The Trinity Game

New Orleans. So we divert our route a little ways north. Then we hole up for the night.”
    “And then what? I still need to get to the French Quarter.”
    “
I know
,” said Daniel. It came out sharper than he intended. “Give me some time to think it through. I get a bright idea, I’ll be sure to share it with you.”

    Atlanta, Georgia…
    Julia entered the office, where Kathy Reynolds stood behind her desk, aiming the remote at the television screen. She closed the door behind her.
    “Saw it on the way in,” she said.
    Kathy nodded at the television. “Not this part. We just got another angle on it, but on this one, the tape runs longer.” She scanned through to where the crowd started chanting, then let it play at normal speed. The camera jostled as the crowd pressed forward, and then a man jumped onto the stage and grabbed Trinity’s wrist.
    Daniel.
    Kathy Reynolds paused the action on the screen. “Who is he?”
    “I, uh…”
    “Don’t tell me you don’t know that fine young man. Your face already established that you do. And given your little freakout yesterday when they started dragging bodies out of the place, I’m guessing you know him quite well.”
    Julia dropped into a chair. “I can’t.”
    “Julia, this footage goes to air after the next commercial break, and the whole world will be asking the same question. It was his choice to step in front of the cameras. He put himself in the story—his choice—not your fault.”
    “If not for him, there wouldn’t
be
a story, Kathy. He’s the one who brought it to me in the first place, and I made a commitment in exchange. Beyond
off the record
, he’s my Deep Throat on this whole thing. When I promise to protect a source, I stick to it.” She looked straight at the veteran news producer. “Wouldn’t you?”
    “Shit.” Kathy pressed the remote and the screen went black. “Yes, I would. Damn. You know, the answer will be found. It’ll come out.”
    “But not from me.”
    Julia was keenly aware of the hypocrisy. She’d already breached her professional ethics by wiring money to Daniel, just as Daniel had breached his by contacting her in the first place.
    But when the ethics of your profession conflict with your ethics as a human being, well, then there’s just something wrong with your profession.

Las Vegas, Nevada…
    W illiam Lamech sat in the cabin of his private jet, drinking Perrier while his pilot waited for clearance from the control tower. He picked up the Gulfstream’s sat-phone and dialed the number of Vito Carlucci, head of all things profitable and illegal in New Orleans.
    “Vito, it’s William. The conversation we had earlier? It’s happening…he surfaced, and he’s heading your way…I’m on the tarmac at McCarran, I’ll be touching down in about four hours. Assemble a team of your very best men. I want them at the Hotel Monteleone in six. We’re going to end this, now.”
    He hung up, lifted the receiver again, and punched in the cell number of Samson Turner.

J ulia sat across from Anderson Cooper and adjusted the lavaliere mic clipped to her dress as Cooper welcomed her to the show.
    “My producer tells me you’ve been looking into the possibility that the Trinity Phenomenon can be explained by quantum physics. But I gotta tell ya,” Cooper chuckled, “we had Leonard Mlodinow on last night, and I still don’t fully understand it.”
    Julia laughed along with him. “One thing all the top physicists agree on: Anyone who claims to fully understand quantum physics, doesn’t. But that doesn’t make it completely impenetrable.”
    “Can you give us an explanation we can understand, I mean without any parallel universes, anti-matter, or cats that are both alive and dead at the same time?”
    “I know, a lot of it seems to run counter to common sense,” said Julia. “But common sense tells us that the sun revolves around the earth. We think we see the sun rise and set, while we’re actually watching the earth rotate on its axis.” She shifted in her chair. “And for most of our history, suggesting that the earth revolves around the sun was heresy, punishable by death. The border between the known and the unknown is always perilous for science. Look at it this way: some animals only see black and white. You might be tempted to think our experience of the universe is more ‘real’ than theirs because we can see the color spectrum. But we onlysee part of the spectrum, while birds also see UV