by Anthology
“I think I’ve had something of an idea,” came Richardson’s voice from the phone’s speaker. Vicki cast an amused look to Paul and then walked toward the store. Paul switched off the speaker.
“Are you there?” said Richardson.
“Sorry. Yes. Go ahead.”
“I am speaking to you from,” said Richardson in a professorial voice, “from a rubber raft in the middle of the Jubilee Sports Centre swimming pool. I have the full EPR experiment with me.”
“To try your surrounded-by-water theory?”
“Precisely!”
For the next five minutes or so, Richardson described the experiment at hand and then guided Paul in the positioning of his capsule.
With the capsule on the ground and him on his knees, Paul made tiny changes in the capsule’s orientation.
Finally, Richardson said, “Perfect. Right on center.”
Paul, his knees sore from kneeling, stood. “Okay.” He glanced at his phone’s call timer and worried about running out of free minutes. “What now?” he said, trying to keep impatience out of his voice.
“Now, just stand by. We throw this little switch and . . .”
Paul heard a whirring sound over the phone.
“Now, this is interesting,” said Richardson. “It looks almost as if the—”
Paul waited a few seconds for more. “Hello?” he said into the silent phone. “Dr. Richardson. Can you hear me?” He noticed that the phone display showed that the call had been lost. He pulled up the received call log and dialed. But the call didn’t go through. Again, he tried, but with the same result. Paul keyed the physics department number, just to see if his phone was working. He couldn’t connect to the physics office, either. He stood there with the phone in his hand for a minute or so, then tried Richardson again. No answer. He blew out a breath, snapped his phone closed, chained both bikes together, and, carrying both packs, walked slowly into the grocery.
He found Vicki hauling a basket of provisions to the checkout counter. She stopped as he came in. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, probably,” he said, feeling sheepish for his worry. “It’s just that my phone dropped the call from Richardson—just as he started to run the experiment.” Paul described his attempts to reconnect. He spoke softly, even though they were the only customers in the small shop.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry.” Vicki proceeded to the cash register. “Cell phone coverage can be flaky at times. I’d imagine very much so out here on the Island.”
The man behind the checkout counter appeared to be in his mid fifties. His bearing and presence suggested that he was the owner of the establishment. As Vicki hefted her shopping basket to the counter, he looked up from a table radio.
“Oh, sorry,” said the man, turning to her and moving to tally up her order. “The BBC suddenly went silent.” He nodded to the radio. “Wight Island Radio seems just fine though.”
Paul shot Vicki a look.
“Coincidence, probably,” she said.
“I guess,” said Paul, loading the provisions into the packs. “Still, I’ve got to say I’m a little worried about it.”
“Do you mean the BBC going down?” said the man, turning toward him. “I admit it is unusual.”
“Oh.” Surprised by the proprietor responding to a comment meant for Vicki, Paul looked up from the packs and gestured toward the radio. “Does that station give news bulletins?”
“The local news comes on in just a few minutes—five minutes before the hour.”
“Mind if we wait around for it?” said Paul brightly, striving to keep his worry out of his voice.
“No. Not at all.”
Paul bought a few snack cakes. He handed one to Vicki and started to munch on the other.
“You’re a grockle,” said the proprietor. “American, by your accent. You’ve come here for the bicycle festival, I assume.”
“Grockle?”
“Tourist,” whispered Vicki.
“Yes, the festival,” said Paul absently, impatient for the news. “And I’m a graduate student at the University of Southampton.”
“Fine institution,” said the proprietor. He turned to stare out the window, thus terminating the conversation.
When the news time arrived, Paul heard an affable announcer report on local politics, sports, a road accident and the weather. Listening to the familiar, Paul felt his worry recede. But then, just before the hour, the announcer’s voice turned serious.
“We’ve just received a report from the Hampshire Constabulary, IOW Operational Command Unit. They say that responding to complaints of mainland television going off the air, they attempted to contact the mainland to ascertain the cause—but were unable to make contact. They speculate there may have been a massive power outage affecting at least the Hampshire region.”
“Oh my god,” said Paul at a whisper.
“They say,” the commentator continued, “it is puzzling that battery backup systems have not provided emergency power. Chief Superintendent Morley says that terrorism, though very improbable, has not been entirely ruled out. She goes on to say that the Island seems completely unaffected. We’ll bring you more when we have it.”
“Let’s go,” Paul whispered.
Vicki nodded and the two of them returned to their bicycles.
“It is coincidence, isn’t it?” said Vicki.
“Yeah.” Paul bit his lip. “I’m sure it is.”
Vicki looked hard at him. “I’m not convinced you are sure.”
“Well, maybe not entirely.”
Vicki’s eyes widened.
“But it’s in no way dangerous,” said Paul quickly. “Even if Richardson is one hundred percent correct, he’ll swap into another universe running only a second behind ours and then, a second later, he’ll swap back. Not in the slightest dangerous—even if it happens, which I don’t believe, not in the slightest—not for an instant. Nothing to worry about. But anyway, I’m sure it’s just a power outage. They happen. I mean, we had a small one at the university just last month.” He paused. “Still, I think we should go back.” He checked his watch. “We can just make the 6:30 boat.”
“What?” Vicki wrinkled her nose. “Because of a power outage? What would going back accomplish?”
“It would . . . It would satisfy my curiosity.”
“You are worrying me.” Vicki pulled out her cell phone. “I’m going to try to call my parents.” She flipped open her phone, paused, and then closed it again. “No. I won’t worry. It’s just a power outage. It’s not as if they’re unusual.”
Paul nodded.
Vicki looked longingly at her bicycle, then sighed. “Fine, then. Let’s go. Once your curiosity is satisfied, we’ll just turn around and come back. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Thanks for humoring me.” Feeling sheepish, he looked away to his bicycle and idly worked the handbrakes. “Sometimes my imagination goes out of control. And of course I’ll pay for the ferry.” As he bent to unchain the bikes, he looked up over his shoulder. “Grockle?”
“Local dialect.” Vicki grabbed her bicycle to keep it from falling. “I study the English language as well as Brit Lit, as you called it.”
“Sorry. No offense.”
Just then, Vicki’s phone rang, startling them both. Vicki pulled it open. “Hello? Daniele. I’m so glad to hear your voice.” She smiled and put her hand over the microphone and whispered to Paul. “She lives in Maison Francaise, right across from my dorm.”
In relief, Paul let out a long breath.
Vicki turned back to the phone. “I’m fine. Why?” Vicki started. “What? You’re not at the university? Paris? But I’m not on the mainland, either . . . We’re going back now . . . I’ll let you know.” Vicki snapped closed the phone and swung onto her bicycle. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go . . . France is unaffected.”
They raced back to Cowes. Being April, the sun wouldn’t set until after eight; they had plenty of light and could make good time.
&nbs
p; As they rode, Vicki said, “I don’t really understand what the experiment has to do with a massive power outage—especially since if Dr. Richardson was in a boat, his experiment couldn’t even have been connected to the mains.”
“This sounds crazy,” said Paul, “but being surrounded by water was to stop the EPR waves from escaping. He might have been wrong about the amount of water he needed.”
As they cycled up a hill, neither spoke. At the crest, Vicki said, “You’re saying that the whole of Britain was affected—and only because the Isle of Wight is set off from the mainland by the Solent, we’re not involved?”
Paul, coasting now down the other side, didn’t answer.
“Well,” Vicki insisted, “is that your explanation?”
“I told you it would sound crazy.”
“What would be the result of the experiment if your crazy-sounding theory were somehow true?”
“Dr. Richardson’s theory.” Paul steered his bike to be handlebar to handlebar with Vicki’s. “The experiment could result in an alternate Great Britain being swapped with ours—one displaced backward in time from the instant of the experiment.”
“A displacement? Do you mean that the Britain across the Solent now could be in an earlier point in time?”
“Crazy, huh?”
“It would be horrible, this theory of yours. Planes take off and land in the UK every second. There’d be monstrous numbers of crashes.”
“I don’t think so,” said Paul. “The swap is complex and not all at once—relative reality. The quantum changes of a crash would be large. I think crashes, for the most part, would be prevented by subswaps. A microminimultiworld model.”
“Oh.”
They rode in silence for a while—until Vicki said, “How big a displacement?”
“What?” said Paul, pulled from his thoughts. “You mean how far back could Great Britain be swapped?”
Vicki nodded. “I’d have thought the displacement of a tiny boat would be a lot bigger than something as large as England.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Paul. “But it’s the opposite. Think of the EPR waves as acting on a . . . a membrane covering England with the edge glued to the shoreline. There are waves at lots of discrete wavelengths that can amplify by interference. The bigger the membrane, the more wavelengths there can be, and the higher the amplitude of the waves—and because of all that, the bigger the displacement.”
“How big?”
“Don’t know. If I knew the dimensions of Britain, I might be able to do a mental back-of-the-envelope calculation.”
“It’s about two hundred fifty miles wide and five hundred miles long,” said Vicki. “We learn it in school.”
“Okay,” said Paul with a laugh. “Just to have something to do—besides pedaling—let me try to figure it out. Order of magnitude, anyway.”
“Go ahead.” Vicki gestured ahead with her nose. “It looks like about five minutes to Cowes.”
“Okay, let’s see.” Paul spoke more to himself than to Vicki. “If we take three hundred miles as a typical dimension for Britain—and if the dimension of Richardson’s rubber boat is, say, ten feet. Then . . . then Britain is three hundred times 5,280 over ten times bigger.” He bit his lip in thought. “About sixteen times ten to the fourth bigger.” He paused. “The time effect goes as a function of area—the square of the linear dimension. So the difference between the boat’s displacement and Britain’s would be 256 times ten to the eighth. Let’s call it two times ten to the tenth.”
“Sure, fine,” said Vicki. “Let’s call it that.”
“What?” said Paul, yanked out of his calculations. “Oh. Give me another minute or two. I’m almost done.” He glanced at Vicki. “There are about three times ten to the seventh seconds in a year.”
“How do you know that?” Vicki’s expression showed she was bemused rather than impressed.
“It’s an important number for us computer jockeys.” Paul thought a little longer. “Richardson expected his boat might be swapped back in time by a second. So, if he was right, I’d expect Britain would be swapped back in the order of a hundred years.”
“A hundred years?”
“Roughly,” said Paul. “But the probabilities are not linear. The most likely displacement points are at regions where there’s a high density of quantum decisions—when the world changes a lot over a short time. Like big historical events, maybe.”
“But a second later, the worlds would swap back. Right?”
“No. On its own, the swap would also happen after a hundred years. But, in theory, if I activated my capsule near where Dr. Richardson activated his, Britain would immediately swap back—I think.”
“This really is insane,” said Vicki.
“Yes, it is.” Paul bit his lip. “I certainly hope it is. You mustn’t tease me about this when we’re back at the university.”
“I’ll try not to.” Vicki paused and then laughed. “It’s funny that we’re actually acting on something that’s so loony.”
“Yeah.”
They dismounted at the terminal and walked their bikes inside.
“Lots of people in here,” said Paul as they entered the passenger lounge.
“But not a full boatload, I think,” said Vicki. “We shouldn’t have any trouble going home with our bicycles.”
In the lounge, they found people milling about, exchanging information and rumors. There was broad agreement that the contiguous landmass of Great Britain had gone silent and also dark. Further, one of the terminal staff had relayed news from a shortwave broadcast from Ireland.
Paul heard the story from a frenzied, middle-aged woman after it had been filtered through an indeterminate number of people. “An Aer Lingus flight bound for Heathrow had to turn back,” said the woman. “The pilot couldn’t contact the tower or even see the airport. He said that mist enshrouded all England, but there was no radio or radar activity, or runway lights. No lights of any kind.”
“Is the Southampton ferry still going to sail on schedule?” asked Vicki.
“In . . .”—Paul checked his watch—“in ten minutes?”
“Oh, yes.” The woman grasped her handbag with a shaking, white-knuckled hand. “They were going to cancel it, but thankfully a member of parliament returning from holiday on the island stepped in. The MP made a big fuss and they changed their minds”—She nodded toward a prosperous-looking individual reading a newspaper—“but only after the ferry pilot insisted. He said, bless him, that his schedule indicated that the ferry leaves for Southampton, and he saw no reason why it shouldn’t. But I’m afraid it’s the last one off the island.” She looked pleadingly to Paul. “Whatever happened, Cowes wasn’t affected. And . . . and since Southampton is so close, less than twenty miles away, Southampton might well be fine—except for the telly and radio. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Paul in a soothing voice. “That sounds very reasonable.” He looked out the window onto the Solent. Mist still obscured the mainland. There might not even be a mainland for all Paul could see. He shivered.
Glancing from the corner of his eye, he saw that Vicki looked scared. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. In truth, he was a little frightened himself.
A boarding call came from a ceiling-mounted speaker. Paul found its squawking normalcy comforting. I’m letting it get to me. It’s just a massive power outage, maybe even the result of a terrorist attack. That would be terrible, but Britain is still there. It’s ridiculous to think otherwise.
The boarding, Paul noted, was disorganized compared to when they’d come; no one asked that they stow their bicycles—which was good. They wouldn’t have to spend time retrieving them when they docked.
Right on schedule, the ferry eased out of its slip into the small harbor and into the Solent: the waterway separating the Isle of Wight from the British mainland.
Leaning over the railing once again, this time with their bikes betwe
en them, Paul and Vicki peered into the mist, a far heavier haze than when they’d come.
Listening to the rhythmic thrum of the engines and feeling it through the railing, Paul experienced a subdued exhilaration—the excitement of a movie. For him, doing theoretical physics was like being a kid at play in the world. But now, he felt what he did might have import, maybe even world import. He smiled, realizing he was pretending; he didn’t really believe it—not really.
Five minutes out of harbor, Paul, squinting, could make out the outline of the mainland. But it would be at least another forty minutes or so until they docked at Southampton—forty minutes of sailing up the wide Southampton Water—forty minutes of feeling important. But just a few minutes later, while Paul basked in his daydreams, he heard the engines go soft and felt the ferry decelerate.
Almost by reflex he looked up over his shoulder at the wheelhouse. There, he saw a few people—he couldn’t tell how many—in what seemed vigorous debate. Paul turned and, leaning his back against the railing, watched. After about a minute he pushed off from the railing. “I’m going up there.”
Vicki turned and followed his gaze. “Why? Do you think something’s wrong?”
“No. Not really. Just my curiosity,” he said, resting his bicycle against the railing. “An occupational hazard for us physicists.”
“I know.”
Paul started for the stairs. “There might be news.”
“Wait!” said Vicki, leaning her bike against Paul’s and following him. “I’m just as curious as you are.”
They ran up the stairs and darted into the wheelhouse. The MP that the woman in the lounge had pointed out was there with a man in uniform.
The MP looked away from the man, a look of disgust on his face. “The captain says”—he shot a contemptuous glance to the man—“that he won’t take us to Southampton.”
“I can’t,” said the captain, not to Paul or Vicki but to the MP. “Southampton Water is treacherous. I can hardly see the shoreline and with the radio beacons out, I don’t dare risk it.”
Paul looked out the window. The shoreline was much clearer from the height of the wheelhouse.
