Delay Is Not Denial

The story

Quarky sends a single tiny particle of light through a maze of mirrors, then waits until the very last moment to decide which path detector to switch on. When the results come back, the pattern looks exactly like the light "knew" the choice in advance! Quarky learns the secret: the particle never picked a path early. It travelled as a fuzzy bundle of possibilities, and the pattern only settles once a measurement finally asks the question. Delaying the question does not rewrite the past, it just reminds us that the past was never fully written until we looked.