Quantum Space: Book One in the Quantum Series

by Douglas Phillips

  “Ms. Kendrick, I assure you that there is no danger and nothing for you to do. We will simply be taking a photograph of you. Live video, actually, with this web camera.” Park picked up a small spherical camera mounted on a plastic stand. It reminded her of the GoPro camera she saw skateboarders use.

  Not waiting for her answer, Park continued. Marie was the selected volunteer, whether she liked it or not. “This is an ordinary webcam. It transmits to the computer at Thomas’s desk via Wi-Fi in this room. I’ll turn it on.” He flipped a switch on the base, and a few seconds later, a video window popped up on Thomas’s computer. As Park pointed the camera at Marie, the view on Thomas’s computer was that of the room, with Marie standing in the foreground.

  Park smiled and held the webcam high. “We will now send this camera on an adventure. First, I will place it in our target space.” He reached up, opened the top of the clear Plexiglas box that was attached to the wall, and set the camera inside. The camera was now at eye level, pointing out through the side of the box. Its video feed still showed Marie standing in the middle of the room.

  She glanced at Daniel, who was staring intently at the camera in the box and examining the setup in detail.

  “We will now flood the target space with neutrinos whose oscillations are aligned along the direction of the pipe. We will then change their alignment so that they oscillate into a fourth dimension, a quantum dimension.”

  He turned to face them and used his right hand to designate another dimension, out there somewhere. “You must understand that for a neutrino to oscillate in another dimension is quite routine. To a neutrino, those extra dimensions are just as real as three dimensions are to us. In fact, it is precisely because neutrinos exist in extra dimensions that they have so little interaction with the matter we see around us. They spend a good portion of their time traveling in dimensions where matter simply does not exist.”

  Park paused and pointed to the box. “When we realign the oscillation, the contents of that box will be extended into a fourth dimension. The camera, the air, the space itself. The camera will still be within reach, but in a direction that you and I cannot see. From the camera’s perspective, it will still be pointing back toward our three-dimensional space, yet will be outside of it.”

  Marie saw the smile growing on Daniel’s face. He was definitely on board. Could this be real? Could they really expand space into an alternate dimension? Marie felt a nervousness within, like the anticipation of the first plunge on a roller coaster. They had crossed the boundary into the world of crazy.

  “Do we have power now, Thomas?” asked Park.

  “Clear to go,” he answered. “The beam is at 137 GeV. Protons are moving nice and fast.”

  For the first time, Marie noticed a slight background hum. Maybe it had always been there, she wasn’t sure. But she imagined it represented the sound of billions of protons rounding the curve of the Main Injector at nearly the speed of light. Thomas would simply open a magnetic doorway, and an immense amount of energy would suddenly blast through one of the overhead pipes and into this room. Even if the beam was only the width of a pencil, it was more than unsettling. Like standing behind a jet with the pilot about to press the start engines button.

  “Please watch the camera,” said Park, and he nodded to Thomas, who pressed a key on his keyboard.

  Almost immediately, the background hum became a loud buzz that filled the room. The floor began to vibrate. If the mad scientist could be believed, trillions of neutrinos were moving at light speed, their oscillations in lockstep.

  All eyes were on the Plexiglas box. In a blink, a bright blue flash was followed by a loud pop, like a balloon bursting. Marie jumped at the pop and shielded her eyes from the flash in a natural reflex. As she adjusted from the brightness, she looked up.

  The box was empty.

  The camera had disappeared completely, a magic act straight from Las Vegas.

  She gasped. “Oh my God.” She looked at Daniel with a nervous laugh. Daniel stepped closer to the Plexiglas box, searching. No trap doors, no mirrors. The camera had really disappeared. Park seemed perfectly calm, as if physical objects disappeared in laboratories every day. And in this lab, maybe they did.

  “Now, please bring your attention to Thomas’s computer. The camera is still operating, still transmitting through the Wi-Fi, but it is no longer in our three-dimensional space. It is about two meters away along a fourth dimension and been rotated slightly so that it continues to point at Ms. Kendrick.”

  Marie looked closely at the computer screen. The live video feed was still there, but the view didn’t look the same. The room was still in view, and Marie saw herself in the foreground, but oddly different.

  She stepped closer and the view became clearer and more frightening. Beyond her external clothing and skin, she could see her internal organs. It was as if an x-ray or MRI had been overlaid on her external body. She could see the folds of her brain within her skull. She could see the large blood vessels and vertebrae in her neck, the bones in her shoulders.

  “This is insane,” she whispered, staring at the computer screen. “Stand beside me, Daniel.”

  Daniel moved into view. No longer just a man standing in a room, the image revealed everything an x-ray would, and more. His heart pumped inside his chest. His lungs expanded with each breath. The coins in his pants pocket were plainly visible, as were even the remains of the scone he’d had for breakfast in his stomach.

  “It reveals everything—too much, in fact,” said Marie holding her hands over her breasts, which did nothing to hide them from view. Every layer of clothing, skin, bones and organs were equally visible with complete clarity. She even noticed she could see right through herself and make out objects in the room behind her.

  Daniel turned to Park, a large smile extending across his face. He shook his head as he struggled to find the words. “I’ve got at least a million questions for you.”

  11 Tesseract

  Daniel put a hand on the empty Plexiglas box, his face within inches of its surface. The room was still filled with the buzzing sound, as if the air itself was as agitated as he felt. His thoughts veered from one question to the next, his finger nervously tapping on the clear plastic while his natural skepticism was diluted by a strong dose of curiosity.

  He turned to Park for answers. “How is this possible? A webcam that’s outside our three-dimensional space, but is somehow still connected to Wi-Fi?”

  “I understand your question, but there is no mystery,” replied Park. “Electromagnetic waves require no medium to propagate—the Michelson-Morley experiments proved that long ago. Wi-Fi, like any electromagnetic wave, travels just as easily in a fourth dimension. When we positioned the webcam, we simply pointed it in the right direction, back toward 3-D space.”

  Daniel stood silent, absorbing this revelation. It made sense… sort of. But there was much more that was troubling. “So, the obvious question. Can you bring the webcam back?”

  “Yes, of course!” Park motioned to the box. “In fact, we are consuming energy to hold it in its current kata offset. Once we remove the energy source, the camera will simply fall back to Kata Zero.”

  “Which means?” Marie asked.

  Park pulled out a chair, sat and crossed his legs. For a man explaining the bizarre he looked remarkably comfortable.

  “Each dimension of space has words to describe its directions. We say left, right, forward, backward, up and down. For a fourth dimension, we need new words, and for many years scientists have used ana and kata to describe these directions. They are Greek words that mean up and down. In this case, we have expanded in the kata direction by two meters.” He spread his arms wide.

  “So, you may ask, where did this space come from?” Park whispered the answer dramatically. “Nowhere!” He leaned back in his chair, smiling. “Minutes ago, this dimension was quantum-sized. Real, but far too small to place a camera in it. Now this same space is two meters wide, and we are holding it i
n place like a clown blowing up a balloon. As this point, we have two choices. If we simply withdraw the neutrino beam, the camera, along with the space itself, will fall back to Kata Zero, like releasing the air from the balloon. But if needed, we can temporarily lock this space by twisting the neutrino oscillation wave before reducing power—as if the clown has tied the end of the balloon. In either case, we can bring the camera back whenever we wish.”

  As Park talked, Daniel correlated each word with his objective. If Soyuz was in the same predicament, then just like the camera, it could be returned. But how? He probed further. “You say the camera would fall back to Kata Zero. Does that mean that gravity applies to a fourth dimension?”

  “Yes,” Park said. “Gravity warps space itself, and the kata direction is no different. We have measured, and the force of gravity still varies by the inverse square of distance. When Isaac Newton first proposed this relationship, he had no idea that it would apply in unseen dimensions. Sir Isaac would be proud, don’t you think?”

  Park reached over Thomas’s shoulder and pointed to a diagram of the Standard Model that someone had taped to the wall. “Speaking in quantum terms, we have proven that both the photon and graviton travel in any dimension. This is a new discovery, and there are several physicists in this building that will earn a Nobel Prize. Once they are allowed to publish, of course.”

  Marie bit her lower lip. “While Daniel is figuring out the physics, my question is far more basic.” She was now positioned out of the embarrassing view of the camera, but she stretched an arm just far enough for it to show up on Thomas’s computer. The bizarre image still showed her skin, the ring on her finger, but also her muscles, veins and bones.

  She shook her on-screen hand. “This is crazy. Why are we seeing our internal organs?”

  “Ms. Kendrick,” Park answered, “please accept my apologies for not preparing you in advance. I knew you would ask. Dr. Rice’s questions were easy, but this one is harder.”

  He stepped over to a whiteboard and picked up a marking pen. “Why do we see inside our bodies? The question is fundamental to extra dimensions of space, and it takes some thought to fully comprehend the answer. The usual way to explain it is by analogy. Have you read or heard of the book Flatland? A book written in the late 1800s by a man named Abbott.”

  Marie shook her head, but Daniel nodded. “Many years ago. It was dated, but entertaining.”

  “I shall borrow from Abbott’s analogy as many others have before me.” He drew a circle on the whiteboard. “Imagine a two-dimensional world where flat creatures live like drawings on a piece of paper. Their bodies are simply circles on the paper, with the circle representing their skin.”

  He drew squiggly lines inside the circle. “Inside their bodies, they have a heart and a brain and bones. Their anatomy is not important. But as three-dimensional beings living outside of their paper world, we can see not only their skin, but inside their bodies.” He pointed to the squiggly lines.

  “Now just apply the same logic to the fourth dimension. The camera view is outside of our 3-D space, yet it is pointed back towards us. Seeing inside our bodies is perfectly normal. The camera sees our clothes, our skin and our internal organs, all at once.”

  Marie folded both arms across her and stayed out of view of the camera. Her internal organs looked well protected.

  Daniel scratched his head. “The fiction becomes real. Okay, let me be a skeptic for a minute. What if you’re wrong? What if you’re misinterpreting what you’re seeing, or perhaps this is just a video hoax and we’re your latest con? Prove to me that the camera is in four-dimensional space. As a famous scientist once said, ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’”

  “And we are prepared to provide that evidence. Much of it comes from our test results, which will eventually be published. Additional evidence is in the live video you have just seen, though I must admit any Hollywood movie producer could do as well.” Park laughed.

  He picked up the blue plastic tesseract from the shelf. “But let me show you additional visual evidence that is far more difficult to fake because it provides a view no human has ever witnessed. Once you have seen it, you will agree it is quite convincing.”

  A view no human has witnessed, Daniel thought. What’s not to like about that? “Dr. Park, you’ve got my attention.”

  Park turned the blue plastic block in his hand. “This is not a model at all. What I hold in my hand is literally a tesseract, a four-dimensional object. We made it in this laboratory.”

  “But all you have are three-dimensional tools. How?”

  “Very slowly,” Park said with a sly smile. “You have perhaps seen a 3-D printer? They are quite fascinating to watch as they build three-dimensional plastic parts, layer upon layer. You may have suspected that is where this model came from?”

  Daniel nodded, and Park continued. “Yes, we have a three-dimensional printer. We programmed it to build a tesseract, put the printer into our target box and started it. We then sent the printer in the kata direction, stepping one millimeter at a time. As it built the plastic model, it moved further in the kata direction, and the result is this, an actual tesseract.”

  “No… really?” Daniel looked closely at the plastic cube in Park’s hand. “But how can you be holding a four-dimensional object?”

  “I’m holding the portion that appears in our three dimensions. There is more that we cannot see, but is just as real. I can even feel its weight.” He bounced the cube slightly in his hand. “Think of the two-dimensional creature living on a flat page. If I placed a cube into his world, he would see it as a square. He could touch it and even grab its edge and carry it with him. But he would only be holding the portion that exists in his world. It is the same for this cube. I am a three-dimensional creature holding a four-dimensional object.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Daniel said, and he meant it.

  “Then see for yourself.” Park carried the tesseract to the target box, and the blue plastic appeared within the view on the computer screen. Daniel stared at the computer uncomprehendingly. Park’s hand was in the frame, but it no longer held a cube within a cube. The screen showed a fundamentally different object, eight cubes tightly arranged in a way that Daniel couldn’t quite grasp.

  As Park rotated the tesseract in his hand, the object changed. One of the eight cubes impossibly popped out of the interior and then popped back in again. Daniel strained to make sense of an image that was not of his world. He looked at the plastic in Park’s hand, then at the computer view, and back again. The two objects were certainly related, but only as an object is related to its shadow. Park held the shadow. The camera revealed reality.

  “You should have seen the four-dimensional Rubik’s cube we made,” Thomas said, laughing. “Nobody wanted to play with it. Mentally stressful!”

  Daniel only barely heard Thomas. His focus was on the tesseract. The stunning view was inexplicable, and his comprehension was lagging far behind. The face of the familiar world had removed its mask, and Daniel struggled to recognize what lay beneath.

  Marie’s lips were drawn, an expression grounded more in doubt than in awe. “Dr. Park, with all due respect, what makes you so certain that your program wasn’t responsible for the Soyuz disappearance? Based on what we’ve seen, any reasonable person would come to the opposite conclusion.”

  Daniel heard her question and surfaced to the familiar three-dimensional world. “She’s right, the evidence matches. If Soyuz was pushed into another dimension, it would explain the lack of radar contact. If our eyes can’t see into the fourth dimension, neither can the radar.”

  Park placed the tesseract back on the shelf and sat down. His head bowed for a moment, and he looked up at his visitors. “You are correct, and I agree with you. I do. Perhaps there is a link.” He paused for a moment, pondering his own question. “But you have only seen the effect of dimensional displacement. Please, let me explain our limitations.”

  His tone bec
ame serious. “First, we cannot point the neutrino beam just anywhere. We can only affect objects within the target space.” He looked up at the still-empty box on the wall.

  “Second, we cannot move living things. We tested it, once. Our targeted subject did not survive. We don’t yet know why, but the technology appears to damage cell structure. No one would dare to experiment on a human being. The result would be disastrous.” Daniel exchanged a look with Marie. It was an important revelation.

  “And third, our ability to maintain coherency is currently limited to thirty meters. Beyond that, the alignment starts to break down, and the neutrinos return to their natural state of chaos. We are working on better alignment tools and software that will give us greater range, but this will require additional time and the utmost care. With greater range also come increased risks.”

  Park stood up and returned to the whiteboard. He wrote a large number two, and underlined it. “These factors will be sorted out in phase two of the Diastasi program. Until then, you have seen what we can do. No more. Moving a Soyuz capsule that is thousands of kilometers away is quite impossible.”

  “When does phase two start?” Daniel asked.

  “Next year. Our corporate partner is just beginning to prepare.”

  “Stetler?” asked Daniel. He was glad the partner had been mentioned.

  “You’ve been briefed, I see. The Stetler Corporation provides supplemental resources that are managed under a separate budget. I admit it is a back door, a way to gain team members without going back to Congress for more funding.”

  “And do these supplemental resources work here, at Fermilab?”

  “Yes, right alongside government employees. They are physicists, operators and people from several other disciplines. Top-quality people. We are one team. We do not discriminate based on where people draw their paycheck. Thomas is, in fact, from Stetler.” Thomas held up his security badge. It looked the same as Park’s except that it was labeled Contractor in light blue.