I was working in my office in the Gamow physics tower when I was interrupted by a call on my cell phone.
         The caller was my roommate, Ben Willis, aka hot cop (I really needed to quit thinking of him like that, since I had a boyfriend). "Hey, Ben. What's up?"
         "Hey, Madison," he said. "Are you busy?"
         I looked at the stack of papers to grade on my desk and my giant to-do list on the pad of paper next to it. But Ben was a pretty awesome roommate, I owed him a lot. "Depends. . . I might not be busy if you need help with something."
         "The police chief up in Nederland called," Ben said. "He said he has a situation that might call for the quantum cop." Ben was developing a reputation as the first line of defense when it came to quantum crimes. I'd discovered how to affect reality using quantum physics; unfortunately, others had deciphered how to commit crimes using this knowledge.
         Damn. Since I was the quantum cop, I definitely needed to help him. "When can you pick me up?"
         "I'm next to the south door with my bike." We'd ridden his awesome motorcycle to crime scenes before.
         "Sweet! I'll be right down." I almost--but not quite--ran down the many stairs. I was excited about solving a quantum crime and serving justice, and not at all about hugging Ben as we zoomed up mountain roads on a beautiful fall day.
         Outside, the weather was unseasonably warm and pleasant for the beginning of November. The sun shone brightly, and a light breeze blew colorful fallen leaves across the sidewalk.
         Ben stood right outside the exit on his bike, on the sidewalk. Around thirty, he did that sexy, shaved-head thing that some guys did. He looked as hot as ever in his sexy leather jacket, all muscles, not an ounce of fat on him. Darn it.
         He smiled under his mirrored shades and saluted as he saw me.
         "Where are we going?" I asked.
         "Caribou, Colorado," he said. "A former silver-mining town, a ghost town. It's up in the mountains, near Nederland. Should be a fun ride today." He handed me a helmet.
         The drive up to Caribou was fun. Correction: it was wonderful. We motored up the highway like NASCAR racers--at least it felt like it. A few Aspen trees still clutched their sunny yellow leaves, and the various pines stood majestically as we zoomed by.
         I had my arms wrapped snugly around Ben, and I leaned into his back. The roaring wind was a powerful presence hammering at us. But in the bright sunshine, it just felt exciting as we drove up and up the mountain.
         Eventually, we drove up a dirt road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and Ben turned off the bike. We were in a vast empty meadow filled with brown grass and the skeletons of last summer's flowers, surrounded by snow-sprinkled mountains. Pretty.
         A man standing next to a battered pickup truck waved to us. He wore a warm-looking jacket with a shearling collar. If I had to guess, based on his sparse white hair, craggy face and worn hands and neck, I'd say he was pretty old.
         "Ben," he called out. "Thanks for coming. Is this the physics lady?" He pointed at me.
         I nodded as I got off the bike. Standing there next to the bike, my body still vibrated from the ride.
         The temperature was a little cooler than down the hill in town, so the warm sun on my skin felt good.
         "Yep," Ben said. "This is Professor Madison Martin, the quantum cop. Madison, this is Chief Goodwin of Nederland." He stowed the two helmets.
         "Nice to meet you, sir," I said, holding out my hand.
         We shook, and he frankly looked me up and down. I couldn't tell what his conclusion was. At least he didn't say I didn't look like a physicist, or I looked like a soccer mom, which was what people usually said.
         "Ben, here, told me you were the quantum cop," the Chief said. "But not how it all works. Can you help me out?"
         "Sure." I nodded. "Quantum physics is the physics of very tiny things."
         Ben joined us. "The short version, Madison." He said that like I was going to get carried away talking about physics. He knew me pretty well.
         "Suffice it to say, the universe follows the rules of quantum physics," I said. "Basically, everything can be described as a probability, and it takes a human mind to collapse the probability wavefunction and instantiate a reality."
         "What?" the Chief said.
         Ben interrupted. "The bottom line is if you really understand this you can control reality. It's like a superpower. Or magic." I didn't like the words 'superpower' or 'magic,' but Ben and I had had this conversation before.
         "Can you do the physics magic, Ben?" the Chief asked him.
         "I'm trying to learn," Ben said. "It's a little tricky, but hopefully I'll get it soon." He glanced around. "Anyway, What's the trouble here?"
         Chief Goodwin waved his hand around. "You're looking at it."
         I examined the beautiful mountain meadow with a narrow dirt road and lots of dried grasses and wildflowers. Some kind of bird of prey glided over us under the enormous indigo sky. "I don't see anything," I said. "I mean it's pretty and all but. . ."
         "Exactly," the chief said. "The town is gone. There were a bunch of old wooden structures and some stone buildings and foundations."
         I started getting a bad feeling. Stuff disappearing did sound like quantum shenanigans. But I shouldn't jump to conclusions, right?
         Ben shook his head and scowled as he unzipped his leather jacket and shrugged it off. He placed it on the bike's seat. Underneath he had on a form-fitting black t-shirt. Good thing I'd stopped thinking of him as the hot cop, because I might have been distracted.
         "Granted, they were old and run down and all, but still," Goodwin said. "This is a historic site. It's not right." He paused. "Did you know a prospector named Conger discovered gold downstream in 1861 and followed the gold right up Coon Trail Creek to here?"
         He knew a lot of history for a chief of police; I was impressed. "I did not know that. Neat," I said. "Is there still gold around here?" I looked around; I wouldn't mind seeing some gold in its native habitat. Or silver, for that matter.
         The two men glanced at me with downturned lips and then continued their conversation.
         "Who reported it?" Ben asked.
         "Some scientist types," Chief Goodwin said. "I think they said they were archeologists. From the university." He looked to me. "Do you know them?"
         Archeologists? Why would I know them? It wasn't like every one of the thousands of university employees knew everyone else. "Gosh, no. I can't say that I've had the pleasure."
         "Anyway," Ben said. "Did they give you any other info?"
         "Yeah," Goodwin said. "They sent me some pictures." He swiped his phone and held it out in front of him. "This is what the place looked like just a few days ago. They were studying it."
         Ben and I stepped to his phone and squinted, trying to see the image.
         Goodwin swiped.
         I could barely make anything out in the bright sunshine. "Can you email us those pix?"
         He nodded and started typing. "Crap. Not enough signal. Usually, it's decent around here. Can I send them later?"
         "Sure," Ben said.
         "So why do you think it was quantum stuff?" I asked.
         "Come on." The chief turned and started walking away. We followed him.
         Our shoes crunched on the stones and gravel in the dirt road. We left the road and walked up what seemed to be a dirt walkway. But it ended abruptly at nothing.
         Goodwin pointed. "The biggest stone building was here."
         There was no building now. I crouched down on the walkway. It ended suddenly in a packed dirt rectangle covered with piles of sand. I carefully poked one of the piles of sand. "It feels like sand." I turned around to face the two men who stood behind me. "Are you sure there was a building here recently?"
         "Yes." Goodwin held out his phone.
         I stood and squinted into the screen. An old stone building was centered in the picture, and the tree in the picture looked exactly like the physical tree about ten feet from the foundation. Tree, check. Building, not so much. "Huh."
         Ben leaned over and checked out the picture and then the tree.
         "Okay," I said. "So that is weird. But it's not necessarily quantum mayhem." It was very probably, but not totally necessarily, quantum mayhem.
         "There's more." Goodwin pointed at another space in the clearing. We followed him over there. A dirt walkway led to a pile of sawdust. Goodwin swiped and held out his phone.
         Sure enough, the picture showed a rickety wooden structure with a familiar background. Again, there was no sign of the building presently--with the exception of the sawdust.
         I got a chill, and I didn't think it was from the wind that had sprung up.
         "There's a whole bunch of these piles of sawdust," Chief Goodwin said.
         "Is it quantum stuff, Madison?" Ben asked.
         "Can't be sure." I was pretty sure. I shrugged. "Anything else?"
         "Oh, yeah." Goodwin led us over to another open space.
         As we approached, this time the ground seemed to be covered in something shiny. We walked right up to it and stared at mounds of shiny goo. "What was this?"
         "A bunch of trees and plants and stuff," Goodwin held out his phone again and showed us a picture of a bunch of trees and plants and stuff.
         I crouched down next to the goo. I didn't want to touch it. It looked slimy, glistening in the sun.
         I stood. "Okay, you're convincing me." Darn it.
         "We should take a sample," Ben said.
         I took a step back. "Knock yourself out. I don't do goo."
         Ben took a small plastic evidence bag and latex gloves out of his jeans pocket and scraped some goo into the bag.
         "Anything else?" I asked Goodwin.
         "Yeah. It's a little further away." He pointed at a path through the grass.
         The three of us tramped along, not saying anything.
         I didn't know why they were quiet. I was quiet because I was mystified. Why come out in the middle of nowhere and wreck everything? Why destroy a whole town? What was the point?
         After several minutes, Chief Goodwin stopped abruptly. I almost plowed into the back of him. He pointed down. "Look."
         "Look at what?" There was nothing there. Literally. It was a giant hole in the ground.
         "This is where the mine was," he said. "It used to be a relatively small opening, with a wooden structure and a warning sign blocking it." That was not what it looked like now.
         Now, it almost looked like a modern-day strip mining operation had taken place here. Or maybe a huge sinkhole. Or a quarry. The point was there was an extremely big hole in front of us.
         "I'm guessing it wasn't like this before?" Ben asked.
         Goodwin held out his phone. I could just make out a small, rickety-looking wooden structure about the size of an outhouse with a big sign, 'Danger. Do not enter.' There were no holes in the ground visible in the picture.
         I crouched down next to the gaping chasm.
         "Be careful!" both men said.
         I jerked at the loud voices.
         Ben added, "Don't fall in."
         "I won't," I said. "Unless you guys startle me again." I leaned over the edge, and the edge of the hole looked weird, kind of spongy. "Gloves?"
         Ben handed me some latex gloves.
         I put them on and carefully touched the edge of the hole. The earth felt spongy.
         It felt familiar. Crap. It felt like holes that had been made in the past, using quantum mechanics to collapse the probability wavefunction. That was a mouthful, so I called it q-lapsing.
         In the past, similar holes in things like bank vaults had been made by criminals, technically my criminal former students. I frowned. Would this never end?
         I stood and pulled off the gloves. "Okay, you totally convinced me. Something quantum happened here."
         "So can you catch them?" Chief Goodwin asked.
         Ben and I glanced at each other. It was unlikely with so little info. "Uh, we'll try," I finally said.
         Ben said, "Maybe I should take more samples."
         Chief Goodwin departed with instructions to call him as soon as we identified the bad guys.
         I resisted the urge to tell him not to hold his breath.
         Ben scurried around taking samples of spongy earth, sawdust, and sand.
         As the sun started to go down, I sat on a big rock and thought. Who knew how to q-lapse? Me, my boyfriend Andro Rivas, my grad student Alyssa Long, FBI agent Lisa Baker, the physics department secretary Nancy Hernandez, and my former students Griffin Yin and Arjun Chatterjee.
         Everyone else was dead. Sigh. Knowing how to q-lapse was not good for your health--even disregarding the possibility of an aneurysm if you did it too much.
         About a year ago I had been trying to teach other FBI agents how to q-lapse until one of them turned evil. Could yet another agent have figured it out?
         There was also a minor chance my current quantum mechanics students had figured it out even though I'd been extra careful this year.
         And then there was the pesky issue of the webpage controlreality.org that basically explained how to control reality using quantum mechanics. So, technically, there were potentially thousands, if not millions, of people who knew about q-lapsing. I needed to get rid of the webpage if it was back. I took out my phone, but like Chief Goodwin, couldn't access the web.
         Ben stomped up. "Gee, thanks for helping."
         I tapped my forehead with my finger. "I am helping. I'm trying to figure out who could have done this."
         "I guess that makes sense." He placed a bunch of evidence bags into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and started putting it on.
         The sun was slipping behind the higher peaks. The temperature was dropping quickly as the sun set.
         "So, what'd you figure out?" he asked.
         "I'm still working on it," I said.
         "What do you think happened here?" he asked. "What was the point of all this? Of destroying a ghost town?"
         "I wish I knew." All I knew, was it wasn't good. I shivered.