If there’s the slightest chance of a screwup, I think it would happen during a readiness exercise. Military experts will probably tell me that even in a readiness exercise, there’s still very little chance of an accidental launch. In my defense, this story is fiction.
There are approximately 3,700 deployed nuclear warheads in the world today. A big number, but much lower than the 70,000 that were active as of 1986. We’ve made progress! United States and Russia each maintain about 1,700 warheads and most of them sit atop missiles on board submarines. No single person can initiate a launch. But once commanded, there is no question that the military will do their jobs. It seems to me then, that the weakest link in the chain is the person at the very top; the president, premier, prime minister, chairman or dictator. We’ve seen belligerent, angry and impulsive people occupy these top spots in every country that maintains a nuclear arsenal. They make me nervous.
The Ultimate Paradox
The ontological, or bootstrap, paradox is one of the most illogical of paradoxes that crops up in time travel stories. It’s the situation where an object or event has no beginning, no cause or no origin. Someone from the future places it in the past where it transitions to the future so that it can be placed into the past.
Quantum Time includes some subtle cases but let me leave you with the whopper of all ontological paradoxes. Nothing beats this paradox. Nothing could.
It’s the idea that the beginning of our universe was caused by an event in our distant future. Something that hasn’t happened yet. Possibly an intervention by an incredibly advanced technology or civilization. They will do something. We don’t know what.
But whatever it is (or will be), this technological intervention reached into the deep past all the way back to the nothingness just before the Big Bang and provided the spark that ignited everything.
Very literally, the universe created itself from an event in its own future.
When you think about it, it’s as good an explanation as any other for how this universe came to be. We already know the components of the universe—the quarks, leptons and bosons. I don’t doubt for a second that in some distant future we’ll find ways to cause those components to spring into existence from the vacuum energy of space. It’s not too great a leap to think that some advanced civilization would be able to manufacture a planet, or a star, or perhaps a whole galaxy.
And if jumping to the past is possible, why shouldn’t we believe that at the very limits of technology there might be a mechanism to reach to the furthest point in the past and trigger everything. Every bit of matter and energy, every event, every living creature that occupied a trillion planets across a trillion years of time might owe their existence to the ultimate ontological paradox—a creation mechanism that sprung from the very universe it created.
Augh! My brain hurts!
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Thanks for reading!
Douglas Phillips
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all the authors at Critique Circle, but especially Kathryn Hoff and Travis Leavitt. You read a very early version of this story and saw each one of its flaws. Your advice was spot-on, and our back and forth conversations produced a cleaner more coherent story. I learn so much when I get the chance to talk with other authors. I can’t wait for your books to come out. I’ll tell everyone I know.
Thanks to Rena Hoberman for another fantastic cover. The coin was a fairly simple concept, one that we worked out more than a year ago. But as additional elements were added (the writing around the edge, the eagle popping out) the integration turned out to be more complex than I had anticipated. I think it turned out great!
I think of the editing process as my opportunity to peer into someone else's head and find out how the story I wrote played in their mind. Did my scene descriptions create the visual image I intended? Did the characters flub any lines? Was the science clear? How many commas did I misplace? (Answer: all of them.)
My editor, Eliza Dee, kicked off the editing process. She really wrapped her head around this complex story, analyzing the details I’d almost forgotten about, and finding fascinating meaning I hardly knew was there.
Thanks also to six special people who jumped in at just the right time to help shape the final story and the characters. We had some intense back and forth and you provided outstanding feedback. Thank you Lili, Michael, Jeff, Kim, Nancy, and Bill for your time and help.
Much appreciation to Christine Lane, who will find all the miscellaneous mistakes. Like this story, I’m reaching into the future because Christine’s part of the editing process comes last—after I’ve already written this section.
Thanks once more to my wife, Marlene. Daily, I retreated to my man-cave to work on “the book” for hours on end. But you never once complained, you always encouraged me and picked up the slack elsewhere in our lives when I was locked away in thought. No writer could ask for more.
Writing a novel is fun. But this time around was harder. Just a few days after I’d finished the first draft, a dear friend died unexpectedly. Phil Hamre was my biggest fan, always providing encouragement, giving honest (yet ego-soothing) feedback, and letting me know exactly what he thought of my characters—especially Nala. I wish I could reach back in time. I’d tell myself to write just a little faster and get an early copy into Phil’s hands. He never got the chance to read this story, but I know he would have liked it. None of us knows when our life might take a sudden turn. Don’t waste a single chronon. Many thanks, Phil, for your timeless support.
About the Author
Douglas Phillips is the best-selling author of the Quantum Series, a trilogy of science fiction thrillers set in the fascinating world of particle physics where bizarre is an everyday thing. In each story, the pace is quick and the protagonists—along with the reader—are drawn deeper into mysteries that require intellect, not bullets, to resolve.
Douglas has two science degrees, has designed and written predictive computer models, reads physics books for fun and peers into deep space through the eyepiece of his backyard telescope.
The Quantum Series
Quantum Incident (Prologue)
The long sought Higgs boson has been discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Scientists rejoice in the confirmation of quantum theory, but a reporter attending the press conference believes they may be hiding something.
Nala Pasquier is a particle physicist at Fermi National Laboratory in Illinois. Building on the 2012 discovery, she has produced a working prototype with capabilities that are nothing less than astonishing.
Daniel Rice is a government science investigator with a knack for uncovering the details that others miss. But when he's assigned to investigate a UFO over Nevada, he'll need more than scientific skills. He'll need every bit of patience he can muster.
Quantum Space (Book 1)
High above the windswept plains of Kazakhstan, three astronauts on board a Russian Soyuz capsule begin their reentry. A strange shimmer in the atmosphere, a blinding flash of light, and the capsule vanishes in a blink as though it never existed.
On the ground, evidence points to a catastrophic failure, but a communications facility halfway around the world picks up a transmission that could be one of the astronauts. Tragedy averted, or merely delayed? A classified government project on the cutting edge of particle physics holds the clues, and with lives on the line, t
here is little time to waste.
Daniel Rice is a government science investigator. Marie Kendrick is a NASA operations analyst. Together, they must track down the cause of the most bizarre event in the history of human spaceflight. They draw on scientific strengths as they plunge into the strange world of quantum physics, with impacts not only to the missing astronauts, but to the entire human race.
Quantum Void (Book 2)
Particle physics was always an unlikely path to the stars, but with the discovery that space could be compressed, the entire galaxy had come within reach. The technology was astonishing, yet nothing compared to what humans encountered four thousand light years from home. Now, with an invitation from a mysterious gatekeeper, the people of Earth must decide if they're ready to participate in the galactic conversation.
The world anxiously watches as a team of four katanauts, suit up to visit an alien civilization. What they learn on a watery planet hundreds of light years away could catapult human comprehension of the natural world to new heights. But one team member must overcome crippling fear to cope with an alien gift she barely understands.
Back at Fermilab, strange instabilities are beginning to show up in experiments, leading physicists to wonder if they ever really had control over the quantum dimensions of space.
Quantum Time (Book 3)
A dying man stumbles into a police station and collapses. In his fist is a mysterious coin with strange markings. He tells the police he’s from the future, and when they uncover the coin’s hidden message, they’re inclined to believe him.
Daniel Rice never asked for fame but his key role in Earth’s first contact with an alien civilization thrust him into a social arena where any crackpot might take aim. When the FBI arrives at his door and predictions of the future start coming true, Daniel is dragged into a mission to save the world from nuclear holocaust. To succeed, he’ll need to exploit cobbled-together alien technology to peer into a world thirty years beyond his own.
For these and other works by Douglas Phillips, please visit http://douglasphillipsbooks.com. While you’re there, sign up to the mailing list to stay informed on new books in the works and upcoming events.
Box Set Table of Contents
Quantum Space
Quantum Void
Quantum Time
The Quantum Series Box Set Page 94