10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights

by Ryu Mitsuse

  “This flow of light reveals an extraordinary transfer of energy from the exterior of the coils to the inside.”

  “Where does the energy come from? I don’t see any kind of generator attached.”

  “Asura, look here. See the part that looks like a diffraction grating woven of wire? I made this wire out of the supports from the original device—though one of these also existed in the sphere. If you induct this with a secondary coil, an incredible amount of power will flow through it. I believe the source of its power to be the Dirac sea.”

  “The Dirac sea?”

  Asura and Siddhārtha stepped forward.

  “Yes, the birthplace of all protons.”

  The two others scanned their own neural memory webs, discovering recollections of this strange term from ancient atomic physics.

  “And so?”

  “I aim this secondary coil’s deflector toward an unlimited function index. This is the same as orienting it toward the entropy D index that was in the sphere. Then, observe—another space is generated on the inside of the larger coil.”

  The primary coil’s diameter was about a meter and a half; Orionae reached over it and held down the deflector on top of a rail fastened to the secondary coil. The deflector slid down the rail.

  ZZZZING

  They heard a faint sound like a metallic wire trembling, a vibration that echoed at the bottom of their ears.

  Suddenly, the space within the coil grew dark: a true darkness, permitting absolutely no light to escape. The blue brilliance of the coil wrapped around it grew in intensity until it was blinding.

  “What is the inside of this coil connected to?”

  Orionae returned the deflector to its original position. The darkness inside the coil gradually brightened into the original blue bands of shimmering light.

  “The thing that was hardest to understand at first was the coordinate system of the grid. I had no idea what the numbers represented. However, while I was analyzing the Milky Way’s galactic latitude, longitude, and the equator baseline range, I figured it out. According to my results, the darkness we just saw here originated from the following coordinates: Y=88.5711; X=43.026; Z=19.3920; T=n-n Δt.”

  Asura’s eyes grew as narrow as needles. “Those coordinates sound like they’re inside the Andromeda galaxy.”

  Orionae nodded quietly. “Indeed. They lie within the second arm in the eighth quadrant of Andromeda.”

  A deep silence followed. No one said a word; even their breaths were drawn lightly. Starlight twisted by the polarizing effect of the gravitational barrier played across Asura’s still features.

  The path toward destruction that had begun far in their past had taken a new turn here, heading off into the night sky. Destruction had come to their galaxy, their solar system, their Earth along that path several times—the result of some transcendent being’s displeasure with human progress. The seeds that being had planted had grown into inescapable tethers, and the once great civilizations of humanity were now reduced to ruin and dust and sand. It was already too late to try and stop it. The damage was done. Their enemy’s work was complete, leaving no tomorrow for the three cyborgs.

  “Let’s go.”

  The necklace around Asura’s neck sparkled in the blue light, reflecting in the eyes of her companions.

  His face expressionless, Orionae once again reached out to the deflector. The coil emitted a bright blue light.

  “I will go in last. It would not do to leave this here behind us.”

  Asura crouched down, stared at the darkness inside the coil, then slid inside.

  Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiin.

  The strange vibration struck her skin like countless needles. She thought she heard Siddhārtha shout something, but in an instant, everything was swallowed in darkness.

  The traveler left behind a pot.

  The villager hung it on a tree.

  The traveler returned and said:

  “This pot is your home.”

  The sky was a single band of light, sending vast waves of brilliance like nuclear flames to beat down upon the ground. To one who gazed through a polarized screen, however, the blazing torrent was distinguishable as a rush of countless particles. Some of these light fragments were enormous—bright enough that had they been placed in a starry night sky, they would have drowned out stars of the first magnitude, or even negative first.

  For a while, Asura stood staring vacantly at the falling light, forgetting her purpose entirely.

  “What do you think it is?” Siddhārtha whispered at her ear, bringing her back to the present. A vast glacier spread out before them, its ice harder than steel, its polished surface reflecting the forms of the three travelers where they stood.

  Not far off to the right, cliffs of ice formed a continuous wall that stretched into the distance. The cliffs were steep and perfectly vertical, as though cut deliberately from the glacial ice. Their upper rims melted into the sea of light extending from the sky.

  “What a sight!” Siddhārtha said. It seemed impossible for even a cloudless, star-filled sky to give off so much light. “It’s as though someone covered the sky with some stupendous sheet of electroluminescent material.”

  Though the idea was outrageous, there were no better words to describe it.

  “Where are we?”

  “Where we intended to be,” Asura said, checking her readings. “Y=88.5711; X=43.026; Z=19.3920; T=n-n Δt—the eighth quadrant of the Andromeda galaxy, in other words. Roughly 130,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy, just outside the two spiral arms that pass near these coordinates.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be much life here,” Siddhārtha noted. “Or perhaps it has all withered away, as it did on Earth and Mars and Astarta 50.”

  Orionae looked around, taking in their surroundings. “Together with seven other planets, this planet we’re on orbits a single star. Judging from the deviations I’m reading in our coil, the star radiates sufficient energy to support life. It is about twice as massive as our own sun. And yet, we’re standing on a glacier—”

  “Orionae. We have already seen another planet brought to ruin for reasons we do not understand, have we not?”

  Orionae shook his head firmly. “That is not so. There have been reasons for all the devastation we have seen thus far. For example: our failure to take appropriate measures when the earth began to dry out or to revitalize the failing production in our cities. But there is nothing here, nothing at all. The sun gives off sufficient warmth, and it’s shining directly on this location.”

  “Let’s climb those cliffs and see what we can see,” Asura suggested.

  Orionae hefted the coil on his back, and the three set off single file across the glacier.

  “I do not understand why our observations do not match the numbers,” Orionae muttered, frustrated.

  Asura paused several times as they walked, staring out across the glacier, pursued by an unsettling feeling that something was eluding her. There was something here, something mysterious, suffusing the place and yet impossible to discern. It was growing thicker, wrapping more closely around them as they walked.

  The light from the sky still streamed down onto the ice, reflecting off the cliffs with such intensity it was nearly painful to their eyes.

  At length, they came to the base of the cliffs. Siddhārtha hesitated to study the wall of ice; then he released the safety switch on the maser in his arm. Orionae continued walking, still muttering formulae to himself. The strangely shaped coil he carried on his shoulder bobbed and swayed as though it were part of his body.

  Asura stopped. She could feel something sweep across her body—a readiness for battle that came not from within, but from without.

  “What is it, Asura?” Siddhārtha asked, following the line of her gaze. He stared in shock.

  A giant city stood buried deep behind the crystalline surface of the icy cliffs. At first, they thought it was only a trick of the shadows created by light refracted through the wall of ice�
��but with all of the light on this world, there were no shadows.

  Roughly two hundred meters beyond the surface of the ice, rectangular buildings, some hundreds of stories in height, stood so close together they almost touched. Beltways ran through translucent pipes that wove between the buildings’ enormous walls. Every surface in the city reflected prismatic sprays of light.

  More surprisingly, the city was approaching them at roughly the speed of a man walking. It seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon on either side, and it was impossible to gauge how far back it might go. The glacier was as quiet as a coffin beneath the piercingly bright curtain of the sky. The phantasmal city approached without a sound, moving the way a tide sweeps in at sea, suggesting nothing so much as the approach of certain death.

  “Asura! Maitreya knew we would come here—we’ve walked into his trap!” Siddhārtha cried, his voice ringing out from the bottom of his throat. A chill colder than ice ran down Asura’s back. She detected something far more dangerous in the advancing city than Maitreya’s assaults.

  Turning back to Orionae, she shouted, “Quick—create a barrier with that coil! This is not one of Maitreya’s psychic attacks! Quickly, Orionae!”

  In one smooth motion Orionae lowered the coil from his shoulder onto the ice. He manipulated the deflector until the instrument began to emit a calm blue light. The space around the three travelers grew keen with a noise like vibrating silver wire. Immediately, the shining sky dimmed, and an ultramarine shadow fell over the glacier. Wrapped in the barrier’s curtain, the three travelers shimmered like a mirage.

  “Now, we each need to make our own barriers,” Asura said. “Orionae wrapped the coil in several gravitationally sealed spaces. You have to maintain the link to the Dirac sea via an imaginary numeric circuit.”

  Standing in the middle of the shimmering blue light, the three companions shone with tremendous intensity. The heat entropy inside their barrier shot up rapidly before reaching a balance point.

  Moments later, the moving city slid over the dome of their barrier.

  The giant carved faces of the buildings, the countless rows of windows, beltways, and spires, passed soundlessly through their bodies, over their heads, and beneath their feet, continuing on to disappear behind them.

  Beyond the city, the ice cliffs stretched like a dark shadow across the glacier. The translucent city continued to spill forth from the wall of ice, passing through them, gliding on and away until the buildings disappeared into the distance.

  “What is this, Asura?” Siddhārtha asked from within the incandescence of his personal barrier. Asura was hanging upside down in her own sequestered space, looking like a minnow inside a shell.

  “My guess, Siddhārtha, is that this planet is a gravitationally sealed imaginary numeric space. A ‘negative energy world.’ I’m sure you have a record of Noya’s Formula somewhere in your neural memory web.”

  “Ah! You’re referring to the event in 3005, when Noya Clark of Jupiter suddenly found himself inescapably trapped in what appeared to be a two-dimensional space, like a screen. There were others present, but though they could see a path within the ‘screen,’ when they tried to enter it, they simply passed through.”

  Orionae sat hunched over the coil’s diffraction grating, apparently not listening. A strange light gleamed in his eyes as he murmured to himself.

  “What is it, Orionae?” Asura asked.

  “Don’t tell me we’re trapped inside this barrier or something like that,” Siddhārtha grumbled.

  “That’s it, I’ve got it!” Orionae shouted. “There’s been a terrible mistake!”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “Asura. We must leave this place at once. I must find a safe location where I can repair the coil.”

  “I see,” Asura said. “But, Orionae, in order to move, we will have to drop the barrier on that coil, and the barriers around each of us, and our external barrier as well—but, surrounded by imaginary numeric space as we apparently are, I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  Orionae held his head in his hands and moaned.

  “What happens if you touch imaginary numeric space, Asura?” Siddhārtha asked.

  “You generate a perfect void at the point of contact. Energy is consumed in order to create the void, and then negative energy will wrap around the void like a shell, spreading almost instantaneously into a limitless pool the ancients called ‘Dirac’s sea’ . . .”

  The city flowed on through them without the slightest break, buildings and streets appearing like phantasms, then disappearing into the distance.

  “Look! The city is alive!” Siddhārtha spread his arms wide, as if to push the cityscape that surrounded them off to one side. The corner of a building passed through one of his hands. They saw buildings and hallways and beltways, then many men and women wearing outlandish clothes, walking through the streets. No one seemed to notice the three travelers at all. Nor did they notice that they were passing through the side of a cliff on top of a gigantic glacier. Their city was grand and beautiful, protected from all unhappiness and decay.

  Orionae abruptly lifted his face. “If we combine our energy together, I wonder how much we could generate?”

  “Roughly 1.1 billion megawatts, I should guess,” Siddhārtha replied.

  “Ah! If we truly can generate that much, then, for a very short period of time, we could control the flow of negative energy through the diffraction grating.”

  “I see. And how long would this very short period of time be?”

  A shadow crossed Orionae’s face. “At most, 0.08 seconds. We could not hold it much longer.”

  “Will we be able to move far enough in 0.08 seconds?”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem,” Orionae said.

  “What if it is?”

  “Then all of the energy we’ve used will convert into a massive amount of heat radiation from the surface of the diffraction grating . . . I think.”

  “And all of us will be swallowed in a sea of negative energy.”

  “I could set it up so that, in the case that we did overstay our allotted time, the circuit would automatically collapse. However, quite a bit of energy will have already been consumed by that point, so I think it would be best to arrange it in such a way that the very first recovery circuit to activate will absorb any excess radiation. Then at least one of us will be able to recover their original form.”

  Siddhārtha shook his head. It seemed their options were limited. “All right, Orionae. Let’s go with that plan.”

  “Orionae,” Asura spoke up. “What was that you said a moment ago about a mistake? Whose mistake?”

  Orionae looked back at the coil. “Do you know of a material called orichalcum?”

  “I do! You’ve spoken of it—the special alloy used in creating the royal palace and other grand structures of Atlantis.”

  “When I was still in Atlantis, I once looked into the origins of that mysterious alloy. I discovered a few fairly interesting properties, and by far the most interesting was that orichalcum is an incredibly stable substance. Reflecting back on it now, I realize that each element of the alloy must contain a perfectly sealed heat-entropy world. Each segment of the orichalcum alloy would be able to contain a massive amount of energy. Furthermore, it could be used as a filter for negative energy.”

  “So what brings this up now?” Siddhārtha asked, growing impatient.

  “As it so happens,” Orionae said, “this coil is made out of orichalcum.”

  Asura and Siddhārtha stood for a long while in silence, watching the phantasmal city flow through them.

  “So,” Asura said at last, “we can imagine that at some point in the distant past, someone brought a bit of that strange metal to Earth and tried to explain its miraculous properties to humankind—perhaps even gave them the technology to understand it. Then when those bent on destroying our world arrived, they eventually discovered the orichalcum and took great pains to completely remove it from the planet
, wiping mankind’s collective memory as they did so. Siddhārtha, Orionae . . . it’s very possible that there were other such materials on Earth that were subsequently removed by an external force. In fact, roughly three thousand years ago, a fragment of pure tin was discovered on Earth. One hundred percent pure tin does not occur naturally on that planet. Perhaps this too bore some great meaning, and yet the tin and all records of it have been entirely lost. And there was another material, tektite, that resembled obsidian. This too has been entirely lost. Our enemy is nothing if not a perfectionist.”

  “I only wish I had looked into the matter more closely back then or discovered the truth behind this destruction earlier. It is most unfortunate,” Orionae said, sighing.

  “No,” Siddhārtha said solemnly. “I believe it was our world’s destiny to walk this long road to ruin.”

  “Well . . . let’s continue on then, shall we?” Orionae said, moving the secondary coil deflector to the zero mark, then withdrawing an impressive number of imaginary numeric circuits from the diffraction grating. These he wrapped around another pipe, creating a new induction coil.

  “This is a response circuit—a fourth dimensional circuit, you might call it. In an emergency, this should absorb any excess energy generated.” Orionae adjusted the sliding cover, closing off the diffraction grating. “All right, I’ll go in last again, after which I’ll open the imaginary numeric circuit. I’ve set our time window to 0.076 seconds. Now, quickly!”

  First Asura, then Siddhārtha, then finally Orionae dived into the darkness inside the coil. A fraction of a moment later, the imaginary numeric circuit connected. The space linked to the coil emitted a tremendous burst of light, turning the icy glacier into a sea of incandescent flames. Quite suddenly, the buildings of the phantasmal city nearest to the blast broke into a million glowing fragments and scattered in all directions. A massive wave of energy crashed into the remainder of the city, and it burned, exploded, shrank, faded, then disappeared altogether. In the wavering blaze, light from the sky pierced through, swirling with imaginary space.