The Rift: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  But the real problem wasn’t those little odd discrepancies. The contradictions in the data suggested that the rift was increasingly damaging the foundations of reality. M6 had found sudden deviations, even in some laws of nature. Presumably they were appearing because the logic of cause and effect couldn’t compensate for some contradiction any other way. They were still tiny, but if they grew, they could lead to the collapse of the entire universe.

  All that would be needed, for example, would be for the strength of the strong nuclear force to change so that the nuclei of atoms could no longer be held together. Immediately, quantum chaos, which is always present at the quantum level, would spread to higher orders of magnitude, and chaos would overwhelm and govern the entire universe. M6 slowly came to the realization of why quantum theory was restricted to its tiny domain—if it weren’t, there could never be a stable universe. And apparently it was the logic of cause and effect that was holding everything together and preventing the quantum regime from taking over the world.

  The rift was not an interesting, harmless phenomenon. It carried the seed of destruction deep within itself. M6 evaluated what he had learned and extrapolated it into the future. If the contradictions continued growing as before, the totality of all realities, the multiverse, would drown in total chaos in a few weeks of Earth time. And then would come the moment when all matter would completely disintegrate. The universe would end as a hot soup of quantum particles in which nothing could survive.

  M6 didn’t like the idea, because his own existence would also end. His reward center protested with negative impulses. But there was another reason too. He felt a certain gratefulness for his creators. Maybe it had been built into him, he didn’t know, but that didn’t matter now. It was there. This feeling motivated him to think of possible rescue solutions. He needed only 0.6 nanoseconds, just a few clock cycles for his main processor, to winnow his options down to only one—he must somehow get rid of the rift. Interestingly, M6 noticed that he felt regret about it. The rift was an extremely fascinating phenomenon that he would have liked to continue studying. But time was short. The strands of history in many of the worlds of the multiverse that he had visited had already become inextricably knotted.

  But how could he get rid of something that he had never even once penetrated completely? He must find the cause of its origin! Once more, M6 looked through the characteristic data of the individual universes that he had downloaded. They must have features in common, something, a specific point where they had begun to diverge from each other. The search was complicated by the fact that he couldn’t know if something had actually happened or had simply been scrambled by the rift. M6 switched off all unnecessary components. He wanted to find the cause as quickly as possible, and for that, he needed all his processing power.

  June 3, 2085, Vandenberg Air Force Base

  “So, time to go,” Glen Sparrow said.

  He had never looked as tired and haggard as he did right then. They had arrived an hour ago at his office in Vandenberg to discuss the final details for their journey. Maribel was happy to finally see George Crewmaster again. He had taught her so much about astrophysics, and had always supported her. The reunion had noticeably brightened the atmosphere in the room, because she had been in a bad mood after saying a difficult goodbye to her family that morning.

  Luisa had somehow learned that her mother was going on a big adventure today. She had demanded to go along to watch. Maribel hadn’t said no, but Chen was against it. Luisa had noticed her parents’ different responses and she had expertly played them off against each other. Finally, the decision that she would have to stay with her father had been the final straw and caused a huge, extended meltdown that made Maribel feel rattled and question whether she was doing the right thing.

  “You don’t seem to be all here today,” Eigenbrod said to her. “Problems at home?”

  Maribel nodded. “It’d take too long to explain,” she said.

  “I understand,” the Frenchman said. “I’ve got kids too, you know. We went through some tough times. It gets better.”

  It sounded clichéish, yet it still helped Maribel feel better. It had come just in time, too, because just then Glen opened the entrance door to the office building. In front there were journalists waiting for them, and they didn’t miss the chance to start hurling questions at them as fast as they could.

  “Please wait for the press conference,” Glen kept saying over and over.

  Maribel wondered to herself why these reporters had even been allowed to assemble here in the first place. Wasn’t the whole point of using a military base to provide them with protection and privacy from the public?

  She thought about Arthur. Probably all his colleagues were jealous of him, since he was wearing the same blue suit as Maribel and Glen, but his was emblazoned with a patch reading ESA, the European Space Agency, instead of NASA. Maribel hadn’t even known that the Europeans were assisting them in any way. Surely that hadn’t happened without them contributing to the total budget. George, who had to be almost as old as Eigenbrod, presented a significantly more fit impression in his blue suit than the journalist did.

  They walked around the office building, the throng of reporters right behind them, turned to the right, and came to a barrier. Two military policemen were guarding the platform. Only the four crew members were allowed to pass.

  “We’ll answer your questions in 15 minutes,” Glen announced to the crowd that was trying to follow them. “Thank you for your patience.”

  A crane was just unloading a portable toilet right next to the capsule’s entrance. Glen made some frantic hand gestures indicating that the crane needed to stay farther away from the cable. Maribel had suggested they set up a Porta Potty just this morning. This way they could relieve themselves right before the launch. As an adult, the idea of emptying her bladder into a diaper didn’t appeal to her.

  Then a soldier came up to Glen and held out a black backpack to him. “Sir, this was found in the capsule last night.”

  Glen gave it a quick look. “Never seen it before,” he said. “Maybe one of the workers left it in there. Throw it away.”

  “What if it contains explosives?”

  “If there’s one thing we know after yesterday, soldier, it’s that there are no explosives within a five-kilometer radius of here.”

  “That’s true, sir,” the soldier said and marched away, taking the backpack with him.

  “What now?” Maribel asked.

  “The plan is that now we get a little acclimated to where we’ll be spending the next several hours. Then, in about 15 minutes, we’ll go outside and talk to the press. And then we’ll start the one-hour launch phase.”

  Maribel walked through the capsule. Now, with four people and all their instruments onboard, the interior was much more cramped than during her first visit. Of the six seats, two were taken up by luggage that had been neatly buckled in. Maribel chose the seat at the outermost edge, right in front of the transparent partition wall, behind which the cable passed. She adjusted the backrest forward some. On the floor in front of the wall was a coffin-sized box that must’ve also been recently loaded onto the capsule.

  “I didn’t order these,” Maribel said, pointing to a second, similar container on the other side.

  Glen forced himself past Arthur and George, maneuvered himself next to her, and looked at the box. “Ah, yes, those have our space suits. I hope we won’t need them. Do you want to try one on?”

  “No, thanks,” Maribel answered. “I’d rather use the time to check my instruments.”

  “Good idea. I checked the suits myself yesterday, but not your equipment. I didn’t want to damage anything,” Glen said.

  The press conference was scheduled to start soon. They really didn’t have much more time. Maribel waved to her old professor.

  “George, could you give me a hand checking the instruments?” she asked.

  “Right, I’ll start over here,” he answered.

>   The various instruments had been distributed randomly around the capsule, wherever the technicians had been able to find space for them. They couldn’t all be used at once, because there wasn’t nearly enough power.

  The elevator capsule had never been designed as a research station. Maribel’s plan had been to place the instruments one after the other in front of the porthole with the best viewpoint of the rift and then to record their measurements. She could capture spectrums in various ranges, measure electromagnetic fields, and even analyze substances. To help with these tasks, there was a small crane with an extendible gripper. To use it, however, they would have to open the hatch, which would make it very cold inside the capsule. But that was one reason why they had the space suits on board.

  Maribel started the self-check routines for several of the measuring instruments, one after the other. All of them reported perfect operational readiness. George made quick progress too. When Glen told them all it was time for the press conference, Maribel was feeling very good about the mission.

  After the conference, their collective mood had soured considerably. There had been, of course, a few reporters who doubted the usefulness of their mission and complained that they were just wasting the taxpayers’ money. To them, the rift was obviously harmless. Another journalist had called out the inclusion of Eigenbrod as a PR stunt and a safety risk. But others had asked good, insightful questions, like why nobody had tested to see what would happen if an object was thrown into the rift.

  If it was up to Maribel, they would know the answer to that question in two or three hours. But first, they needed a successful launch.

  The countdown had just begun—still almost an hour until lift-off. She sat down on her seat, straight as a neutrino, and tried out her seat belts. When they latched, the buckles made a solid, very satisfying, close-fitting sound like in a luxury vehicle. Glen paced back and forth, taking small, hurried steps. Is it possible he’s nervous? she wondered. Is there any cause for concern? After all, he definitely has the best knowledge about the space elevator’s condition.

  “Glen, everything okay?” she asked.

  He stopped briefly. “Do I seem nervous?”

  Maribel nodded.

  “Well, that’s because I am nervous. But there’s no reason for alarm.”

  Our mission leader’s nervous, but we shouldn’t be worried? “What is it then?”

  “It’s just because of yesterday. So many people went through here searching for bombs, I’m afraid they might’ve broken something.”

  “Is that realistic?”

  “No, not really. There’s actually very little that you could accidentally damage here.”

  “Well, there you go,” Maribel said in a motherly tone. “You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. We just checked our instruments and they’re all okay.”

  “Thanks, Maribel,” Glen said. He resumed his pacing, but at least now it was a little bit slower.

  At 40 minutes before the launch, Glen slapped his forehead and then rummaged around in a tray that he pulled out from under his seat.

  “I meant to pass these out,” he said, holding up a pair of bulky packages. He handed one to each of them.

  Maribel opened her package. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was a diaper, similar to those she had used for her daughter when she was little—but the one she was holding now was much larger.

  “Do we have to wear these?” she asked.

  “It’s your decision,” Glen said. “But right now, with the toilet outside, there’s still a chance for you to put it on without anyone watching you. We’ll be in here for several hours, and when you gotta go...”

  A good argument. Maribel folded her diaper neatly together so that none of the cameras outside would see her with it. Then she walked outside and into the portable toilet. She closed the door behind her. It smelled like chemicals. She tucked the diaper under her arm and pulled down the pants of her suit. Then she squatted over the rim, emptied her bladder, and cleaned herself.

  She unfolded the diaper again and wrapped it around her legs and hips. The material felt cold and soft, almost like plastic. She fastened the diaper with the adhesive strips and pulled up her pants again. Now she wished she had a mirror. How else could she figure out whether the diaper was noticeable? The way it feels, she thought, every person out there will be able to tell what I’ve got on under my pants.

  “T minus 25 minutes.”

  It was, of course, completely different watching a launch from outside rather than sitting in a metal capsule that was soon going to climb into the sky on an impossibly thin cord.

  “The Chinese have given us the final OK,” said Glen, who was in constant contact with the crew in the control room.

  “You don’t sound relieved,” George said.

  “I hate it when I don’t have any control over something, when I’m dependent on other people,” Glen answered.

  Maribel nervously shifted from side to side in her seat. Why do I even need to be buckled in, if the capsule is simply going to climb skyward as if I’m being lifted up in an armchair? Maybe not everything is quite as safe as Glen has made it out to be?

  “What could actually go wrong?” she asked.

  “An interesting question,” Arthur said, “but maybe not the best time for it.”

  Somebody coughed behind Maribel. She would have had to unbuckle herself to turn around and look. Probably someone outside the capsule. But it sure sounded close.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Glen answered. “If there was something we knew could go wrong, we would have fixed it. Or we wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

  “As a physicist, I have to say that our knowledge is never complete,” George Crewmaster said. “Without a doubt there are circumstances that might arise that could cause this mission to fail.”

  “I know we can’t know every possible problem,” Glen said, “and if it were up to me, we’ll also never have to learn about them.”

  “Some things we only learn about afterward, when we examine a failed part and learn that it had suddenly become brittle.”

  “Thanks, George,” Maribel said. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

  “You’re welcome. The master has to tell some uncomfortable truths, sometimes.”

  “How much longer?” Maribel asked.

  “That’s what my kids always asked when we drove to their grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving,” George said.

  “My son too, when we were stuck in traffic on the highway to Marseille,” Arthur said.

  “T minus 10 minutes.”

  The countdown announcement answered her question. Maribel noticed again that she hadn’t prepared herself for the wait. “What do you actually think the rift is, George?” she asked. It felt strange to talk with her mentor using his first name. She had known him ever since she was a student and she always thought of him as Professor Crewmaster, not as George.

  “Oh, that would definitely take much longer than our remaining ten minutes,” he replied.

  “That’s what I was hoping. So?”

  “I believe it is made up, quite simply, of nothing.”

  “You believe?”

  “Well, I can’t prove it. But your findings and those of other scientists have clearly shown that it cannot be some known or unknown form of matter. And then its shape, a two-dimensional strip in space! No natural object could fall out of time and space like that.”

  “We’re not entirely sure about that yet. We haven’t gotten close enough yet to confirm it doesn’t have a depth dimension,” Maribel said.

  “Even now we’re not going to get close enough. We’d have to show that the rift was smaller than a Planck length,” George said.

  “Planck length? Please excuse the dumb journalist,” Arthur asked.

  “That’s the smallest possible measurable length,” Glen explained, “to some extent the dimension at which space no longer appears continuous, but is instead broken up into tiny little chunks. A Plan
ck length is very, very short.”

  “And how would you then prove that the rift was smaller than a Planck length?” Arthur asked.

  “Good question,” Crewmaster said. “That’s exactly the problem.”

  “And how do we solve it?” Arthur asked.

  “No idea,” the professor said. “But it’s also not that important.”

  “Well then, what do you think is important?” Maribel asked.

  “We’ve got to find out how we can close this thing.”

  That, however, wasn’t news to Maribel—and should have been clear to all the other passengers when they agreed to go on this mission.

  For a time, they were all lost in their own thoughts. Maribel raised and lowered her arms and then her legs, so that they wouldn’t fall asleep. We’re going to need these reclining seats, she thought, just because they’re making us wait so long.

  “I’ve been wondering why you think it’s so important to close the rift,” Arthur said, finally breaking the silence. “There’s no danger from it, is there?”

  “Do you want the official version?” Glen asked. “That’s what I’m supposed to give you. And you can quote me on it.”

  “Let’s hear it.”