‘Shit!’ She wiped the sweat off her brow and ran a hand through her hair. ‘That was interesting.’
‘You did it?’ Jiao sounded excited.
‘’I sure did. Fascinating place, alpha-normal. I’m just not sure I can do it again without getting another code to crack.’
‘If you’ve achieved it once, it should be second nature next time round. Try again now.’
‘Jiao, I’m shattered. I don’t even know what day of the week it is.’
‘It’s Thursday. Please try again. Your physical state shouldn’t stop you doing this.’
‘Okay, if you say so.’
Deira focused on what she’d just experienced. For a moment, nothing happened, and she thought she’d have to go back to the drawing board, then – quite suddenly – she was there. She was in alpha-normal and watching her brain at work. She let it go again and gave a tired whoop of satisfaction.
‘Yes! I did it.’ She yawned. ‘Jiao, can I go and lie down now?’
‘Indeed, you can. This is remarkable. I never really believed you’d achieve this much, and certainly not so quickly.’
‘You didn’t? But you said …’
‘We needed a strategy for rescuing Tao Chen, Deira. Nothing else stood a chance of working, so it made sense to try this.’
‘And what sort of chance did you think I had, then?’
‘My estimate was three-point-four percent.’
Deira frowned. ‘’You know, if we’re going to be working together for some time, I think we need to work on our communication.’
She took herself off to her bed.
Chapter 10
His energy body flashed through the rift between universes. This was another critical moment. The cosmology suggested that the new universe would remain too hot for their occupation until it was around half a million years old and, since they couldn’t wait that length of time, The Device had been built specifically to solve this problem by employing a temporal manipulation of the creative energy pulse. In theory, they should arrive at a time corresponding almost exactly to the creation of light. Any earlier and they risked destruction. He risked destruction.
It was over almost before he’d completed the thought, and he was relieved to find he was still alive. His surroundings, however, were not at all what he had been expecting. He should have been in a universe bright with light. Instead, all was darkness.
How could this be? He ran through the known facts regarding universe formation – the initial singularity, the explosion, inflation, big bang nucleosynthesis, photon era, and so on. He should have arrived at a time when the new universe was transparent to light because photons were no longer in thermal equilibrium with matter. Any earlier and it would certainly have been dark like this, but the darkness would have been accompanied by a superheated plasma. It would have been too hot for electrons to bind to nuclei – and far too hot for him to survive. If he’d arrived later than the target era he would have seen early star formation.
All around him, he sensed the energy-bodies of those who had made it through the rift with him. There was confusion – confusion and fear. They had soon discovered that they numbered in their thousands rather than the expected billions, and now they found themselves in an environment so alien and unexpected that many were questioning whether they should have made the effort at all. When they identified his energy signature the questions came thick and fast. Unfortunately, he had no answers.
It took some time to deduce what had happened – and the answer wasn’t what he’d expected. The transfer had deposited them in a form of space existing below the level of “normal” quantal reality – a space that didn’t exist in their original universe. They were quite safe, but as far as he could tell, they were trapped in this sub-quantal prison – and would probably remain trapped until the death of this new universe.
There was uproar. He was the one who had landed them in this predicament. This was all his fault. Then they discovered what he’d done to get them here, the mass murder that had been the only way to achieve the desired outcome, and the accusations came thick and fast. If they’d been in normal space, he would undoubtedly have suffered some form of penalty for his actions, but all concepts of punishment were essentially futile in this environment. The unpalatable fact was that what had been done had been done and they now needed to move on and find a way out of this mess. If, indeed, there was one.
In fact, he already had the germ of an idea, though the accompanying maths proved to be as slippery as a barrel of eels. While the people fumed, he worked his way through it as best he could and eventually called them together to discuss his findings. They listened to him in a hostile silence, the mood darkening further as he explained that it had been their arrival in this new universe that had resulted in the creation of sub-quantal space in the first place. They had, in effect, created their own prison, entered happily, and thrown away the keys. There were many who suggested he should have been aware of this from the beginning, but the majority wanted him to explain what could be done to help their situation. He promised he would, but he needed to give them some background information first.
The first thing to explain was how the fundamental constants of the universe must be very tightly set to enable star formation to occur. His original equations had suggested that their mere presence in this new young universe would automatically result in a shift of its fundamental constants, forcing them to align with the universe they’d left behind. This appeared to have occurred as expected. However, what was totally unexpected was that their presence here had been responsible for the generation of a further fundamental constant, one that had not been present in their original universe. That constant was consciousness.
The effects of this were far-reaching. They came from a universe in which they had been the only intelligent lifeform, and they had expected nothing different in this one. However, with consciousness now a fundamental constant, life in this new universe would always tend to evolve towards sentience. It was likely that there would be millions upon millions of conscious species – and they would all have been generated by their presence in sub-quantal space. In effect, they were as gods once more – though gods with a very restricted range of options unless they could find a way out of sub-quantal space. He thought there might be a way.
He had determined that the only way to leave this prison was through a neuro-spatial tunnel, a tunnel between the low-level neural activity of a sentient being and sub-quantal space. Such a tunnel would only be available in a mentalic-capable species and, for them to use such a tunnel, the genome of the selected species would need to be roughly congruous with their own.
That was the good news. The bad news was that the likelihood of finding such a species before the outside universe died its own death, was not good, and made worse because they had no way of contacting normal space. If they were to have any hope of escape, they would need a suitable species to find a way into sub-quantal space of its own accord. It wasn’t impossible – just highly unlikely.
So, the waiting commenced.
He kept himself busy with his calculations, adding to them when more data became available. And more data did, indeed, become available as the universe in normal space aged, life arose, and the normal quantal branching forced the creation of alternative universes within the sub-quantal stratum. It was fascinating watching these wraith-like creations and seeing what sort of beings were evolving in the outside world – always taking care to remind yourself that you were watching what wasn’t happening, not what was. The reality outside would be different to all these other pseudo-realities. No, he reminded himself, these were all genuine realities – just inaccessible from this one. A multiverse within a universe.
It was while he was watching one such alternative reality strand that the first sign of trouble came. It felt like a faint tremor, so faint, indeed, that he doubted if he would have detected it if he hadn’t been so absorbed in his data-collection. None of the others had felt anyth
ing, and he was just beginning to think he had deluded himself when it happened again. He side-tracked from his usual observations to focus on this anomaly. What was going on?
He worked painstakingly through the mathematics of sub-quantal space, adding modifiers here and there, until his observations fitted into the overall framework. It wasn’t good. The very cosmic constants that their arrival had modified, allowing the formation of a universe fit for life to develop, were threatened with disruption. Specifically, the strong nuclear force was becoming larger.
At present, the increase was a mere 0.001% over baseline, but the trend was upwards. If it reached around 2%, even in the absence of changes in the other constants, his models suggested that diprotons would become stable, leading to rapid hydrogen fusion and the dying-off of stars. Add in changes to the other constants and the future of this new universe looked grim indeed. The question of what was causing this deterioration in the underlying structure of reality produced an answer that was as shocking as it was unexpected – it was themselves.
Although their initial presence in the new universe had been necessary to synchronise the constants to those in their home universe, the calculations had always assumed they would end up in normal space. Perhaps all would have been well had they been able to vacate sub-quantal space as soon as the constants had become fixed, but that had not been possible, and it was their continuing presence here that was causing the constants to slip back to their initial conditions. If they didn’t get out soon, normal space would no longer be capable of sustaining life.
So, the hunt for an escape route took on a new imperative and he scanned the alternative universes eagerly, watching for a suitable host species. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before one species looked like it might provide the necessary preconditions. All that was missing was mentalics, and though a few mutations did find their way across the divide separating their reality from his, they were all too primitive to be useful.
Finally, it happened. He had been immersed in his observations of the alternative universes when his pre-set alarm informed him that a more advanced individual from the designated species had found its way into sub-quantal space. Immediately, he abandoned his work and went in search of the entity, finding it wallowing in the shallows as if it didn’t know what to do next. Clearly, it might suddenly withdraw, and the opportunity would be lost, so he made up his mind quickly. He would test the escape route himself
He followed the entity’s energy signature back to its origin, expecting to find a way into its low-level brain activity. No such way existed. He was baffled. All the previous visitors had been equipped with such a gateway. Why wasn’t this one? And, if he didn’t have one, how had he managed to get into sub-quantal space in the first place? He had initially been concerned lest the being disappear from sub-quantal space again, but his investigations showed that this wasn’t likely. The same lack of a gateway that was preventing him using the being as an escape route, was also preventing the alien leaving sub-quantal space. He was now as stuck as they were, and consequently useless to them.
His disappointment was intense because this had seemed like the chance they’d all been waiting for. Now they could only hope that more of these entities would come their way, perhaps better prepared next time. As it happened, another one turned up very soon after the first, and his spirits soared. Clearly, these creatures were knowledgeable about the existence of this place and were taking their first exploratory steps into this new environment. It was just what he needed – what they all needed.
He watched the new entity carefully. It was highly mentalically-capable. That meant it should be possible to use it as an escape route and, once again, he went chasing down its signature. It was with a sense of deep disappointment that he soon discovered that, just like the first one, this entity had no way of returning to normal space either. It differed from the first one in possessing the sub-spatial end of the neuro-spatial tunnel. It just didn’t have the neural end, which appeared to have been sheared off. He pondered the problem. It seemed a terrible waste to ignore this being’s highly developed mentalics. Was there anything else he could do?
The more he considered it, the more obvious it seemed that this being might still represent the opportunity they had all been waiting for. With mentalics of this quality, it might very well be able to contact its fellows for help, and if that turned out to be the case, it was imperative it was aware of the situation pertaining to the cosmic constants. A mentalic download seemed the obvious way forward.
After his previous disappointments, he was expecting problems with the mentalic link to this entity, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that this wasn’t the case. He was able to slip easily into its mentalic matrix. Then he realised why – and the shock almost caused him to lose his link. This was unprecedented and totally unexpected and would require further study to fully understand. However, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he implemented the download and swiftly withdrew.
He knew that further communication would be impossible for the few minutes it took the entity to recover from the massive download, and he used those few minutes to reformat his appearance. Glancing up, he saw his partner approaching and noted with surprise that she had already changed her own photonic body. Then he saw the entity accompanying her and understood why. She had already made the connection and taken the necessary precautions. Their original appearance would create unnecessary dissonance and would therefore not be conducive to ongoing communication.
The female entity had been following the course of the stream down to the pool and had only just caught sight of the two men as they sat together. She stared at them quizzically, probably wondering what she had been brought here for. She even looked mildly irritated. Then she focused on the male and her brow furrowed as recognition began to dawn.
The male, still confused from the mentalic download, was initially sitting with his back to her. However, as he began to recover and slowly turned, her face changed yet again, this time exhibiting signs of first shock and then unutterable joy. She began to run towards him, then stopped and approached more cautiously, as if she doubted the reliability of her senses.
‘Josh?’ She tried to touch his arm, but the two photonic bodies reacted to form a shower of pixels that flew away into the photon stream like leaves on a breeze.
He gazed at her blankly, still confused from the recent download.
Josh! It is you! You’re alive!’
Josh gazed into her eyes, and suddenly all confusion ended as he snapped back to reality. His photonic face lit up in a smile so radiant it threatened to outshine the photonic background.
‘Tao!’
Their bodies came together in a virtual embrace that created a veritable lightshow of displaced pixels.
Meanwhile, the two sub-quantal entities gazed at each other in wonder – and smiled.
Chapter 11
All he could see was a vague, diffused light, like looking through an opaque window. Then, his eyes regained some of their focus, and he realised that was exactly what he was looking through. He was standing in some sort of tube-like chamber, around four metres high and a metre across, which gave the impression of being designed for someone a good deal larger than he was. The front of it, which was probably a door, not a window, was composed of white plastic, and it was that which had confused him. Through it, he could just make out a huge space, some sort of room, but again not built to human scale. So, where was he? More to the point, who was he?
That last thought seemed to act like a trigger. He recognised the feeling, but from a long time ago, and then he’d been lying in a chamber, not standing. The word “PHASE” came to mind, and that released a torrent of memories that whirled and eddied like leaves in an autumn breeze before finally settling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Sol grimaced. This business with memories was becoming too much of a regular outing. That last episode had been enough for any lifetime. Twice just seemed damned unfair.
So, now he remembered who he was, the next step was to work out where he was. He was still a little deficient in the memory department, though he remembered being involved in an accident of some kind. In many ways, he wished he didn’t. It had been excruciating. He could still feel the agonising pain as his bones had first snapped then sheared their way through the surrounding tissues, the sharp stab in his side that had reminded him of Nicolau Dominguez’s serrated knife of twenty years ago, and the blessed blackness as his head had cracked open. After that, there was nothing.
He tried to move, but his body seemed to have shut down and wouldn’t respond. As far as he could tell, he wasn’t even breathing. So, was this like the time he had flicked into anaerobic metabolism under the ethane sea of Titan. He didn’t think so. On that occasion he’d been fully mobile throughout. This time round, he was frozen in place like a mannequin in a shop window.
There was something about an alien ship, but the memory flitted about like a butterfly and he was just unable to capture the thing. He knew that concentrating on it wouldn’t work, so he relaxed instead, and that did the trick. It suddenly clicked into its proper place and he remembered everything. He recalled finding the massive alien ship, the stasis chambers with their alien occupants, and releasing the alien, Micha, from his chamber. So, that must be where he was – in a stasis chamber – and that implied he’d been very badly injured when the fragment of Titan had smashed into Mars.
How badly injured? The question appeared to enable an ability he’d never known he possessed. He could visualise exactly what was wrong with his body, right down to cellular level. Not only that, he could see what the regeneration processes of the stasis chamber were doing. They were clearly faulty, and if he didn’t intervene soon, he’d never be able to walk again. His body reacted to the knowledge instinctively, activating his own regeneration sequence and discontinuing the regeneration processes of the chamber at the same time. Somehow, he knew that his regeneration sequence required twenty-four hours to complete, and he didn’t want any interference from the El during that time, so he mentalically turned off the chamber’s various alarms. Things should be alright now. He could relax.
Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Page 8
