Across the Multiverse

WARNING: The following is an excerpt from the story Timeline by the late Michael Crichton (God bless him). Here is a citation in MLA format. Please don't sue. YOU MUST READ THIS. It explains the way this story works.

Crichton, Michael. Timeline. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999. Print.

Disclaimer: DEFINITELY not mine.

Page 123-4:

"You mean time travel," Marek said.

"No," Gordon said. "I don't mean time travel at all. Time travel is impossible. Everyone knows that."

:

"The very concept of time travel makes no sense, since time doesn't flow. The fact that we think time passes is just and accident of our nervous systems-of the way things look to us. In reality, time doesn't pass; we pass. Time itself is invariant. It just is. Therefore, past and future aren't separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn't a location, you can't travel to it."

They were silent. They just stared at him.

"It is important to be clear about this," Gordon said. "The ITC technology has nothing to do with time travel, at least not directly. What we have developed is a form of space travel. To be precise, we use quantum technology to manipulate and orthogonal multiverse coordinate change."

They looked at him blankly.

"It means," Gordon said, "that we travel to another place in the multiverse."

"And what's the multiverse?" Kate said.

AN: Okay, then Gordon goes on to discuss the multiverse and quantum physics and stuff you people don't really care about (if you do, read the book!). To sum things up, physicists used to think stuff traveled in waves (light waves, radio waves, etc.), but then later found out that everything was actually made up of particles, which they called quanta, and "quantum theory" describes how these "quanta" behave. But quantum theory is just a set of mathematical equations, and the physicists couldn't visualize the world expressed by those equations, but quantum theory was proven over and over again, so they couldn't very well gainsay it. Now we go back to Timeline for more explanation.

Page 126-7:

Many physicists tried to explain the equations, Gordon said. Each explanation failed for one reason or another. Then in 1957, a physicist named Hugh Everett proposed a daring new explanation. Everett claimed that our universe-the universe we see, the universe of rocks and trees and people and galaxies out in space-was just one of an infinite number of universes, existing side by side.

Each of these universes was constantly splitting, so there was a universe where Hitler lost the war, and another where he won; a universe where Kennedy died, and another where he lived. And also a world where you brushed your teeth in the morning, and one where you didn't. And so forth, on and on. An infinity of worlds.

Everett called this the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. His explanation was consistent with the quantum equations, but physicists found it very hard to accept. They didn't like the idea of all these worlds constantly splitting all the time. They found it unbelievable that reality could take this form.

"Most physicists still refuse to accept it," Gordon said. "Even though no one has ever shown it is wrong."

Everett himself had no patience with his colleagues' objections. He insisted the theory was true, whether you liked it or not. If you disbelieved his theory, you were just being stodgy and old-fashined, exactly like the scientists who disbelieved the Copernican theory that placed the sun at the center of the solar system-and which had also seemed unbelievable at the time. "Because Everett claimed the many worlds concept was actually true. There really were multiple universes. And they were running right alongside our own. All these multiple universes were eventually referred to as a 'multiverse.'"

"Wait a minute," Chris said. "Are you telling us this is true?"

"Yes," Gordon said. "It's true."

"How do you know?" Marek said.

"I'll show you," Gordon said.

And then Gordon proves that it is true. Now that you know more about quantum physics than you wanted to, let's move on to exactly how to move through the multiverse. Gordon goes on to explain that they create wormholes through quantum foam to travel to different universes. Then Stern explains quantum foam. Basically, when the big bang happened, there were some imperfections in the universe, and, in Stern's words:

Page 136:

"...And the imperfections never got ironed out. They're still a part of the universe."

"They are? Where?"

"At subatomic dimensions. Quantum foam is just a way of saying that at very small dimensions, space-time has ripples and bubbles. But the foam is smaller than an individual atomic particle. There may or may not be wormholes in that foam."

"There are," Gordon said.

"But how could you use them for travel? You can't put a person through a hole that small. You can't put anything through it."

"Correct," Gordon said. "You also can't put a piece of paper through a telephone line. But you can send a fax."

Stern frowned. "That's entirely different."

"Why?" Gordon said. "You can transmit anything, as long as you have a way to compress and encode it."

Gordon goes on to explain that all you'd need to do this to a human was a really powerful computer. By the way, compressing and encoding basically means saving the instructions for how to recreate something, instead of just saving a thing. So instead of saving a picture of a red square on a white background, with millions of pixels and millions of information, the computer just says make so many pixels white, then so many red, and so on, cutting the data to a very small amount. Then Gordon demonstrates multiverse travel. This is shocking news to the other characters.

Page 157:

"But this, uh, method of shrinking a person, it requires you to break her down-"

"No. We destroy her," Gordon said bluntly. "You have to destroy the original, so that it can be reconstructed at the other end. You can't have one without the other."

"So she actually died?"

"I wouldn't say that, no. You see-"

"But if you destroy the person at one end," Kate said, "don't they die?"

Gordon sighed. "It's difficult to think of this in traditional terms," he said. "Since you're instantaneously reconstructed at the very moment you are destroyed, how can you be said to have died? You haven't died. You've just moved somewhere else."

And one more thing to think about...

Page 179-80:

"It may be easier to understand," Gordon said, "by seeing it from the point of view of the other universe. That universe sees a person suddenly arrive. A person from another universe."

"Yes..."

"And that's what happened. The person has come from another universe. Just not ours."

"Say again?"

"The person didn't come from our universe," Gordon said.

Stern blinked. "Then where?"

"They came from a universe that is almost identical to ours-identical in every respect-except that they know how to reconstitute it at the other end."

"You're joking."

"No."

"The Kate who lands there isn't the Kate who left here? She's a Kate from another universe?"

"Yes."

"So she's almost Kate? Sort of Kate? Semi-Kate?"

"No. She's Kate. As far as we have been able to tell with our testing, she is absolutely identical to our Kate. Because our universe and their universe are almost identical."

"But she's still not the Kate who left here."

"How could she be? She's been destroyed, and reconstructed."

"Do you feel any different when this happens?" Stern said.

"Only for a second or two," Gordon said.

So you see, my friends, that quantum theory is troublesome. But the idea here is that YOU CAN TRAVEL BETWEEN UNIVERSES and, essentially, through time. Which is, of course, what our characters are going to do. Hope you understand this and happy reading!