Anomaly

by Caitlin Lynagh

  ‘They don’t have the same resources as we once did, Myaie,’ Ahrl replied. ‘Neither do they educate their young in the same ways.’

  ‘Sophia Leto and her family obviously can,’ Myaie said.

  ‘Only to a certain degree,’ Ahrl replied. ‘There have been a few living humans who have surprised us before. Not all of them have made good choices.’

  ‘You could say that about any soul. We can’t force the living to make the right choices – they have to figure it out themselves so that they can learn and grow,’ Ioel said. ‘Sophia was involved in one of Kyle’s previous futures, before you passed away. There is another future now where she may be involved again.’

  ‘Previous futures?’ Alice said. Ioel glanced at the rest of The Thirteen.

  ‘Tell her, she already knows too much,’ Myaie said. Ahrl nodded.

  ‘Very well. Sophia and Cameron were supposed to join you and Kyle in research. You were to become a team, and together you were going to discover the force-carrying particle which could open up a scientific explanation for the afterlife. Unfortunately you became seriously ill and nature, along with a few Negative delays, meant that you passed away, and Kyle, well Kyle gave up on life after that. It knocked all of you from that future pathway.’

  ‘Negative delays?’ Alice said.

  ‘Yes. Negatively placed suggestions caused you some costly delays. If you had been diagnosed earlier, if certain surgeries had taken place earlier, you may have been saved,’ Ioel said. ‘Now however, it seems the pathway has opened up again, though we do not know how or why. There’s a possibility that Kyle may work with Sophia and Cameron again and somehow you are involved.’

  ‘Sophia can see me,’ Alice said. ‘That will be how!’ She had seen all of Kyle’s future pathways but she didn’t know all of the details. The fountain wasn’t set in stone and new details emerged all the time.

  ‘That has never happened before. It’s unheard of but, perhaps.’

  ‘What about the father,’ Myaie said.

  ‘Whose father?’ Alice asked. The Thirteen glanced at each other once more. They looked nervous and Alice felt a small pit of dread opening up in her stomach.

  ‘There’s a problem looming on the horizon,’ Ioel said.

  Twenty-Five

  The snow was beginning to clear, melting away and giving into the promise of spring. Kyle still glanced warily at the vehicles parked on the sides as he passed. He entered the chapel through a glass-panelled door; the warm air was layered faintly with incense and it rushed past him in a bid to escape outside. He let the door close slowly behind him and his eyes roamed around the chapel’s interior. He walked down a narrow corridor. Lining the wall on his right were shelves crammed with books on all sorts of religions. He thought this was a little strange but dismissed the thought quickly as he approached the end and turned left again.

  Sophia was sat exactly where he thought she would be. She was hunched over the coffee table with notebooks and pens all around her. She didn’t even glance up at him as he approached her.

  ‘Hello, Kyle,’ she said. He hesitated then. How the hell had she known it was him? ‘You have a distinct footfall,’ she said, answering his silent question. She looked up finally and smiled at him, her dark brown eyes flashing with mysterious humour.

  ‘Hi…’ he said awkwardly. ‘I just…’ She jumped up quickly as a fiery excitement erupted over her features.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said taking his hand. ‘You’ve got to see this.’ She pulled him into another room and then up a flight of stairs. He hadn’t even been aware that the chapel had a second floor.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked as they reached the next floor and paused before a set of heavy, wooden doors. Sophia pressed a finger to her lips and ignored his question. She opened the door carefully and he heard voices floating up and echoing around a lofty ceiling. She pulled him inside and then crept carefully along a balcony. The floor squeaked slightly under their feet but she finally settled in a seat and then leaned forwards over a low ledge to look into the main belly of the chapel. Down below them a service was taking place.

  ‘I just came to return your book,’ he whispered to her. She didn’t reply, instead she motioned to the service below. Kyle gazed down at the people. He didn’t understand why she wanted him to look, but then his eyes focused on the individuals and he did a double take. There appeared to be people from all different religions seated in the pews below. He could see women with their hair hidden from view, and men with turbans, he could see different ethnicities and cultures, and there were a line of people at the front, dressed in different garments and seemingly taking it in turn to deliver messages from differing texts. He glanced at Sophia who was watching him curiously.

  ‘Amazing isn’t it?’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Kyle said softly back.

  ‘It’s a religious service where they incorporate all religions,’ she explained. ‘Followers from all the major religions attend and even some from the minor religions. Then they each take a short piece from their religious texts to deliver to the whole group. They all use English, as it’s the most commonly used language that everyone understands.’ Kyle watched the smile on her face as she turned back to look at the service; she seemed genuinely happy, but he still had no idea why she had insisted on bringing him here.

  ‘But why? What’s the point?’ Kyle asked.

  ‘It brings all the religions together, it’s beautiful. They all have the same messages in the end, just different stories, different paths to the same ending.’

  ‘I guess,’ Kyle replied. He hadn’t expected this from Sophia. She didn’t seem overly religious, but then again, he had come to realise that he shouldn’t assume anything when it came to her. She motioned to the doors they had come through and led the way back out and down the stairs.

  ‘I didn’t think I was going to get my journal back,’ she said as she sat back down. Kyle raised an eyebrow and drew her book from his bag.

  ‘Here… I err… I added some more notes to it. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Sophia smiled. She took her journal eagerly and began flipping through it.

  ‘It seems like I’m collecting books lately,’ Kyle said.

  Sophia gasped; her eyes widened and her mouth hung open but curved upwards as though she had been caught in the midst of laughter. He wondered if he should apologise for the mess he’d made of her work.

  ‘This is brilliant,’ she said excitedly, almost bouncing in her chair. Her dark eyes gleamed with something that was both incredible and frightening.

  ‘It is?’ Kyle said, slightly taken aback.

  ‘Yes!’ she said and then she frowned at him. ‘Sit down,’ she said agitatedly. He did as he was told and took the chair opposite her.

  ‘This is exactly what I’ve been looking for,’ she said, leaning forwards in her chair. ‘One timeline that pushes everything along, another that contains every possibility.’ She looked at his notes again and nodded. ‘Yes, yes, this is perfect!’

  ‘It was just a passing idea…’ Kyle said. ‘I really don’t know how the mathematics would work.’

  ‘Ah, we’ll come to that later,’ she said, waving a hand in the air. ‘Each loop gets bigger as regular time moves forward because the information in the universe is growing, hence entropy is growing, hence the universe is expanding.’ Her words seemed to be jumping from her mouth.

  ‘I’m not sure how you would explain the beginning of time with these timelines…’ Kyle said.

  ‘Beginning?’ Sophia said. ‘There is no beginning, as you go back into the past the loops get smaller, the infinities get smaller and smaller, it’s like trying to reach zero by continuously halving down from the number one. It doesn’t work.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘That math
s won’t work. But that’s OK.’ Her grin stretched wider. ‘I like your ideas but I don’t think these timelines have to be limited to the physical world alone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kyle asked sceptically.

  ‘Well, let’s put it this way…’ she began. ‘We don’t know if multiple dimensions really exist, correct?’

  ‘Correct.’ Kyle nodded.

  ‘So even if they’re not physical dimensions, we can still imagine what other dimensions would be like if they did exist.’

  ‘Yes, I guess so.’

  ‘So they become imaginary,’ she said. ‘And I mean really imaginary, imaginary to us, like made up, in our minds, imaginary.’

  ‘Right.’ Kyle frowned. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this line of thought but he wasn’t entirely sure he liked it.

  ‘Take one of these loops on this vortex you’ve drawn,’ she said, pointing to his rough diagram. ‘The centre is regular, human time, and each loop corresponds to a specific moment in time. If you take a cross section through any point, you would have a large circle with a dot in the centre for regular, human time.’

  ‘OK.’ Kyle nodded.

  ‘The space in between the dot and the edge of the circle would represent every possibility that could occur in that specific moment in time. So, for instance, you right now could stay here in the chapel, or go to the Students’ Union, or get on a bus to town, or go back to your flat, or go to the physics building, you could call your mum, dad, sister and so on and so on,’ she explained. ‘Even those are only a small number of the possibilities open to you right now and technically you could do any one of them.’

  ‘OK…’

  ‘However they are only the physical possibilities, the possibilities that are physically possible for your biological body to achieve within this moment. What if you wanted to say, be in Paris, right now.’ She pointed to the ground.

  ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘It’s impossible at this moment in time because no one has built a human teleportation device yet; however it may be a possibility in the future and this is where entropy comes in. The vortex grows as the present continues onwards, each loop gets bigger because as time passes more information is learnt and processed. Information is entropy so there is more entropy in the system. Therefore, maybe on some distant loop in the future it might be physically possible to move from here to Paris in one moment.’

  ‘These moments in time are short then?’ Kyle said.

  ‘Yes, but it depends on the moment,’ she said. ‘Now if we go back to the present day and back to my scenario before, you can’t physically move from here to Paris, but you can picture yourself in Paris right now, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I guess, but that’s just our imagination,’ Kyle replied.

  ‘Exactly, so technically there are imaginary possibilities too,’ Sophia said. ‘You could picture yourself here, or at home, or in Paris, or New York, or Israel, or in the Amazon, or by the Gaza Pyramids, etc., etc. It’s not a physical possibility for you, but it is an imaginary one, because your mind can picture it instantly.’

  ‘Right… but I don’t see how this relates to anything,’ Kyle said.

  ‘It does,’ Sophia replied. ‘It’s possible for someone to win in the lottery in one of these brief moments.’ Her fingers brushed upwards against the pencilled vortex. ‘Winning millions on the lottery is a massive change in anyone’s life, and it’s both a physical and imaginary possibility for someone who has bought a ticket.’

  ‘The odds are very steep though,’ Kyle replied.

  ‘Which makes it all the more important. There are some possibilities no matter how remote, which can affect the course of someone’s life drastically, it’s technically the chaos theory,’ she explained. ‘Therefore…’ she paused and picked up a pencil from the table. She flipped the page and drew a new diagram quickly. ‘In this circle cross section…’ She held her journal up. She’d drawn a circle with a dot at its centre overlapped by a shaded star with numerous points, covering the dot and extending outwards into the circle but never reaching the outer edge. Some of the star’s arms reached far from the dot, others were much closer. ‘The shaded area displays the physical possibilities for that moment in time for a specific person, and the unshaded areas display the imaginary possibilities. Some of the physical possibilities are more remote than others so stretch further away from the centre. Whilst others are more likely, so these are only a short distance from the centre. Do you see?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Kyle nodded. ‘But how would the maths work? There are no experiments, there’s no… data we could use.’ He sighed. ‘I can see what you’re saying and it makes sense, but it’s pointless in the scientific world unless you can prove it with something, and I’m not entirely sure what that something would be.’

  ‘It doesn’t need to be proved; it’s only a thought theory at the moment, nothing more,’ Sophia replied. ‘It’s like the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment; if you put the cat in a box and you can’t see the cat, and then you put poison in the box with the cat, is the cat dead or alive? No one knows for sure until the act of observing it makes the outcome fact.’

  ‘OK. Yes.’ Kyle nodded, as he felt something strangely familiar stir within him.

  ‘You can see it now can’t you?’ Sophia asked quietly. He nodded.

  ‘Yes. Yes I think I do,’ he said. It had taken a while but his thoughts were racing ahead of him; this was in fact quite a good idea. ‘It covers the dimensions because it uses the same logic applied to thought experiments; just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there, and if it’s not a physical option then it’s definitely an imaginary one.’

  ‘Imaginary options would only apply to creatures that can use their imagination to picture themselves in different settings,’ Sophia said. ‘I wouldn’t want to just say creatures with a consciousness, as we don’t really know what goes on in the minds of other creatures, as much as we can guess.’

  ‘Yes, but you could apply these timelines to anything, even a lump of rock on a distant and uninhabited planet, though it would only have physical possibilities, not imaginary,’ Kyle replied. ‘For that rock, in one moment in time, it might get hit by an asteroid falling from the sky, which may or may not be a remote possibility. It may also be rained on, or struck by lightning. It might fall off the edge of a cliff, if the cliff gave way, it might get picked up by a nearby stream, it might be at the bottom of the river where it’s sunk, or maybe it’s being bounced along the river bed? Who knows? It’s just a rock on some distant planet that we can’t see, but it too has thousands of possibilities.’

  ‘Yes, exactly. Now think about that but for a human being. The possibilities are endless,’ Sophia said.

  ‘You can apply these timelines to the whole world; you could apply it to different viewpoints, the person themselves, the spectators, the people who may or may not be affected by that person’s moment in time,’ Kyle said. He could feel excitement charging down his veins and the cogs in his brain were working overtime.

  ‘It would mean that every decision we made would be important, no matter what that decision was,’ Sophia said. ‘It’s the butterfly effect, though there would be both little and big butterflies.’

  ‘It is, you’re right, exactly like the butterfly effect.’ He took the notebook from her and turned to a new page. ‘The decisions people make during each moment in time may or may not have huge consequences,’ he said, as he roughly sketched out another vortex with a line running through the centre. ‘The thing is, the decisions people made before you in the past, their decisions would affect which possibilities would be more likely for you in the future. So…’ he paused with his pencil poised, ‘you would have fine webs of something,’ he said vaguely, ‘connecting people together.’

  ‘Ah… so everyone’s decisions affects each oth
er to lesser and greater extents. A gravitational consequence of events,’ Sophia said. ‘Your family and friends are more likely to affect your decisions and open up possibilities for you, than say, a complete stranger.’

  ‘Yes, and it would go much further than that, if you think,’ Kyle said. ‘There are people in history that changed the course of the world by making a fundamental decision at a specific moment in time.’ The hair on the back of his neck seemed to stand on end; he felt a murmur of static energy running through his limbs. Warm and faint tingling sensations caressed his skin.

  ‘Interesting, yes, you’re right,’ Sophia said but Kyle was barely listening to her, he was trying to sketch out graphs and diagrams to help link all of their thoughts together. His eyes drifted lazily over his fingertips and he paused suddenly as he saw a little spark jump between them. He hesitated and stared at his hand. Slowly, he set down the pencil and book on the coffee table before him.

  ‘Still…’ he said awkwardly, glancing up at her. ‘I don’t know how you would get anyone to take these ideas seriously. You’re technically branching into so many different subjects, it’s almost philosophy.’ He felt his excitement ebbing away again as the realistic side of his brain pointed out the flaws; there were many, he realised sadly.

  ‘True, for now,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘That’s why they’re only my personal theories. Sometimes I talk to people about them; Professor Green is one of those people. I can talk about ideas and theories for hours and hours, but you’re right, it would be difficult to prove anything like this with the technology we have right now.’ She smiled a smile that seemed to know everything. The intensity in her dark eyes told him that he was missing something, and he had only seen that particular look once before.

  ‘But it would give physicists a new possibility, something else to consider perhaps?’ Kyle said as he smiled and repeated her words from the night of the van incident.