Play@YSDC

With some difficulty, everyone pulls their attention away from the window. The room falls silent.

Henry,Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait for everyone else to catch up - unless you really feel like delivering that lecture!

The door to the lecture hall squeaks open, and a young man shuffles in awkwardly. Henry recognizes him as the student who was at the scene, apologizing profusely to his female friend. He says nothing as he finds himself a seat.

Henry pauses and nods to the student before launching into the lecture: "The double-slit experiment shows the odd behavior of light. Is it a wave, or a particle? It turns out the answer is more complicated than that. Light is possibly both...or neither. The experiment involved shining a beam of light through a barrier with two slits onto a surface beyond it. If light were a particle, you would expect that after passing through the slits that it would form a pair of bands because each particle must pass through one slit or the other, but if it were a waveform it would form a single one, as it would pass through both slits at once. The strange truth is that light's behavior depends on whether or not it is being observed..."

After the lecture is done, most of what Henry hears from the students on their way out is gossip about what happened outside. Did you hear? and How awful, and My goodness!

When the lecture hall has mostly emptied, the student from earlier gets up from his desk and shuffles forward. "Professor Witherspoon? Do... you have a minute?"

"Of course," says Henry. "What's on your mind? Is it about what happened?"

"Yeah." The young man rubs the back of his neck and awkwardly glances around the room, waiting for the last couple of students to clear out.

"Look," he says, dropping his voice low and leaning closer. "Everybody's heard the rumors about this place--Arkham, I mean. But I always thought they were just stories, you know, stuff girls like Eliza would believe. This morning, though... Professor, was that man just crazy, or could there have been something else going on?"

"I don't really know," admits Henry. "I've never seen anything so bizarre. But I've seen enough in my study of physics to realize that the universe is stranger than we imagine. I'm willing to keep an open mind."

The student shrugs and nods a little. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess. But is--" He goes quiet, suddenly looking embarrassed.

"You didn't, by any chance... see him seeing things? I know it sounds crazy, but I-- I was late because I was walking Eliza back to her dorm, and she kept saying that man was-- was looking right at her. That's impossible, right?"

"It looked like that to me too," says Henry, nodding. "I know it sounds crazy, but you've learned in this course a little about the strange properties and behavior of light. Maybe there are aspects of it that we don't know about yet. Or perhaps he sensed Eliza's presence some other way, by hearing her or smelling her, for instance. Blind people often develop their other senses stronger to compensate, though it does usually take a long time to improve them. Or sometimes people can sense each other's presence in some unknown way. If there's someone standing behind you that you haven't seen, you might get a feeling that someone's there. If someone you aren't looking at is looking at you, you could feel some kind of sensation letting you know. I know there must be a reasonable explanation for what happened."

"Right, of course. There's got to be an explanation." The student nods firmly at Henry, though it seems like he's really talking to himself. Then he folds his arms and nods again. "Thanks for your time, Professor. Really. I think I just needed a moment."

"You're welcome," says Henry. "Any time you need to talk about anything, remember that my door is always open."

The young man manages a small smile. "All right. Well... goodbye, Professor." He squares his shoulders, turns on his heel, and walks out of the lecture hall.

Henry is alone now, but he can see Ms. Ross, the groundskeeper, and another young lady conversing outside his window. Have they been there the whole time?

Henry gathers his things and heads outside to where Ms. Ross and the others have gathered.