Quantum Void

by Douglas Phillips

  Jan shook his head. “I… I don’t follow…”

  “To understand the universe, you must first understand a single point. To understand the point, you must understand both the infinite and the nothing.”

  Jan seemed to be thinking, but Core’s obscurity was on full display once again. “Still not sure I follow.”

  “Humans still have much to learn. Begin with the density of matter.”

  “You mean, the ratio of baryonic matter to bosons?”

  “Yes.”

  Jan turned to Daniel. “Well, at least it’s confirmation that Nala and I were on the right track. I can work with that.”

  Jan’s work might lead to future insight, but it didn’t clear any of the inherent dangers from his path. Daniel jumped in. “We’ll do our homework. We’ll study these concepts. But lives are at stake. Give us some guidance on how to proceed safely.”

  “You already have such guidance. Provided by new associates.”

  New associates? There was only one possible explanation for that bit of obscurity. “Who… the Dancers?”

  “As you call them.” Core’s voice shifted, the source of the vibration moving under the platform toward Marie. The particles flying through the air also shifted, hovering directly over Marie’s head. She looked up, mortified. “Marie Kendrick represented your species and was gifted. Through this gift, she comprehends.”

  Marie looked like she’d just been caught sipping a margarita at a business meeting. She shrugged, “Yeah, well…it’s kind of a long story.”

  “Apparently, she does comprehend,” Daniel said. “We’ll need to discuss this with her when we get back.” He sent a piercing stare through Marie.

  “Others have learned. Humans have not yet. Nothing is certain. Outcomes follow probabilities. My emissary, Aastazin, selected Marie Kendrick. She is the highest probability for your guidance.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Marie slipped off the transfer chair, happy to be grounded to her home planet once again but still feeling unsettled. The nearly instantaneous transfer across a vast distance of space had no impact physically, but the interruption of consciousness was disorienting. The message from Core made the confusion worse.

  I’m a probability.

  Core had revealed more than she’d expected. Zin had selected her to join the Ixtlub mission, but not for the reasons she’d thought. It wasn’t her qualifications or cheery disposition. We all want to think that good fortune comes our way because of who we are. But there was something else—a calculation of some kind.

  She recalled what Ibarra had told her when he assigned her to the team. Zin says you increase the probabilities of success. At the time, she had thought he meant the success of the mission. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Core had talked about outcomes. A probability for an outcome. Of whose choosing? Zin? Or was it Core? The outcome could mean anything, and Core hadn’t elaborated.

  The headband? Did they want me to have it?

  Daniel looked rankled. She could understand why. Core had implied that she knew something, so Daniel naturally assumed she was holding out. Maybe she was. She hadn’t even mentioned the headband to him, but it hadn’t seemed relevant until now.

  Zin approached. “Everyone alright?” He examined Daniel and Jan for any obvious signs of distress. He’d done the same to the four katanauts when they’d returned from Ixtlub.

  “A bit woozy,” Daniel said, rubbing his head. “A very strange experience.” He looked over to Marie, already standing. “Does it get any better the second time?”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?” Marie answered. “Like part of your existence disappeared en route and you can’t seem to get it back.”

  “Humans seem to take the transfer somewhat harder than other species,” Zin said.

  “Maybe we’re just natural whiners,” Daniel said. “Give us time, we’ll get used to it.”

  “I hope you will. Others have. The Zheraks, an industrious people in the Sigma Aquilae system, reside on one planet and carry out mining operations on another. They travel to work daily, much like humans do, through more than ten million kilometers of compressed space.”

  “And I thought my commute was bad,” Daniel said.

  Marie wrapped a hand around Zin’s metallic arm. “You’ve seen a lot of species, Zin. Do we complain too much?”

  Zin patted her hand. “I would never say that. I’ve grown quite fond of humans. I shall miss you desperately when I leave.”

  “Me too,” Marie said. “But let’s not say our goodbyes just yet, my shiny copper friend. I might need your help.” She looked up at Daniel and winced as if he was going to throw a punch her way. “I think I owe these guys an explanation.”

  23

  Eigenstates

  Nala inhaled, let the breath out, and inhaled again. Air. Oxygen. Life.

  She lifted her head from the hard surface. The surrounding air was cold with a stale smell. She lifted to her knees and sniffed. Stale, lifeless. The dizziness returned.

  She dropped to the floor and pushed her nose against it, filling her lungs with fresh air.

  Oxygen. In the floor?

  It wasn’t really a floor, she knew that much. Down was not at her feet, but at some other angle that her inner ear could not quite process. Regardless of direction, the floor was a source of fresh air.

  She lay on her stomach and pondered this fact, keeping her face close to the glowing surface. Fresh air could mean only that the floor was a flattened version of three-dimensional space. Home, but strangely out of reach.

  “Now what?” she said aloud. “I can stay alive as long as I lie here?”

  She lay motionless for several minutes, consuming the life-giving air.

  Get to Thomas.

  She took one last draw into her lungs, pushed up and ran to where Thomas lay. Letting the air out, she pushed her face close to the floor and inhaled.

  Fresh air here too. Lying next to Thomas with her stomach on the floor, she remained still and listened. There was no sound of breathing from her friend. Not good. She reached a hand to his face, nothing coming from his nose or mouth. She laid two fingers across his neck but could find no pulse. Concern turned to panic as she repositioned her fingers but still felt nothing.

  She slammed a fist to the floor. “Damn it! Fuck this shit!” Her throat constricted and tears came once more. Soon her whole body shook with sobs.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Thomas, I’m so sorry.”

  She cried for her friend and for herself. “Damn, damn, damn!” She pounded the floor with each word. “Why didn’t I think? Just use your fucking brain.”

  The anger couldn’t be kept inside, but it led to no solutions. She’d need to find another path, a more intellectual route to find a way out of her situation. Thomas would have been the first person to point this out.

  I can’t just lie here.

  Nala lifted herself to her knees and took a breath. Bad air, probably low on oxygen. If this was a 4-D bubble, it was sealed from three-dimensional space—like living inside a balloon. The pangs of hunger in her stomach told her she’d been trapped for at least twenty-four hours, enough time to use up the oxygen. At this point, just standing up required survival skills.

  She dropped to the floor and sucked good air through the porous boundary once more.

  Improvise. Find something.

  Flex-tubing. Where had she seen it? Somewhere on one of the debris piles. It was the kind of tube they used to route Ethernet cables in the ceiling. If the tubing was still intact, it could be useful.

  She lifted her head and looked around. Piles of debris were everywhere. Lowering herself again, she took a deep breath, then jumped up and began pushing aside debris and turning over planks of wood. Where was it? She swiveled and saw the end of a tube protruding from another pile. Grabbing it, she dropped back to the floor.

  Breathe. She examined her find. A corrugated plastic tube, an inch in diameter and six or seven feet long. Dusty, b
ut intact. She held one end up to her lips and blew. Dust came out the other end.

  This could work.

  She blew a few more times and then held one end to the floor. Lifting to her knees, she twisted the other end around to her mouth and inhaled. Air flowed through the tube, good clean air. She stood up, keeping one end against the floor. She sucked again and exhaled to the cold surroundings. Workable.

  The makeshift device could be improved if she could find the right parts. She wandered through the piles of debris, biting on the tube like a snorkel and pushing the end of the tube on the floor for each breath. Her foot kicked a rectangular piece of plastic, thick and heavy, with a hole in the center; perfect. She slipped the bottom end of the tube through the hole and continued walking, dragging the plastic weight across the floor. Better for the floor end, but her jaw was already aching from biting on the tube, and the additional weight made it worse. A mask would help.

  The light hanging in the sky flickered. She swiveled her head just as the light flashed off and then back on again. A chill ran through her body. The plunge into darkness, even for an instant, was disturbing. Up to now, the light had been so steady; why the sudden variation? She waited, but the light continued to shine as if nothing had happened.

  “Don’t mess with me,” she yelled at the light. Trying to find her way around a space with edges capable of slicing off your limbs wouldn’t be much fun in the dark. That light had better hold.

  Nala returned to Thomas and kneeled. “Good friend. Can I borrow your hat?” The leather Viking hat was crumpled but would make a good mask to complete her air supply system. She picked up a sharp piece of glass and punctured the hat at its top, pushed the flex-tube through and secured it with tape from the first-aid kit. Snug. With a bit more tape, she fashioned a head strap and positioned the mask over her nose and mouth.

  She inhaled. Good air with a secure breathing apparatus. Not bad. At least, I’m mobile again.

  The horns of the Viking hat flared out to each side, looking like tusks coming from her face. “Fucking perfect.” Her voice was muffled inside the hat. “Thomas would have loved the warthog look.”

  The inert body of her friend lay at her feet. “I owe you one, buddy.” Of course, there would be no way to repay the debt. Her eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away. No more, it’s time to survive. She picked up the sweater she’d draped across Thomas and put it on, feeling warmer immediately. She scanned for the water bottles but didn’t immediately locate them.

  Water was a key requirement for survival, and she’d pulled three bottles from the mini-fridge. They should be right next to Thomas, but they weren’t. Perhaps he had moved while she was unconscious, knocking the bottles away. She searched the area, but with so much debris, they couldn’t have rolled far. When she came up empty-handed, a feeling of panic rose inside. No one lasts long without water.

  Were there more in the mini-fridge? Doubtful. It was a small unit, but it might be worth a second look. She located the smashed refrigerator and pried open its bent door. Inside were three bottles of water, unopened.

  “What the hell?” Her heart pounded like she’d seen a ghost. The bottles completely filled the small space. “I took those bottles out, I know I did. I opened one for Thomas and set the other two by his side.”

  Yet here they were, full of water, unopened. She closed the door and reopened it. It wasn’t a mirage; the bottles were still there. She removed one and left the other two inside. Not trusting her senses, she set off down the path she’d cleared through the debris.

  The pool I saw earlier had better still be there.

  It wasn’t far, and she found it again without trouble, just beyond the debris field. It was now darker, but still contained rippling water, even if it produced no sound. She removed her mask, bent down and put her lips to the water. She sucked and was surprised to find that her mouth filled. It tasted of chemicals, but it was water.

  Bottles that randomly rearrange themselves… but with the pool, at least I won’t die of thirst.

  Maybe she’d never taken the bottles from the fridge. Maybe it had been a hallucination or false memory. Lack of oxygen? The explanation seemed farfetched, but she couldn’t think of anything better. Just as difficult to explain was how a bubbling pool of water was available to her.

  You’re a scientist. Examine the evidence.

  The floor had shapes, air and water. It must be the 3-D world but flattened, as was always the case when any 3-D object was viewed from 4-D space. She was in a 4-D bubble, she theorized, that rested on a 3-D surface just like a soap bubble on the surface of a mirror. It explained the feeling of vertigo every time she stood up. Down was not down. It was ana or kata. The real down was in some other direction.

  That explained the floor. But what was beyond the sizzling wall of death? The void? The word was no more than a physicist’s placeholder for the concept of nothing. Not nothing—as in empty space—but really nothing. As in, not even empty space itself. In the void, not only were there no quarks, no bosons, no particles of any kind, there weren’t even any dimensions. Zero dimensions, like a singularity. It made sense. Sort of.

  She summarized out loud. “I’m in a 4-D bubble projecting into a dimensionless void that was created by the momentum of a 3-D implosion.” It was a working theory.

  She looked up at the light hovering at some unknown distance away. She’d originally labeled it a singularity. Was it? Maybe it was more like a knot, tying off 4-D space. Analogies helped. Finding a relation to something known helps to crystalize the unknown.

  An inflated balloon, held underwater, would rapidly deflate if its pinched-off nozzle were suddenly opened to the air above the water’s surface. If it were a large enough balloon, it might even collapse fast enough to turn the balloon inside out and, with a bit of rubbery momentum, reinflate in the opposite direction above the water. Substitute concepts: the water is our normal 3-D world, the balloon is 4-D space, and the air above the water is the void. The analogy was conceptually neat, but it came with a few huge assumptions—such as whether the void even existed.

  How does nothing exist? It seemed more of a problem of definitions. True nothingness is not something; it’s not anything. It’s the absence of everything. But to give it an attribute implies that it’s something, and something can’t be nothing. Circular reasoning always made her head hurt.

  But sometimes it helped. With all the science bouncing around in her head, a key property of quantum systems popped into her consciousness.

  Eigenstates. Superposition. She’d just been arguing with Jan about it—when? Yesterday?

  Orbiting any atom, an electron’s position exists as a probability wave, known as superposition, until the moment someone makes a measurement. Only then does the wave collapse to a specific position, an eigenstate. It’s one of quantum mechanics’ most perplexing but very real effects. Many theorists make sense of it by saying that eigenstates are relative to the observer. Two scientists can find the same electron occupying two different positions simultaneously, yet both measurements are equally valid. Only in the quantum world can something exist in two states without logical contradiction. It’s like finding your car parked on the left side of your garage, then closing and reopening the door, and the car is now on the right side.

  The water bottles. They’re in a state of superposition.

  Two eigenstates. Two histories. Two entirely different locations. It was crazy, but it made perfect sense in the quantum world. A quantum bottle of water could be both empty and full, opened and sealed, and these contradictory states were equally valid.

  The thought that a macro-sized object might behave like an electron was terrifying. Even if it explained the spooky phenomenon, it meant she couldn’t trust her own senses.

  She looked down at the pool of water. Still there, at least. Better than the capricious water bottles. She stepped in it, watching the ripples her shoes created. Three-dimensional space, no doubt. Within reach but impossibly distant.


  She jumped. Her shoes splashed in the water, but the hard surface resisted penetration. “Okay, only a sliver of me exists within that space,” she said with authority. “The bottom of my feet, the tips of my fingers. I can intersect with the three-dimensional world, but just barely.” She talked herself into this revelation. It was the only logical explanation that fit the data.

  Without overthinking things, she walked on, directly away from the light, her only point of reference. The shapes on the floor changed subtly, with fewer patches. It looked like asphalt, but mixed with dirt. She kept on walking, dragging her breathing hose behind her while scanning in all directions for anything unusual. The light behind never dimmed.

  After several minutes, the shapes at her feet changed, with distinct lines, circles, squares and much more detail. There was motion too, all around. A confusing scene, but with nearly recognizable shapes. A doglike shape went by, followed by what looked like a person holding its leash. Both figures were compressed, with a strange mashup of views from multiple directions, but there was no doubt of their reality.

  The floor was home. The 3-D world. Theory confirmed.

  “Hey,” she yelled. The person-shape didn’t stop. She ran after it. “Hey, can you hear me? Help!” There was no reaction from either the person or the dog. Nala stopped and watched the shapes as they receded into the distance.

  There was more motion to her right. More people, or at least people-like shapes. They were flattened and distorted, and she could see not just their skin and clothes, but also their bones and organs.

  “Hey,” she yelled again. There was no response and no sound from the moving scene below her.

  Like walking on the surface of a television. Or a Picasso painting.

  She jumped up into the air, her feet slamming down onto the scene in motion. The misshapen people went about their business, no different than if they were images in a movie.

  They can’t hear me, but I can drink the water and breathe the air.

  She removed her makeshift mask and dropped to the floor. She pressed her lips to its surface and yelled. “Hey, can you hear me? I need help!”