Secrets of Goth Mountain
Page 65
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Elizabeth sat in a Doppelganger world with the Doppelganger Johnny, five meters from the Cube. In the alternate universe they currently viewed, the Cube was evidently buried in rock, so there was currently nothing of interest to view, but she was having an interesting discussion with Johnny about multiple universes.
“So you think this thing might be cycling through only a finite number of universes?” she asked.
“Yes, Elizabeth. It’s a hypothesis supported by only limited observations, but I suspect that it will prove to be true.”
“What observations?”
“Two types. First, all alternate universes seem to have started diverging ten to twenty years ago at a minimum. Others have perhaps split off longer ago, but not longer than a few decades. So the universes we see are certainly not random; otherwise we’d be seeing universes where Germany won the World War Two or Rome still rules and so-forth.
“The second thing is that we’ve seen some of the same messages passed among us more than once. Even the set of universes that split off only ten to twenty years ago should effectively be infinite, if there are an infinity of universes generated every second. Somehow the number of universes being viewed is limited by the Cube. Seeing the identical message twice implies that the ensemble of universes viewed is significantly limited, perhaps to only a few hundred, perhaps with the set of universes in play redefined every few decades.”
“That still sounds like a lot of universes.”
“A lot to view one at a time, but on the average messages can be sent faster, because they propagate somewhat geometrically. It only works because the number of universes is limited. You tell folks in several universes something, and they tell several others, and so forth. I’ve modeled it on my PC.”
“OK, I get it” said Elizabeth. “But what does that imply, beyond the obvious?”
“This thing may be millions of years old, and it has been here for thousands of years at least, but we see people that we know in family and cultural contexts that we recognize. So the whole business must sort of start over every so often and limit the universes it views to ones that are relatively nearby, space-time wise. And anyway, it sort of makes sense that the Cube could have capability limitations such that it can only tune in to a finite set of universes over finite periods of time. And that means you have a chance, Elizabeth.”
“Great. On the other hand, if the Cube cycle starts over again before we’ve found my home world we’re probably screwed, and so are Mark and Mort. Do you have your marker board? Let’s send a message to my Johnny geometrically.”