospital, Saiid gave her the bed and moved to the couch. A few nights later, Jane awoke in a cold sweat, having dreamt of the woman with auburn eyes and the people made of light-dust. She tiptoed to the living room and found Saiid awake too, playing his video games. Without saying a word, she sat on the floor, wrapped herself in his legs and watched the screen, calmed by his warmth and the play of his prickly leg hairs on her neck. That night, they fell asleep together on the couch, and the next, Saiid returned to their bed with her.
       Their weekly family movie nights had become nightly and now rarely involved actual movies. Instead, Saiid, Leo and Jane told and retold the stories of their shared lives. One night, Leo told the story of Saiid stepping in poison ivy on a camping trip, Jane told the story of how in kindergarten, there was an entire month in which Leo insisted on dressing as a Jedi, and Saiid told the story of how proud he and Leo were when they saw Jane's last fashion show make the evening news, how they cheered so loudly when they announced her name that the neighbors started banging on wall to quiet them down. Jane was touched. She had wanted so badly to call Saiid after the show, to share her own joy with him.
       Jane had reached the executives at Beaulieu the day after her accident. She'd been offered the contract after all, but fearing that she might actually lose her mind due to stress, she made some reasonable excuse and turned it down. At first, she felt devastated. She second-, third- and fourth-guessed her decision, but eventually felt relieved by it. She even began making a dress for herself, a simple summer dress. It was the first time since Leo was born that she made an item of clothing for herself, and when she first tried it on, she found herself, an adult, a professional, giggling and twirling before her closet mirror. The next day, Saiid cleared a space in his office so she could use it as a design and sewing studio.
       Saiid and Jane walked together every day to drop off and pick up Leo from school, a new privilege of Jane stepping back from her role as lead designer and Saiid's job becoming remote. On their way, they'd stop to smell the goods of each street vendor, listen to the commotion of passersby, and peek into every empty lot turned public garden. It was spring, the end of Leo's fourth-grade year, and as the weather warmed and magnolias blossomed, Saiid and Jane walked slower, as if that could have slowed time itself, though never slow enough to be late. In fact, they always arrived early to watch Leo play a while with his friends.
       One day, walking home from school, Saiid asked Leo what he'd learned that day, and he responded with a question:
       "Dad, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
       "Of course, son."
       "That's not what Howard told me," Leo said.
       "Who's Howard, honey? Is he one of your friends?" asked Jane, thinking Howard was a peculiar name for a young kid.
       "Yes."
       "Okay, so if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it makes no sound at all?" Saiid said.
       "Yes, that's what he says."
       "Well, what do you think, Leo?" Saiid asked.
       "I guess it makes sense... Howard said that sound only exists in our brains. He said, when a tree falls in a forest, it just pushes around a bunch of air particles. It becomes sound in the mind of a conscious observer."
       Saiid laughed. "I'll have to ponder that one, son," he said.
       "Wow," Jane said, "that sounds pretty advanced. Are you learning this in Ms. William's class?"
       Leo shook his head.
       "Your friend Howard is a smart kid," she said, laughing too. She rubbed Leo's back, imagining what everything before her--the smells of the street vendors, the sounds of passersby, and the colors of the public gardens--really were behind what her brain was telling her.
       She thought of the woman again and heard her last words: "Wake up, Jane. It's time to wake up."

...soon, he'll be going away, he said, but he wouldn't say where... he knew I was angry but made me tell him the story again, and after a while, I gave in... I do like the story, much more than the books he asked me to read... it goes like this:
       Once upon a time there were special people who could see beyond sight--actually, they're still everywhere, all the time, but this is how the story goes--they were called the Inbetween... a long long time ago, people understood the Inbetween, listened to them, and treated them with great respect... when a young person was discovered who could see colors that other's couldn't, or hear sounds as high as dogs--even higher--the Inbetween would train them in their ancient art... they learned not only to sense beyond the five senses, but hear other's thoughts, and feel other's emotions, animal's too... eventually they learned to speak to the trees and soil, who were also Inbetween, and would become their teachers... once they mastered their powers of perception, they could see different futures, all futures... every time they flipped a coin, the saw it land on heads and tails, and everything that followed each outcome, existing in a maze of infinite outcomes... once they could do that, it was their sacred duty to find another person who could also see into the Inbetween and pass on their knowledge...
       He asked me if I believed in the story, and I said yes, even though I'm pretty sure it's just a story. But the truth is, I don't want to believe in it. It scares me to think that the Inbetween don't just see everything as it is, but everything is because they see it...

       "Sai?" Jane found him reading on the roof. From there, they could see Leo playing in the courtyard. "Have you seen what Leo's been writing lately?"
       "You mean those stories on his desk? Yeah, a bit odd--but amazing, huh? What an imagination! And vocabulary--"
       "Yes, I know. You don't think we should be worried, though, do you?"
       "Worried? No! He's almost eleven, and he's always been bookish for his age. A little bored, maybe, with summer almost over. If anything, I'm glad he's practicing his writing. Did you notice how good his spelling is?"
       "I did." Jane sits beside him and sighs. "You're right. You're absolutely right. I just never had thoughts like that as a kid, and honestly, they frighten me a little."
       "Yes, but Leo's got YouTube and the Discovery Channel. They're practically teaching quantum physics to kindergartners these days."
       "Do you know anything about quantum physics?"
       "Not a thing."
       "No?"
       "Just that, I guess, things don't happen the way we expect when they're really small."
       "Hmm." Jane pocketed the thought for later, then said, "So, what do you want for dinner?"
        At that moment, Saiid reached for her hand, pulled her onto his lap and kissed her.
        She blushed, although a gesture such as this was no longer taboo or even uncommon between them. She had given up her old apartment and moved back into their shared home. They still attended counseling, and though Jane returned to working a lot, she made a point of noticing little moments of joy, like this one, every day. Saiid had started noticing them again, too. They felt they had a second chance and wouldn't let it quietly slip away again.
       "I'll make pasta," Saiid said.
       "Pasta? Again? Is that all you can make?"
       "You don't like my famous pasta?"
       "Maybe it's getting a little too famous."
       "Okay, okay, I'll make rice with... with... stuff in the fridge?"
       Jane kissed him and said, "Come on. I'll help you, and make sure you go easy on the garlic powder."
       Jane took her husband's hand and led him back inside.
        Leo watched them from below and thought he might have felt a joy that wasn't--was more than--his own, then went back to playing.

...it's been a while since I've seen him... so I've been reading more of the books he told me to... at least, I've been trying to... they are harder than the books I like, and I have to Google a lot of words, but I can't stop now... I've written down all the things that I think are important...

"Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the present, the unobserved past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."
       --Stephen Hawking

"Universe is like a soup of consciousness. Brain is just a receiver. Awareness is continuously transforming thoughts into matter."
       --Amit Ray

       It was the first day of Leo's fifth-grade year and the first day of Jane's new high-profile contract as lead designer for a major film, a second shot at making fashion history. Jane still feared that her work may come between her and Saiid again, her and her sanity, but Saiid encouraged her. They were stronger now, he said, and much better at communicating their needs. So, she accepted it on the condition that she could start each day only after they walked Leo to school.
       When the three arrived, Leo saw a friend of his and took off running.
        Saiid put his arm around Jane, and they watched him go.
       "Look how happy he is to be back, I've never known a kid to love school this much," Saiid said.
       "Wait! Who is that he's talking to--Leo!" Jane yelled after him.
       Leo ran not to the group of children congregating in front of the school but to the far end of the playground, up against the chain-link fence, where, on the other side, kneeled the same bearded delivery man Jane had seen on the platform. She was sure of it.
       She ran toward them, slowing her breath to stay calm. She didn't want to drive the man away. She had so many questions for him, although she couldn't form words around a single one just yet.
       As she approached the strange man, she watched as he whispered something to Leo, then turned and disappeared into a crowd on a shady, narrow street.
       "Leo, who was that you were just talking to?"
       "That was Howard, Mom! That was my friend!"
       "Howard?" Saiid had just caught up, out of breath.
       "What did he just tell you?" Jane said.
       "He asked me if I did what he told me to."
       "What did he tell you to do?" Saiid said, losing his customary calm.
       "He told me to observe everything around me, as much as I can, and to never forget to notice you and Mommy." Leo was nervous now, worried he was in trouble.
       "What do you mean, notice us?" Jane asked, shaking, but Leo only stared back like the woman on the platform, somehow at her and through her, with an auburn glint in his eyes.

He called it the observer effect, and introduced himself as an Inbetween... he said he thinks I could be one too, but it will take a lot of practice and patience, and the best way to start is with the people I love...