Outland (World-Lines Book 1) (7 page)

June 23              Omni

Bill, Matt, and Erin arrived well before Richard’s announced starting time. In the center of the lab, the gate sat inside something that looked like an extra-large diving helmet, the kind with an air hose running up to the surface. It had a larger window on the front, and one of the cameras pointed through the window at the gate. The whole assembly including the camera sat on a large turntable.

Matt pointed at the setup. “Now,
that
is some mighty fine Rube Goldberg.”

Richard waved a hand at the equipment. “That’s the pressure vessel that Bill supplied. No idea what it was supposed to be for originally. We’ll rotate the whole assembly on the turntable and try to get a 360-degree view of things.”

“You think that’ll work?” Matt asked.

“It should. This isn’t like a TV; it’s like a periscope. Stuff came
through
last time. I think we can rotate our viewpoint. We’re going to try anyway.”

This time the control station and monitor were set up in the observation room behind the safety glass. The group settled down, and Richard went through his startup sequence.

“I got the parameters from the logs the other day, so I know where we need to go to lock in. I won’t even bother with anything local,” he explained.

“Shouldn’t someone make a speech or something?” Bill asked. “Boldly go, yadda yadda.”

“Chrissake,” Richard muttered. Without ceremony, he activated the connection. In the monitor, the area within the gate blurred, then settled into a murky view of what appeared to be a landscape with tall objects in the distance. The vessel made a slight groaning sound as the pressure equalized. A glance over at the setup made it clear that air in the vessel was mixing with atmospheric gasses from the other side. Readouts on the container indicated a little over two atmospheres and 90 degrees Celsius.

Once the mixture stabilized, the view through the gate cleared up a bit. Kevin pointed the remote at the video camera and operated the zoom. The view on the monitor expanded, and they found themselves looking at… the campus. Or a very ruined version of it. In the stagnant mist, they could see corroded and partly collapsed buildings.

“That’s the Engineering Center,” Kevin said in a soft voice.

“And Othmer Hall, or what’s left of it.” Erin added.

They were silent for several seconds before Kevin said, “They’d be in that direction from this angle too.”

They stared at the scene of devastation. There was no movement other than an occasional slight shift in the mist.

“Okay, I’m going to rotate,” Richard said. He operated a control, and the turntable started to turn. As it did so, the view on the monitor slid sideways. When the assembly had rotated just about ninety degrees, they got an out-of-focus image of something too close to the camera. Kevin backed off the zoom, and they realized they were looking at part of a wall.  Another ninety degrees and they found themselves looking at the room they were all standing in, or a heavily damaged version of it.

“Well, not Venus,” Bill said in a small voice.

“Nope,” Erin replied. “Earth. Runaway greenhouse effect. Not as bad as Venus, but bad enough. This is an alternate Earth, and they lost the coin toss.”

***

They walked to Dempsey’s after shutting down the experiment. By tacit agreement they didn’t talk about it until they had sat down, looked at menus, and ordered food and drinks. Once the waitress had left, Erin turned to Kevin and asked, “So is there one alternate Earth or an infinite number?”

“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 two-dimensional. There’s the normal forward and back, and that’s what we experience as past and future. Then there’s, uh, left and right, I guess. That’s where the various world-lines run in 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. This all sounds stupid in English, because it’s all bad analogies. The math makes a lot more sense.”

“I guess having the Earth 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 just 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 I think 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.”

“Not following,” Erin said.

Kevin opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the waitress came back with the drinks.

Bill raised his and said, “To whatever the hell we’ve got.”

The others raised their glasses and said, “Whatever the hell we’ve got.”

Kevin picked up where he’d left off. “So, a world-line splits off from us at some point in the past. Let’s call it Earth Two. Then later, Earth Two splits again, and one of the new lines becomes Greenhouse Earth. Is Greenhouse Earth the one closer to us, or the one farther from us? The answer is, it can be either one. The world-lines don’t sort themselves. There could be an Earth five world-lines over that’s almost identical to us.”

“Can we connect to those world-lines?” Bill asked.

“We can only
get to the one beyond Greenhouse Earth from Greenhouse Earth. We can’t go around it. Time is
two
-dimensional, not
three.
” Kevin explained.

“Okay, how about the other direction? Left instead of right, or whatever.”

“Possible in principle, but I don’t think it occurred to anyone to build a direction setting into the equipment.” Kevin looked at Richard.

“Um, crap, give me a second.” Richard stared into space.

“What about reversing the polarity of the bogotronic particle stream?” Bill interjected. “Always works on TNG!”

Richard frowned at Bill but otherwise didn’t respond to the gibe. “Yeah, if we shift the matching phase by 180 degrees, it might have the effect we want. Yes, Bill,” he added as Bill opened his mouth to speak. “It sounds a lot like reversing the bogotrons. Get off it.”

Bill sat back, smiling.

“And the Earth in that direction could be anything at all?” Matt asked.

“Or nothing at all…” Erin added.

“So, I’ll get going on modifying the control system to allow reversing the bogotronic particle polarity, shall I?” Matt said with a grin in Bill’s direction. “Trial run day after tomorrow?”

June 24              Matt

Erin picked up her glass of wine and snuggled in against Matt’s side. Matt was holding an open but untouched beer. The TV was on, and in theory they were watching it, but at least as far as Matt was concerned, it might as well have been a test pattern.

Be careful what you wish for… Holy crap. What am I into here?

“Um, Erin?”

“Hmmm?” Erin looked up at him.

“I’m not crazy, right? This is bizarre, right?”

Erin smiled. “Yes, it is. I’m pretty sure there aren’t more than three or four other parallel-universe-generating projects in the whole state.”

He laughed and attempted to tickle her ribs, which almost resulted in a wine-related accident.

“What do you think we should do about it? Or with it?” he asked.

“Not our decision, to be honest. And when it comes down to it, you don’t even know what you have yet. Let’s see what happens with the next experiment. Then you can start to answer that question.”

“Yeah. I just have a funny feeling that this is going to get complicated.”

“Oh, depend on it.” She put her wine glass down on the coffee table, turned, and began to nuzzle Matt’s neck. Thoughts of multiverses faded…

June 23              Suzie

“Hey, Ted,” Suzie called out.

Ted turned at the hail and stopped to wait for her to catch up.

“I hear you had an interesting time at Yellowstone,” she said.

“Yeah,” Ted replied. “I think we had five people injured in the quake. The girls in my group got pretty panicked. I had to keep reassuring them that we were safe.”

“So, were you? Safe, I mean.”

Ted shrugged. He grabbed the door and held it open for her. “As safe as anyone who goes to Yellowstone. I mean, if the thing erupted, there’s no guarantee there’d be any warning anyway.”

“There have been a lot of news stories about it lately,” Suzie said.

“I know, but this isn’t the first time or the last time that’s going to happen. Some people got killed in the late fifties when a big earthquake took down the side of a mountain. Stuff happens, you know? It’s an active volcano. It’s going to act up a couple of times a century.”

Suzie said, “Mm hmm,” then changed the subject. “So your course is done now, right?”

Ted gave her a large smile and a thumbs-up. “Yep. Field trip, thesis, and conclusions, all done, for full course credit. Can’t beat that! I’m taking off tomorrow, going home for a couple of weeks of actual home cooking before I have to start getting ready for the next round of hell.”

Suzie laughed and waved goodbye as she headed off for her class.

June 26              Bill

“I wrote a speech…” Bill said, deadpan.

Kevin snickered. Richard closed his eyes for a moment but otherwise ignored Bill.

“Seriously, we’re making history here. Maybe. Or maybe we’re about to create a big hole in the campus. Either, or. Don’t you think a speech is in order?”

Matt shook his head. “I bet it starts out: Space, the final frontier…”

Bill laughed and dropped the subject. Richard looked just about ready to start, anyway.

Richard had set up the equipment in the same manner as the previous occasion, sealed in a pressure vessel and sitting on a turntable. The camera was poised at the viewport on the vessel, and Richard had stopped poking at the tablet.

He turned and looked at the group for a moment. “Okay. I’ve got it set up in what I hope will send us leftwards.” He hit OK.

Bill noticed a certain amount of cringing in the audience. Pressure vessel or no, they had no actual idea what they might get.

The reality was anticlimactic. The gate opened with none of the drama of previous attempts. The monitor showed a scene straight out of Wild Kingdom, a large meadow with sparse forest to one side, blue sky, and the occasional fluffy cloud. A herd of what appeared to be deer grazed in the meadow.

“Now
that’s
more like it!” Matt said. “This is like the exact opposite of worst-case.”

“Let’s rotate it and see what we get,” Richard activated the turntable.

As the scene shifted, Erin commented, “Looks almost like the Lincoln area, doesn’t it? Maybe a little hillier. Why would it be hillier?“

The turntable finished a 360 ° sweep without revealing anything suspicious.

Richard muttered, “Well I’ll be damned.”

“What now?” Erin asked.

Bill shrugged, palms up. “We don’t have a lot of options, actually. We can dial in Greenhouse Earth or Mutual of Omaha Earth. According to Kevin, that’s it from here. Right or left. And we can only move our viewpoint on that side by moving the gate on this side. But, hey, I’m open to suggestions.”

Richard shut off the gate. “Good points, Bill. People, this calls for some thought. And beers. Many beers. Followed by food and more beers. Then maybe some discussion, but definitely
beers. Dempsey’s, anyone?”

He looked at each person in turn. There was no argument, so he powered down the rest of the equipment, and everyone headed for the door.

“Uh, hold on,” Kevin said. Pulling out a set of keys, he locked the lab door and made a point of testing it to make sure it wouldn’t open.

“Yeah, I hear ya,” Bill said, giving a thumbs-up.

***

“Wow. Like, just… wow,” Bill muttered. The events of the day were so far beyond anything he had expected or imagined that he was having trouble processing it. He suspected he wasn’t alone. The faces around the table looked as shell-shocked as he felt.

The waitress came by, but the drinks had hardly been touched. She walked away, looking perplexed.

After several minutes of silence, Bill said, “So let me see if I understand this. There are alternate Earths on either side of us. One is like Wild Kingdom. The other is some kind of post-apocalyptic horror with a Venus-like atmosphere, where everything is probably dead. Does that about sum it up?”

He looked around the table. Kevin nodded, Matt looked thoughtful, Richard sat back and put his hands behind his head, and Erin returned his look with a faint smile.

Matt took a sip of his beer, then said in a distracted tone, “Maybe we can sell acreages…?”

Bill stared in disbelief for a few seconds. “What are you,
slow?
”

Matt raised his eyebrows and looked amused. “You have a better idea?”

Bill grinned back at him. “Look, if these are duplicate Earths, then chances are things like mineral deposits will be in the same place. Including gold. Ever hear of the California Gold Rush? Panning for gold? Or closer to home, Deadwood Creek or Pikes Peak?”

“Sure, okay,” Matt answered. “So how do we get there? Doesn’t look like there are highways on that side.”

“There are highways on
this
side. And the portal hardware is portable, if you have a van.”

People around the table exchanged looks.

“How much gold do you think there was at the Deadwood gold strike?” Matt asked.

Erin replied, “About two hundred and fifty million, in today’s money. Of course, most of that was mined, and I have no desire to swing a pick axe. But there would be at minimum several tens of millions worth of placer gold before you’d have to switch to more intensive extraction processes.”

“Are we sure we want to go down this road?” Kevin asked.

Erin replied, “Ever hear of Kim Kardashian’s half-million-dollar wedding dress?”

Kevin looked offended, and Erin laughed. “Sorry, Kevin, of course you haven’t.
Yes
, I want to go down this road. Or at least play with the idea. I’d like to not have to worry about how I’m going to pay for next year. Or even this year.”

Bill couldn’t help smiling at Erin’s comment. The life of a poor university student tended to make the advantages of financial security very clear.

“Is this legal?” Kevin persisted.

“Unless we’ve come under Napoleonic law when I wasn’t looking,” Richard replied, “anything not specifically
declared illegal is legal. And that
isn’t
Nebraska we’re talking about, just a place that looks a lot like Nebraska used to.”

“That sounds a lot like lawyering,” Matt commented.

“And who do you think will be fighting both sides of this if it ever goes to court?” Richard asked. “If and when this tech becomes available to the public, do you think various people, groups, and governments will be waiting around to ask permission of the current owners on this side? Not a chance. I think we have a limited amount of time to get in and get ours before it becomes a total war-zone.”

Bill leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. This was getting interesting.

“Can we hope to keep control if it gets out?” Erin asked.

Richard shook his head. “Kevin is smart, but if he can figure out the theory, someone else will too, sooner or later. No offense, Kevin. And the hardware isn’t that complicated once you know what you’re trying to do. It’s all off-the-shelf components and some light metalwork.” This last comment with a tip of his head to Bill, who acknowledged with an ironic wave. “Patents don’t help either. 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 just a matter of time.”

“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 ten years without explanation. And as Richard said, someone else will figure it out. We’re
there
, Erin. These 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.”

“All right, I accept that,” Erin replied. She thought for a few seconds. “Of course, patents will make you a lot of money, and there’s the Nobel prize…”

Richard waggled his hand
so-so
. “The Nobel isn’t guaranteed, although I think we’d have a pretty good shot. But that’d be mostly Kevin, and might be as much as a decade away”.

“And it’s not really
that
much money in the end,” Matt added.

“Patents,” Erin said.

“Granted,” Richard answered, “but I don’t think this would be a mass-market product along the lines of the PC. And anyway, if someone figures out a slightly different way to do it, a patent could be worthless.”

There were a few moments of silence as everyone pondered the alternatives. Richard took the opportunity to signal the waitress for refills.

Bill broke the silence. “Here’s another question, Kevin. If Yellowstone erupted here, would it erupt there at the same time?”

“Where the hell is
that
coming from?” Richard asked, surprise plain on his face.

Bill tipped his head towards Erin and Matt. “You should get Erin to tell you about her fun times at Yellowstone last week.” He turned to Kevin. “So?”

Kevin huffed a bit, thinking. “I doubt it. They are separate worlds, and have been so for some amount of time, depending on where they split. They’re not going to proceed in lockstep. Small differences add up.”

All eyes turned to Erin. Matt said, “Jeez, Erin, you think that’s going to happen?”

Erin hesitated before shaking her head. “Yellowstone has been acting up on and off as long as America has been here. And people have been predicting an eruption for just as long. The west coast is overdue for a mega quake too, and that hasn’t happened. So no, not particularly.”

Bill inclined his head. “Still, if it did blow, it’d be nice to have a bolt-hole. This is kind of my thing, right?”

Matt laughed. “I hadn’t noticed!” He pointed at Bill. “You’ve been waiting your whole life for this moment, haven’t you?”

Bill spread his hands in an expansive gesture and smiled an acknowledgment.

“Another thing.” Richard said after a moment. “I’d like to move it out of the lab. Lousy security and too many curious people.”

“And I,” Bill interjected, “would like to see a second portal built if we’re going to be going through that thing.”

“What? Why?” Richard exclaimed.

“Are you kidding me? Now
you’re
slow! What, you think nothing will go wrong? You're like the guy who shrugs off concerns then gets eaten or blown up in the next scene. You're the guy who goes into the attic alone because that's the
smart
thing to do.”

Bill shook his head and held out his hands, palms out. “Dude, I've seen every sci-fi and horror movie known to man. I've seen people locked in, locked out, locked up, abandoned, lost, crushed, eaten, beaten, shot, disintegrated, or just stuck out on the street in their underwear, because they didn't bother to take precautions. God exists, and he's not only
a nasty SOB, he's also a B-movie director with a warped sense of humor. And I don't want to be his next sight gag.

“So I am not going anywhere near that thing unless you have spare parts, a spare unit, spare batteries, and a spare generator. You want to skip all that? Fine! I'll wait on this side.”

Richard made a wry face and shrugged. “Well, you ain’t wrong.”

At that point, the waitress arrived with another round of the same for everyone. All conversation ceased until she was several tables away.

There were several more hours of discussion. It was one thing to talk in general and theoretical terms about crossing the dimensions and panning for gold, another to resolve to do it. But in the end, the potential for adventure—combined with the possibility of massive amounts of money—was too much to resist.

Richard summed up what they’d worked out. “So the plan is we move the portal generator out of the lab, location to be determined. We build a second portal, and several gates, including one we can drive a truck through. We pick a good location for gold panning, put together supplies for an expedition, and then we’re going looking for gold, which is hopefully in the same place on that side. All good?”

Everyone signaled agreement by various nods, thumbs-up, and grunts. And that called for beer.