The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  “Wait a second,” the monk sensed something important tickling at the edge of consciousness. This trip had given him a lot to process. To learn that his world, his thoughts and his perceptions had been so far wrong, so untrustworthy, all of his life was stupefying. The niggling realization wormed its way to the surface of his thoughts and snapped into focus. “If the worlds we visited were all so inhospitable to my basic form, how could I have survived?”

  Again, Darak held his gaze, gently waiting for comprehension to arrive. It didn’t take long.

  “Did you change my body for each local condition? How?”

  “In normal travel, the local starstep alters the physiology and appearance of the traveler as required. I simply read the programmed pattern as we arrived and made the changes myself. A bit of a nuisance, really. I could have just kept us in a protective bubble as we travelled; that would have been easier. But I thought our visits would be more useful if we adapted to local conditions.”

  “Is it like that everywhere in the Realm?”

  “Yes, but with good intent. The illusion of Standard Life maintained through the perceptual filter of the lattice minimizes prejudice in the Realm. It would be harder to do if people traveled more. Sadly, it also prevents the appreciation of diversity. I’m not sure it’s a good trade-off.”

  “But it’s a lie!”

  Darak laughed aloud. “Of course it’s a lie. Our whole civilization is built upon lies. Most are. The real question is whether the lies are necessary and whether the benefits outweigh the damages.”

  Stralasi felt his conceptual universe spinning again. He wasn’t sure he could take anymore. His eyes scanned the small wooded clearing where they’d arrived. “So what does this really look like?”

  “Actually, this planet happens to be unusually similar to Earth, I mean, Origin. So the lattice isn’t filtering anything right now.”

  Relieved, Stralasi sat on a nearby stump. Here, at least, he would be able to enjoy nature the way it was meant to be enjoyed. He watched the bugs and birds fly among the grasses and trees. He could hear the trickle of a brook behind the trees and knew the water would be sweet and clear. He allowed himself to relax and thought back over some of the places he and Darak had visited. This time, the memories washed over him without their previous repugnance.

  In that moment, Stralasi came to a new understanding and appreciation of Alum’s wisdom, even if he wasn’t certain he agreed with it.

  22

  Darak scouted around the clearing. Satisfied with what he found, he extracted a small marble from his robe.

  “This looks like as good a place as any to set up camp.”

  “Do you mean, we won’t be staying at the Alumita Hostel tonight?” Brother Stralasi asked.

  “No, I think we could use one night away from civilization. Don’t you?”

  “I haven’t camped in ages. It might be nice. Unfortunately, we don’t have a tent or sleeping rolls.”

  Darak placed the marble on the ground and stood back to give it room to expand. Within seconds, it was a meter across and growing.

  As Stralasi watched, a miniature tent, some stools, and a storage box emerged inside the milky interior. When it reached five meters in diameter, the outline of the sphere faded away. A ready-made campsite, complete with dried wood inside a fire pit, lay before them. With a small pop, the wood ignited into a smokeless campfire.

  The Good Brother clasped his hands together in childlike delight. “Is there no end to your magic?”

  “Actually, this is just a bit of newer technology mixed with a bit of older and simpler technology. I’ve carried this camping equipment around for quite a while.”

  “Wasn’t it heavy?”

  “Well, that’s the advanced technology, the magic, as you call it. I shrunk the electron orbitals to make everything smaller and altered their Higgs field interactions to remove the effective mass, making it easy to carry wherever I go. You never know when it might be preferable to camp out.” He smiled and stepped into the campsite. “Anyway, I’m hungry. Would you like to eat?”

  Stralasi was dumbfounded by the meaningless technical explanation, but he did feel his stomach growling. “Yes, I’m famished. Shall we pop into a restaurant in town?”

  “No need. The larder is completely provisioned.” Darak pointed to the storage box. “Did I mention that everything was held in molecular stasis while stored in the marble? The food you’re about to enjoy is older than anything you’ve ever known except for, perhaps, the stars and the planets. Nevertheless, I guarantee it will be as fresh and delicious as if it were prepared moments ago.”

  Darak opened the chest and the odors of hot food, scrumptious as any Stralasi had ever smelled, wafted out. The Good Brother’s mouth watered. He perched gingerly on one of the small stools, eager to discover what fine repast the magic would deliver.

  Darak swung the lid of the storage box between them, creating a makeshift table. He pulled a feast out of the container: rolls filled with spicy meats, exotic steamed vegetables, garlic shrimp, a poultry and nut dish, and more. He gestured for Stralasi to help himself, and the Brother dug in heartily.

  An hour later, the two men sat on benches staring into the campfire as the sun set behind the trees. Darak pulled out a few more logs to feed the flames from the seemingly bottomless storage box. He sighed as he poked at the firewood. This was the most relaxed he’d seen Brother Stralasi since they’d left Alumston on Gargus 718.5. Understandably—he thought. The man has been through a lot.

  Stralasi picked up a stick and held one end in the fire until it burst into flame. “Don’t you have to visit the Integration Lab for your secret project tonight?”

  The question drew Darak from his pleasant lethargy. “Perhaps while you’re sleeping.” “I won’t ask you again to explain what your project’s all about, but could you tell me if it has something to do with your opposition to Alum’s Divine Plan?”

  Darak stared at the dancing flames without answering for so long that Stralasi began to think the man hadn’t heard him. He was about to repeat the question when the other man sighed.

  Darak said, “My opposition, as you call it, remains uncertain. I have made a few inquiries and some preparations; nothing has been set in motion.”

  “Why not?”

  “Alum’s Realm has done a lot of good for humanity. Before He assumed permanent leadership, humanity had a history of brutal war, greed, and devastation. I hope His mind can be changed from His ultimate plan for the universe. Until my inquiries are complete and I have spoken with him, my opposition will remain inactive.”

  Stralasi could accept that for now. He had come to the conclusion Darak was neither a Shard of God nor a demon, simply an odd and powerful other. As for whether Darak could best Alum in a direct confrontation, that remained to be seen, although he rather doubted the man had powers equal to the Living God.

  “Tell me about your travels before you came to Gargus 718.5.” Stralasi’s request surprised them both.

  “My experiences are difficult to describe.”

  “Please, indulge me.”

  Relenting, Darak shifted on his bench and settled in to tell his story. “Okay, you remember when we first met, I told you that I came to Gargus 718.5 from the Da’arkness beyond the Realm and that I had traveled beyond the edge of the universe? All of that is true.

  “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 achiev
ed 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.”