Marie wasn’t helpless. She unzipped the case and pulled out the headband. Jan and Park stared at her as she put it over her head.
Park held up a hand. “Ms. Kendrick, an alien device…I’m not sure…”
She gave him her best pissed-off-female look and Park backed away. Jan didn’t say a word. She reached up and tapped twice on the side.
The spheres materialized before her but shifted in position—lower. It made sense. She was now high up in Wilson Hall, not below ground at the site of the accident. The bubbles were clearly associated with the underground lab.
“The spheres are still there,” she said. “I think we’re actually inside the biggest purple one. It’s all around us now.”
Neither man said anything. Maybe they thought she was conjuring the spirit world and their words would break the spell. As the famous futurist Arthur C. Clarke had once said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The capabilities of the headband were exactly that.
“There’s one sphere that’s far away and badly misshapen. Daniel thought it might be 4-D space over Texas, but I can’t really tell. It’s bigger than it was before. Not sure why.” She flipped through several other data layers. “No sign of Nala.”
I need that people layer. But it simply wasn’t there. The magic had its limits, and if Nala was nearby, Marie had no way to know. She removed the band and returned it to its case. “Sorry, I wish I had more.”
As she zipped the headband’s case, there was movement on the table. Marie turned quickly. “Did you see that?” She stood upright and stared. A box of crackers trembled and slid, no more than a half inch, but without anyone touching it. “There.”
They all gathered around the circular table covered with supplies. The box of crackers wiggled again and then slowly vanished in a wave that started at one end and finished at the other, as if someone had erased it from existence.
Jan dropped to his knees, his eyes level with the table. “Wow. Interdimensional kinesis. Maybe the new-age nutcases weren’t so nutty after all.”
“It’s Nala,” Park said. “It must be.”
It had better be, Marie thought. Because this is pretty freaking weird.
The pineapple juice bottle began to shake. It slid one way and then the other and then disappeared in the same fashion. Three intelligent people with significant training in skeptical analysis had witnessed what anyone would describe as supernatural.
Even the rational explanation was a tough sell: Nala stood among them, but in some other space, unseen. It was an explanation that could make you crazy.
The vodka bottle wobbled and fell over, rolling off the table before anyone could catch it and crashing to the floor. Broken glass and the smell of liquor made the absurdity very real.
Jan pushed the broken glass away with his foot. “That didn’t seem intentional. She’s struggling.”
“Two for three. I’d say she’s doing pretty well.” Marie picked up a jar of peanut butter and held it in the air. None of them spoke as the jar wiggled and then vanished.
Marie wrapped both arms around her as a chill shivered through her body. “Wow. It felt like someone pulled it right out of my hand.”
The blanket shifted slightly and brushed against the radios that stood next to it, causing one radio to fall on its side. “Perhaps we should hold each item up,” Park suggested. “It might be easier for her?”
“I’d be careful,” Jan said. “Remember the Flatland story.”
“Which is?” Marie asked.
Park nodded, apparently comprehending Jan’s oblique reference. “A-sphere pulls A-rectangle from the two-dimensional page.”
Jan nodded in agreement. “It may not be that simple, but there’s the potential for injury, for both you and Nala.”
“Sorry, what?” Marie asked again. Why was it so hard to get a simple answer from these guys?
Park spoke while Jan remained deep in thought. “Jan is suggesting that Nala might unintentionally pull on your finger or hand and drag you in.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Marie said.
Park shook his head, his expression no less serious than if he were delivering a eulogy for an interdimensional death. “Jan might be right. Assuming we are adjacent to space that we can’t see, who is to say how much effort it takes to release us from our normal 3-D space, in whole or in part? Nala seems to be pulling small objects out with very little effort. It may not be that hard to pull you in too. We might think the dimensional boundary is impenetrable, but the dividing line between our space and this other space may be nothing of consequence.”
The magenta spheres that Marie had visualized were held together by the flimsiest of surfaces, looking very much like giant soap bubbles. I could put my hand through it.
Even without the headband, Marie could almost see the dimensional sphere that was unquestionably surrounding them. She lifted the radio into the air and held it by her fingertips.
“Careful,” Jan advised. Whatever that meant. There were so many unknowns in this scenario that it was impossible to describe what being careful even looked like. Nala needed that radio, and if no one else was going to do it, Marie would hand it to her.
The radio wiggled. For a moment, Marie thought she felt something brush against her wrist and then the radio disappeared, starting from its base and going all the way to its antenna.
“Yes!” Marie shouted.
Jan switched on the second handheld radio. “There’s no guarantee a radio communication is going to work. Part of it depends on how Nala holds it.” Marie was familiar with the issue. Antenna gain, or directional control, varied depending on the equipment. NASA high-gain antennae focused the electromagnetic transmissions in a specific direction. It was how a spacecraft orbiting Mars could communicate all the way back to Earth. But radios used for short-distance communication were low-gain, meaning the transmission would broadcast in a disc in all directions perpendicular to the antenna.
“How would she even know which way to point it?” Marie asked.
“She might not,” Jan answered. “I’m not sure I would either, but depending on how she holds it—and a dozen other variables—we might receive her transmission.”
“But not vice versa. Right?” They’d had the same problem trying to communicate with the missing Soyuz spacecraft. One-way communication only.
“Right,” Jan said. “We have no way to point our antenna in her direction. All we can do is wait for her to call.”
And so, they waited. But the radio produced nothing, not even static. Jan adjusted the squelch, but the radio remained silent.
“You sure it works?” Marie asked.
Jan nodded. “I tried them out when I picked them up. Fully charged. They work fine.”
There was no way to know what problems Nala might be having on the other side of this strange boundary. Their wait ended with a crash that came from somewhere down the hall. When Marie looked up, Jan was already heading out the door.
“Sounds like it came from my office,” he said, pulling his key out.
They followed him only a few steps down the hall and around a corner. He slid the key into a door and opened it to reveal a darkened office. Jan flipped the light switch.
A whiteboard had fallen from the wall and was lying on the floor. Jan picked it up and laid it flat on his desk. The whiteboard was partially covered with physics equations and diagrams, but scrawled diagonally in large letters were two words written with a black marking pen.
Sorry, Jan.
As they watched, additional words formed from nowhere, written by an invisible hand. The words ran across the width of the whiteboard, passing over its edge and onto the desk itself as if both were part of the same writing surface. A portion of one word even crossed the top of a white computer mouse in the middle of the desk. It was like a film projection of written words, covering multiple surfaces. They were difficult to piece together, but unmistakably from Nala.
Radio doesn�
�t work … crackers and peanut … good.
Jan grabbed an eraser and wiped the whiteboard clean. He quickly wrote. Hold the radio parallel to us.
They waited. The radio in Jan’s hand remained silent, but more words were scrawled across the whiteboard, this time even drawing across Jan’s hand resting on the desk.
Can’t see … you’re doing … again.
Jan wiped the board clean again and wrote the same message once more. He looked up at the ceiling, but even Marie recognized that “up” was not the direction where Nala was hidden. Jan couldn’t look in her direction any more than he could point to her. No one could.
More writing appeared.
Nope. Too confusing.
“She can’t see what you’re writing,” Park said. “It’s the view from four-dimensional space.” He leaned close to Marie. “You recall, Ms. Kendrick when you first visited Fermilab, the strange view from the camera? Walls, clothing, skin, bones, all mixed together. Confusing is an understatement. Nala’s situation may be even worse.”
More words appeared.
Cover it. Black for … white for no. Okay?
Jan grabbed a dark blue blazer that hung on the back of his door and covered the whiteboard as best he could. If he was interpreting Nala’s broken words correctly, a dark surface would mean yes.
“Now, uncover it so she can write,” Marie suggested.
New words appeared as soon as the board was cleared.
You guys learn quickly! … trained mice. Was radio working?
Jan covered the whiteboard with the jacket for yes, and another sentence appeared.
I’m calling. You’re … not hearing me. Write on cracker… easier to pick up.
“She means the cracker box,” Marie said. “She had no problem picking that one up. There’s another box in the break room.” Marie dashed down the hall and returned with the box of crackers. Jan scribbled a note across its surface and handed it back to Marie. He still seemed concerned about holding anything out to Nala.
Marie shook her head and held the box in the air as far from her body as possible. It probably wouldn’t be any safer, but it might make it easier for Nala to see it. Within seconds, the box began to wobble in Marie’s hand, then disappeared just as the first one had.
Marie smiled. They waited to see what would happen. Writing appeared once more on the whiteboard.
Not bad. Food with a message. … fortune cookie. As you thought, Jan. Instability … boson. I totally fucked up. Hang on to your lederhosen … in the void. Your move.
As they watched, a few more words appeared.
Hurry, would you?
29 Flickers
Nala put the radio down and dipped another cracker into the peanut butter jar. A sweater wrapped around her body, she sat cross-legged on the floor, allowing her bare legs to soak up its relative warmth.
She lifted the Viking oxygen mask for a moment, popped the cracker in her mouth and washed it down with pineapple juice. “Just as well that the vodka bottle broke,” she said between crunches. “Probably better if I stay sharp.”
The bottle had been harder to grasp than the other items. Slippery, with no distinct edges to pinch between fingers. The peanut butter jar was much easier, particularly when someone held it up. Nala wasn’t sure who it was, but most likely a woman given the longer hair. Faces were difficult from this fourth-dimensional perspective, though hair was easier. The woman looked a bit like Daniel’s old partner. What was her name? But why would she be at Fermilab? More likely it was someone from security.
The other two were easier. Jan and Jae-ho, almost certainly. Even if their faces were jumbled, she could tell just by their motions. People moved a certain way, and after years of working with the same colleague, you got to know them pretty well. Maybe not from another dimension, but the principle was the same.
No sign of Daniel. She wouldn’t expect him to be there anyway. She could wish he was there. Daniel figured things out, and that kind of help could be pretty handy right now. But Jan was the physicist, and there would be no walking out of bizarroland without a scientific solution. Jan was her best hope, not Daniel.
Finishing the cracker, she licked her lips and made another try with the radio, turning the volume up to maximum and speaking loudly through a gap in the mask. “Calling all scientists. Anyone out there?” She released the transmit button and listened. Nothing, of course. There wouldn’t be. Interdimensional conversations were one-way at best. A three-dimensional radio has no mechanism for sending electromagnetic waves into a fourth direction.
She held the button down. “Just kidding. I know you can’t talk to me, and I think we’ve established you can’t hear me either… but if I’m not mistaken, I think it depends on the position of the radio, or maybe the antenna. Can’t remember. But I’ll keep talking and twisting the radio around and maybe you’ll pick up a few words here and there.”
Nala stood up, whatever up was. “Thanks for the food. I’m going to grab a few more items if I can and then check out my surroundings. I’ll return here at noon, okay? In fact, let me just write that for you.” She drew once more on the whiteboard.
She walked a few steps back to the break room, passing directly over—through?—the three-dimensional walls in between. She dropped to her knees for a better look at the table. It was still covered with objects, some recognizable, some not. There was something bulky and gray. She had already tried to pick it up, but it seemed soft—maybe a pillow. It was too difficult to pinch, and she had given up. Nourishment was more important anyway. There was still another bottle, maybe water. No longer a critical need, though with disappearing-reappearing water bottles, you never knew. Other shapes looked like food. Better.
She reached to the floor and pinched a slender yellow shape between her left- and right-hand fingers. It wiggled and bent, but she finally managed to lift it from the page. A banana.
“Yum,” she said, taking a bite. “Good choice, people of the page world.”
She took another bite and picked up the radio again. “Who knows, maybe you can hear me. Probably better for my sanity if I think you might be out there. Hey, the writing sure got your attention, but I had no idea what you were doing in response. Maybe you were writing too, but it just looked like chicken scratches to me.”
Nala’s ability to write in their world made perfect sense; it really wasn’t any different from an ordinary pen to paper. A three-dimensional pen intersects a two-dimensional sheet of paper exactly where the pen tip touches the paper. Any flat two-dimensional creatures living in the paper world would never see the pen but would easily detect the ink flowing into their page. From her 4-D perch she was simply intersecting the 3-D world with the tip of the pen, or the tip of her fingers. Same concept.
“I’d love to give you a longer description of where I am. Maybe I’ll try to find a clear floor to write on. Anyway, if you can hear me, this might help you come up with a solution.”
She looked around in the darkness. The area where she sat was free of debris, but there was no telling if she might encounter the edge again. It would be certain death if she did.
“I’m in quantum space, probably propped up by HP bosons, though I couldn’t say what the baryon-to-boson ratio might be. My best guess is that the space Thomas and I created was unstable, and it folded back on itself when we forced it to collapse. Along with some 3-D space, we got sucked in.”
She glanced to the bright light. “There are two sources of light. One is hanging above me. It’s almost like a star, bright and probably far away because walking toward it or away from it doesn’t really change its position. It might be the singularity I saw in the lab, but from another viewpoint. Whatever it is, the little shit turned itself off once. It just flickered and was gone. Almost wet my pants. Luckily it turned back on and has been steady ever since. But I’m wary.”
She looked down, into the 3-D world. “The other source of light is the real world below me, though down may be a misnomer around here. The real
world is dim, but it does glow. That tells me that photons are leaking across the boundary and, of course, any boson leaking into quantum space is normal physics, so that helps to confirm my hypothesis about where I am.
“I can interact with the 3-D world. I can touch things, even pull them out. Well, you’ve already seen me do that. It probably means that at least a small sliver of me still inhabits the 3-D world. I’d love to find a way to improve upon a sliver, but I haven’t thought of anything yet.”
She released the transmit key, dipped her head and then pressed the button again. “I fucked up bad… Thomas didn’t make it.”
She missed her friend and colleague. He would have been highly valuable in getting them out of this mess, particularly with the communications. He was always so good at…
She paused and slapped her forehead. “Dumb shit! What were you thinking? Cables. Fucking wires. That’s all you need.” The whole world had been wireless for years, but it was still no excuse. After all, they’d communicated with Core through a coaxial cable.
Nala quickly scribbled a note on the whiteboard and then keyed the radio. “Boy, are we dense sometimes. Just hand me a phone. But before you do, make sure it’s connected to a computer via USB. Simple, right?”
Once a wired connection was established, there were a number of ways to communicate. They could transfer files, for example. She even recalled a chat app that worked over USB.
Satisfied that better communication was on the way, Nala turned off the radio and put it in the back pocket of her ripped shorts. It was time for some reconnaissance.
She gathered a few items of food and one water bottle and put them in a plastic bag she had found in the debris, tying her supplies through a belt loop. She picked up a metal pole that was now the equivalent of her blind man’s cane, a last-chance warning for the edge and the void beyond it.
The Quantum Series Box Set Page 50