Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds

by Geoffrey Arnold

  Recently, Mandara had very reluctantly come to the conclusion that the dark energy he had experienced was not Aurigan in nature, but indicated Antiquarians or Custodians. It was a worrying discovery in a supposedly open society that that made him wonder exactly what more lay concealed in the Archives beyond even his reach.

  The twins looked at one another, wondering if it had been a mistake to let the adults know what they were able to do. But, to tell only half truths was almost as bad as lying – and both clearly showed up in the speaker’s aura.

  Since Qwelby had become elderest to Wrenden and they had formed XOÑOX, a lot of exploration was done as a group of six. The more difficult it was to access the information, the more fun they had in winkling it out. Except there were times when they had come across an exceptionally strong, foul Darkness that seemed to be at the root of the Kumelanii’s fears. They hadn’t wanted to try to penetrate it. It had been forbidding: full of foreboding, guilt and shame.

  They had chosen the name XOÑOX from their mantra: “xátuyé osiy nola nola osiy xátuyé”. A lot later they were to discover that they could make XONNOX from several of the Azuran languages, but that it didn’t quite work in the most common one: six all one one all six.

  Shandur and Mizena were relieved that their children had not discovered anything about the short lives of the previous pair of Quantum Twins. They had a lot to discuss with their children and wanted them relaxed and at home to do that with no more worries on their minds. As they thoughtshared that with their great uncle and aunt it seemed as though everyone was plunged into an HWAdventure: immersed in an enormous fish tank as a wave swept through it, rippling through their bodies and distorting their vision.

  ‘The Stroems are Swirling strongly this KeyPoint,’ Lellia said, standing up and walking to the door. ‘They’ve started earlier than normal and, as you know, the effects will continue until the solstice is past. I’ll come back as soon as they are settled for a while.’

  ‘Tullia, Qwelby, what you have discovered is nothing short of amazing,’ Mandara said as the door closed behind his wife. ‘You must have gone very deep into the Archives. Just with your four friends?’

  Two grinning faces nodded.

  ‘Please make me a promise. None of the six of you are to explore those areas again, until I have had chance to discus this with your parents.’ He looked across to Shandur and Mizena. ‘I am very concerned about the Darkness that surrounds some the sections they must have explored, and again that mentally isolated them yesterday.’ He turned back to the twins and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘We promise,’ they said, looking puzzled.

  ‘Don’t worry, You haven’t done anything wrong. Far from it. But there are dangers, and we need to ensure your safety for future exploration.

  The twins nodded, relieved that no-one was asking how they had managed to dig so deep. There were matters best kept from parents.

  ‘Now, with the Stroems so excited, I don’t want you exploring Lungunu today,’ Mandara continued. ‘Please use the Elmit Room. We’ll all get together later and sort out what happened yesterday. Another day we will talk about Aurigan times in detail. Meanwhile,’ he added with a grin. ‘I’ve got a new invention for you.’ He produced a small box from one of his pockets and opened it.

  ‘Wow! Miniature squigglesnakes!’ Qwelby exclaimed as he peered into the box.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Tullia scolded, pushing him aside to get a closer look. ‘They’re not real snakes!’

  Mandara took a compact neutron magnifier from another pocket and placed it on top of the box. The twins could see what looked like two incredibly small spirals. As they looked closer they could make out arrays of wriggling wires at each end.

  ‘Nano technology!! What do they do??’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Nose de-bogeyfiers?’ asked Qwelby.

  ‘Urgh! Revolting child!’ Tullia exclaimed.

  ‘Try again,’ said Mandara quickly, stopping Qwelby from responding.

  ‘Miniature karaoke sets?’ suggested Tullia.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Miniaturised twistors?’ Qwelby contributed.

  ‘No.’ He laughed. Their guesses had given him ideas for more experiments. ‘Personal, Self-Learning, Interactive, Language Compilers, incorporating Pseudo Tetraquarks.’

  ‘Ehh??’

  Lellia gave her husband a despairing look. ‘Try speaking Tazian, Mandara. Not your techno-babble!’

  ‘It is what they are,’ he retorted.

  ‘What are they for?’ Tullia asked.

  ‘For the Elmit Room,’ he replied, looking smug.

  ‘Gumma! You haven’t?’ Tullia almost squeaked in her excitement.

  ‘Yes. I’ve managed to put together enough extracts from flikkers to create several Viewings. I am confident that each Viewing is put together from the same, unique series of Azuran programmes, and that there is consistent Azuran language in each one.’

  The twins goggled at him, speechless.

  ‘These compilers are intuitive programmes. As well as Tazian, each contains Reduced Aurigan as a comparator. They will interact with your memories and thoughts as you learn the different Azuran languages.’

  ‘We learn?’ Tullia asked.

  Mandara raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Compiler, airhead!’ Qwelby crowed.

  Tullia grimaced as she realised that her twin had picked up her thought that what Gumma had created was a translator, as opposed to software that would store vocabulary and syntax in their brains.

  ‘But why do we need to learn their languages?’ she asked, flashing her twin a look that said: ‘You didn’t think to ask that, did you!’

  ‘Have you never studied Reduced Aurigan?’ Lellia asked, certain the twins had never studied the old Living Aurigan which encompassed multi-dimensional images and feelings.

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you had, you would know that as you learn a different language, you discover how those people think differently,’ their mother explained.

  ‘You mean that if we learn an Azuran language, we will not just understand the flikkers, but also how weird the Azurii are?’ Qwelby asked.

  ‘Something like that,’ she replied with a smile.

  The twins looked at each other.

  ‘Not so,’ Mizena said, thoughtsharing with her husband that no matter how advanced their children were at times, they still had a lot to learn about Life.

  Mandara turned to Tullia. ‘Inside your left ear?’

  She nodded, eyes wide with surprise, and gave a little shiver as it slipped inside and said ‘hullo.’

  He turned to Qwelby. ‘Right?’

  He nodded and twitched his head as it tingled inside him.

  Mandara smiled as he noticed their reactions. ‘Good. That’s the Self-Locating element safely anchoring inside your ears. Try them out…’

  ‘Race you!’ Tullia called as she headed for the door.

  ‘If necessary, I’ll explain …’

  ‘No way!’ Qwelby exclaimed, as firmly clasping the satchel under his arm he followed his twin.

  ‘…how to use them when you come back…’ Mandara finished, looking at the closed door.

  CHAPTER 9

  WHEN IS A DOUGHNUT NOT A DONUT?

  The twins raced around the semi-circular entrance hall and up the twirlypoles located in the centre of the main, bifurcated wing of Lungunu, Qwelby following Tullia into the Elmit room in their suite. He stood undecided, go into their bedroom and put on some more clothes or try the compilers? As Tullia turned to him with a drink in her outstretched hand, the fish-tank effect happened again.

  He raised his left arm with his fist clenched. Tullia immediately damped down her thoughts, and raised an eyebrow as she put her head close to his.

  ‘You know that room that’s not in this timeframe?’ Qwelby whispered.

  ‘Where Gumma’s trying an experiment with Azura?’ Tullia whispered back

  ‘
Yeah.’

  ‘And we’re forbidden even to try to go there.’

  ‘We’ll never get a better chance.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ Tulia asked, sounding dubious at what he was suggesting.

  ‘They want to talk about us. They’ll establish a Group PrivacyShield, so we can’t listen in…’

  ‘Meaning they won’t hear our thoughts either…’

  ‘And with the Stroems Swirling so strongly, that’ll cover us up even more,’ Qwelby said.

  Tullia continued to look uncertain.

  ‘Afraid of your DragonRider genes when you Awaken?’ Qwelby taunted.

  ‘Nothing to do with BigMan!’ Tullia spat back, referring to the myth that all boys pretended not to believe, that the more adventurous a boy was before puberty the bigger his emerging masculinity would be.

  ‘Kaigii,’ Qwelby responded, reminding his twin that as they had identical genes he was just as concerned as to what would happen to him when he Awakened.

  ‘Come on, Sis, just a look,’ Qwelby wheedled, using their code to acknowledge she was older and offering her the decision.

  ‘Just a look,’ Tullia agreed, mollified.

  They left their suite and headed to where they knew that special room had to be, as that part of Lungunu was missing from the fifth dimension. Holding hands so as to maximise their energy sharing, they waited, facing a wall they knew wasn’t there, Qwelby hoping for another Swirling, Tullia beginning to regret having agreed.

  *

  Tullia was just about to speak when the wall wavered. Holding in their minds as strongly as possible the concept of a room containing an experiment with Azura, the twins stepped forward and found themselves in a corridor. Everything, even the air itself, was shimmering. They walked to the end and turned the corner. In a dark alcove was a door that looked like an airlock from an Azuran space flikker: dark grey metal, bevelled edges and a large central wheel in a lighter grey.

  ‘There are twelve bolts connected to the wheel,’ Tullia said as she withdrew her mind from the door. ‘All in light grey and heavily loaded with inertia.’

  Qwelby tried to turn the wheel. His hands slid around it as though it was not really there. ‘Temporal discontinuity. We need to adjust the timeframe,’ he said.

  ‘Backwards to latest opening,’ Tullia suggested.

  ‘No. Forwards. To when we will open it.’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  With all four hands on the wheel, they focussed on imaging it and the mechanism inside changing into dark grey in a very near future.

  The fish-tank effect happened again. All the metal was dark grey. They heaved on the wheel.

  Nothing happened.

  Eventually, with aching muscles, they stood back and examined the door.

  They heard humming

  ‘Why does a door hum?’ Tullia asked.

  ‘Because it’s happy?’ Qwelby replied.

  ‘What does a door want to do?’ Tullia asked.

  ‘Open!!’ they said together, grabbing the wheel, bracing their feet and heaving. The wheel spun and the door swung away from them. With their hands all tangled together they were dragged with it. Hands slipping free, they fell to the floor.

  As they untangled themselves and got to their feet, the door swung to behind them. They were mesmerised. One moment they were in a brightly lit room, all chrome and white like an operating theatre. The next moment they seemed to be standing in a total blackness that seemed to go on forever. They hoped they were still in the room and not out in space. As the room morphed to and fro, they were showered with a kaleidoscope of colours.

  They hadn’t intended to enter the room, only have a look, but, now they were in it, well, looking couldn’t do any harm, could it…

  Slowly their eyes focussed on the only object that seemed constant. It looked like a permanently shimmering, hi-tech, chromium Jacuzzi, large enough to take the whole family. On both sides it was connected to pipes big enough for the twins to crawl through. When the room wasn’t there, the whole setup became translucent and they could see great streams of colours circling through the pipes in opposite directions. When the room was actually there, the colours fountained out of the Jacuzzi-like thing. What the twins did not know was that the energy streams were from an Azuran machine, everything safely isolated and contained in a different space-time continuum – but one which they had just entered.

  *

  The Large Hadron Collider as the Azurii called the machine, had been warmed up and the latest series of experiments initiated. Two streams of particles were shooting towards each other. When they had accelerated ten thousand times around the ring of what was called the Big Doughnut to almost the speed of light, millions of collisions would happen every second.

  All the twins could see were two amazingly beautiful streams of colour flowing like miniature comets in opposite directions.

  Tullia mindslipped into one as Qwelby examined Mandara’s array of controls and monitors. They were the most complex he had ever seen and it was going to take him ages to understand them.

  ‘Dragon’s Breath!’ he exclaimed as he realised that the two streams were going to collide. His urgent thought did not reach Tullia. Every quantum particle of her self was immersed in the beauty and splendour of being what to her was a comet soaring through deep space.

  ‘Xzarze, Tullia! Why do I have to keep on rescuing you?’ he muttered. He ignored his Intuition’s tart comment that she rescued him just as often, as he mindslipped half into the other comet and half into the controls.

  ‘Eeyooowww!’ he exclaimed as the power of the comet ripped his half mind from the controls.

  <¡HELP!>

  Seeking the transdimensional strength of the Stroems, his panicked thought reached them in the microseconds before the comet quantumwrapped him just as the other had done to Tullia.

  The twins found themselves hurtling through space, or was it Time, or did they remain still and everything hurtled past them? Whatever, it seemed as though they found themselves inside a great big tunnel hurtling along at almost the speed of light. Around and around they went, in opposite directions. Strange buzzes not so much ringing in their ears as vibrating through their bodies.

  Shooting around faster and faster, they felt their bodies getting longer and thinner. Two streams of energy sweeping past each other. Where was the end or the beginning of a line of infinite length?

  Sending out powerful thoughts of their desperate need to be with each other, the twins’ electro-magnetic fields interacted and became part of the powerful magnetic fields in the Big Doughnut. The shock ripped through their whole beings.

  It felt like a fizzy drink. Not drinking one. Being one.

  Scattered throughout the length and breadth of their bodies, each managed one thought. I have fifty trillion cells in my body. Every single one HURTS!

  Uncountable numbers of fundamental particles showered in every direction.

  ? WHERE AM I ?

  .

  ? WHEN AM I ?

  .

  ? am i ?

  .

  ? ?

  .

  ?

  CHAPTER 10

  WHERE ARE THEY?

  ‘They’re growing up so fast since their crystals were attuned to their EraBands,’ Shandur said as the door closed behind his children.

  ‘It started before they were fourteen, ShahShah,’ his wife pointed out. ‘It’s since Tamina became elderest to Tullia. And that’s well over three years ago.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand how they can have reached through that adult energy banding,’ Shandur protested.

  ‘You don’t see them like I do when they are around Siyataka,’ his wife replied. ‘I see how very strong they are. It frightens me at times. Their power. What they can do. Just look how they created that Bell Tower.’

  ‘Right!’ Mandara said forcefully. ‘Let’s discuss yesterday. We can talk freely without them here. Lellia can add her comments later.’

 
Lellia had returned and they were well into the discussion when House shook and quivered. Ornaments rattled and a phlock of photons swooped around the room. Unprecedented numbers of electrons swopped places all at once so that everything seemed to flicker in and out of solidity.

  Mizena called the twins. She could not locate them mentally.

  Shandur tried. No luck either.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mandara was quick to say, ‘I have the perfect answer for that. My latest gadget. I haven’t told you about it because I was waiting until the twins were back with us. It’s part of the Compiler I gave them. I can’t speak with them, but I will be able to say where they are. First though, we have to go to my study.’

  Mandara summoned Lift. After being shaken about as Lift bucked to the after-effects of what they assumed was another XzylStroem eruption, it dissolved and left them standing in Mandara’s study. He sat behind his desk and explained.

  ‘I’d been thinking about how much the twins enjoy going to the Elmits to see the strange things that happen on Azura. Flat screens, not being able to actually be there in the film, fuzzy pictures and time differences, but, you know kids. And watching those incomprehensible flikkers with the twins, we agreed that most appear to be mixtures of two or more transmissions.

  ‘Well. Shandur and I decided to capture some transmissions ourselves. Obviously we needed to develop a programme that would decipher any language. Then I thought: why not go one better and enable the twins to speak the languages!’

  Lellia and Mizena looked at one another and shook their heads. ‘Who’s the biggest child!’ they thoughtshared

  ‘And I couldn’t help it,’ he added with a smile. ‘Because I am a genius, I built-in a tracking device.’

  Shandur nodded. His great uncle loved creating his gadgets as much as the children loved using them.