Quantum Void

by Douglas Phillips

“Yeah?”

  “You’re not making this up, are you?”

  “No, superposition is as real as gravity. Electrons, photons, every quantum particle—when nobody’s looking, this is how they exist—as a probability wave. But as soon as anyone takes a peek with any kind of measurement, the probability collapses to a specific outcome.”

  “Yeah, I knew that about subatomic particles. I just didn’t think it could apply to people.”

  “It can’t. At least, it shouldn’t.”

  31

  Austin

  Daniel walked into the small terminal building that provided support for business jets and private pilots. Standing in the middle of the lobby was the man he recognized from his previous trip, the EPA district manager, Jeffrey Finch.

  The wiry-haired man stuck out a bony hand. “Thanks for coming down, Dr. Rice. We might need your expertise to figure this one out, and your influence to get it fixed.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Daniel replied, hoping he had something to offer. His head was still foggy from limited sleep. The sun crept over the rooftops of the low-slung buildings dotting the edges of the taxiways at the Austin airport. It would soon be a blue-sky spring day in central Texas.

  Finch led him to a car, and they were soon on the crowded freeways of the state capital. Most of the traffic was inbound to the city. “Normal commute? Or are these people trying to get away from the anomaly?” Daniel asked.

  “Pretty normal actually,” Finch responded. “Three million people in the Austin metropolitan area. Fastest-growing city in the country. If anything, the anomaly is drawing people toward it, not away.”

  Daniel wasn’t thinking clearly quite yet and gave Finch a puzzled look.

  “You know, the storm chasers,” Finch said. “They’re coming from all over the state, now that the news broke.”

  Daniel hadn’t thought of that bit of illogic. If it looked dangerous, there were always people who wanted to get as close as possible.

  “The FEMA people are dealing with it,” Finch said. “They’re on-site at the Bastrop facility right now. State emergency management too, plus a whole mess of state police.”

  “Has FEMA established a perimeter?”

  Finch nodded. “But you and I will be going deep inside.” He looked over at Daniel. “Hope you’re okay with that.”

  A few minutes later, they were past the last housing development and into the rolling ranchland east of Austin. Through the windshield, Daniel caught a glimpse of the strange phenomenon he’d been called to witness. Just above the trees, a gray swirl loomed. It looked like a dark rain cloud, but with considerably more geometric structure. Circular. Hurricane-like. It popped in and out of view as trees went by, but even at this distance, Daniel could tell the swirling cloud was enormous.

  Finch turned off the highway onto a smaller road traveling north. When they got to a clearing, he pulled over on the shoulder. Daniel opened the door and stepped out for a better look.

  The dark cloud now filled half the sky, blotting out the rising sun. The slowly rotating swirl was as ominous as any thunderstorm but at the same time oddly different—as if nature were throwing something new at the unsuspecting humans below. He half-expected lightning bolts to strike the ground at any moment, and perhaps they would. Atmospheric motion produced static electricity, and this unnatural swirl was definitely moving.

  Rising in the foreground, the four smokestacks of the Bastrop electric generation facility seemed like toys beneath the enormous cloud.

  “What do you think?” Finch asked from the other side of the car.

  “I had no idea it would be this big,” Daniel said. A slight breeze blew in his face, and he detected the scent of flowers even though there were none around. Thunderstorms did that too, with downdrafts that spread out across the land and carried a variety of curious smells with them. “This cloud wasn’t here yesterday?”

  “Well, it was just starting,” Finch answered. “The local police got a few calls yesterday morning. At first, people said it was a UFO, but it kept growing and the calls changed over time. I got down here just at sunset last night. It’s doubled in size this morning.”

  “Any lightning? Hail? Other weather phenomena?” Daniel asked.

  “None that I know of, but we have a state meteorologist out here somewhere. We could check with her. They’ve set up a forward command center at the Bastrop facility. That’s where I thought we’d go. You’ll have access to anyone you need from there.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Daniel said with a shrug. “I guess I’m just one of those storm chasers.”

  Finch nodded. “Just wanted you to see it before we got too close.” They climbed back in the car and headed east, toward the ominous apparition in the sky.

  32

  Interdimensional

  Thomas still wore the Viking hat, complete with the trailing hose that Nala had assembled. He said he liked the improvements she’d made.

  They’d come to the place where Thomas had rerouted a ventilation duct. Fresh air was still pouring out. How Thomas had managed to bend sheet metal into their space was a mystery, but the man probably had muscles in his fingers that were bigger than Nala’s biceps.

  She’d had wondered whether they could crawl out through the ventilation, but when they arrived she realized the opening was much too small even for her slim body. Still, it demonstrated that there were ways to break into the 3-D world. They’d have to make any alterations themselves, though. The people below had no visibility and no access to 4-D space. To them, the metal had simply disappeared into thin air.

  It was good to have someone to talk to as they walked back to Nala’s campsite above Jan’s office. “I’m sticking by my theory. I poured water in your mouth. I listened for your pulse. Those aren’t false memories, even if you are healthy now.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Thomas said, “I vaguely remember. I was lying on my back and my knee hurt and water dribbled into my mouth.” He stopped walking for a minute and lifted up his perfectly healthy leg. “So, tell me again how I could remember having my leg sheared off when it’s not?”

  “I’m really not sure. Superposition of memories?”

  “Which means?” He continued walking.

  “If events are probable but not certain, maybe our memories reflect the probability. Maybe we remember every probability. That is, until there’s an outside observer.”

  Thomas nodded, the hose bouncing against his back. “Then… poof, our brains will reset to match the final result? That’s going to be weird. Who do you think the outside observer will be? I hope it’s Jan. He has a good imagination.”

  Nala laughed. “I’m really not sure how this works at our level. In ordinary quantum systems, the outside observer isn’t a person. It could be a camera or an alpha particle detector—any device capable of measuring a quantum property, like a particle’s position or spin.”

  “A camera determines the fate of a particle? A camera’s not even alive.”

  “Sorry, but it’s how things really work. The universe doesn’t care whether it makes sense to you.” She walked a few more steps, contemplating the weirdness of it all. She patted Thomas on the shoulder. “It’s great to have you back, my friend. I’m not sure I could have managed much more of this alone.”

  The faraway light flashed again, freezing them in their tracks. Nala gave Thomas a glance, glad to see that he hadn’t vanished. In fact, nothing about either of them looked any different, and her memory still seemed the same as before. Maybe the flash had nothing to do with probabilities or quantum eigenstates. Maybe it was just a faulty lightbulb.

  The universe doesn’t have to make sense. They walked on, with Thomas leading the way.

  “How come you’re not concerned about walking off the edge?” Nala asked. “There is an edge, you know. Bad shit beyond it, too.”

  “Why would it matter?” Thomas asked. “There’s no outside observer yet, so all probabilities are still in play.”

&nbs
p; “Good point.”

  “I figure I’m either invincible or dead. It will all sort itself out.”

  A few minutes later, he stopped. “We’re back.”

  They were. Assorted items of food lay on the floor just where she’d left them, along with several water bottles. For now, the disreputable bottles were behaving themselves.

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Famished.” Thomas sat down and opened the second box of crackers. “Peanut butter, too? You’ve done well, m’lady.”

  “There’s more if you want it.” She motioned to the space over the break room. “You might be better at prying the bigger items out than me.” Nala sat next to him. Her legs were no longer bare, but the warm floor still felt good.

  She had a million thoughts about their predicament, most of it crazy talk, but in the absence of data speculation was all they had. It was time for a brain dump to another physicist. Jan’s office looked empty, but there was plenty of blank space on the walls, and she had a marking pen. Until someone offered a phone on a wire, it would have to do.

  Nala wrote furiously across the floor, walls and ceiling of Jan Spiegel’s office. From this strange perspective, all surfaces tended to blend together. The right angles where walls met were hardly noticeable, as if someone had taken the complexity of a three-dimensional space and compressed it with a waffle iron. A sentence might start on the floor, jump to the desk and finish on the wall. In the 3-D world, it might be hard to read, but Jan would figure it out. At least it was communication.

  Nala spoke to herself as she wrote. “Thomas is back. We’re in a superposition of paths, each with a nonzero probability of occurring. Eventually, our options will collapse to a single reality. It’s a roll of the dice.”

  She looked up and thought about her next words. She wrote again on the remaining clean surfaces. “Any action you take will produce a random outcome. Do it anyway.”

  Beneath her knees, there was motion. A figure entered the room. Longer hair and dark, clearly the same woman she’d seen before. The figure walked around the 3-D space, bending down to examine the floor and looking up at the ceiling. Had she seen the writing? A minute later, Jan came in and stood next to the mystery woman.

  Nala picked a spot on the wall nearest to the woman and wrote, Who are you? The figure moved to the wall, apparently examining the writing. She might have even waved, though it was hard to tell exactly what she was doing. Nala reached down and placed a hand on the thin layer of three-dimensional space and the human shape within it.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  “Jan, hurry! Come see this,” Marie yelled. “More writing.” She squatted closer to the floor. The words were stretched in places and unreadable, but clear in other places: nonzero probability… a roll of the dice and more. The floor and walls were covered in writing, and much of it read like a physics paper.

  Jan came in and looked around. “Wow, she’s been busy.” He studied the words. “Instructions—at least, that’s what it looks like. Written to me; I see my name up here at the top of the wall.”

  While Jan pieced together the messages, movement to one side attracted Marie’s attention. Black writing appeared on the wall, one letter after another. The phantom handwriting was genuinely eerie, like walking into an episode of Eyewitness to the Paranormal. “She’s not done yet.”

  Marie moved closer as words from another dimension formed before her eyes.

  Who are you?

  “Oh, my God, she sees me,” Marie whispered. The creepy feeling of being watched sent a shiver up the back of her neck. She scanned the ceiling and walls, but of course, her eyes were blind to wherever the apparition might be standing. She knew right away it was a terrible comparison. This was not a ghost or any kind of paranormal spirit. It was Nala. Flesh and blood, and she needed help.

  Marie picked up a marker from Jan’s whiteboard and started writing on the wall. I’m Marie Kendrick. We’ve met. Hope you’re okay. It probably wouldn’t work; it hadn’t before. As Park had explained, the view from 4-D was too complex. But he might be wrong.

  Something brushed against her shoulder, a physical touch, very light. Marie jerked her head to the left—the touch hadn’t come from Jan, who stood several feet away. That left only one other possibility.

  Jan seemed to notice her sudden motion and the I-am-so-weirded-out expression on her face. “You felt her, didn’t you?” he asked.

  Marie nodded. It’s not a ghost, it’s a person, she reminded herself, but her nerves didn’t seem to agree.

  She reached upward, opening her hand and spreading fingers. She held her hand in the air for several seconds. The touch returned. A light tap on her index finger, a brush against her palm.

  “She’s here,” Marie said, her voice hushed. “Right now.”

  “Careful,” Jan said. “She might not mean you harm, but…”

  A lock of Marie’s hair slid across her forehead on its own and a sensation of touch ran up her arm and across the back of her hand. She turned her hand over, palm up. Something touched her hand. It was just a tickle, like the brush of a feather. She watched as a black oval appeared in the center of her palm. She held her arm steady as another oval appeared, and a third. Marie smiled as the figure took shape. This was no ghost. There was a scientist behind that pen.

  33

  Particles

  The touch had come from Nala. It must have been her, at least the skin of her hand. Flesh and blood, this was no ghost.

  The Dancers might join tentacles as an expression of sexuality, but the human gesture is different. When one hand touches another in a handshake, it provides a connection between two people. It acknowledges, we are the same, we are familiar. The touch was certainly from Nala.

  It was more than just a touch. Deeper. It felt like an interlacing of two paths. A link between their fates? Marie had been selected by Zin. A probability, a calculation of some sort. Of course, Zin couldn’t have foreseen what Marie would do with the headband or that Nala and Thomas would need her help. Could he?

  Fate is an imagined property of the universe. The scientist inside her pushed the thought away.

  Jan was preoccupied, copying the notes scribbled across the walls onto paper. The words ran around edges, starting on the desk and dropping to the floor. In some cases, relevant sections were missing altogether. The words were mostly Nala’s thoughts about physics. One note mentioned Thomas. It brought relief for everyone.

  Jan ran his finger along the wall, following a sentence that wrapped around the edge of a bookcase. He lifted his head in thought. “She’s right. Why not? She was able to pick up the radio.” It wasn’t clear what he was talking about, but he ran out of the office and returned a minute later with a phone and a white cord.

  He plugged the USB connector into a port on his laptop computer and handed the phone to Marie. “Mind offering this to her? You’re better at the handoff stuff than me.”

  Better didn’t figure into it, given that Jan hadn’t once tried to hold anything for Nala to pick up. But the phone on a wire made perfect sense. Once a wire was strung between the spaces, there would be some way to communicate that didn’t involve radio technology. It was old-school, but certainly better than a pen and paper.

  Marie held the phone out, leaving as much slack in the wire as she could. She waited. Was Nala still out there? With so many notes covering the walls, it was impossible to tell how long it had been since she’d written about the phone. Could she even see it?

  The phone wiggled, twisting just slightly between Marie’s fingers. If Nala could pull the phone into her world, it would represent some much-needed progress. Maybe there was even an app that could make phone calls across the wire? It would be nice to hear her voice.

  In quick succession, the phone disappeared, the cable snapped taut and the USB connector slipped out of the laptop port. Marie reached for the dangling wire as it flopped through midair but missed by inches. The wire and the USB connector at its end disappeared like a strin
g of spaghetti being sucked into the mouth of the invisible man.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Jan’s office was now filled with people: two other Fermilab employees and a guy from the Department of Energy. Even a cop, though it wasn’t clear why the police were needed. Dr. Park seemed to be managing the chaos as the various experts took photographs of the walls and debated the precise angle of the writing instrument used to produce the scrawl.

  Jan himself was searching for a longer USB wire, thinking that the previous failure was only a matter of the distance offset between worlds.

  It was all a waste of time as far as Marie was concerned. Did the precise distance really matter? The angle of her pen? Even if they could get a wired connection, it was still just an improvement in communications, not a solution.

  None of the experts seemed to have any idea how to reach into whatever strange place had captured Nala and Thomas, much less how to get them out. Marie left the office and walked to the break room around the corner. Jan sat at the food and supplies table, still covered with items that Nala and Thomas might want. Someone had put the blanket on the floor to make room for more food.

  Jan raised his head but didn’t say anything. He looked tired. The pad of paper he’d used to copy Nala’s notes lay on the table in front of him. It now contained additional diagrams, graphs and a few equations that were far beyond anything Marie might grasp.

  “Couldn’t find a longer cord?” Marie asked.

  Jan replied without looking up. “One of the security guys went to an electronics store to buy one. When he gets back, we’ll try again.”

  He tapped his pencil on the pad, and his thoughts became words. “We need to know the spatial relationship relative to the singularity.”

  Marie had already seen that much. “They’re in one of those bubbles I described to you. They must be.”

  Jan kept tapping on his paper.