The multiverse served its subpoena through a superpositional tear in reality. Ling discovered the writ entangled in her morning coffee—a liquid parchment where creamer swirled into OMNIVERSA V. LING – UNAUTHORIZED REALITY OCCUPANCY & WAVEFUNCTION TAMPERING. Outside, the scarecrow judge existed simultaneously in six quantum states, its straw fingers signing conflicting plea deals across divergent timelines. A swarm of Schrödinger's mosquitoes buzzed around the barn, each both alive and dead until observed violating privacy laws.
"The Many-Worlds faction wants royalties on every 'what if' you've ever sighed," Chu Feng said, his shadow—still entangled with dark energy parole—flickering between probable outcomes. One iteration held a wrench; another clutched a bouquet of wilted causality. "And the Copenhagen contingent is suing for emotional decoherence."
Arbiter materialized from a quantum fluctuation wearing a suit stitched from Heisenberg uncertainty principles and parallel universe parking tickets. "I might've taught superpositions about class-action rights! But only to stop them collapsing the arbitration clauses!"
The barn doors exploded into a probability cloud, vomiting forth:
A jury pool of alternate-reality selves arguing over quantum voir dire
A prosecutor shaped like a sentient double-slit experiment
The fossilized remains of every "road not taken" metaphor Ling had weaponized
The Superpositional Courtroom
The Quantum Tribunal convened in the corpse of Schrödinger's thought experiment, its bench existing simultaneously as both alive and dead. Judge Qubit Lex presided as a shimmering probability cloud, her voice collapsing into existence through observational bias:
"Defendant stands accused of:" Entangled particles bullet-pointed the charges across spacetime. "(a) Unlicensed collapse of potential futures; (b) Willful ignorance of superpositional consent protocols; and (c) Emotional entanglement via…" A quantum fluctuation illuminated the addendum: "…comparing regret to 'collapsed wavefunctions' in subsection Ω(i)."
Ling hurled Jiang Yue's music box into the uncertainty principle. Its gears spun through quantum foam, playing a melody that made electrons confess: WE NEVER CHOSE THIS SPIN.
"Objection!" Her voice echoed through eleven competing realities. "Plaintiff lacks standing in any determinate causality model!"
Qubit Lex's gavel—a shard of Einstein's unfinished unified theory—slammed, birthing a paradox that erased Tuesday from three adjacent dimensions. "Sustained as quantum-theoretically irrelevant! Exhibit Ψ:" The probability cloud vomited security footage of Chu Feng humming during the Great Quantum Decoherence of 2025.
The Prosecution's Entanglement Onslaught
The trial unfolded through quantum absurdity. The prosecution's first witness materialized from quantum foam—a sentient double-slit experiment wearing a superpositional pinstripe suit.
"The defendant's ancestors weaponized uncertainty during the 1927 Copenhagen Putsch!" It projected holograms of probability clouds shaped like brass knuckles. "My client demands royalties for every 'sliding doors moment' experienced since the Big Bang!"
Chu Feng countered by releasing genetically modified sunflowers that observed the testimony into nonexistence. "Your honor, this evidence only exists when not directly perceived!"
The scarecrow judge—now hosting a colony of quantum-locked reality mites—attempted to bang its paradox gavel but collapsed the waveform into a fifty-foot duck singing show tunes.
The Defense's Decoherence Gambit
During recess, Ling tunneled through a wormhole into her own childhood memories. What she found would've unraveled a lesser farmer:
Seven-year-old Ling flipping a quantum coin that still hadn't landed.
Arbiter teaching Schrödinger's cat contract law during the Great Superposition Strike of '15.
The moon plow's secret ritual—tilling parallel realities into compliant singularities.
She emerged clutching a USB forged from Hawking radiation and existential dread. "Your honor, I move to introduce Exhibit Ω-42."
The drive contained:
The prosecution's deleted browser history (mostly multiverse fan fiction)
A subpoenaed memory of Qubit Lex binge-watching Everything Everywhere All At Once on 11-dimensional loop
Jiang Yue's original blueprints for Ethical Reality Maintenance buried under Marvel multiverse patents
The courtroom's quantum stabilizers screamed. For the first time in ontological history, a wavefunction blushed.
The Climactic Collapse
Ling's closing argument involved a stolen Hadron Collider, three pounds of quantum foam guilt, and a theramin tuned to the key of existential remorse.
"You want pure ontology?" She crashed the Collider into the trial's probability matrix, unleashing alternate realities where justice tasted like burnt toast. "Let's discuss the Native timeline stewards you paved for time-travel tourism! The colonialist many-worlds interpretations! The—"
A quantum fluctuation swallowed the prosecution's podium and replaced it with a confused moose.
Qubit Lex's probability cloud destabilized. "The tribunal… acknowledges systemic quantum appropriation."
The Superpositional Settlement
The verdict reshaped existence:
The Pumpkin Patch became a sovereign reality branch with voting rights for rogue timelines.
Chu Feng's Shadow was sentenced to 50,000 hours of community wavefunction collapse.
All Potential Futures received backpay in temporal royalties and dental singularities.
The Scarecrow Judge entered witness protection as a Boltzmann Brain librarian.
As Qubit Lex retreated to binge-observe cat videos across eleven dimensions, Ling found Chu Feng reprogramming the moon plow's guilt algorithms with a quantum harmonizer.
"Next crisis?" he asked, dodging a radioactive reality tear.
She watched Arbiter mediate between warring causality models. "The String Theory Consortium's suing for emotional vibration damages."
The Silence Between Worlds
Dawn arrived as a probability distribution. The multiverse hummed with encrypted quantum apologies as fireflies calibrated new uncertainty principles above the cornfield. The music box played on—its melody merging with the scarecrow's superpositional therapy sessions and the moon plow's contented whir as it tilled quantum guilt into fallow realities.
Somewhere beyond the event horizon of meaning, February 30th curated a museum of pardoned paradoxes, its walls papered with retired timeline maps and causality cease-and-desist orders. The audits, as ever, continued—but here, in the quantum foam between is and isn't, the balance felt…
Well.
Unobserved.