Short story feedback, please

'Sup nerds. I'm looking to enter a short story into a competition. I only learned of the competition a few hours ago and it has some weird rules: must be under 1k words, must have something to do with quantum mechanics and must contain a certain phrase (brownie points if anyone can guess which phrase in the story is the one I had to include).

Normally I would leave the story for a week and then revisit it myself with fresh eyes, but the deadline is in two days so I need outside opinions...

Short story feedback, please