"Right. There was a lot of talk that there might have been some sort of hoax or cover up that some of the archeologists performed to get more funding."
"Were they able to absolutely prove that that wasn’t what happened?"
"Well," he said, finally looking up from the papers and at her, "it is my contention that there is no such thing as proving anything. You can think that you understand something to its absolutes and that there is no argument about it, when in reality what you think that you know and have proven is actually completely false when viewed from the perceptions and understandings of someone else. The truth is that there is no one existence, no one perception, no one experience that can be used to dictate what is and what isn't, what is true and what is false, what can be proven and what must be debunked."
"I don't understand."
"The concept of linear existence is limited. It sets you up to believe that what you see, think, do, and experience are all happening one right after the other, like a continuous trail that has gone on since the beginning of time. People believe that once you have experienced that moment, breathed that breath, or made that choice, that is it. It is over and will never be again."
"That isn't the way that it actually is?"
Rick shook his head.
"What were you doing last Tuesday?" he asked.
Galadriel looked at him quizzically.
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I asked. What were you doing last Tuesday?"
"I was here with the wall."
"The whole day?"
"I took breaks and I spent some time looking at some of the other parts of the exhibit, but for the most part, yes."
"Alright, well I was eating lunch with my grandmother and then visited an aquarium."
"That's nice."
"The point is that our realities are not the same. Just because you were here looking at that wall does not mean that that was the only thing that was happening at that moment. When you turned your back to look at another artifact or left to eat, the objects inside this room continued to be here. They didn't just disappear. That was their reality. You were living yours. If someone asked you to prove what the weather was last Tuesday while you were standing here looking at the wall, you wouldn't have been able to tell them, much less offer any type of proof. That doesn't mean that the weather wasn't there or that it wasn't completely and tangibly real for the person who was standing outside in the street. That person, though, could take a video of rain pouring from the sky and of a still of a thermometer reading the exact temperature, and that would still not be proof that that was the weather of that particular day."
"Why not?"
"Because someone on the other side of the country would still be living that Tuesday afternoon, but would not have that weather. They would be able to prove that it was bright and sunny and 30 degrees warmer than the person here said it was. Which one was correct?"
"They both were."
"Exactly. Those two people had completely different experiences at the exact same moment. Everyone in the entire world did. Even if you were standing right beside someone, you can't know with absolute certainty that you were experiencing the same thing. You might think it was chilly, while that person was uncomfortably warm. You might think that you are seeing the same colors, but how do you know? There is no way of knowing that you are perceiving any of your senses in the same way or even that what is happening around you is what is happening around that person. Because your perceptions are singular to you and only you; you cannot ever express it to another person. Just because you say that something is green doesn't mean that you are telling that other person what you are seeing. That person might see what you call green as what you call blue. You might call it the same thing, but that doesn't mean that it is the same reality, and you will never be able to prove it."
"I think that I understand what you are saying. I'm not sure that I get what that has to do with the wall, though. Even you pointed out on your site that they were able to do testing on the wall, and the sand and the layers beneath and above it that showed that it was authentic and from a time that doesn't coordinate with the Gylex culture."
"Yes, I did say that. It still isn't proof of anything."
"I'm sorry, but I'm having a really difficult time following you."
"Come with me."
They walked toward the back of the exhibit where two long benches hunkered in the shadows, waiting for weary visitors to these deep recesses of the museum to stop and rest. Galadriel sat on one of them and Rick took the other, turning to her with an intent, concentrated look in his eyes.
"We've established that every person has their own strain of existence. You are moving forward and building on your own existence, yes? But you don't necessarily share that existence with someone else. That doesn’t mean, however, that other people don't have their own existences. Your reality exists alongside the reality of another person. What one person has seen or done does not completely eliminate the possibility of you seeing or doing it."
"So just because one person has gone to a theme park, ridden the rides, and seen the parades does not mean that I can't do it."
"Right. You could conceivably go and do the exact same things that that person did. You could even walk in literally the exact same footsteps, sit in the same seats, and do everything in the same exact way. That right there perfectly illuminates the primary issue with completely linear time. The thought is that each day follows the last and that each of those days is unique and singular. Once a day has been lived, it can never be lived again."
"But it isn't being lived again, it is just another person living the same thing on a different day."
"Exactly."
"What?"
"You are taking the same day, the same experiences, and you are having them in your own expression of time. That is the way it is for all people. You can still have the same experiences as another person at a different time. Just because they experienced it does not mean that you can't. What if it's the same for time itself? What if it isn't that each of us can live time in our own way, but that time can live us in its own way?"
Galadriel was trying desperately to understand what Rick was telling her. She felt like she was clawing at the words, trying to grab them out of the air as he spoke them and piece them together until they made some semblance of sense, but they were disappearing before she could. Suddenly, they hit her. She felt like she had broken through a piece of glass and was with him.
"Moments have their own experiences," she said, "and just because one moment has seen something does not mean that another can't. Which means that the same thing can happen again and again, but a moment may change and it is different."
"Yes," Rick said.
"Then why aren't we living in a continuous loop?"
"Because the moments aren't existing in a cluster, but in parallel streams. If that is true, and I am not the only one who believes that it is, then that means that all of time is continuously happening and re-happening right alongside each other."
"So there could be more of me?"
"I don't think so," he said. "I don't think that living creatures can exist in more than one stream of time at the same moment, because that would mean that two moments are living a simultaneous existence, which we've established can't happen."
"But the moments are happening. They are happening continuously. Can they interact with each other?"
"I've never thought so," Rick admitted, "but what if they can? What if that is what has happened with the wall? Something or someone from another of those streams of time has figured out how to interact with our time stream in a way that we can detect. If that is possible, that means that they can interact with anything, not just the wall."
"Then why just the wall? They might not even know that they are doing it."
"They might not," Rick agreed, "but they might. They might have chosen the wall as their specific point of con
tact, or they might be practicing so that they can make contact in other ways and manipulate this time stream from theirs. Either way, the prospects are both exciting and terrifying.
Chapter Five
Galadriel sat in front of her computer screen, its emanating glow giving off the only light in her dark house. It had been several hours since her encounter with Rick, and she was still reeling. She chewed on her thumb as she stared at the screen, the nervous habit from her childhood resurfacing as she read through the pages of tight font in front of her.
Once her mind had finally caught up with it, she had been able to understand what Rick had told her, and it had begun to truly make sense. It was the only explanation that she could come up with that explained how the words on the stone changed without there being any signs of interference or any mention of the change. If the change had been done purposely by one of the archeologists, historians, or scientists involved with the excavation or exhibit, there would have been some kind of publicity involved. There would have been no reason for them to make the changes if they weren’t going to make them public and use it for their own gain.
She continued to stare at the screen, reviewing everything that she could about the wall and what the archeologists believed about its significance in their understanding of the history of the area. Though the information was presented as complete, there were glaring gaps that Galadriel couldn't overlook. It wasn't just the changes in the symbols engraved on the stone that were problematic and brought validation to Rick's thoughts about someone in another time stream interacting with their own. It was the presence of the wall itself. Not only was it not there when they first excavated the area, but the pictures of the stone from when it finally was discovered showed that it shouldn’t have been difficult to find in the first place.
The images of the discovery showed it just as Galadriel had imagined it. Rather than standing up as it might have been when it was part of the original structure, or lying on the ground as if it had fallen over, it was tilted. The bottom edge, two corners, most of one-side edge, and part of the other were buried deep in the ground, while the other edges were exposed. It was this exposure that wore those edges down and eroded them with wind, rain, and sand. The problem with that, however, was that in order for that to happen, those edges would have had to be exposed to the weather for many years. That would have meant that they should have been apparent to anyone who went near the area.
Galadriel’s thoughts kept returning to what Rick had said about it not being possible for the time streams to interact with each other, making this a truly extraordinary event. What he hadn't mentioned, but what she was unable to get out of her mind, wasn't just the fact that the time streams had interacted. It was how it had happened. Not once had Rick mentioned what he thought had allowed whoever it was from the other stream to directly influence this one. It was something that seemed less consequential to him than the thought that it was happening at all, but Galadriel couldn't stop wondering about it. Just as Rick had said, the wall itself was only a small form of interaction, but if that was possible, it could become much more extensive and much more impactful. That was a frightening thought in many ways, and if they didn't know how it was happening in that one instance, there would be no way of being able to control it in other places to other people.
Her heart was pounding in her chest the way that it always did when she knew that she was facing a major decision. She knew that what she was considering was drastic, that she didn't have enough information or training to even begin to understand the plan that was forming in her mind, but she couldn't shake it. No matter how many times she told herself that it was outlandish, no matter how many times she heard Ty's voice in her head, telling her that she had gone too far, it wasn't enough.
Finally, she opened another window on the screen and pulled up the travel site that she had been looking at. She made her reservation for the next available flight and jumped up to pack. As she was locking the door to her house, she called Ty. He answered in a groggy voice, and she told him her plans as quickly as she could, not giving him the chance to interrupt her. When she was finished, she took a breath and let him process it all.
"I know that I'm tired, so I'm probably not hearing everything exactly right, but did you just tell me that you are getting on a plane to go see the site where they found that wall?" he asked.
"Yes. I should only be gone a couple of days, tops. Please come over and feed Homer and McGuppie while I'm gone."
"I'm worried about you, Galadriel," he said.
His voice sounded sincere, and she felt a flicker of guilt wash over her. She hated feeling like what she was doing was hurting her best friend, but this was something that she had to do. One day, she hoped that he would understand. Even if he didn't, she would know that for the first time in her life, she hadn't just let the world happen around her. She had made a decision completely on her own and did something that she knew in her heart and her mind that she had to do.
Two hours later, Galadriel sat back in her seat and stared through the small window as the plane pulled backwards out of the gate. She had barely made it to the flight in time, but the rush of adrenaline caused by running through the airport didn’t help the anxiety that rushed through her every time she sat in an airplane. This was always the moment of any flight that she dreaded. Most people got nervous when the plane was beginning to take off or as it was landing. She felt completely calm when those moments came. They were out of her control, and she knew that there was nothing that she could do to impact them. The slow pull away from the gate, however, was something that always made her stomach turn and her heart flutter. As they pulled away, there was a feeling of panic – the tangible, sharp feeling of losing her control. Even if she was excited about her trip and looking forward to the journey there, this was the exact point when she was having to willingly give up her autonomy and simply allow whatever was to happen, happen.
She watched the boarding ramp detach from the plane and sink back toward the airport, and her hands clenched around the arms of her seat. That was it. She could no longer get up and run back down the ramp into the building and change her mind. She was now at the mercy of the airplane and could only sit back as she allowed the experience to unfold.
The trip felt longer than it should have, and she knew it was the anticipation of what she would find when she finally arrived. There was something waiting for her out in that desert, but she didn't know what it was or even where to look. Right as she left, she had thought about calling Rick and telling him that she was going, but she had stopped and ended the call before it connected. Something told her that she shouldn’t involve him. This was for her to do, and she couldn’t rely on any one else to do it for her.
When the plane touched down, Galadriel picked up her rental car and stopped by her hotel just long enough to check in, change her clothes, and get back in the car. Though she hadn't slept and the sun had only just risen, she was filled with energy. Now that she was so close, the thought of waiting any longer to get to the excavation site was unimaginable. Using a map that she had snagged from a display in the lobby of the hotel and information that she had printed during her research, she drove through the surprisingly small town and then out onto a road that led into the open desert. She had driven along the barren stretch for more than an hour and was beginning to understand why the maps all strongly recommended that all tourists interested in visiting the site bring along plenty of potable water and an emergency kit, just in case their vehicle broke down on the way. Of course, she had not heeded that warning. She had only one and a half bottles of water tucked low in her bag and the deep-seated hope that the only rental that was available on such short notice would hold up.
When she finally arrived at the excavation area, she was pleasantly surprised to find that the massive gate separating this portion of the desert from the street was standing open. It hadn't occurred to her until she was nearly there that they might not open the are
a that early in the morning, and she worried that after all of that effort she was just going to have to turn around and go back to the hotel until later in the day and then do it all again. She drove right through the gate, however, and made her way down a narrower road. As the road continued on, the area around her began to feel more and more desolate. She felt even more isolated than she had when she was driving through the open space, and an eerie, uncomfortable feeling began to creep along the back of her neck.
Finally, she came to another, lower gate made of thick planks of wood. A bright red sign on the front proclaimed the area off-limits to unauthorized personnel, and Galadriel felt her stomach sink.
"What the hell?" she muttered to herself, leaning forward to look at the sign more closely through her windshield. "They let you drive all the way up here only to tell you that you can't actually see the site?"
Another, smaller sign on the side of the gate caught her eye, and she climbed out of the car to look at it.
"Meeting spot for guided tours. Tours leave every hour, on the hour, 10 AM until 6 PM," she read.
She checked her phone and saw that there were still hours to go until the first tour. She had no intention of standing there and waiting for a tour guide to show up to give her an overview of the site. She glanced around to make sure that there was no one watching her and then ran back to the car, turning it sharply and pulling into the furthest parking space possible in the small parking lot to one side of the gate. Hopefully, if one of the guides showed up before she made it back to her car, they wouldn’t notice the unassuming compact tucked in the back corner of the lot.
Grabbing her bag and locking the doors, Galadriel rushed back across the parking lot to the gate. She stopped as she got close to it and stared at the wood. It looked simple and unintimidating, more of a milestone barrier than something meant to dissuade people from coming closer. That didn't mean, however, that there couldn't be security measures built into it to prevent intrepid tourists from slipping past with the intention of doing their own exploration. Galadriel could feel the seconds passing her as she looked at the gate. She had to make a decision. She took a breath and reached forward, resting her hand on the worn wood. This was a risk that she was just going to have to take.
Alien Portals: A SciFi Alien Multiverse Romance Novel Page 3