“It’s, uh, probably more than one and might be infinite. See, the way it works—at least according to my math—is that time is multidimensional. There’s the normal forward and back, and that’s what we experience as past and future. But there’s room for multiple tracks. That means that various world-lines can run in parallel.” Kevin paused and scratched his head. “The strange attractor thing we’ve experienced kind of confirms some of the math. Timelines can split, run parallel for a while, then merge when the differences average out. Except if something happens that’s big enough so they can never merge, where there’s no sequence of events where they can ever become similar enough, so then you get a new attractor. This all sounds stupid in English, because it’s all bad analogies. The math makes a lot more sense.”
“I guess having the Earth apparently go into a meltdown and kill everyone and everything qualifies as big enough,” Matt mused. “So is there another Earth beyond that? Maybe it’ll be better. Or does it get worse?”
“Yes, maybe, no,” Kevin replied. “If there are more beyond Greenhouse Earth, they could be better or worse. It’s a random walk, not a trend. Although there might be a general tendency for each Earth to be a little stranger compared to us—not counting things like being a burnt cinder, I mean.”
“Can we connect to other world-lines?” Erin asked.
“We can, but only by finding and locking onto an attractor.” Kevin glanced at Richard.
“Since the portal equipment always starts up with the same parameters,” Richard added, “we’ll always get Greenhouse Earth. What you’re talking about now is trying to aim the equipment in a completely random direction.”
“Can we do that?”
“Possible in principle, but we didn’t build steering into the equipment.” Richard looked at Kevin, then at Matt. “We could shift the X and Y matching phases at startup. Matt, can you add that to the U.I.?”
“No problem.”
Bill looked around the table. “This is … huge. You guys understand that, right? We’ve just proven the many-worlds theory. More or less. This will change the world forever.”
“Which is why,” Richard replied, “Kevin and I are so concerned about Keeting. In a perfect world, we’d get credit for this, become rich and famous, get Nobel Prizes, and so on.”
“But in the real world, you could have it taken away from you and end up with nothing. I get it.” Bill looked at his hands for a moment. “Doesn’t even have to be the university. What if the government gets wind of it? They could classify it. We could all disappear, end up in Area 51 for the rest of our lives. Or in shallow graves.”
Richard frowned. “Y’know, there’s no need to mock us.”
“What makes you think I’m not serious? You’ve been worried about Keeting, as if an over-the-hill bureaucrat is the worst thing that can happen. The way I see it, Keeting is bad mostly because he’d spout off about it to anyone who’d listen. If the government gets wind of your discovery, do you think they’ll just sit back and wait to see what happens? Do you seriously think there are no military implications to this?”
Richard glared at Bill in silence for a few seconds. “Yeah. Okay. So it’s even worse than I’ve been thinking. Thanks, I feel much better.”
Bill shrugged. “We might as well be clear about what we’re getting into here.”
A pall settled over the group as each person considered the implications.
“So, should we?” Erin said. “Hand it over to the military, I mean. Would it be that bad an idea?”
“No way,” Richard replied. “They’d take it away from us without compensation or explanation. We’re just students, Kevin is an Indian national, and my family situation would make me a poor security risk in any case. There’s no possibility we’d be cleared to keep working on it. They’d just take it away.” He glared at Bill. “Nice job. Now you’ve got me doing it.”
“Still,” Matt replied. “Erin has a valid point. Is it the responsible thing to do?”
Richard opened his mouth to reply, but Bill held up a hand. “Let me field this one. You’re assuming that the government and the military will handle the discovery in a responsible and ethical manner. I find that unlikely in the extreme. There are so many possibilities with this discovery—scientific, humanitarian, whatever else—and if the government gets it, that’s all gone.”
“And not to put too fine a point on it, but Kevin and I would like to get something out of this discovery,” Richard added.
“Okay,” Erin replied. “I don’t really disagree, but the question had to be dealt with.”
“The other thing to consider is that the two options aren’t mutually exclusive,” Bill said. “We can work with it for a while, and if it gets too big for us, then hand it over. But once we do hand it over, there’s no going back.”
“Or we just go public right away,” Matt said. “Release it into the public domain.”
“And, again, lose control completely,” Richard growled.
“Well, what are you hoping to do with it?”
“I don’t know yet what we can do with it, Erin. I’d like to find out. That’s why I went into science in the first place.”
Erin gave Richard a small smile of acknowledgement and sat back. Richard looked around the table. “Bill’s right that releasing the information is a one-way street, so for now, at least, let’s keep this to ourselves. We can all revisit the question if things go sideways.”
12. The Other Way
June 22
“I wrote a speech …” Bill said, deadpan.
Matt snickered. Richard closed his eyes in a display of exaggerated exhaustion, but otherwise ignored Bill.
“Seriously, we’re making history here. Maybe. Or maybe we’re about to create a big hole in the campus—”
“—or in the universe,” Matt added.
“Even better. Don’t you think a speech is in order?”
Matt shook his head. “I bet it starts out: ‘Space, the final frontier …’ ”
“Or, ‘Here, hold my beer.’ ” Bill grinned as Matt laughed. Richard looked about ready to start the experiment anyway.
The equipment had been cleaned up a little more, and the portal hardware was now contained in a single PC server box. The actual gate was again sealed in the pressure vessel that Bill had provided, the whole assemblage sitting on a turntable in the middle of the lab. Kevin had set up the cameras again, with one pointed straight through the viewport.
“Okay, we’re ready to go.” Richard looked around the group, tablet in hand. “It’s still not what I’d call real directional control. What we’ve done is added some feedback to avoid Greenhouse Earth’s attractor while searching for a new one. To use a fishing analogy, we’re throwing our line out and trying to hook something new while avoiding the old location.”
Kevin grimaced. “That analogy hurts my head.”
Richard smiled at him, then continued. “The pressure vessel is a good precaution, but doesn’t entirely eliminate any danger. Last chance to back out. Last chance to argue. Anyone?” He waited for comments. “Well, okay then.” He poked the tablet, and the experimental equipment powered up.
The whole crew leaned forward, staring at the monitor. The gate opened with none of the drama of the previous attempts; instead, it showed a scene straight out of a nature documentary. The monitor pictured a large meadow with sparse forest, blue sky, and the occasional fluffy cloud. A herd of what appeared to be especially stocky deer grazed in the meadow.
“Now that’s more like it!” Matt exclaimed. “This is like the exact opposite of worst case.”
Bill gestured at the image. “I am perversely disappointed at the lack of horrific disaster displayed here.”
“You would be,” Matt said.
“If you’re all done with the comedy, I’m going to rotate the assembly now,” Richard said.
The view shifted as the turntable slowly rotated. Erin said in a soft voice, “Looks almost like the Lincoln area, does
n’t it? Maybe a little hillier. Why would that be?”
No one had an answer, and the turntable finished a complete rotation in silence.
Richard muttered, “Well, I’ll be damned. I guess we lucked out this time.”
“What now?” Erin said.
Bill made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Notwithstanding how utterly cool this is, we don’t really have a lot of options. We can rotate the gate, we can dial in Wild Kingdom Earth or Greenhouse Earth, and that’s about it. So far, anyway. We can move the gate around, of course, but I shudder at the image of us trying to drag this assembly around the campus with a giant extension cord trailing behind.” He grinned at the others. “And fending off campus security the whole time.”
Richard shut off the gate. “You ain’t wrong. And …”—he glanced at Kevin—“maybe it’s time for Kevin and me to come clean on this whole project. This is going to require a lot of beer.”
“Come clean?” Bill exclaimed. “I thought you already came clean. There’s more cleaning? It’s even worse?”
Richard replied, with a sour look, “I may have left out a few details. Let’s get to the beer first, okay?”
Matt leaned toward Bill and muttered, “Rogue physicists.”
They gathered their possessions and headed out. Kevin pulled out a set of keys and made a point of locking the lab door and testing it with a pull.
Richard held up his tablet and waggled it. “It’s not going to be much good without this, but I agree with the sentiment, buddy.”
Erin sat back in her chair and stared at Richard, jaw agape. “Well, it’s not technically theft, but it’s close enough to maybe get you suspended.”
Bill’s eyes darted from person to person, trying to take it all in. Richard had the grace to look embarrassed, and Kevin looked like he could burst into tears any second.
The group sat in the same corner of Dempsey’s as on the previous visit. With its bad angle to the wall-mounted TV, this end of the pub was always more sparsely inhabited.
“I know, Erin. We started out doing everything by the book. But Kevin mentioned that we could test one of his many-worlds predictions with a small mod to the equipment. Then that worked, and we could do this other thing by just adding a few parts …” Richard grimaced. “It took about two weeks before we realized we’d borrowed a couple thousand dollars’ worth of equipment that wasn’t on the proposal.”
Bill gave Richard the stink-eye. “If someone had noticed—”
“Someone did. We got a query. That’s when we totaled up the equipment requisitions.”
“And?”
Again, Richard looked at Kevin before answering. “We submitted a revised proposal.”
“Keeting approved that?”
“No.” Richard shook his head. “He doesn’t know.”
“But the revision would require his signature.”
Richard said nothing. A slow flush crept up his face. There was a charged silence as everyone stared at him.
Erin shook her head slowly. “I withdraw the maybe. You’re screwed.”
“This may be one of those cases where forgiveness is better than permission,” Bill added.
“That’s kind of our only option at this point, I think,” Richard said. “We need the biggest, most dramatic announcement possible, made as publicly as possible. Associate it, and ourselves, with the university. Then they won’t dare suspend us.”
“So you’re betting the wad.” Bill grinned at Richard. “I like your style. But it explains why you’ve been looking like you swallowed a live squirrel.”
Richard, surprisingly, returned the smile. “Honestly, Bill, most of the time I feel like I’m about to throw up. My financial plan for getting through college has no slack in it. Even one bad semester and I can’t complete my degree.”
“How far do you want to go before making an announcement?” Bill said. “I may have an idea for a backup plan.”
“I bet it’s larcenous,” Matt said.
“Is not. As far as I know, we won’t be breaking any laws at all. Other than the ones that Richard and Kevin may already have broken.”
Richard scrubbed his face with his hands. “At this point, I’ll listen to anything.”
Bill turned to Erin. “This is your specialty, Erin. What’s the closest large gold strike to us?”
“Historically? Probably the Deadwood strike in the Black Hills. It would be about two hundred and fifty million worth, in today’s money. Why?”
“Because if these other Earths are essentially near-duplicates of our Earth, then the chances are that things like mineral deposits will be in the same place. Including gold.”
“Most of that strike was mined out, Bill.”
“On this side, Erin. If I’m right, it’s still all there on Wild Kingdom Earth.”
“The operative word is mined.”
Bill’s face fell. “Oh. Yeah, okay, I don’t want to actually engage in exercise.”
“Wait, why do you think it’s still all there?” Richard said.
“It’s an assumption, Richard. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable.” Bill waved a hand. “Think about how different the past would have to be in order for major geological artifacts like metal deposits to be in a certain location on this side but not on that side. You’d need a completely different geological history. Based on what Kevin says, it sounds like these alternate realities are almost the same, just different in details.”
Kevin nodded. “That’s right. I think the principle of parsimony applies here. Don’t assume something is different unless we see evidence requiring that belief.”
Bill smiled at Kevin, then tilted his chin at Erin. “So, these gold deposits in Deadwood. Were any of them panned successfully?”
“Could be.” Erin got a thoughtful look. “In fact, I think they still have panning gigs for the tourists up there. I’ll check and get back to you. But if it isn’t the Black Hills, it’ll be somewhere else. Placer gold is about the most accessible kind there is.”
Now it was Kevin’s turn to look around the table, shock plain on his face. “Wait. You want to use this discovery to go panning for gold?”
“Think of it as a proof of concept, Kevin,” Bill replied. “As well as a backup plan if the university does come down hard on you. A few mil in the bank, you can buy your own equipment. And take your research anywhere you want.”
“Thanks, I like it here.”
“Not the point, Kev.” Richard nodded thoughtfully. “Bill’s plan is for the worst-case scenario. Best case, we use it as a demonstration. Worst case, we fund our own project.” He looked around the table. “You guys aren’t associated with this yet, not on paper. You can walk away …”
“Or not. As you say, we’re not officially associated with it. So if it hits the fan, we’re not likely to get caught in the fallout.” Bill cocked his head. “Meanwhile, if things go according to plan, we could all end up millionaires. It’s not terrible, as fates go.”
Erin stared at Bill. “I’m sure I already know the answer, but why did this idea spring fully formed into your head?”
Bill and Matt both laughed. “Hell, even I know that one,” Matt said. “It’s one of the first things time travelers always want to do—visit a gold mine before it’s discovered. The only surprise would be if Captain Reference here didn’t suggest it.”
“One problem, though,” Erin said. “We don’t actually know if Wild Kingdom Earth is uninhabited.”
Bill pulled his head back in surprise. “Damn, I did not see that one coming. But how could we tell? What if this actually is a time machine instead of a parallel-universe portal?”
“It’s not,” Kevin said.
“Okay, but still, Erin brings up a good point.” Bill leaned forward and put his weight on his elbows. “Caution is warranted. If we find humans, we pull back and adjust plans. For now, though, my gut feeling is that Wild Kingdom is either uninhabited or so sparsely inhabited as to make no practical difference.” Bill paused an
d looked around the table. “Given that assumption, are we provisionally prepared to investigate my idea? Just in principle?”
There was silence, then “I’m in,” from Matt.
“Me too,” said Erin. “I’d really like to not be scrambling to fund every semester. I also would like to find out why Lincoln is hillier on that side.”
“As long as we’re not doing anything illegal,” Kevin added.
“Technically, that isn’t Nebraska we’re talking about, just a place that looks a lot like Nebraska used to,” Richard said.
“That sounds a lot like lawyering,” Matt commented.
Richard smirked. “I’m sure there will be lots of lawyers involved once this gets out.”
“Can we hope to keep control of the invention when that happens?” Erin said.
Richard shook his head. “Kevin is a genius, but if he can figure out the theory, someone else will too, sooner or later. Things happen like that in science. Without any kind of collaboration, several people in different parts of the world suddenly come up with the same ideas at around the same time. Breakthroughs don’t come in a vacuum. Even Einstein started with other people’s work to get to his theory. ‘Shoulders of giants’ and all that.”
“And the hardware isn’t that complicated, once you know what you’re trying to do,” Bill added. “At least the gate part of it.”
“Patents don’t help either,” Richard said. “They just prevent people from selling it, not from making it in their basements. No, we are golden as long as no one realizes what we’re doing. Once that breaks, it’s only a matter of time.”
“Again, what about burying it and walking away?” Erin suggested.
Kevin looked chagrined. “You’re asking me to throw away everything I’ve been working on for the last five years without explanation. And as Richard said, someone else will figure it out eventually.”
“All right, I accept that.” Erin thought for a few seconds. “Of course, patents will make you a lot of money, and there’s the Nobel Prize …”
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