by Paul Anlee
“The universe extends incredible distances in every direction. There are billions and billions of galaxies whose light will never reach the Realm. They’re far away, and moving farther so fast their light is receding from us. I’ve wandered a long time among some of those galaxies, exploring their wonders, and getting to know their many sentient beings.”
“Are there other realms like Alum’s?” interrupted Stralasi.
“Oh, yes, but very few. The leap to understanding how the basic physical laws arise in the universe is not an easy one to make. Over the uncountable light years I’ve traveled, there’s been less than a handful of species that achieved such a level before their home stars exploded or they destroyed themselves. A few did, though, and their influence has spread across entire clusters of galaxies, as has Alum’s. Like Alum’s, the realms I’ve visited have found their pace of exploration limited by the speed of light.”
“You visited them yourself? Are you not similarly limited in your explorations?”
“There is a way around the limitation. It requires a certain level of recklessness. Sane people would never attempt it.”
“You admit to insanity, then?” Stralasi scrutinized Darak’s expression, watching for any hint of anger as he replied.
“I admit there was a time when I was nearly insane, having been driven there by the ultimate futility of Alum’s reign. We’ll talk of that another time.”
“So, what is the way around the limitation?”
“In order to explain that, I first need to explain a bit of physics.”
“I should have known, more science.” Stralasi complained.
Darak held up his hand, “Don’t worry. Though the actual science is difficult to understand, I can provide a simple analogy.
“Imagine you are in a crowded room and you see a friend on the other side with whom you want to talk.”
“I would send an InterLat message.”
“Okay, imagine there’s no InterLat in the room.”
Stralasi looked skeptical but shrugged his acceptance.
Darak continued, “You try to walk to your friend but you keep bumping into people standing in your way. It slows down your progress, limiting how fast you can cross the room. If the room were empty except for you and your friend, you could cross more quickly.”
Darak gave Stralasi a moment to catch up to the logic before continuing.
“The people in that room represent something called the Higgs boson field, named for a scientist from ancient Earth who first came up with the idea. It’s the reason particles have mass. It’s the effect particles feel as they try to move through the Higgs field, just like the effect you feel as you try to make your way through the people in the room. The particles’ mass impedes their motion through the field as your size impedes your motion through the field of people.
“However, if we were to send radio waves through that crowded room, they wouldn’t be impeded by the people in the room at all. Radio waves—photons—don’t interact with the Higgs field. So you might wonder if there’s any way to turn off the Higgs interaction in other particles.
“It turns out to be possible to disconnect the Higgs field interaction in any particle. And if the particles no longer interact with the Higgs field, they effectively have no mass—they’re no longer wading through a crowded room. We’ve just freed up those particles to move at velocities up to the speed of light. Amazing, isn’t it? But that’s not the end of the story.
“Ancient researchers believed such particles could move even faster; that they were only limited to the speed of light because they were still interacting with something. There was still something in that room the particles had to navigate through.
“Having made the huge conceptual leap to define the effect of the Higgs boson field, and come up with a way to neutralize it, a few researchers were excited by the possibility of identifying and defying the next limitation. Would they finally be able to move particles faster than the speed of light?
“It didn’t take them long to identify the next challenge. It turns out, the quantum electromagnetic, or EM, field that permeates our universe also impedes the movement of particles in much the same way as the Higgs boson field.
“But if we use the same kind of technology Alum uses, we can make it so that particles don’t interact with the EM field, either.”
“And does it work?” Stralasi asked. “Can the particles move faster than the speed of light?” In spite of his initial resistance, he had been lured in and was keen to know more.
“Yes, they can. Unfortunately, it causes a different problem.”
“What kind of problem?” Stralasi blurted. Ugh, too late. What was I thinking? The monk’s lips rolled tightly inward in a reflexive twinge of regret and self-censorship. He kicked himself for inviting another dense and convoluted answer. Oh, Great Alum, help your humble servant; I really do want to know.
Darak threw another log on the fire. “Well, since you asked, all particles in the universe exchange information using photons moving at the speed of light. If you no longer interact with the EM field, you no longer exchange information with particles in the universe. In essence, you become separate from the universe; it becomes invisible to you.”
“You’d be lost! How would you ever find your way back?”
“Exactly. The answer is, you find signposts that remain connected to real particles in the universe.”
“Sign posts?”
“Yes. They’re called quantum entangled particles. Think of them as a pair of particles that remain connected at a level deeper than the Higgs and EM fields. If you are holding one member of the entangled pair when you become detached from the Higgs and EM fields, you can find the other half of the pair instantly, wherever it is in the universe. This is the basis for the starstep technology.
“The starsteps you use to travel between planets and stars are connected by entangled particles pairs; they can find each other no matter where they are. It has taken ages to achieve, but the older parts of the Realm host many entangled pairs that enable travelers to set out on various paths from one point. It’s this very system that allows the starstep network to span millions of light years.
“But it isn’t always a direct route. If you travel to a planet that isn’t directly connected to the one you’re leaving, even though the travel is practically instantaneous, it could involve multiple starstep connections, or pairings, to come to your destination. Some planets have a connection only with one other. The oldest and most central starsteps have been seeded with millions of connections.”
“What if you don’t have an entangled particle pair?”
“That’s when you need to be reckless. Remember how the Angel, Mika, could only shift small distances? That’s because when he disconnected from the Higgs and EM fields, he took some basic particles with him from his environment. Perhaps some bits of air or cosmic dust.
“By sifting through them, it’s possible to find particles that are entangled with bits of matter or energy in the universe nearby. One has to work fast. You can only stay disconnected for an infinitesimal period of time or you risk not being able to find any locally-entangled partners. Angels are limited by their processing speed and by cautious safeguards. It would be easy for them to become lost forever.”
“So how do you avoid getting lost?”
“The full answer is quite complicated. Let me see if I can simplify it for you.”
“You know, there was a time when that comment might have offended me—but I’m past that now,” chuckled the Good Brother. “Carry on.”
“Yes. Well, the simple explanation would be that I very, very quickly find toeholds, and jump from one to the other in rapid sequence until I can connect with a properly entangled particle that I can follow back into the universe. Usually, I use something called entangled virtual particles; they’re more common but harder to detect.”
Stralasi’s animated brow said it all; he didn’t need to utter a word.
“Okay, imagine you are trying to cross a deep chasm from one mountain crag to another. Large rocks are falling from the sky between the two peaks. If you were fast enough, you could leap from the top of one rock to another and make your way across the chasm, like a stone skipped across the surface of body of water. If you make a single misstep, if you miss a rock or you don’t land close enough to its center and it tips, you plunge to your death. If you stay on any rock for more than a millisecond as it falls past you, you’ll end up too low and never make it back up to the peak.”
“That sounds exceedingly difficult, even for an accomplished acrobat.”
“Precisely,” Darak said. Stralasi studied his face for some sign that he was joking. The man did have a dry sense of humor. Darak stared back at him patiently and, it would seem, sincerely.
“Now imagine you were doing this in darkness…well, not complete darkness. Light flashes, illuminating everything for the briefest instant, every couple of seconds. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, the chasm is thick with smoke so everything you see is indistinct, just shades and shadows. You have to identify all the places you might jump to, measure the relative velocities, and make a plan, all in that one millisecond flash of light, and then execute your plan in darkness over the next two seconds. Can you imagine how terrifying and dangerous that would be? How much sheer computational power you’d need not to make a misstep? That, my friend, is the only way to travel sizeable distances independently of the entangled starsteps.”
“That’s insane. You’d have to be crazy to try that!”
“Not really, but it does require some practice.”
“And that’s how you traveled to the ends of the universe?”
Darak laughed. “I’ve only been to one end so far, and that was quite enough but, yes, that’s the basic idea.”
Stralasi shuddered. “What was so compelling about visiting even one end of the universe, that you would take such a risk?”
“I had to know what it was like.”
Stralasi waited for him to elaborate. Darak watched the flames without further comment until the Brother couldn’t bare it any longer.
“And what was it like?” he prodded.
Darak started at the sound of Stralasi’s voice. When he replied, his hollow, haunted voice was unnerving.
“The closer you get to the edge of the universe, the more it resembles the time shortly after the Big Bang. It’s intensely hot; there’s enormous energy being released as matter condenses from the Chaos. If you pass through the transitional zone and into the infinite region beyond—into the Chaos itself—you will find a region that, so far, has been unregulated by the laws of nature as we know them.”
“How can you know it’s infinite?”
“I guess I can’t, not really. It fits the theory. At any rate, it’s immensely larger than the real universe. We’ve been expanding into it at a velocity beyond the speed of light for billions if not trillions of years. It’s possible that some domains within the Chaos may have evolved combinations of natural laws different from our own, and that they’re expanding from their own origin outward, like our universe has been doing.
“I wonder if there might be multiple, unconnected universes out there, surrounded by vast domains of Chaos. It’s hard to say, though I’ve always liked the singular real universe hypothesis, myself.
“I’ve never visited another universe, other than those I’ve created myself. If the matter of another universe doesn’t interact with the matter of this universe, it’s impossible to detect. I’d have to imagine the correct, consistent set of physical laws before I could even design a way to sense it.”
“What was it like, being in the Chaos?”
Darak reflected for some time before answering. “I don’t have the words to adequately express it. The fabric itself eats away at you, trying to pull your matter out of existence. It doesn’t look like anything. It’s infinite, empty blackness. There’s no light, no sound, no matter, no energy. In the Chaos, matter is an abomination, struggling to remain an integral whole against random forces that want to tear it apart.”
“How could you possibly survive that?” Stralasi accepted Darak’s other God-like powers, but this pushed the limits of credibility. Then again, which of the many incredible experiences hadn’t, since first meeting the man?
“I know it sounds like an impossible place, but it does exist, after a fashion, and it can be survived. You just need to generate a field that compels the nearby bits of Chaos to cooperate with your own matter. It’s exceedingly difficult and requires enormous computational power but it can be done. Luckily, I’d designed that into my body before I arrived there. Otherwise, I never would have endured it.
“When I first entered the Chaos, I retreated bit by bit from the way it tore at my essence. The pain was tremendous. Unimaginable. My limbs dissolved and all the heat was pulled out of me. As I became less and less, I eventually gave myself over to it. I gave up wanting to survive. I hoped it would destroy me and I could be done with living.”
Darak tried to continue but the choked sound that came out frightened Brother Stralasi.
He cleared his throat and started again. “I guess I was too much a coward at the end,” Darak admitted. “I discovered I didn’t want to die quite yet. I made my own small universe in the Chaos where nothing existed except my mind and the substrate on which it ran. I pulled energy from the expansion of my own tiny universe into the Chaos. I lived there a long time, alone with my thoughts. Using my imagination, I could make any kind of world I wanted and populate it with any kind of people I desired. I played in my universe a long time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t really know. Time was different for me there. In this universe where we are now, I think some tens of millions of years might have passed.”
“Why did you leave? It sounds like you’d achieved sublime perfection in the middle of all that Chaos.”
“Indeed. It is remarkably similar to the kind of perfection Alum would like to build for Himself. But mine was isolated, unique to me. Alum’s heaven would incorporate this universe, in fact, all possible universes. In the end, it wasn’t my kind of perfection. It was too self-indulgent. During much of my time there, I wasn’t sure whether I was actually alive. My thoughts flowed so slowly it was hard to know whether I existed or not until, one day, I noticed something felt different.”
“How do you mean?”
“The Chaos is infinite in size and outside this universe, but I wasn’t totally cut off from our reality. I wasn’t far removed from this cosmos; there was always a presence, a little pressure from the real universe as it expanded into the Chaos. It’s a strange sensation, hard to describe. It’s not like the wind or a flowing river. More like…a push toward orderliness coming from one side. Anyway, when I felt the pressure subside, I moved toward it to explore the cause.”
“What did you find?”
Darak hesitated. “Our universe, this universe, had stopped expanding.”
“Isn’t it big enough already?”
“You don’t understand. The formation of new matter at the edge of the universe stopped. The edge still retained the heat of creation, but without new reality being formed out of the Chaos, it was cooling rapidly and beginning to recede from the Chaos. Later, I learned this was Alum’s doing. He had initiated His Divine Plan.”
“What do you mean, His Divine Plan?”
“His first step was to stop the universe from expanding. The second was to reverse the expansion, to let pandemonium flood back in and return Reality to Chaos. You don’t need to worry about the third step because everything will be gone by then, leaving nothing more than the Chaos awaiting whatever configuration Alum wishes to shape it into.”
“So you came back?”
“I came back.”
“How did you get back?”
“I had a single entangled neutron with me, which I’d preserved deep inside my substrate. That was my guide out, my safety harness in c
ase I decided to return. I followed the signal to its mate and came back to this reality.”
“You had a way to get out, all along, and you chose to go through that terrible experience?” Stralasi asked.
“Yes, it was only pain. What I gained from my time there was worth the pain at the beginning.”
“And now you wish to deprive Alum of the opportunity to build his own perfect universe?”
“No, Alum is free to venture into the Chaos as I did and create whatever He wishes for himself. I realized that I value this messy, unpredictable universe too much to allow Him to destroy it simply to fulfill His own dreams. He can go, but He can’t take everyone and everything with Him.”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to stop Him? After all, He is the Living God.”
Darak Legsu stood up and glared into the fire, pressing newly-clenched hands to his side, but he didn’t utter a word.
Stralasi became aware of the wind rustling the leaves overhead, and frogs croaking in a nearby pond and he trembled, wondering what was going through the mind of this strange and powerful being.
Darak gradually unclenched his fists, and made a concerted effort to relax his body and regulate his breathing. “You need some sleep,” he said, “and I need to visit the Cybrid workshops.” He looked back at the camp fire, and the flames diminished to a gentle glow.
The weight of the day and the conversation settled heavily on Brother Stralasi. “Yes, I guess I am tired.” That was an understatement. He felt completely wrung out, mentally and physically. Even more, he had no desire to be on the receiving end of Darak’s displeasure just now.
The monk stood, stretched, and yawned loudly.
“Though I’m only a passenger on your journey, I do find the rapid changes exhausting. Thank you for your story. I appreciate that you trusted me with it.”
He bowed, and took refuge in his tent, leaving Darak to attend to his mysterious business with the Cybrids.
The man/god shook his head and chuckled softly at the monk’s gracious exit. He wished a good night to Stralasi’s retreating back and, in the blink of an eye, was gone.