Multitude, p.22
Multitude, page 22
part #2 of Dimension Space Series
Vaughn nodded. “Makes sense. Guess that’s why the robots don’t know we’re there. We’re jumping thirty-six hours back in time, showing up in another dimension a day and a half before they ever knew we existed.”
“Exactly!”
Vaughn glanced at his arm and then looked at her. “It’s not a full reset, though.” He showed her a scratch on his forearm. “I got this during our first trip through Hell.” He pointed to a green stain on his pant leg. “And I got that from a plant outside of that first villa on Corsica.”
“Yeah, so?”
“That means we’re not in a true time loop, at least not like the one Bill Murray’s character experienced in Groundhog Day. His injuries didn’t follow him. Hell, he even died a few times, but when the day reset, so did he.” He pointed at her and then at himself. “We're not.”
Studying a cut on her arm, Angela nodded. She’d gotten it during one of their trips through Corsica. “Shit, you’re right. If we break a leg or die, it’s all over. No reset, no get-out-of-jail-free card.” Lowering her arm, she looked out over the waves. “We have to find a way out of this, or eventually it will kill us.”
Through her peripheral vision, Angela saw Vaughn nod as he too shifted his gaze to stare across the water. He sat up and pointed toward the strait. “Why do we keep coming back here?”
“I’ve been working on a theory. I think it’s tied to the amount of power we fed into the wormhole.”
Vaughn screwed up his face. “How would that have anything to do with it?”
“Wormholes connect two points in space, right?”
“If you say so. You’re the physicist.”
Angela waved a hand. “Yes, I say so. They connect two points in space, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that they also connect two points in time. Even when wormholes were just a theoretical construct, we believed they also bridged time itself.”
“Why?”
“It’s really complex. The problem ties into relativity and how time is a variable portion of the universe’s fabric.”
“Break it down for me Barney-style, then.”
Angela blinked. “Huh?”
Vaughn’s eye gleamed and he smiled. “Nothing. Just give me the simple explanation.”
She looked up at the sky and tried to think of an example. Then she nodded. “Say you were standing outside of a wormhole that connects to a point a couple of hundred thousand miles away. On the far side of that hole, you have a telescope. You step through the wormhole, and instantly you move to its far end. If you then used the telescope to look back toward the start point, you’d see yourself stepping into the opposite end of the wormhole a little more than a second later because that’s how long it takes light to travel the distance.”
“Isn’t that just a speed of light restriction?”
“Actually, it's a space-time thing. Bottom line: information in the form of you traveled faster than light, so effect preceded cause.”
Vaughn’s eyes were glazing over.
Angela shook her head. “You’re the one that wanted it Barnet-style.”
“Barney.”
“Whatever. Anyway, in a greatly oversimplified way, effect preceding cause ties into the time travel aspect of wormholes.”
“Okay, so what does all that have to do with how much power you pumped into the damned thing?”
“I think that the wormhole somehow links to every point in time touched by its existence just like it links to various dimensions.”
Angela’s eyes widened as an incredible epiphany slammed home. “That’s it!”
Vaughn sat bolt upright and looked around. “What’s it?”
“That’s our out!” She threw her hands up. “That’s how we fix this!”
Vaughn stopped searching the horizon and looked at her. “How in the hell do we fix any of this, Angela?”
She started pacing up and down the rocky beach again. “If I’m right about this, we might be able to reset … everything!” Her heart raced as if trying to keep pace with the possibilities that were running through her mind.
She stopped walking and turned toward Vaughn. “We could reset the entire timeline!”
He shook his head. “Wait, what? We can reset it? We can break the loop?!”
Angela began to shake her head but then nodded. “Yes, but much more than that. If I’m right, then the same mechanism that sent us back this far could be used to send us to any point in the lifespan of the wormhole!”
“What mechanism?”
Angela sighed. “Don’t you see? It was the power! I didn’t pump enough of it into the wormhole last time, so it just sent us back here.” She gestured excitedly toward the strait. “To this point in the wormhole’s lifespan.”
Vaughn stared at the sky for maddeningly long moments as he mulled over her words. Then he looked at her and tilted his head. “Let me see if I got this right.”
Angela tried and failed to resist the urge to roll her eyes.
Seeing her reaction, Vaughn held up a hand. “Sorry, but I’m just a helicopter pilot, and you made some pretty big jumps there, so bear with me.”
Angela pressed her lips together, but she waved her hand in a go-ahead gesture.
Vaughn nodded. “So you’re saying that the power you dumped into the wormhole back in CERN created a … a time loop that pushes us back thirty-six hours every day and a half and that the distance the loop pushes us back is tied to the amount of power that you put into the wormhole?”
Angela nodded. “Yes, yes! We landed at a point in the wormhole’s lifespan because I didn’t use enough power to reach its far end.”
Vaughn’s face twisted. “Why does the power level matter?”
Sighing impatiently, Angela threw her hands up. “Don’t you see? If I had pumped in more power, we might have been sent all the way back to the beginning of the singularity’s life, but since we fell short, we don’t have an anchor, so we keep dropping into parallel dimensions, not our own. Eventually, we will return to our version of Earth, and when we do, I can pump all of the power that was coming through the wormhole back into it.” She paused and gave him a meaningful look. “Listen to me, Vaughn! This is the important part, the part that changes everything. When I do that, we’ll be sent back to the point in time when the robots created the wormhole, maybe farther, and because that is the anchoring end of the connection, we should stay in our own dimension.”
She watched as realization dawned on Vaughn’s face. Then a look of fragile hope took root there. “And that …?” He swallowed. “That would bring … everybody back?”
Angela smiled and nodded. “Yes! We would return to the beginning, to a point in time when they were all still alive. Every person, every animal … every living being will return, all of them back, all of them alive!”
Chapter 26
“Holy crap!” Vaughn jumped to his feet. He grabbed his backpack and slung it over a shoulder.
His mind raced with the possibilities of Angela’s proclamation.
Thoughts of what this could mean for his mother and Matt shot to the front.
Then he realized it was so much bigger than that.
A whole world bigger.
“Where are you going?”
“Huh?”
“I asked where you’re going.”
Vaughn stopped walking and looked up from his feet.
Glancing around, he saw that he’d walked halfway up the beach. Looking back to Angela, he smiled self-consciously. “Not a clue.”
Still holding his backpack, Vaughn turned. Facing the ocean, he stared across the waves. “I can’t believe it.” He looked at Angela. “Are you sure we can do it? Go back in time … reset everything?”
“I think so. It fits with what’s been happening and with what science has speculated about the nature of both singularities and wormholes.”
As Angela spoke, Vaughn started walking in a wide circle around her. His arcing path took him from the water’s edge below Angela to the dry sand up the beach from her.
“This is …!” He searched for the right words and failed. Unable to stop his manic circling, he began to walk across his previous steps, cutting a circular groove in the sand with Angela at its center. “We can save the whole world!” Even as he said the words, Vaughn couldn’t accept the weight of the statement. It seemed unreal, but still, his heart pounded in his ears, and he started breathing heavily.
He dropped the bag and then stopped his circuitous pacing as he reached the water’s edge again. Standing with his fingers laced across the top of his head, Vaughn stared out to sea. Inch-high waves lapped at his toes.
Everything they’d lost—all that the world had lost—could be returned? He had never permitted himself that hope, hadn’t even considered it, but now …
The horizon wavered as tears clouded his vision.
Vaughn took a deep breath and then blinked his eyes clear.
Not wanting Angela to see his face, he continued to look across the water as he spoke. “Is there anything we can do to expedite things?”
“No. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until the loop takes us back to our home dimension.”
Vaughn’s face darkened. Then he slowly shook his head. He should’ve known that her theory was too good to be true. Blinking the last of the moisture from his eyes, he dropped his arms and turned to face Angela. As he looked at her, he could feel a muscle twitching in his clenched jaw.
“Come on, Angela! What makes you think we will ever get back to our Earth? Didn’t you say there could be thousands of dimensions?” His frustration boiled over. “We could be stuck in this loop for years! Shit! We probably won’t live long enough to see home!”
Angela’s eyes flared. “No, Vaughn! I told you, I think we will return. We’ll—”
“Sure we will!” he said acidly, cutting her off. “After what, a couple of years stuck in this loop? Lot of good it’ll do us!”
Angela started to say something, but Vaughn held up a hand.
“You’ve seen what these loops are doing to us. Our bodies aren’t resetting, not physically anyway. Even if we somehow manage to survive long enough to reach our Earth, we’ll be too malnourished and weak to make our way back into the collider.”
“Damn you, Vaughn!” Angela squared on him, nostrils flaring. “If you’d shut up and listen for a moment, I’ll tell you why that’s not going to happen!”
Vaughn’s head rocked back as if slapped. His teeth clicked as his mouth shut. Feeling his cheeks warm, he looked around, suddenly too ashamed to look her in the eye.
Blinking, Vaughn stepped back from Angela and held up his hands. He took a deep breath and then sighed. “Sorry. I …”
She shook her head. “Just listen.”
Finally managing to look her in the eyes, he nodded.
Angela sighed and then continued. “Remember how I said the robots are crossing into dimensions by latching onto the micro black holes created by powerful colliders?”
“Yeah. You said that as soon as they detect one, they lock onto it and then open up the wormhole. We’ve seen what happens after that.”
“Exactly, and because of that, I think these robots are limited to invading versions of Earth where the native inhabitants have advanced enough to create supercollider technology.”
Vaughn frowned. “We’ve been over that.”
“Yes, but now we’re trapped in a loop that's hopping between dimensions, and you were right. There probably are thousands of dimensions.” Seeing his reaction, she held up a hand. “But the vast majority of them won’t be accessible to our loop.”
Vaughn tilted his head. “Why not?”
“We now know of two worlds that the robots have invaded in the span of a few months, ours and the amphibians. The first world, the one with the robot-infested Corsican nature park, must have been invaded long ago, but both our world and the amphibians’ were hit in the same year.”
“Yeah, it sucks, but what’s your point?”
“Vaughn, don’t you see? That’s two worlds that reached the same level of collider technology within a few months of each other.”
Then Vaughn did see. His heart sank as he finally understood Angela’s point. Considering the length of Earth’s geologic timeline, the fact that two societies reached that level of technological advancement at virtually the same time pointed to thousands of dimensions, probably a lot more than that.
“That’s why I said you were right about the number of dimensions.”
He felt the muscle twitching in his jaw again. “Angela, that's worse, not better.”
She nodded. “Yes, that part is, but I still think we’ll come full circle sooner rather than later.”
Vaughn looked up. In spite of the nagging doubts, he felt hope trying to take root again. He raised his eyebrows. “How? … Why?”
Angela pointed down. “The loop is depositing us here because it’s along the path we traveled and this is as far back as the overload I generated could send us.”
“Right.” Vaughn nodded. “Because the wormhole connects to all dimensions. But isn’t that the problem? That's why we’ll have to go through thousands of them to get back home.”
Angela shook her head. “No. The wormhole doesn’t connect to all dimensions, only to the ones that have been affected by it, and more importantly, only to versions where the collider is in roughly the same geographic area.”
Vaughn looked up from the sand, his eyes widening. “You’re saying we’ll only cycle through dimensions they’ve already invaded?”
Angela nodded. “And only the ones where the collider is close enough geographically for cross-dimensional interaction. That’s why the collider has been in roughly the same position in each version.”
“Oh.” Vaughn nodded appreciably. “And that’s why you were so sure there had to be a collider in Fish-Head Geneva.”
“Actually, I wasn’t sure. I was just beginning to think we were stuck in a loop. My biggest fear was that I was wrong about the proximity thing. If so, we could have had many more dimensions standing between us and home.”
Vaughn smiled. “Yeah, like a few thousand, but I think you’re right. It all makes sense.”
Angela held a finger to the back of her ear. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
“You’re right. I’m wrong. And yes, I’ve learned my lesson.”
She smiled back at him. “Good. Just remember that next time.”
Vaughn smirked. “Sorry I was such an ass.”
“It’s okay, Captain.” She sighed and looked around. “We’ve been through one hell of an emotional roller coaster.”
Vaughn glanced at the cliff and then tilted his head. “Any idea how many dimensions we’ll have to pass through to find ours?”
Angela blew a curly strand of damp hair from her eyes and then frowned. “No, just that it’ll be a lot less than it might have been.”
Vaughn felt the worry trying to return, but this time he managed to push out the thoughts.
He nodded. “Okay, what’s the plan when we get back to our home dimension?”
Angela pointed toward the strait. “We’ll probably end up back here, so we’ll have to get to the collider before the thirty-six hours end. Otherwise …”
“Otherwise, we’ll start it all over again,” Vaughn finished for her.
“Yeah, pretty much. Then there’s the whole thing about sneaking back into a city of killer robots, all while dodging flying supertankers and not getting dumped into a stadium-sized vat of molten metal.”
Vaughn scoffed and then grinned. “Can of corn! Easy-peasy!”
They both laughed at that.
As he started to mull over the possibilities, Vaughn resumed his circular pacing. He glanced at Angela and waved dismissively. “When we've done all that easy stuff, and you supercharge the wormhole, we’ll be sent back to the beginning?”
Angela nodded.
Vaughn gave her a meaningful look. “Where do we end up? Will we still be together?”
He widened his arc, leaving the circular groove he’d cut into the sand. Then he heard a hollow echo reverberate from beneath him.
Vaughn stopped and looked down. “What the—?”
Suddenly, the ground fell out from under him.
It hadn’t been thirty-six hours yet!
Why was he falling?!
The thoughts had barely formed when Vaughn plunged into water.
Waist-deep water.
About a half-yard of loose sand dumped on top of his head, nearly pushing him below the shallow water.
The onslaught of earth subsided, and Vaughn rose to a crouched position, an arm held overhead to ward off further sandy barrages.
Blinking, he tried to scan the area around him. Instead of being assaulted by blindingly bright light, his eyes had a hard time making out his now dark surroundings.
A contrast of dusty light and glistening shadows cut through the middle of his suddenly shrunken universe.
One of the shadows reached out for him.
Vaughn screamed and jumped about a foot off the ground.
Sending up a frenetic spray, he backpedaled and then fell, landing hard on his ass in the shallow water.
“Vaughn?!”
He looked up to see Angela peering down from an opening, her head cutting a notch into the mote-filled shaft of light that streamed through it.
Angela shifted position, causing her shadow to move again. She peered down at him with wide eyes. “Oh my goodness! Are you okay?!”
From the floor of his watery cell, Vaughn squinted and blinked against the combined assault of trickling sand and contrasting light.
“I think—” A cough cut off his words, launching a spray of salty sand into the bright beam. He waved it away and then looked up again. “I think so.”
