Quantum Void

by Douglas Phillips

  Audrey, the young woman who had joined them in the car, was connecting cables on just such an instrument. Her colleague, Parker, lifted a high-powered telescope onto a heavy-duty tripod and screwed a camera onto its visual back. At least the telescope was recognizable.

  “Is this your Lidar?” Daniel asked. He could only guess what the device might be used for, but she had mentioned it in the car.

  Audrey nodded and connected a cable to a box that looked like a cross between a television studio camera and a gun sight. It sat atop three sturdy legs at eye level.

  “Is it the same as Doppler radar?” Daniel’s best guess.

  “Same idea,” she answered. “But Lidar works with a laser, not a radar beam. I’m taking cross-sections through the cloud every five minutes… well, as soon as I get it set up again.”

  Daniel wasn’t familiar with the equipment, but any data was better than none. “What can you measure?”

  “We’re doing real-time processing of twelve parameters. Wind, aerosols, cloud base, droplet size, molecular composition and a few others.” She pointed to a cable that ran across the ground to a NOAA van parked nearby. “We have a mobile analytics station for whatever parameter we need to study. Of course, it’s not a vertical profile like it was at our forward location, but it should still give a good view of what’s going on up there. You need something in particular?”

  “For starters, how high is the cloud?”

  “Base is thirteen hundred meters. Top varies, but generally around three thousand. Kind of compressed compared with most cumulonimbus clouds.” Audrey seemed to know her stuff.

  “Can you measure vorticity?”

  “You bet. But vorticity is a measure of synoptic scales… low-pressure systems and hurricanes. This cloud is more of a mesoscale event, so we’re using an angular momentum circulation measure—same thing we do for tornadoes. I can get that data if you want it.”

  Pouring through reams of cloud cross-sections probably wasn’t the best use of his time, but it was great to have a sharp meteorologist who seemed to be ready to answer whatever questions might come up. “No need. But one thing I’m curious about: is the rotation increasing?”

  “Just like an ice skater pulling in her arms,” she said. “This baby is spinning up, at least the central core.”

  “Good to know. Thanks.”

  “Science rules,” Audrey said.

  “Damn straight,” said Parker, who was set up only a few feet away, adjusting the camera-telescope combination.

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Go for it,” Parker said. “I’m spotting the power plant.”

  The SLR camera on the back end of the scope put a highly magnified image onto the camera’s display. The scope was trained on the center of the power plant, two of the four smokestacks visible. They wobbled just like Twizzlers.

  Five questions in two minutes, and his understanding of an otherwise unknown phenomenon had just gone from severely limited to not bad. Science did, in fact, rule.

  Daniel’s phone rang. “Excuse me.”

  It was Jan, probably the busiest man in Illinois right now. “Daniel,” he said breathlessly. “Listen carefully. We need a big change. I’ve been in communication with Nala and Marie. They have a plan. I agree with their assessment, but we’re going to need the help of the Romanians to pull this off.”

  Even over the phone, Jan’s concern was obvious. But so was his passion. “How can I help?” Daniel asked.

  “The stability of dimensional space is a direct consequence of the ratio of mass to volume. Call the Romanians. Tell them to ramp up their neutrino oscillation. Make the space bigger. Double its size.”

  The four-dimensional space hovering over this part of Texas was certainly the underlying reason for the ominous cloud that threatened to do what had already happened at Fermilab. Yet Jan wanted to double its size. It wasn’t the most obvious path to success. Daniel’s understanding of the situation had just reset back to severely limited.

  “I have to get back to Nala,” Jan said. “Call them. And hurry.”

  Daniel tried to piece together any scenario where this crazy idea might make sense, but he couldn’t think of any. It was a very foreign feeling for a man who usually not only had the answers but also assumed control of the solution. Double the size of the four-dimensional space? The evacuation perimeter eight miles out might suddenly seem entirely too close.

  But there were times when decisions had to be made with the best available information. Jan and Nala were the experts, and they had clearly come up with a plan. After a minute of thought, Daniel dialed the contact in Romania.

  42

  Intersection

  Marie and Nala kneeled side by side above the pancaked view of Jan’s office. The compressed figure of the three-dimensional man walked in and out, looking like he might be talking on his phone.

  Nala finished typing a note and offered the phone to Marie. “Anything else before we go?” Nala asked.

  Marie took the phone. “Yeah, just one more message to pass along to Daniel.” She finished typing and handed the phone back to Nala. The two exchanged a long look and Nala reached out, hugging Marie tightly around the neck.

  Nala spoke into Marie’s ear. “This is a brilliant idea. I can see why Daniel loved you so much as a partner.”

  Marie pushed back, still holding Nala by the shoulders. “Any idea is only as good as its chance of success. Realistically, what are the odds that we can pull this off?”

  Nala shrugged and started counting on her fingers. “Let’s see. Death by asphyxiation… death at the edge of the void… then there’s death from dimensional misalignment of every cell in our bodies… and, of course, death by a massive explosion. I’d say our chances are one in five.”

  Both women laughed. “You know, I think I can live with that,” Marie said.

  Thomas returned from the break room. He held out three paper masks, the kind commonly worn by doctors during surgery and by the Japanese to avoid germs. Marie had remembered seeing a stack of the masks at the Fermilab security desk and had texted Jan to provide them.

  Thomas looked very confused. “I managed to peel them off the break room table, but somebody needs to tell me what the heck we’re doing.”

  Marie grabbed his hand and pulled herself up from the floor. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry. I’ll tell you on the way.”

  Except for the masks, one bottle of water and the headband, they left everything else at the makeshift campsite over Jan’s office. If the plan worked, they wouldn’t need supplies. And if it didn’t work, there were at least four ways they were going to die. One way or another, their dimensional imprisonment was coming to an end.

  They moved directly away from the singularity, away from its flashes of probability and eigenstates, away from the debris field and away from the one-way portal that had dropped Marie into this impossibly strange bubble of existence. She wouldn’t miss any of it.

  Had it been a colossal mistake to leap down the rabbit hole? Probably. Words echoed from what now seemed like the distant past. You’re in over your head, Kendrick. Tim’s assessment, just before their mission to Ixtlub. Tim was a jerk, but his call had been spot-on, both then and now. She was unquestionably in over her head. But Tim had vastly underestimated her resolve.

  There was a way out of this place. It might offer no better than a one-in-five chance of success, but at least it was a path. The three raced forward into the darkness.

  “Don’t mind me,” Thomas said between breaths as they ran. “Go ahead and make your clever plans without explaining. I’m just the lab assistant. Probably just here for comic relief.”

  Marie took two strides for each one of Thomas’s. “Sorry, Thomas. It’s all happening really fast. It’s the critical density that Nala and Jan figured out. We can change it, or at least Daniel can. If they make the bubble over Texas bigger, the density goes down, the ratio goes below one point zero and the bubble stabilizes. At least that’s the theo
ry.”

  “Okay, that part makes sense,” Thomas said.

  Marie stopped running. “Hold up a second, let me check status.” She tapped the headband and tuned in to the colored spaces all around. Most of the smaller blue bubbles were already behind them. The purple bubble that surrounded them extended for another kilometer, maybe more. The larger bubble, the one she was sure was over Texas, had grown larger still. “It’s started!” she yelled. “It’s growing again. Daniel got the message!”

  “How’s the ratio?” Nala asked. She leaned her hands on her knees, panting from the run. The only person who didn’t seem to be affected was Thomas, who looked like he was out for a Sunday stroll.

  Marie examined the unseen numbers that displayed only within her mind. “Uh… down a little, 1.508.”

  “But still well above 1.0,” Nala said. “Still dangerous. Is the edge getting closer?”

  “Yeah, definitely.”

  They started to run again. Thomas continued to ask questions. “You’re trying to make a stable 4-D space over Texas, right?” Marie nodded. “Great for the people of Texas, but how does that help us?”

  “There’s a chance that the bubble will grow large enough to intersect this one.” It was the same technique that Zin had used to get them to Ixtlub. A small bubble on the departure side, a larger bubble at the arrival point, intersecting to provide a continuous 4-D path from one point to another. It was the germ of an idea that had flashed into Marie’s head. Two bubbles, and the larger one would be their savior.

  “A bubble merge? All the way from Texas?”

  “Think about it,” Nala said, providing the expert validation for Marie’s plan. “It’s four-dimensional quantum space. When it expands, a direction in 3-D space must compress, right?”

  “Right,” said Thomas. “We’ve established that relationship a million times.”

  Nala waved one arm as she talked, her run reducing to a jog. “From our point of view inside 4-D space, the distance from here to Texas could become negligible—just a hop, skip and a jump. We’ve got two bubbles of 4-D space with the 3-D distance between them getting smaller by the minute. Merging should be no problem at all.”

  “I like it,” Thomas said. “We just jog from Chicago to Texas.”

  Marie examined the two bubbles in her mind. Though there was no specific data on their widths, she was confident the visualization represented each to scale. If they were currently in a sphere a kilometer wide, then the other bubble was probably ten times that size.

  “Once they merge, it should be about six kilometers to the center,” Marie said. “At least from our perspective on the inside.”

  “At a jog, we could cover six kilometers in thirty minutes,” said Thomas, clearly happy that he was contributing to the calculations.

  Marie slowed to a walk, breathing heavily. “Another check,” she said. “It’s easier if I’m not running.” The distant bubble was not so distant anymore. A curving purple surface intersected the floor not far in front. “We’re really close. The bubbles could merge any minute. Ratio is down to 1.471. Still pretty high.”

  “Going in the right direction,” Nala said, “but the whole thing might still collapse. Who knows where that would throw us?”

  One of the four ways to die. There was no avoiding it. They had to cross the boundary into the larger bubble. Marie looked around, comparing the view her eyes provided against the one inside her brain. “We’re close to the edge. Might be safer to wait here for a minute until the bubbles join up.”

  Thomas croaked in a classic voiceover of a movie trailer. “Welcome to… the void. Your worst nightmare.”

  His repertoire was impressive, but his scary voice wasn’t what was bothering Marie at just this moment. What caused her heart to pump faster was the contortions on his face. His forehead began to pixelate, and it quickly spread to his nose, mouth and chin.

  Crap! Not a good time.

  Marie would need to wear the headband continuously, or none of this was going to work. She forced herself to concentrate on what she knew was real.

  “Grrrrr,” she yelled through gritted teeth. She kept her eyes open and grabbed Thomas’s arm. His face was not melting into colored dots. His skin was normal. She touched his cheek. Her fingers felt skin with whiskers, not the vibration of a thousand tiny insects that overwhelmed her vision. “Damnit! Stop!”

  She felt a wave of dizziness coming over her while the insectlike dots rotated in place, as if the hive was deciding whether to pour out and devour her or recover the figure of a man. She squeezed Thomas’s arm. “Slap me!” she yelled. And Thomas did.

  The buzzing bees slowed their motion and faded away into the normal skin of the man standing in front of her. She buried her face in his chest. “Thanks, I needed that.”

  Her cheek stung where he’d slapped, but the terror was over. Not the most pleasant of solutions, and probably not a permanent answer either. She could feel the creepy-crawlies lying in wait for another opportunity for permanent psychosis. They didn’t belong to the headband; they weren’t even external. These little buggers were buried deep inside her own mind.

  “You okay?” asked Thomas with watery eyes. “I’m really sorry. Did I hurt you?” Nala looked on from behind the large man with an expression of deep concern on her face.

  “Whatever just happened to you, Marie, it’s not good,” Nala said.

  Marie sheepishly pointed to the headband. “It does things to me. I’m okay now.”

  “Can you turn it off?” Nala asked.

  Marie shook her head. “Not if we want to get out of here. This is going to get really crazy, really fast. I’m going to need that visualization, or our chance of success drops to one in a thousand.”

  She looked up, noticing a change in the bubbles. Their edges were no longer spherical, but in the shape of a lopsided dumbbell. Like two soap bubbles, one large and one small, they had joined.

  A distinct odor filled the air, a foul smell like burning tar, fortified by an acidic taste on the tongue.

  “What’s that smell?” asked Thomas.

  “We’re there,” Marie answered. “The bubbles have joined. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to suffer through whatever pollutants they’ve been pumping into this space. But…” Marie held out the paper masks. “These might help.” They each donned a mask over their nose and mouth.

  “Better,” said Nala. “But I can feel it stinging my eyes already. This could get ugly.”

  “Can’t be helped. Let’s get going,” Marie said.

  They resumed their run, with the headband providing some guidance to the destination. It wasn’t far; they’d be there in a few minutes.

  “This stuff is nasty,” Thomas said, coughing under his mask. “Tell me again why we’re running toward this stuff instead of away from it?”

  Breathing was twice as hard and harder still when trying to talk. “We’ve got to get to the center of this bubble,” Marie yelled.

  “But if this new, even bigger bubble might still collapse, isn’t the center the worst place to be?”

  Marie nodded. “Yeah, probably true. But it’s also our best chance.”

  “Best chance to get blown up again?” he yelled.

  “It’s why Daniel went to Texas. There’s a power plant down there with some kind of special cap at the top of the smokestacks. They’ve been sending pollution into 4-D space through it. I’m guessing the cap is big. Maybe as big as a tunnel.”

  “So, you think—”

  “Yeah,” Marie yelled. “It’s our way out of here.”

  43

  Rupture

  Audrey, the meteorologist operating the Lidar instrument, waved her hand at the group of FEMA managers huddled to one side. “Um, Jesse, Gonzalo, anybody? I’m getting something weird here.”

  Daniel perked up. The combination of a smart scientist operating high-tech equipment and calling attention to weird results was a detail not to be ignored.

  One of the FEMA managers broke away
from the group and hurried over. Audrey pointed to a monitor attached to one side of the instrument. “Pressure wave. Large-scale, spreading out from just below the cloud in all directions. It’s big, and it’s coming right at us.”

  “Is this the same thing we experienced at the plant?” the manager asked.

  She looked nervous but meticulously kept on message. “No. It’s natural, but there’s no telling what caused it. We only have about thirty seconds before it hits. I think we should we take shelter.”

  “Thanks.” He turned and shouted to the crowd of scientists and reporters. “Everyone in the building. Now!”

  Daniel approached Audrey as her hands flew around the tripod, quickly disconnecting the equipment. “How bad?”

  “It might die out before it gets here, but you never know.”

  Daniel nodded. “Good plan, let’s get inside.”

  She pulled the instrument off its tripod base, and they headed through the single door into the old restaurant. The building was brick, but it had large picture windows facing the oncoming pressure wave.

  “Stay away from windows,” the FEMA manager shouted to the group gathering inside.

  Seconds later, a blast of air twisted tree branches and stirred up dust. It shook the windows like a sonic boom, but the glass held. The sudden storm was over as quickly as it had come.

  “Yow,” Audrey said to Daniel. “A gust front. This thing must be generating downdrafts.”

  Ayala poked his head out the door. “All clear. Meteorologist? Where are you?” He caught Audrey’s eye among the crowd of people. “Keep monitoring and give us regular readings on this.” She picked up her Lidar unit and pushed out through the door. Daniel followed.

  A few minutes later, she had the event analyzed. Ayala and several other FEMA officials gathered around as she explained. “It was a pressure wave—compressed air responding to something going on under the cloud. The data shows it’s happening repeatedly. The air is being pushed and pulled, a lot like waves on a beach. That was a big one, but there are a lot of smaller waves around the plant. Just like at the beach, most waves don’t go past the wet sand, but a few of the big ones make it all the way up to where you put out your towel.”