Dr Kroonstad had a plan. They had calculated the wave function with his twin and Enembe, and they were convinced that it was safest to be near a node of the function rather than near an antinode. Lucky for us, there were nodes at the locations of the Rocks, namely right here and at the valley of Floating Rocks. But the hub was more of an antinode area, and also the village was not safe. All this was in concordance with the practical experience of the villagers and religious beliefs of the priests.
The plan was straightforward but tricky. First, everyone and their twins in the snow-world should be brought to a node area. Second, the wave function should be let collapse and hope for the best. Most people were in the cave in both realities, so that was good. The tricky things were to find Svetlana and to know how to actually collapse the wave function. The double-world function had been fairly stable for more than two weeks now and it could go on for a long time, which would cause severe problems with food supplies in the cave after a week. Based on the stories of the priests, there was an earthquake maybe an hour before a collapse. Enembe confirmed that it can be possible based on the math, as there was a point where the oscillation started to interfere with the other reality some time before a collapse. From that point on the collapse would be inevitable.
- We should start executing the plan first thing tomorrow morning by bringing Ismen's and Svetlana's twins here. So, today we have time to explain everyone what will happen, Dr Kroonstad said.
- Do we have any plan about Svetlana? She should be in this reality, but we didn't see her in the hub, and nobody has seen her here. We were asking around today, I said.
- It is really difficult to know. But we have left notes behind us. So if she comes to the hub, she'll learn that we are here. The snow-world hub does not have a note, but it is very unlikely that she would switch there without her twin switching to the other reality. And if she cannot go to the hub, she will for sure try to get to the village. So she should show up here. We just need to wait and prepare to act when we meet her.
- How do we collapse the wave function when we get that far, Ismen asked. - Are you planning to explode another Rock?
- That is one option, but it will have consequences we cannot anticipate. Rather, I suggest that we disturb the Rock #2 above the cave by removing it from the air in the snow-world. It probably will have strong enough an interference with the wave so that it starts collapsing. We should proceed in iterations: first move it a bit, wait for a few hours and if nothing happens, move it more, and so on until we get an impact.
- And how do you know that there was an impact?
- We will record the Rock movements in both realities, and inform each other about changes. I am pretty sure we'll notice when it happens.
- OK, I summarised. - We'll start slow tomorrow morning and try to avoid extra disturbances. That sounds good. But I suggest that we talk with the priests today so that we have social acceptance for our actions.
- You are right, Ismen said. - We should do that immediately, that might take the whole night. I am not sure that they will like our idea. If I have understood, they just want to protect people and not interfere with the Rocks in any way.
Everyone agreed with Ismen, so we all headed to the corridor where the priests stayed. It was around ten, so it wouldn't be too late for some discussion. Ismen was right: they were strongly against the idea of touching not to mention removing any of the Rocks (fortunately they did not know that Dr Kroonstad had exploded one!). We tried to explain that we could calculate and predict what can happen and make estimates about how long it takes for the emergence to go away and that this time it may take very long unless we interfere. It was not convincing, they just said that it is in the hands of gods and they were benevolent and won't let that happen. It was enough to keep people safe in the cave. We didn't want to push too hard, because if we would get Ismen and Svetlana here tomorrow, we were not in any particular hurry and could negotiate about this for days. Now it was more important to convince the priests that we were here to help and that we knew something about what was going on.
We were not quite sure what we should say about the other reality and whether we should tell that we had a direct connection there both ways (and also that our twins were actually there talking with the twins of the priests about the same issue with as little progress). We decided to be cautious first and not talk about it.
Suddenly the ground started shaking slightly, and the tin cups on a shelf clattered. The magnitude was very low, but without doubt we knew that it was not coming from anything someone could do in the cave. It was an earthquake. Everyone fell silent for two seconds, and then we all stood up and walked out of the priests' dormitory. We knew that our assumed-no-hurry plan was shattered in pieces and we should get Ismen and Svetlana here immediately. Also the priests knew that our discussion was over as they were needed in the hall and dormitories to give instructions and comfort to people. We only had a final two-sentence conversation with them while we all walked toward the main hall.
- Two of our colleagues have just arrived in the village, and we must go there to bring them here, Ismen said.
- Very well, if you tell that you are on a rescue mission, everyone will help you if they can, they replied.
Then we had a short discussion amongst ourselves about who should go to Khorixas' house. Ismen immediately insisted to be with his twin, and my twin said that she should go because she is in the same reality and could talk to them directly. That made sense, but for us to know what was going on, it would be important for me to go as well, and we also needed both Dr Kroonstads to communicate the other direction between realities.
Besides, he reminded, only he could use the probe, which would be very helpful when sliding people around in the reality with hard and slippery snow everywhere. So it was the five of us who left, while Enembe stayed behind and would learn anything the priests would tell people and try to figure out whether that made sense from the point of view of the wave function. Enembe should also try to find Khorixas who knew many people and could probably help. Unfortunately they would loose the inter-reality connection, but that could not be helped.
We had been told that from the earthquake there was around an hour to the wave function collapse, so in theory we should easily make it. It was only two kilometres to Khorixas' home and the road was familiar. But it was an estimate only, and if we were in a wrong place we could die. I saw that Ismen was worried about that, but he focussed his thoughts on pairing with his twin and refused to think that that was not enough. My heart was beating for Svetlana, because even if we could bring her to the cave, her odds were poor without her twin. Paradoxically, that made me even more determined to bring her there.
When we had come to the village yesterday, I had wondered the speed of Dr Kroonstad's twin. Now I could see it with my twin's eyes. His probe was flying in front of him one or two metres above ground, and he was pulling a rope from the probe and sliding on the slippery snow like on skis. My twin was holding her arms around his waist and skiing just behind him. It would had been fun winter sports unless we hadn't been on a dangerous rescue mission.
In any case, with two-directional communication, it was easy to follow the others and make sure that even with running speed, nobody was left behind. We were in the village in fifteen minutes. Khorixas' house was dark and silent.
Dr Kroonstad's twin went to the door and banged it loudly. We did the same in the non-snowy world in the hope that Svetlana's twin would be there. After a few seconds, my twin saw a light being lit in the upper street-side bedroom. Our reality was painfully silent. There were noises and squeaking stairs, and after a moment Ismen's twin opened the door. I described this to Ismen, and he looked really relieved, he almost collapsed on the veranda, but he could manage himself and sat down on a stair. In contrast, our house showed no signs of life, so we just broke a small window beside the door. While my twin explained the situation to Ismen's and Svetlana's twins (both had now appeared to the door), I rushed inside and turned all lights on. There was nobody downstairs. I rushed up the stairs and shouted for Svetlana. Complete silence.
She was not there.
I felt a panic grow in my chest, but I refused to let it take over. I went back downstairs and took some paper to write notes. With large block letters I wrote: "URGENT! COME TO A CAVE 2 KM AWAY VIA THE SOUTH ROAD, INSIDE THE HIGHEST HILL. MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, AND MINUTES. NDALI " I left the paper on the kitchen table and wrote another one. Then I took a large mug, put water in it and dumped the paper into the water. I didn't know were the plastic bags were and I had no time to find them. I put the mug into the microwave and turned on the heating program we used for bread. Then I turned off the lights, rushed out of the door and closed it behind me.
On the veranda, my twin had already explained Svetlana's and Ismen's twins what was going on, and they were ready to leave in the other reality. Dr Kroonstad's twin told them that we were also ready in this reality and we should go immediately, as time was running out. So we all headed back. This time it was slower, as the probe was supposed to pull four people instead of just two, and we had some uphill on the way. I was afraid that we would be too much delayed. Fortunately Ismen had noticed some beanpoles that Khorixas used to keep his sunflowers from falling down. They were almost two metres long and they had a sharp metal peak, so they could be used to push from the slippery snow.
On the way back we did not talk much. We had to focus on getting back as fast as possible. I felt good that we found Ismen's and Svetlana's twins safe and sound. I tried to focus on that, rather than trying to think about missing Svetlana or my desparate attempt to send her a message through the microwave. It would take twenty minutes to run the baking program and even if it did go somewhere, it was not likely that she would make it to the cave in time. So we just walked and slid and pushed with the poles and tried to move well as we could. Of course it was much easier for us, but I could see everything in the snow-world and how it was much more difficult there and it made me feel that struggle as well.
Half way back I noticed that the night sky was getting brighter. I looked up and saw strong northern lights across the sky. In the North, they were so intensive that they could almost be used for reading, or that's how it felt. I could also hear their sounds. They were strange cracks and whistling, and crackle and sputter. The sounds became louder as the lights were brighter. This had been considered as humbuge for a hundred years, but just recently an audiologist had proven that these sounds can actually be recorded and that they do not form in stratosphere but rather at height of just less than a hundred meters, and therefore their timing matches with the lights. There was also a bright new star on the eastern sky, which was really strange as stars don't just appear like northern lights. I had never seen such beautiful northern lights, and they felt somehow comforting - until Dr Kroonstad said that they were probably signs of collapsing wave function and we should really hurry.
As we approached the cave and the hills, the road turned uphill, and that considerably slowed down the speed on the slippery snow. There was only twenty minutes left of the estimated respite. The probe pulled as it could, and everyone pushed with the poles, and every small lump on the surface was used as a pivot point. The northern lights were becoming brigher minute by minute, and they were also spreading higher, close to zenith. The cracks were disturbingly loud.
Then we noticed something good. The poles took a better hold of the snow, and we could push us forward easier (I mean they could, but I started to loose the distinction between my and my twin's realities, as I was so intensively in her head now). This made our moving suddenly much quicker, and we cheerily started to walk more confidently.
There were only maybe two hundred meters to the opening of the cave, when we realised that the increase of the friction did not stop. The snow was quickly turning into a sticky flypaper. Svetlana noticed this first, as she had experienced it in the snow-world before. Indeed, the temperature was much higher than it was earlier in the evening, we just hadn't noticed the change. When I thought about it, I noticed that the northern lights had gone beyond zenith and they were warming my back and head like sun on a summer day. The cracking sound had changed and was much softer, more like humming. A glimpse of humming gods, playing with us like cruel childred played with flies, struck my brain, but I pushed that idea away and fought against increasing horror.
I must focus on helping others, I thought. I encouraged Svetlana, whose boot was stuck in the snow. We pulled it together but in vain. Ismen told her to leave it and move on without, and that's what she did. We noticed that the longer we kept our feet in one place, the tighter they stuck, so we started moving our legs very fast with small steps. It worked for a while, but the snow melted more and more.
Five minutes. The cave was only fifty meters away. The sky was almost as bright as on a sunny day, and the sound had changed to a wheeze of a strong wind although it was dead calm. The snow did not carry us at all any more, and every footstep sinked into the muddy, sticky white death.
Then Enembe showed up at the cave entry. He had a long rope in his hand, and he threw it high in the air. The coil unfolded in the air, and for a short moment, it seemed to stay still in the air, just before it fell on the ground just a few metres away from us. I took two steps and reached the rope. I pulled it toward me and handed it further for everyone. Now we had a good handle, as Enembe had tied the other end up to a pole. We started pulling, and we made progress again.
The temperature rose and the consistence kept changing. When only ten meters away, the snow turned more runny, although it still was sticky. Dr Kroonstad could now walk faster and he bumped into Svetlama from behind. She was already exhausted and had no time to react, and she fell directly into the muddy snow, face first. I felt like a thunderbolt going through my body. It was only a few meters, we still had a minute to go. I would not leave her there. I waded to her, grabbed her and pulled from the snow. I dragged her for the last metres into the cave, then wiped her nose and mouth clean from the snow so she could breathe. Enembe pulled the heavy iron door of the cave closed with help from a fireman.
Svetlana was lying on the floor, breathing heavily. I fell beside her and started crying. This was everything we could do for her. We had instructed her to come from the hub to the village, we had found her from Khorixas', and we had helped her into this safety cave. But her twin was still missing, and she would most likely vanish in a minute, and we couldn't help her at all any more. I felt misarable and just cried. She was the person who had inspired us to come to this expedition in the first place, and now she was the one to suffer from the weirdness of this land.
- I am sorry, Bwana. I am really really sorry, I cried.
Then I just lied beside her on the cave floor and sobbed and listened to the storm outside that was not a storm but a collapse of universes. How can it be as beautiful and magnificient as northern lights, and at the same as unpredictable and cruel as a spiderweb to a fly? I did not want to think or feel, I just wanted to be beside her until there was nothing to be with.
The storm faded slowly and the sound turned lower, gradually to like a wind in the willows. Then it gradually disappeared altogether.
- It's okay. You can call me Bwana anytime.
I opened my eyes and looked around. Svetlana was still beside me, she had pushed herself up and leaned to her elbow. Enembe was standing just beside me, and Dr Kroonstad and Ismen and Khorixas were there as well. Ismen's and the doctor's clothes were dripping water, and Svetlana's and mine were soaking wet as well. She was smiling softly.
- Thanks for saving my life, she said.
I tried to hug her, but I just ended up pushing her back to the floor as I fell on top of her. I pushed myself up quickly and helped her up as well.
- How did it happen? I thought that people vanish if they lose their twin.
- I cannot really explain that except by saying that Amirhan is more complex a place than we can ever imagine. A wave function does not capture it all. My twin was in the non-snow world first, but somehow it got mixed up. It seems like that there was a third reality as well, because I remember the hub with no snow. I also remember hearing my own thoughts from the snow-world, but nobody could hear me. When you came from the village, you did not come to the same non-snow hub that I remember.
- So you heard your twin all along, although we had no idea about it?
- Yes, that's how it looked like. I followed me and Ismen to the village today. The reality where I was had a strange bright star in the eastern sky. I remember it from both the snow-world and non-snow world, but nobody else seems to have noticed that.
- I saw that star just a few minutes ago, I said. - But it wasn't there before.
- I guess that was when all the realities merged and all of them started to happen in the same place. That's the best how I can describe it, Dr Kroonstad said.
- So what is outside? Is there one world, or two, or three, Enembe asked the doctor.
- What do you remember? Do you remember both worlds as if you had been there yourself? If yes, I suppose the worlds did merge and the wave function collapsed in the way we hoped for.
I started probing my own memories. I had very clear memories of being in the sticky snow world a few minutes back, and walking to the village on the dirt road yesterday, and spending more than a week in the cave helping villagers, and eating bread rolls at Khorixas'. I was again the full me and I had the memories of both my twins. It felt that I had found something that I had missed a lot, except that just yesterday I couldn't even imagine that that was something that could be missed.
A priest came walking to the cave door.
- We have received a divine announcement that the Great Chasm is over and we can safely go back home, he said.
He went to the door, unlocked it, and pushed it open with the fireman. He watched outside for a while and looked pleased. Then he turned to us, waved his right hand toward the outside world and smiled. Then he bowed slightly, turned and went back to the cave.
We looked at each other for a while, and went outside. There was no snow, but the ground was soaking wet just like after heavy rain. The moon was shining bright, and the air was calm and warm.
- Hmm, I like the smell of moist soil, I said.
- Yes. My garden smells just like this before the flowers start blooming, Dr Kroonstad replied.
The end.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Monday, December 26, 2016
Amirhan, Part 26 - Cave
Dr Kroonstad looked alarmed.
- What happens? Why is there an alarm? Did you collapse the wave function? Ismen asked almost in panic. From his eyes I could see that he was thinking that his twin was still in the hub and he was here, so he would vanish in a second.
- Calm down, everyone, I shouted. - We don't know what's going on, but our Rock is safely hanging up in the air, so our part was successful. The realities are not collapsing, on the contrary, we stopped them from collapsing. If our work is done up here (I looked intensively at Dr Kroonstad, and he seemed to understand that I wanted his confirmation so he nodded), we must immediately go down to the village to see what's going on there. People may need help. We must stop thinking about ourselves and help others.
Ismen seemed to relax a bit, so we started to walk downhill toward Ashakati. The sirens and loudspeakers had shut up, but we started to hear noise, shouts and clatter when people came out of their homes. The noise increased as we approached the village. When we came to a road going South-West from the village, we saw a line of people walking away with small bags or pouches.
We came to the road and turned toward the village. People we faced looked serious and worried, but they were determined and everyone seemed to know what to do. They said to us things such as "you need to go to safety", and "don't go back, it's dangerous", but I said that we must go there to help. So we continued against the human tide, until we saw a familiar face in the line.
- Khorixas, thank goodness you are here. Please explain what is going on, I said. He stopped with us at the roadside.
- There is a village emergency. We must all go to the cave for safety.
- What emergency and what cave? Shouldn't we help people in the village, I asked.
- No need, the priests will take care of that. They will check everyone gets away and they will be the last ones to leave the village. Everyone needs to go to the safety cave that is just a few minute's walk from here.
- But what happened in the village? It seemed very peaceful, and there was no sign of fire or something, Enembe said.
- It was a divine announcement of a danger. The priests saw a sign in the temple and they set the alarm.
- What! cried Enembe. - What nonsense is that?
- I don't know very well, you know I am rather a science person myself. But for generations we have had this safety cave that is used when a celestial danger threats us. They say that there is food and equipment there for weeks just in case. The congregation has some kind of a warning system. When I was a kid, there was a warning and we spent two days in the cave. They say that it saved our lives. Six people were out in Amirhan, and they were never seen again.
- Right, sure, said Enembe doubtfully. He was a bit aggressive against religions, and I guess this situation was quite upsetting for him anyway. - And what is the celestial warning sytem anyway? Astrology?
- I don't know really. I never go to the temple. But it is somehow built into our administration, so that people are not asked whether they believe in these things ot not. The system is enforced.
We fell silent as everyone was trying to understand what was going on. We started walking with the stream of people, as there was nothing to do in the village. The road went around the highest hill that we were just on top of half an hour ago. People were walking pretty fast an mostly in silence, and the line reminded me of a giant glowworm as there was no other light than people's pocket lights. After another hundred metres, the glowworm turned left and entered a hole under a cliff. It was big enough for two tall men to walk in side by side, but I had my doubts about whether the whole village actually could fit in a cave. It should be huge.
It was. After the entry, the cave became a bit higher and more spaceous, but especially it turned out to be long and branchy. There were corridors going to left and right, and it was clearly built and designed and built for a long-term shelter for a large group of people. We entered a larger hall that seemed to be a central place in this cave system.
The fire brigade, together with the priests, efficiently organised a bunk or a mattress for everyone, and after a long day, we were happy to go to sleep and have some rest.
~x~
Next morning we went to the hall for breakfast. It was merely canned soup and dried bread, but we were happy that there was next morning and the whole village did not just collapse into some hole between realities. After the breakfast, we headed to talk with the fire brigade people to find out about the emergency and what is going to happen next.
We learned that the alarm was given by the priests of the village temple. They have a Floating Rock also in the temple (actually, the temple was built around the Rock more than a hundred years ago). The alarm system was based on the rock: if there were important changes in the Rock movement, the priests would make interpretetions and launch an emergency if needed.
- You said that the story about holy rocks was a lie, Enembe reminded Dr Kroonstad when we learned this. Doctor looked ashamed and scratched his head.
- Erm, I heard the story but I thought it was a joke. I am not really an anthropologist, so I didn't pay much attention to this religious stuff. I couldn't believe it would turn out important.
- Well, listening to others may be a good idea sometimes, even if you think they are wrong, said Enembe. That was something that I did not expect Enembe to say, but maybe he had also learned something. I did't want the discussion to get personal, so I switched topic.
- If the priests could detect a disturbance in the wave function, they might be able to tell us something we don't know. They seem to have decades of experience on this, if they have successfully built evacuation caves and everything. We should talk with them.
We agreed that we would do that with Ismen, while Enembe and Dr Kroonstad could do some calculations about the wave function and try to estimate how stable it is now and how we could make it collapse in a controlled way.
We spent most of the day talking with priests and other people. The local religion was indeed quite practically oriented to protect people from alternative reality disturbances. It became obvious that such events happen in Amirhan frequently enough so that people could have observed when problems arise and which actions prevented people from vanishing into reality discrepancies. Of course they did not talk about wave functions and realities, but we could understand them when they described what they meant with each religious term.
We also learned that this cave was a special place that seemed to protect from these disturbances. It was practically below the place where we brought the Rock #2, so Dr Kroonstad's intuition about a correct place seemed to match the intuition of the villagers. Originally the cave was a natural formation and it was noticed to protect people inside it. Therefore it was built much larger with the idea to protect the whole village. It had been used for that purpose thirty years ago, when there was a major reality discrepancy. Now that we had learned about the wave functions and their connections to actual events in Amirhan, we realised the amount of ignorance scientists of that time had related to these events. They had simply been considered unfounded religious fallacies, and they had not been seriously studied.
~x~
In the evening, Ismen left to find the others, while I went to the other direction because I had promised to return a diary to an old priest that had made precise notes thirty years ago. His dormitory was at the very end of the corridors on the right. I hadn't been there before, so I looked closely at the signs on the walls.
Suddenly the corridor looked familiar. It was like a strong déjà-vu, but rather than just things feeling familiar, I knew what was behind each door. I knew that there was a large clock at the very end although I couldn't see it from here.
I was stunned and stopped. The feeling started to faint, and a strange anxiety grew inside me. It was so good, so right, and now it was going away. I felt an urge to turn around and go back. I looked around, and there was a warm, friendly spot, almost like glowing in the dim cave just beside me and offering nice thoughts to me. I took two steps to that direction, and the good feeling came back. But the feeling fainted again, and realised that the friendly spot was moving toward the main hall. I knew that I should go return the diary, but I didn't want to leave the spot. So I turned around.
I walked close to the spot, and it gave me new feelings and thoughts all the time. The whole place started to look familiar. I knew this place, and had known for a while. I knew many of the people, and they had become dear to me. I knew how the canned evacuation meal tasted like. This place felt like, well, not like a home but a like a place with purpose. I had a reason to be here.
Although I didn't know why, I was now determined to stay near my spot. The thoughts it gave me were both familiar and new at the same time. I could see the whole cave in a new way, and it brought me courage. I came to the main hall, when I thought about Enembe. He was probably in the eatery already, but I thought I saw him in the hall and that he greeted me: "Hello, Ndali!"
I also thought about an old man. He was nearby and turned around abruptly toward Enembe's voice. He looked just like Dr Kroonstad, but strangely enough, he didn't feel familiar at all. He turned his head around like trying to listen and then he shouted: "Dr Mariental, is that you? Please come here, I need to talk to you!" It was so lively, although it all happened in my imagination.
I felt awkward that he knew me, and I felt awkward that I felt that way, having spent the most intensive day of my life with him. I thought that I went to him. "Yes, sir?" He said: "Dr Mariental, it's a fortunate that you are here. Please help me. I need to ask you to shout: 'I found myself.' Please do it now. She might be nearby." He was very persuasive, and I felt that I should help him.
- I found myself! I shouted.
Then I fell silent. Why did I shout aloud? It was just my thought about shouting, why did I actually do it? People turned to look at me, and I felt embarrased. Dr Kroonstad was apparently nearby, as he showed up from somewhere and walked toward me.
- Ndali, is that you? What did you say?
- Eh, sorry doctor, I don't know what it was. I just suddenly felt like saying it.
My thought about the doctor intensified and rather than talking with him I started to think what he would say. He would seem pleased and say: "Very good, they heard you. Now things are going somewhere." I would say: "I'm sorry, I don't understand." And he would say: "I'll explain in a second. But I'd like you to say another thing: 'My twin met your twin in the snow world.' Please say it."
- My twin met your twin in the snow world, I said.
Suddenly it all made sense. Dr Kroonstad seemed to understand the situation as well.
Doctor's twin said in my head: "Ndali, I am Dr Kroonstad. Everything has been split into two for two weeks, and we have twins in the other reality. You twin met my twin in another reality yesterday. They are now in this very same cave. Your twin can hear your thoughts, and I can hear my twin's. So I can tell you what's going on in the other reality, and I need your twin to speak up everything you learn from here to tell the others. Do you understand." My twin said: "No", but I understood my role. I repeated his words aloud.
- Very good work, the doctor said. - Now we can have a real-time two-direction communication. Why don't we all go to the eatery and sit over there so it is more comfortable.
We went to the eatery and found Enembe and Ismen there. We all sat down in both realities and told each other everything. My twin was very confused at first, and I wished she could sense my feelings of comfort and joy when I found her, but apparently she couldn't. She only knew what doctor's twin told her. It was, however, easy to convince her because I could hear her thoughts and tell the doctor to tell his twin to repeat those thoughts. Soon enough, we were having an intensive discussion between the realities, me describing the says in the snow-world and doctor's twin those in here. It was interesting to notice, that although Enembe's twin was also present, Enembe could not hear him the same way I heard mine. There had to be large individual differences, as Ismen's twin heard Ismen only during sleep.
We learned that Enembe's and my twins had woken up in the snowy, empty village, when Khorixas was baking rolls for us. It had took some time to figure out that everyone had been evacuated, just like what had happened here yesterday. They had found their way to the cave and thought that the villagers needed their help. And besides, the priests were very strict about nobody leaving before the emergency was over. So they have lived in the cave with the villagers for more than a week, trying to figure out what was going on and how they could solve the emergency.
We told them what had happened in the non-snow world and that Ismen and Svetlana would come here today (rather, the village, so we should get them a message). Now that we had a direct contact, it should be easy to organise. So it seemed that we were pretty much on map already and knew that the double realities seemed quite complete on the area from the hub and the Floating Rocks to Ashakati and the cave. But one piece was missing: Svetlana's twin should be in this reality, and yet nobody had seen a glimpse of her since Sunday last week. How was she doing?
____________
The topic for tomorrow is The last snow.
- What happens? Why is there an alarm? Did you collapse the wave function? Ismen asked almost in panic. From his eyes I could see that he was thinking that his twin was still in the hub and he was here, so he would vanish in a second.
- Calm down, everyone, I shouted. - We don't know what's going on, but our Rock is safely hanging up in the air, so our part was successful. The realities are not collapsing, on the contrary, we stopped them from collapsing. If our work is done up here (I looked intensively at Dr Kroonstad, and he seemed to understand that I wanted his confirmation so he nodded), we must immediately go down to the village to see what's going on there. People may need help. We must stop thinking about ourselves and help others.
Ismen seemed to relax a bit, so we started to walk downhill toward Ashakati. The sirens and loudspeakers had shut up, but we started to hear noise, shouts and clatter when people came out of their homes. The noise increased as we approached the village. When we came to a road going South-West from the village, we saw a line of people walking away with small bags or pouches.
We came to the road and turned toward the village. People we faced looked serious and worried, but they were determined and everyone seemed to know what to do. They said to us things such as "you need to go to safety", and "don't go back, it's dangerous", but I said that we must go there to help. So we continued against the human tide, until we saw a familiar face in the line.
- Khorixas, thank goodness you are here. Please explain what is going on, I said. He stopped with us at the roadside.
- There is a village emergency. We must all go to the cave for safety.
- What emergency and what cave? Shouldn't we help people in the village, I asked.
- No need, the priests will take care of that. They will check everyone gets away and they will be the last ones to leave the village. Everyone needs to go to the safety cave that is just a few minute's walk from here.
- But what happened in the village? It seemed very peaceful, and there was no sign of fire or something, Enembe said.
- It was a divine announcement of a danger. The priests saw a sign in the temple and they set the alarm.
- What! cried Enembe. - What nonsense is that?
- I don't know very well, you know I am rather a science person myself. But for generations we have had this safety cave that is used when a celestial danger threats us. They say that there is food and equipment there for weeks just in case. The congregation has some kind of a warning system. When I was a kid, there was a warning and we spent two days in the cave. They say that it saved our lives. Six people were out in Amirhan, and they were never seen again.
- Right, sure, said Enembe doubtfully. He was a bit aggressive against religions, and I guess this situation was quite upsetting for him anyway. - And what is the celestial warning sytem anyway? Astrology?
- I don't know really. I never go to the temple. But it is somehow built into our administration, so that people are not asked whether they believe in these things ot not. The system is enforced.
We fell silent as everyone was trying to understand what was going on. We started walking with the stream of people, as there was nothing to do in the village. The road went around the highest hill that we were just on top of half an hour ago. People were walking pretty fast an mostly in silence, and the line reminded me of a giant glowworm as there was no other light than people's pocket lights. After another hundred metres, the glowworm turned left and entered a hole under a cliff. It was big enough for two tall men to walk in side by side, but I had my doubts about whether the whole village actually could fit in a cave. It should be huge.
It was. After the entry, the cave became a bit higher and more spaceous, but especially it turned out to be long and branchy. There were corridors going to left and right, and it was clearly built and designed and built for a long-term shelter for a large group of people. We entered a larger hall that seemed to be a central place in this cave system.
The fire brigade, together with the priests, efficiently organised a bunk or a mattress for everyone, and after a long day, we were happy to go to sleep and have some rest.
~x~
Next morning we went to the hall for breakfast. It was merely canned soup and dried bread, but we were happy that there was next morning and the whole village did not just collapse into some hole between realities. After the breakfast, we headed to talk with the fire brigade people to find out about the emergency and what is going to happen next.
We learned that the alarm was given by the priests of the village temple. They have a Floating Rock also in the temple (actually, the temple was built around the Rock more than a hundred years ago). The alarm system was based on the rock: if there were important changes in the Rock movement, the priests would make interpretetions and launch an emergency if needed.
- You said that the story about holy rocks was a lie, Enembe reminded Dr Kroonstad when we learned this. Doctor looked ashamed and scratched his head.
- Erm, I heard the story but I thought it was a joke. I am not really an anthropologist, so I didn't pay much attention to this religious stuff. I couldn't believe it would turn out important.
- Well, listening to others may be a good idea sometimes, even if you think they are wrong, said Enembe. That was something that I did not expect Enembe to say, but maybe he had also learned something. I did't want the discussion to get personal, so I switched topic.
- If the priests could detect a disturbance in the wave function, they might be able to tell us something we don't know. They seem to have decades of experience on this, if they have successfully built evacuation caves and everything. We should talk with them.
We agreed that we would do that with Ismen, while Enembe and Dr Kroonstad could do some calculations about the wave function and try to estimate how stable it is now and how we could make it collapse in a controlled way.
We spent most of the day talking with priests and other people. The local religion was indeed quite practically oriented to protect people from alternative reality disturbances. It became obvious that such events happen in Amirhan frequently enough so that people could have observed when problems arise and which actions prevented people from vanishing into reality discrepancies. Of course they did not talk about wave functions and realities, but we could understand them when they described what they meant with each religious term.
We also learned that this cave was a special place that seemed to protect from these disturbances. It was practically below the place where we brought the Rock #2, so Dr Kroonstad's intuition about a correct place seemed to match the intuition of the villagers. Originally the cave was a natural formation and it was noticed to protect people inside it. Therefore it was built much larger with the idea to protect the whole village. It had been used for that purpose thirty years ago, when there was a major reality discrepancy. Now that we had learned about the wave functions and their connections to actual events in Amirhan, we realised the amount of ignorance scientists of that time had related to these events. They had simply been considered unfounded religious fallacies, and they had not been seriously studied.
~x~
In the evening, Ismen left to find the others, while I went to the other direction because I had promised to return a diary to an old priest that had made precise notes thirty years ago. His dormitory was at the very end of the corridors on the right. I hadn't been there before, so I looked closely at the signs on the walls.
Suddenly the corridor looked familiar. It was like a strong déjà-vu, but rather than just things feeling familiar, I knew what was behind each door. I knew that there was a large clock at the very end although I couldn't see it from here.
I was stunned and stopped. The feeling started to faint, and a strange anxiety grew inside me. It was so good, so right, and now it was going away. I felt an urge to turn around and go back. I looked around, and there was a warm, friendly spot, almost like glowing in the dim cave just beside me and offering nice thoughts to me. I took two steps to that direction, and the good feeling came back. But the feeling fainted again, and realised that the friendly spot was moving toward the main hall. I knew that I should go return the diary, but I didn't want to leave the spot. So I turned around.
I walked close to the spot, and it gave me new feelings and thoughts all the time. The whole place started to look familiar. I knew this place, and had known for a while. I knew many of the people, and they had become dear to me. I knew how the canned evacuation meal tasted like. This place felt like, well, not like a home but a like a place with purpose. I had a reason to be here.
Although I didn't know why, I was now determined to stay near my spot. The thoughts it gave me were both familiar and new at the same time. I could see the whole cave in a new way, and it brought me courage. I came to the main hall, when I thought about Enembe. He was probably in the eatery already, but I thought I saw him in the hall and that he greeted me: "Hello, Ndali!"
I also thought about an old man. He was nearby and turned around abruptly toward Enembe's voice. He looked just like Dr Kroonstad, but strangely enough, he didn't feel familiar at all. He turned his head around like trying to listen and then he shouted: "Dr Mariental, is that you? Please come here, I need to talk to you!" It was so lively, although it all happened in my imagination.
I felt awkward that he knew me, and I felt awkward that I felt that way, having spent the most intensive day of my life with him. I thought that I went to him. "Yes, sir?" He said: "Dr Mariental, it's a fortunate that you are here. Please help me. I need to ask you to shout: 'I found myself.' Please do it now. She might be nearby." He was very persuasive, and I felt that I should help him.
- I found myself! I shouted.
Then I fell silent. Why did I shout aloud? It was just my thought about shouting, why did I actually do it? People turned to look at me, and I felt embarrased. Dr Kroonstad was apparently nearby, as he showed up from somewhere and walked toward me.
- Ndali, is that you? What did you say?
- Eh, sorry doctor, I don't know what it was. I just suddenly felt like saying it.
My thought about the doctor intensified and rather than talking with him I started to think what he would say. He would seem pleased and say: "Very good, they heard you. Now things are going somewhere." I would say: "I'm sorry, I don't understand." And he would say: "I'll explain in a second. But I'd like you to say another thing: 'My twin met your twin in the snow world.' Please say it."
- My twin met your twin in the snow world, I said.
Suddenly it all made sense. Dr Kroonstad seemed to understand the situation as well.
Doctor's twin said in my head: "Ndali, I am Dr Kroonstad. Everything has been split into two for two weeks, and we have twins in the other reality. You twin met my twin in another reality yesterday. They are now in this very same cave. Your twin can hear your thoughts, and I can hear my twin's. So I can tell you what's going on in the other reality, and I need your twin to speak up everything you learn from here to tell the others. Do you understand." My twin said: "No", but I understood my role. I repeated his words aloud.
- Very good work, the doctor said. - Now we can have a real-time two-direction communication. Why don't we all go to the eatery and sit over there so it is more comfortable.
We went to the eatery and found Enembe and Ismen there. We all sat down in both realities and told each other everything. My twin was very confused at first, and I wished she could sense my feelings of comfort and joy when I found her, but apparently she couldn't. She only knew what doctor's twin told her. It was, however, easy to convince her because I could hear her thoughts and tell the doctor to tell his twin to repeat those thoughts. Soon enough, we were having an intensive discussion between the realities, me describing the says in the snow-world and doctor's twin those in here. It was interesting to notice, that although Enembe's twin was also present, Enembe could not hear him the same way I heard mine. There had to be large individual differences, as Ismen's twin heard Ismen only during sleep.
We learned that Enembe's and my twins had woken up in the snowy, empty village, when Khorixas was baking rolls for us. It had took some time to figure out that everyone had been evacuated, just like what had happened here yesterday. They had found their way to the cave and thought that the villagers needed their help. And besides, the priests were very strict about nobody leaving before the emergency was over. So they have lived in the cave with the villagers for more than a week, trying to figure out what was going on and how they could solve the emergency.
We told them what had happened in the non-snow world and that Ismen and Svetlana would come here today (rather, the village, so we should get them a message). Now that we had a direct contact, it should be easy to organise. So it seemed that we were pretty much on map already and knew that the double realities seemed quite complete on the area from the hub and the Floating Rocks to Ashakati and the cave. But one piece was missing: Svetlana's twin should be in this reality, and yet nobody had seen a glimpse of her since Sunday last week. How was she doing?
____________
The topic for tomorrow is The last snow.
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Amirhan, Part 25 - Flee
A silence fell in the tent. We knew that Amirhan was a strange and dangerous place, but now it seemed to be an immediate emergency.
- Is your twin right? Should we obey?
- We have studied the wave function a lot -- in theory. We knew many of its properties beforehand. A critical difference is that when we performed the first experiment two weeks ago, I thought it proved the function wrong, while he learned that it was actually correct. And he has heard my thoughts ever since, so he is the best informed person about our situation, by far. He knew that I was going to explode the Rock, so I am pretty sure all he has been doing is calculating what would happen in that situation and how to contact me to prevent that.
- Then we must do it, I said determinedly. - We have nothing much with us and can leave in a minute. What do you need, doctor?
- This is an emergency exit, so I just pack all my recordings and the most valuable equipment in one box. Two people can easily carry that. Everything else can stay. Maybe a bottle of water and some snacks. We won't need more, beause we can get supplies from the village, and if we fail, we wont need any.
He was saying this in a couraging way, possibly just thinking about the weight to carry with us. Then he realised the implications of the alternative, and tried to formulate it in another way, but failed. He just coughed and started packing. Suddenly, Ismen realised something and his face turned anxious.
- We should go to the hub to explain the situation to Svetlana and me. They should know that they are in a hurry.
- I'm sorry we can't, said Dr Kroonstad. - The hub is in the wrong direction and it would take too much time. We are in a hurry in postponing the collapse of the wave function, not they. If we succeed, they will come to Ashakati tomorrow as planned. And besides, he said 'everyone'. I assume it is not enough to go there. We have some serious and urgent work to do there.
Ismen did not look pleased at all, but he couldn't find any arguments against the reasoning.
Everything was packed soon enough, and then we just waited for additional instructions. Dr Kroonstad sat beside the desk because he thought that his twin would sit there too, and he wanted to maximise the information flow from here to there. That's why he didn't talk, he just thought about the things his twin might need to know. We sat on the bed and boxes and did not want to disturb him. It was very quiet. Amirhan desert was often quiet, and then the silence was surrounding us deeper than ever.
Finally the microwave beeped. Ismen took a pot of pea soup out of the oven, spooned a message out, and handed it over to Dr Kroonstad.
Doctor folded the two sheets of paper open and placed them on the table. His fingers slided across the paper line by line of small bumps that only his fingers would interpret. I could see his lips move just barely when he was reading the text. He read aloud the items we would need: map, probe, Rock #2, fishing rod (why did he even have a fishing rod?), rope, knife. We turned the boxes upside down when seeking the items in a hurry. Soon we had everything. Doctor checked everything once again and said:
- Grab your gear, we must leave in four minutes. There is a detailed schedule for us that we must follow precisely. He will take the snow-world Rock #2 and we should keep them in the same spatiotemporal location as closely as possible. His probe can detect ours, and he can hear my thoughts but not vice versa. Therefore we must move at constant speed and stop at specific milestones so they can adjust for any mismatches.
So we started walking. The speed was surprisingly fast, being adjusted for a blind man walking alone in a desert. He really must know how to move around. Our doctor was walking closely after the probe that was floating one metre above the ground. It seemed to react to boulders and rocks by moving around them, and to smaller rocks with a beep. Doctor had learned to understand it so that he raised his feet very precisely above the rocks. It was amazing to see how well they collaborated. He practically did not use his white cane at all, and still we could march as fast as an army. Enembe and Ismen were carrying the box of equipment, and I had most of the recordings in my backpack.
Our track went first across the plain and then turned slightly to avoid a few hills between us and the village. During a stop at the second milestone, Dr Kroonstad told us that we were not heading to the village but to the highest hill to the south of Ashakati, about two kilometres from the market square. Our mission was to place the Rock to the top of the hill at the height of eight metres from the ground. The snow-world doctor would do the same with his Rock, and the plan was that they would attach to each other and start floating there. If it worked, the wave function would clearly stabilise and buy us time to figure our how to get everyone aligned with their twins.
The trip proceeded as expected, but I couldn't stop thinking how doctor's twin was doing. Although if he was in trouble, we wouldn't know and couldn't help. I tried to switch my thoughts into the next day. We were missing snow-world Ismen and Svetlana, but that was the least of our problems. They would show up in Khorixas' place and we hopefully could contact them there. But Enembe's and my twins have been missing for days, as well as Svetlana's twin in this world. We would need to figure out how to contact them. An a horrible thought struck me only when we were walking: the whole village population in the snow-world was missing. How could we find them, as they might all disappear in a collapse?
It was already dark when we were at the hilltop. There were no trees, just some low bushes growing there. We could see the lights of Ashakati down in the valley. Although it looked the same as always, I could not stop thinking about our last visit to the snowy, abandoned village, and I had the unpleasant feeling that I was ignorant about which was the real Ashakati, and the other one might be just imagination.
My thoughts were interrupted by Dr Kroonstad, who urged us to take the Rock and raise it. We figured out that the probe was strong enough to take it, which made our task a lot easier. The Rock was placed inside, and the probe raised slowly above our heads. There was no way of knowing the right place exactly, so we just had to hope that the other rock was in the same place.
- Two minutes to go, and then both Rocks should be in their places.
- How do we know that it worked, I asked.
- We don't. I just pull the probe slowly backward, and if the rock stays in the air, we succeeded.
There was again a tense silence. If this did not work, our predicted future was just hours long, and then, knowone knew who would survive the collapse and how.
It was time. Doctor started to move the probe very slowly, it moved a bit but then stopped. He increased some force, and I could see the Rock appearing from inside the probe. The probe moved away, and the Rock was just on the edge of falling. Doctor took a deep breath and pulled the probe even further. The Rock fell out of the probe door into the air. I shrieked as I saw the Rock falling, but suddenly it was pulled back up as if there was an invisible hand. It bounced a few times and started to turn around slowly above our heads.
We felt really relieved, but that lasted only for a minute. Down from the village, several sirens started a threatening sound, the pitch going slowly up and down, and the volume so loud that we could not talk with each other with normal voice. Then the sirens suddenly stopped. A voice spoke through loudspeakers.
- Citizens of Ashakati. This is not a training. Flee for you life. Immediately proceed to the safety area. I repeat: flee for your life.
________________
The topic for tomorrow: Cave.
- Is your twin right? Should we obey?
- We have studied the wave function a lot -- in theory. We knew many of its properties beforehand. A critical difference is that when we performed the first experiment two weeks ago, I thought it proved the function wrong, while he learned that it was actually correct. And he has heard my thoughts ever since, so he is the best informed person about our situation, by far. He knew that I was going to explode the Rock, so I am pretty sure all he has been doing is calculating what would happen in that situation and how to contact me to prevent that.
- Then we must do it, I said determinedly. - We have nothing much with us and can leave in a minute. What do you need, doctor?
- This is an emergency exit, so I just pack all my recordings and the most valuable equipment in one box. Two people can easily carry that. Everything else can stay. Maybe a bottle of water and some snacks. We won't need more, beause we can get supplies from the village, and if we fail, we wont need any.
He was saying this in a couraging way, possibly just thinking about the weight to carry with us. Then he realised the implications of the alternative, and tried to formulate it in another way, but failed. He just coughed and started packing. Suddenly, Ismen realised something and his face turned anxious.
- We should go to the hub to explain the situation to Svetlana and me. They should know that they are in a hurry.
- I'm sorry we can't, said Dr Kroonstad. - The hub is in the wrong direction and it would take too much time. We are in a hurry in postponing the collapse of the wave function, not they. If we succeed, they will come to Ashakati tomorrow as planned. And besides, he said 'everyone'. I assume it is not enough to go there. We have some serious and urgent work to do there.
Ismen did not look pleased at all, but he couldn't find any arguments against the reasoning.
Everything was packed soon enough, and then we just waited for additional instructions. Dr Kroonstad sat beside the desk because he thought that his twin would sit there too, and he wanted to maximise the information flow from here to there. That's why he didn't talk, he just thought about the things his twin might need to know. We sat on the bed and boxes and did not want to disturb him. It was very quiet. Amirhan desert was often quiet, and then the silence was surrounding us deeper than ever.
Finally the microwave beeped. Ismen took a pot of pea soup out of the oven, spooned a message out, and handed it over to Dr Kroonstad.
Doctor folded the two sheets of paper open and placed them on the table. His fingers slided across the paper line by line of small bumps that only his fingers would interpret. I could see his lips move just barely when he was reading the text. He read aloud the items we would need: map, probe, Rock #2, fishing rod (why did he even have a fishing rod?), rope, knife. We turned the boxes upside down when seeking the items in a hurry. Soon we had everything. Doctor checked everything once again and said:
- Grab your gear, we must leave in four minutes. There is a detailed schedule for us that we must follow precisely. He will take the snow-world Rock #2 and we should keep them in the same spatiotemporal location as closely as possible. His probe can detect ours, and he can hear my thoughts but not vice versa. Therefore we must move at constant speed and stop at specific milestones so they can adjust for any mismatches.
So we started walking. The speed was surprisingly fast, being adjusted for a blind man walking alone in a desert. He really must know how to move around. Our doctor was walking closely after the probe that was floating one metre above the ground. It seemed to react to boulders and rocks by moving around them, and to smaller rocks with a beep. Doctor had learned to understand it so that he raised his feet very precisely above the rocks. It was amazing to see how well they collaborated. He practically did not use his white cane at all, and still we could march as fast as an army. Enembe and Ismen were carrying the box of equipment, and I had most of the recordings in my backpack.
Our track went first across the plain and then turned slightly to avoid a few hills between us and the village. During a stop at the second milestone, Dr Kroonstad told us that we were not heading to the village but to the highest hill to the south of Ashakati, about two kilometres from the market square. Our mission was to place the Rock to the top of the hill at the height of eight metres from the ground. The snow-world doctor would do the same with his Rock, and the plan was that they would attach to each other and start floating there. If it worked, the wave function would clearly stabilise and buy us time to figure our how to get everyone aligned with their twins.
The trip proceeded as expected, but I couldn't stop thinking how doctor's twin was doing. Although if he was in trouble, we wouldn't know and couldn't help. I tried to switch my thoughts into the next day. We were missing snow-world Ismen and Svetlana, but that was the least of our problems. They would show up in Khorixas' place and we hopefully could contact them there. But Enembe's and my twins have been missing for days, as well as Svetlana's twin in this world. We would need to figure out how to contact them. An a horrible thought struck me only when we were walking: the whole village population in the snow-world was missing. How could we find them, as they might all disappear in a collapse?
It was already dark when we were at the hilltop. There were no trees, just some low bushes growing there. We could see the lights of Ashakati down in the valley. Although it looked the same as always, I could not stop thinking about our last visit to the snowy, abandoned village, and I had the unpleasant feeling that I was ignorant about which was the real Ashakati, and the other one might be just imagination.
My thoughts were interrupted by Dr Kroonstad, who urged us to take the Rock and raise it. We figured out that the probe was strong enough to take it, which made our task a lot easier. The Rock was placed inside, and the probe raised slowly above our heads. There was no way of knowing the right place exactly, so we just had to hope that the other rock was in the same place.
- Two minutes to go, and then both Rocks should be in their places.
- How do we know that it worked, I asked.
- We don't. I just pull the probe slowly backward, and if the rock stays in the air, we succeeded.
There was again a tense silence. If this did not work, our predicted future was just hours long, and then, knowone knew who would survive the collapse and how.
It was time. Doctor started to move the probe very slowly, it moved a bit but then stopped. He increased some force, and I could see the Rock appearing from inside the probe. The probe moved away, and the Rock was just on the edge of falling. Doctor took a deep breath and pulled the probe even further. The Rock fell out of the probe door into the air. I shrieked as I saw the Rock falling, but suddenly it was pulled back up as if there was an invisible hand. It bounced a few times and started to turn around slowly above our heads.
We felt really relieved, but that lasted only for a minute. Down from the village, several sirens started a threatening sound, the pitch going slowly up and down, and the volume so loud that we could not talk with each other with normal voice. Then the sirens suddenly stopped. A voice spoke through loudspeakers.
- Citizens of Ashakati. This is not a training. Flee for you life. Immediately proceed to the safety area. I repeat: flee for your life.
________________
The topic for tomorrow: Cave.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Amirhan, Part 24 - Flower
- Oh, I just remembered something. Could you give us a second, please, I said and gave Enembe and Ismen hand signs to follow me.
We rushed out of the tent and hurried a hundred meters away to be sure that Dr Kroonstad would not hear us. Enembe started first.
- You heard what he said! It was him causing the snow reality in the first place!
- Enembe is right. It all matches up. He caused the snow reality to appear with his first experiment, and it became much larger than he ever anticipated. It covers the whole desert, all the way to Ashakati.
- That makes sense, I agreed. - And it seems that he hasn't observed any of that with his equipment.
- No, because the equipment is still there, and someone has moved them so they are not connected any more. We didn't see any of them in the snow-world. I don't know who would have moved it and why, but that would explain it.
- I have a guess, Ismen said. - He moved them himself.
We looked at him surprised.
- It's the easiest explanation. There are rarely any people here, so who else could it be? We didn't see the equipment, so it is hardly any desert badger or similar dragging them for a few meters. And besides, we would have seen prints on the snow if it didn't happen the same evening. He did the experiment and was expecting some small discrepancy in realities. Instead, it started snowing heavily in the evening and he couldn't imagine that it was caused by him. So, he collected his stuff and went back, disrupting the spatiotemporal connection.
- And why doesn't he hear himself from the other reality, Enembe asked.
- I don't know. But again, I don't hear myself, the other me in the snow-world hears me from here. So maybe the other Kroonstad in the snow world is well aware about what's going on here. He just hasn't baked any bread so that we would know.
- OK, now we have to decide, I said. - We haven't told him anything, because we don't know if we can trust him and whether anything he is telling is true. But if he is honest, he would know a lot about wave functions, and that could be crucial for us, and Svetlana. What do you think?
Everyone fell silent for a while. Then Enembe started.
- Even if he is lying, we can learn important things. And we know so much about this place - more than anyone - that he won't be able to fool us too much.
- I agree, said Ismen.
- Very well, we all agree. Let's go back and tell him everything.
We went to the tent, and Enembe told our story to him. I watched from beside, and I was amazed how visual a person Dr Kroonstad actually was, being blind and everything. It was like looking a silent film, where his expression and posture changed as he learned more things. When Enembe told that his wave function hypothesis was actually correct, he started cheering and danced around in the small tent. When he heard how vast an area was ripped into the alternative reality, he sat down and took the cap from his head, like for a confession, shoulders hanging low and a serious look on his face. When we told that Svetlana was stuck in the snow world, he pressed his left fist tightly with the other hand, and convinced us with very serious and determined face that we would get her out of there. He was very sympathetic about our situation and said that he'd do anything he can to help us out of the trouble. He seemed sincere, and I hadn't had noticed any lies or cheating on things that I knew about, so I was rather sure that it was good having him with us.
The discussion turned to the exact form of the wave function, and that was something that only Enembe could undestand, so we just sat in silence with Ismen and let them talk. Dr Kroonstad had made a classical error when assuming a cosmological constant in his equation. He thought it was needed to scale down the spatiotemporal range of the equation, as the Floating Rocks were located within twenty metres from each other. When he heard that the alternative realisations could span thousand times further, he realised that the constant had mislead him about the nature of the phenomenon. Without the constant, the equation became simpler and more elegant, and it also made it possible to create more precise predictions about the alternative realisation.
Dr Kroonstad got excited about this new unexpected progress and started visioning how he could learn to understand Amirhan better.
- The wave function is much more powerful than I thought. It covers kilometres of space and days of time, and people can be split into two realisations, and Ismen is a living proof of that.
- But why am I the only one who is split? We were all fairly close to the Floating Rocks when the realisations fell apart?
- That's not true, Enembe said. - We were also split, but we merged when we went to the edge of the wave function in Ashakati.
- You mean switched, Dr Kroonstad corrected.
- No, merged. Khorixas told that we came to his place in both snow-world and this world, and in the morning there were just one of us there in this world. So we merged.
- Yes, you told that you went there, but in a merge you would get double memories. Do you remember anything that you did in this world before you woke up at Khorixas'?
Enembe raised his index finger to emphasise what he was about to say, but after opening his mouth, he seemed to disagree with that and kept silent. He looked down for a while, started again, but still didn't say anything.
- We don't remember, I finally said. - Everything we remember was actually things that Khorixas told us that we had said to him. So you are saying that when we switched away from the snow-world, the others disappeared? In any case, they were not there in the morning.
- Well, disappearance seems to be a very low-probability event, because it decreases entropy. Switching is much more likely, which means that the respective objects switch realities. Your twins ended up in the snow-world.
That was again one of those things that we had started to call Amirhan moments. Where you experience something that will change the way you think about the world for ever. So, we were still out there, together with Ismen and Svetlana in the snow-world but without any contact to any of us. Where could we be, and what had we been doing for the whole time? We all thought of these things in silence. Finally Ismen said:
- So you also have a probable twin in the snow world, right? You haven't heard from him, but your tent is in the same place, so he might hear you just like my twin hears me.
- That is possible. I haven't thought of that, but it would fit the wave function.
- Could he contact us? We were able to do that through the microwave when baking bread.
- I don't have any baking materials, just conserves.
- It's not about bread, it must be about the long microwave program we used for baking. We have used the microwave a lot for heating meals, and nothing happens then. The microwaves are somehow in interference with the wave function, Enembe said.
- So we should try it. Write a note in Braille alphabet, we'll stick it into a conserved meal and use the baking program. You have a microvawe here, right? And in addition, you should memorise the instructions, because he might hear your thoughts when you are in the same location, and you seem to sit a lot beside that desk, said Ismen.
That's what we did. Dr Kroonstad kept his microwave under the bed because there it was out of way. The meal turned around on the plate, becoming burned and dry on the corners because the program was too long for it. But when the program finally ended, the meal was gone.
- Wow, that is amazing, Dr Kroonstad said. - But it fits the hypothesis and implies that my microwave is in the same spot in the snow-world. I hope I can get the message I sent. It feels strange to say such things. Now we just have to wait for a response.
- Let's think about an exit plan, I said. - This is becoming more and more complex, and I am becoming more and more confused, even if some things start to make sense because of the wave function hypothesis. So we know that the twin doctor is probably close to his mocrowave which is here, and Svetlana and twin Ismen are at the hub but with a plan to move to Ashakati first thing tomorrow morning. And we have no idea about twin me and Enembe, who were last seen in Ashakati more than a week ago.
- That is correct, Enembe said. - It would make sense to get everyone to Ashakati, because it would make it easier for everyone being in one spatiotemporal location. But we still don't know how to merge, if the most likely event is a switch. I really don't care for being thrown back to snow-world, especially after I heard from Svetlana how things are there now.
- Ah, the merge will happen, when the wave function collapses, doctor said eagerly. - There is little doubt about that. The tricky part is to be spatiotemporally coherent, because if you are not there in both realities, it is just a matter of luck whether you will merge as one piece in the remaining reality, or disappear with the wave function.
- And why are you so happy about such Rustonian roulette, Enembe asked bitterly.
- Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about the mathematical elegance of such an event. The dance of waves and interferences, strengthening each other in this cosmic world... But you are right, humanely thinking it is absolutely horrible to go through...
There was a nasty beep. Dr Kroonstad immediately turned toward the microwave and pulled the door open. There was a burned, nasty smelling plastic plate of Happy Pork and Beans from Flower Fields. Enembe grabbed that plate and poked it with a stick. He found a plastic bag from inside, pulled a Braille note out and handed it to the doctor, who read it aloud.
- FINALLY! I can hear my own thoughts from there. Exploding third rock was BAD IDEA. I have done calculations. The wave function will collapse in 6 h with 84 % probability unless you execute my plan. Prepare to evacuate everyone to Ashakati in 30 min with Rock #2. Use probe, I'll use mine. Wait for my detailed instructions before leaving.
___________________
The topic for tomorrow is Flee.
We rushed out of the tent and hurried a hundred meters away to be sure that Dr Kroonstad would not hear us. Enembe started first.
- You heard what he said! It was him causing the snow reality in the first place!
- Enembe is right. It all matches up. He caused the snow reality to appear with his first experiment, and it became much larger than he ever anticipated. It covers the whole desert, all the way to Ashakati.
- That makes sense, I agreed. - And it seems that he hasn't observed any of that with his equipment.
- No, because the equipment is still there, and someone has moved them so they are not connected any more. We didn't see any of them in the snow-world. I don't know who would have moved it and why, but that would explain it.
- I have a guess, Ismen said. - He moved them himself.
We looked at him surprised.
- It's the easiest explanation. There are rarely any people here, so who else could it be? We didn't see the equipment, so it is hardly any desert badger or similar dragging them for a few meters. And besides, we would have seen prints on the snow if it didn't happen the same evening. He did the experiment and was expecting some small discrepancy in realities. Instead, it started snowing heavily in the evening and he couldn't imagine that it was caused by him. So, he collected his stuff and went back, disrupting the spatiotemporal connection.
- And why doesn't he hear himself from the other reality, Enembe asked.
- I don't know. But again, I don't hear myself, the other me in the snow-world hears me from here. So maybe the other Kroonstad in the snow world is well aware about what's going on here. He just hasn't baked any bread so that we would know.
- OK, now we have to decide, I said. - We haven't told him anything, because we don't know if we can trust him and whether anything he is telling is true. But if he is honest, he would know a lot about wave functions, and that could be crucial for us, and Svetlana. What do you think?
Everyone fell silent for a while. Then Enembe started.
- Even if he is lying, we can learn important things. And we know so much about this place - more than anyone - that he won't be able to fool us too much.
- I agree, said Ismen.
- Very well, we all agree. Let's go back and tell him everything.
We went to the tent, and Enembe told our story to him. I watched from beside, and I was amazed how visual a person Dr Kroonstad actually was, being blind and everything. It was like looking a silent film, where his expression and posture changed as he learned more things. When Enembe told that his wave function hypothesis was actually correct, he started cheering and danced around in the small tent. When he heard how vast an area was ripped into the alternative reality, he sat down and took the cap from his head, like for a confession, shoulders hanging low and a serious look on his face. When we told that Svetlana was stuck in the snow world, he pressed his left fist tightly with the other hand, and convinced us with very serious and determined face that we would get her out of there. He was very sympathetic about our situation and said that he'd do anything he can to help us out of the trouble. He seemed sincere, and I hadn't had noticed any lies or cheating on things that I knew about, so I was rather sure that it was good having him with us.
The discussion turned to the exact form of the wave function, and that was something that only Enembe could undestand, so we just sat in silence with Ismen and let them talk. Dr Kroonstad had made a classical error when assuming a cosmological constant in his equation. He thought it was needed to scale down the spatiotemporal range of the equation, as the Floating Rocks were located within twenty metres from each other. When he heard that the alternative realisations could span thousand times further, he realised that the constant had mislead him about the nature of the phenomenon. Without the constant, the equation became simpler and more elegant, and it also made it possible to create more precise predictions about the alternative realisation.
Dr Kroonstad got excited about this new unexpected progress and started visioning how he could learn to understand Amirhan better.
- The wave function is much more powerful than I thought. It covers kilometres of space and days of time, and people can be split into two realisations, and Ismen is a living proof of that.
- But why am I the only one who is split? We were all fairly close to the Floating Rocks when the realisations fell apart?
- That's not true, Enembe said. - We were also split, but we merged when we went to the edge of the wave function in Ashakati.
- You mean switched, Dr Kroonstad corrected.
- No, merged. Khorixas told that we came to his place in both snow-world and this world, and in the morning there were just one of us there in this world. So we merged.
- Yes, you told that you went there, but in a merge you would get double memories. Do you remember anything that you did in this world before you woke up at Khorixas'?
Enembe raised his index finger to emphasise what he was about to say, but after opening his mouth, he seemed to disagree with that and kept silent. He looked down for a while, started again, but still didn't say anything.
- We don't remember, I finally said. - Everything we remember was actually things that Khorixas told us that we had said to him. So you are saying that when we switched away from the snow-world, the others disappeared? In any case, they were not there in the morning.
- Well, disappearance seems to be a very low-probability event, because it decreases entropy. Switching is much more likely, which means that the respective objects switch realities. Your twins ended up in the snow-world.
That was again one of those things that we had started to call Amirhan moments. Where you experience something that will change the way you think about the world for ever. So, we were still out there, together with Ismen and Svetlana in the snow-world but without any contact to any of us. Where could we be, and what had we been doing for the whole time? We all thought of these things in silence. Finally Ismen said:
- So you also have a probable twin in the snow world, right? You haven't heard from him, but your tent is in the same place, so he might hear you just like my twin hears me.
- That is possible. I haven't thought of that, but it would fit the wave function.
- Could he contact us? We were able to do that through the microwave when baking bread.
- I don't have any baking materials, just conserves.
- It's not about bread, it must be about the long microwave program we used for baking. We have used the microwave a lot for heating meals, and nothing happens then. The microwaves are somehow in interference with the wave function, Enembe said.
- So we should try it. Write a note in Braille alphabet, we'll stick it into a conserved meal and use the baking program. You have a microvawe here, right? And in addition, you should memorise the instructions, because he might hear your thoughts when you are in the same location, and you seem to sit a lot beside that desk, said Ismen.
That's what we did. Dr Kroonstad kept his microwave under the bed because there it was out of way. The meal turned around on the plate, becoming burned and dry on the corners because the program was too long for it. But when the program finally ended, the meal was gone.
- Wow, that is amazing, Dr Kroonstad said. - But it fits the hypothesis and implies that my microwave is in the same spot in the snow-world. I hope I can get the message I sent. It feels strange to say such things. Now we just have to wait for a response.
- Let's think about an exit plan, I said. - This is becoming more and more complex, and I am becoming more and more confused, even if some things start to make sense because of the wave function hypothesis. So we know that the twin doctor is probably close to his mocrowave which is here, and Svetlana and twin Ismen are at the hub but with a plan to move to Ashakati first thing tomorrow morning. And we have no idea about twin me and Enembe, who were last seen in Ashakati more than a week ago.
- That is correct, Enembe said. - It would make sense to get everyone to Ashakati, because it would make it easier for everyone being in one spatiotemporal location. But we still don't know how to merge, if the most likely event is a switch. I really don't care for being thrown back to snow-world, especially after I heard from Svetlana how things are there now.
- Ah, the merge will happen, when the wave function collapses, doctor said eagerly. - There is little doubt about that. The tricky part is to be spatiotemporally coherent, because if you are not there in both realities, it is just a matter of luck whether you will merge as one piece in the remaining reality, or disappear with the wave function.
- And why are you so happy about such Rustonian roulette, Enembe asked bitterly.
- Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about the mathematical elegance of such an event. The dance of waves and interferences, strengthening each other in this cosmic world... But you are right, humanely thinking it is absolutely horrible to go through...
There was a nasty beep. Dr Kroonstad immediately turned toward the microwave and pulled the door open. There was a burned, nasty smelling plastic plate of Happy Pork and Beans from Flower Fields. Enembe grabbed that plate and poked it with a stick. He found a plastic bag from inside, pulled a Braille note out and handed it to the doctor, who read it aloud.
- FINALLY! I can hear my own thoughts from there. Exploding third rock was BAD IDEA. I have done calculations. The wave function will collapse in 6 h with 84 % probability unless you execute my plan. Prepare to evacuate everyone to Ashakati in 30 min with Rock #2. Use probe, I'll use mine. Wait for my detailed instructions before leaving.
___________________
The topic for tomorrow is Flee.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Amirhan, Part 23 - Match
"Amirhan desert mission, day 338
"This morning Ismen had not gotten the memories from the Ismen in the non-snowy time line..."
"That's my memories, shouldn't I be the one logging about it?"
"This is my log. You can do your own. That way we get both versions of events and by combining them get later a more accurate understanding of what we have done. I have told you this before."
"True, but it seems today it doesn't matter much whether we do a joint log or separate logs."
"... Fine."
"So I woke up, and didn't have the memories from the other-worldly me in my head, like I've had pretty much every morning now. It was very weird, and I felt like I was missing half my memories from yesterday, even though I remembered as well as ever what I myself did. It's really quite incredible how fast the brain gets adjusted to a new situation and sets that as the new norm. Other than giving me new insight on the function of the brain, it means we don't have any idea what is happening in the other time line and that something has obviously changed, since the memories aren't coming through any more. We debated what to do with this information for a while, but since we don't have any new information other than something is different, or possibly that nothing is different but that Amirhan has developed some new quirk for us to puzzle over, though that would also mean something about this particular thing has changed, even if Amirhan being weird hasn't changed. Anyway, since we don't have any new information, it is best to act according to the information we already had, which means we proceeded with our plan to get to Ashakati and see if we can get through to the other time line from there."
"Satisfied? Good.
"So, in the morning we packed the rest of the things we took with us. While packing them onto the sled, we realised we have too much with us. The solar panel we attached to the sled to get power for the motor would be partly covered, and not wanting to take any chances of it not producing enough power, we decided to leave behind some of the equipment we were planning on taking with us. We were planning on taking some non-essential things with us anyway, to serve as backup parts in the non-snowy time line, if we get through. We left early, since even though we estimated the journey should only take a few hours, depending on how fast we would dare to move through the desert, we wanted to make sure we did not get stuck in the middle of the desert for a night in case something went wrong. Possible things that could go wrong were the motor breaking, which we had equipped ourselves to handle, as long as it did not break too badly, and the temperature rising and the snow melting from a slippery surface to a sticky surface again, which we could do nothing about if it happened. But the temperature has stayed below zero for almost two weeks now aside from that one day, so the chances were the ground would remain frozen."
"Also anything else could have gone wrong, this being Amirhan."
"Well, that is true. But there were not all that many scenarios that we could in reality prepare for. We had equipment for fixing the sled, including the motor, we had with us rope that we used to tie all the things and ourselves onto the sled, in case we had to do a sudden turn and we would not accelerate as quickly ad the sled beneath us and would be thrown off the sled, and some extra rope for other possible uses. A medical kit, some fabric that could be used as a sail if the motor broke beyond fixing and the wind would happen to blow in the right direction, which it did not. Although it has not been very windy today at all, which is good, and made our way a little bit easier.
"Either way, we took what precautions we could take without making our travel too much harder and against those possible problems we might face on the way."
"It's quite funny actually, now that I think about it, how much time we spent worrying about all the things that could go wrong and taking precautions against all kinds of things for a journey we have taken so many times during the last year."
"Well, previous times if something went wrong we could simply walk to the village, and even though it might have been quite a walk, it would have been perfectly doable in one day. Almost the only things severe enough that could happen on the way it made sense to prepare for were animal attacks, even though there are not that many predatory animals in Amirhan, especially not ones that are active during the day, and against hyperthermia and dehydration, but being in a desert we have to take precautions against those all the time. This time, if something had gone wrong, it would not have been fixed with a medical kit, a cooling blanket or some water. We could have gotten stuck in the middle of a desert with no way to get in any direction, if the motor had broken. We would have been stuck there until something changed and it became possible to move around walking again, or until we starved to death. Or maybe we would have come up with some other plan while stuck there, since we would not have had nothing but time. And maybe there would have been a strong wind some day in the correct direction and that would have given us enough speed to get out of the desert.
"Either way, this is all what if. And as important as it is to prepare for these things, afterwards we can now simply be happy the only problem we had on the way was one of the blades of the motor coming lose and almost hitting Ismen in the head. Luckily it missed, and we had made a couple of extra blades to take with us for this precise possible event, so he got it fixed in no time and we could continue our journey.
"We got to Ashakati in the afternoon, and everything matched the description we had gotten from Ndali and Enembe. There was no one here that we could see coming into the town, and there clearly had not been anyone moving outside since the snow came. We headed to Khorixas' first, and as we already believed, there was no one home. We spent some time roaming the town with the sled. There were no signs of life anywhere in the town, confirming the information we had on the situation.
"We have spent the evening at Khorixas' place, cooking a better meal than either of us has gotten for a while, since he had some ingredients in his cupboard we have not had access to for a while, and since he is not in this time line, we did not feel bad about eating his food. He will never know. We think.
"We thought about spending the evening trying to figure out how to get to the other time line, but since Enembe and Ndali jumped there from here by simply sleeping in town, we decided to see if it is simply a thing that happens over night, and if it is not, spend tomorrow trying to figure out our next move. There is really nothing more we can do tonight.
"Anything you would like to add, Ismen?"
"No, I don't think so. I think you covered today quite well. Let's just hope we will wake up tomorrow in a world without snow."
__________________________________________________________
Your topic for tomorrow (the last topic!) is Flower.
~matu
"This morning Ismen had not gotten the memories from the Ismen in the non-snowy time line..."
"That's my memories, shouldn't I be the one logging about it?"
"This is my log. You can do your own. That way we get both versions of events and by combining them get later a more accurate understanding of what we have done. I have told you this before."
"True, but it seems today it doesn't matter much whether we do a joint log or separate logs."
"... Fine."
"So I woke up, and didn't have the memories from the other-worldly me in my head, like I've had pretty much every morning now. It was very weird, and I felt like I was missing half my memories from yesterday, even though I remembered as well as ever what I myself did. It's really quite incredible how fast the brain gets adjusted to a new situation and sets that as the new norm. Other than giving me new insight on the function of the brain, it means we don't have any idea what is happening in the other time line and that something has obviously changed, since the memories aren't coming through any more. We debated what to do with this information for a while, but since we don't have any new information other than something is different, or possibly that nothing is different but that Amirhan has developed some new quirk for us to puzzle over, though that would also mean something about this particular thing has changed, even if Amirhan being weird hasn't changed. Anyway, since we don't have any new information, it is best to act according to the information we already had, which means we proceeded with our plan to get to Ashakati and see if we can get through to the other time line from there."
"Satisfied? Good.
"So, in the morning we packed the rest of the things we took with us. While packing them onto the sled, we realised we have too much with us. The solar panel we attached to the sled to get power for the motor would be partly covered, and not wanting to take any chances of it not producing enough power, we decided to leave behind some of the equipment we were planning on taking with us. We were planning on taking some non-essential things with us anyway, to serve as backup parts in the non-snowy time line, if we get through. We left early, since even though we estimated the journey should only take a few hours, depending on how fast we would dare to move through the desert, we wanted to make sure we did not get stuck in the middle of the desert for a night in case something went wrong. Possible things that could go wrong were the motor breaking, which we had equipped ourselves to handle, as long as it did not break too badly, and the temperature rising and the snow melting from a slippery surface to a sticky surface again, which we could do nothing about if it happened. But the temperature has stayed below zero for almost two weeks now aside from that one day, so the chances were the ground would remain frozen."
"Also anything else could have gone wrong, this being Amirhan."
"Well, that is true. But there were not all that many scenarios that we could in reality prepare for. We had equipment for fixing the sled, including the motor, we had with us rope that we used to tie all the things and ourselves onto the sled, in case we had to do a sudden turn and we would not accelerate as quickly ad the sled beneath us and would be thrown off the sled, and some extra rope for other possible uses. A medical kit, some fabric that could be used as a sail if the motor broke beyond fixing and the wind would happen to blow in the right direction, which it did not. Although it has not been very windy today at all, which is good, and made our way a little bit easier.
"Either way, we took what precautions we could take without making our travel too much harder and against those possible problems we might face on the way."
"It's quite funny actually, now that I think about it, how much time we spent worrying about all the things that could go wrong and taking precautions against all kinds of things for a journey we have taken so many times during the last year."
"Well, previous times if something went wrong we could simply walk to the village, and even though it might have been quite a walk, it would have been perfectly doable in one day. Almost the only things severe enough that could happen on the way it made sense to prepare for were animal attacks, even though there are not that many predatory animals in Amirhan, especially not ones that are active during the day, and against hyperthermia and dehydration, but being in a desert we have to take precautions against those all the time. This time, if something had gone wrong, it would not have been fixed with a medical kit, a cooling blanket or some water. We could have gotten stuck in the middle of a desert with no way to get in any direction, if the motor had broken. We would have been stuck there until something changed and it became possible to move around walking again, or until we starved to death. Or maybe we would have come up with some other plan while stuck there, since we would not have had nothing but time. And maybe there would have been a strong wind some day in the correct direction and that would have given us enough speed to get out of the desert.
"Either way, this is all what if. And as important as it is to prepare for these things, afterwards we can now simply be happy the only problem we had on the way was one of the blades of the motor coming lose and almost hitting Ismen in the head. Luckily it missed, and we had made a couple of extra blades to take with us for this precise possible event, so he got it fixed in no time and we could continue our journey.
"We got to Ashakati in the afternoon, and everything matched the description we had gotten from Ndali and Enembe. There was no one here that we could see coming into the town, and there clearly had not been anyone moving outside since the snow came. We headed to Khorixas' first, and as we already believed, there was no one home. We spent some time roaming the town with the sled. There were no signs of life anywhere in the town, confirming the information we had on the situation.
"We have spent the evening at Khorixas' place, cooking a better meal than either of us has gotten for a while, since he had some ingredients in his cupboard we have not had access to for a while, and since he is not in this time line, we did not feel bad about eating his food. He will never know. We think.
"We thought about spending the evening trying to figure out how to get to the other time line, but since Enembe and Ndali jumped there from here by simply sleeping in town, we decided to see if it is simply a thing that happens over night, and if it is not, spend tomorrow trying to figure out our next move. There is really nothing more we can do tonight.
"Anything you would like to add, Ismen?"
"No, I don't think so. I think you covered today quite well. Let's just hope we will wake up tomorrow in a world without snow."
__________________________________________________________
Your topic for tomorrow (the last topic!) is Flower.
~matu
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Amirhan, Part 22 - Quiet
- Well, what do we do now? Should we go and check the tent? asked Ismen quietly.
- They probably have explosives inside, Enembe reminded.
- There is no reason to think that they are violent. They have advanced technology and they haven't used it against us, I said. - So let's go.
We walked downhill carefully, listening. There was no sound from the tent. It was a round army style tent for maybe eight people, with a high pole in the middle. The eaves was just high enough for a man to stand up straight. There were a few plastic storage boxes outside. Enembe looked hesitant, so I took the lead and walked into the tent.
- Hello?
It was very dark in the tent, when coming from bright sunshine, and it took a while for eyes to get used to it. I heard a sound when someone was moving just two metres from me.
- Ah, doctor Mariental. It is good to finally meet you, a voice said.
I startled when hearing my last name that nobody had used for a year. I started to see things from inside the tent. A man was sitting in front of me on a saddle chair beside a desk. He stood up and took two steps toward me. He was at his sixties, and his dark skin was grooved like someone's who has spent a lot of time outdoors. He was wearing dark sunglasses and a cap. He reached out his hand.
- Er, and you are? I asked, hesitantly.
I reached out my hand but he did not take it. It took half a second to infer the obvious with the white cane and sunglasses in the dark: he was blind. So I took his hand and shook it.
- I am doctor Kroonstad. Welcome to my quarters. And you should ask your colleagues come inside.
- Enembe, Ismen, I shouted. - Come on in, we were expected.
When Enembe and Ismen pulled the tent door open, more light came in and I could see that he had a laptop on the desk but with Braille screen. In addition to the desk, there was only a simple bed and a dozen storage boxes. I also noticed two camera lenses on both sides of his cap. He must have had some kind of video system embedded in his gear, but why if he was blind?
- These are Enembe and Ismen, I said pointing with my hand. - And this is doctor Kroonstad.
- It's a pleasure, the doctor said. - I am sorry that I have not prepared anything. You came sooner than I thought. Would you like to have some tea?
- What do you mean sooner? Have you been spying on us? Enembe said offensively.
- Oh, no, heavens. I have no reason to spy on you. I just saw your cameras near the Floating Rocks -- I mean my probe saw them, so I knew that you would see my probe and where it would go and that you would search for it. But I thought you would only come tomorrow after you have checked your videos tonight and that it would take more time to actually find your way here.
- Well, we triangulated the sound of explosion when you destroyed the floating rock, and walked directly to the crime scene, Enembe said.
- Ah, excellent. Very good thinking. Great work.
- We are not interested in your opinion about our work. But what right do you have to come here and destroy the holy relics of the native people?
The man laughed. - Oh, they are not really holy relics. We just told you so so that you would not touch them too soon.
There was an unpleasant quiet moment for three seconds. We were looking at each other.
- So you are saying that you are actually some big boss in the Repopulation Research Organisation and you made us come here on false premises? I finally said, without being able to hide increasing tense in my voice.
- Oh please do not get me wrong. Yes, I am working for the R.R.O., but no, I am not a big boss, I was just aware of this story. And no, you are not here on false premises although this one detail was indeed exaggeration. (He heard Enembe grunt disapprovingly.) OK, it was a lie, but it was thought as a necessary extra measure.
- I think you owe us a good explanation, Ismen said.
- Yes, you are right. Please be seated, although the boxes are somewhat uncomfortable. I'll make some tea. And you may also want some light here.
He leaned toward the table and switched a lamp on. Then he filled and electric kettle with water from a canister and turned it on. We sat on the boxes and watched him. He seemed to remember everything in the tent, as he rarely hesitated or missed an object he reached for. The silence was a bit awkward, but none of us was able to think of anything that would have been less awkward. He seemed to be happy about guests, as he was silently humming while picking bisquits and plastic cups from somewhere. He put the cups in a row on the desk with tea bags, poured water into them and then handed them over to us.
- Okay, you must be wondering why I am here, so I'll tell you. About a month ago, we made a major discovery related to the Floating Rocks. Based on the videos and recordings you had sent earlier, we developed a hypothesis that they are on the edge of alternative realities, which made them behave partly based on the physical forces from the one reality and partly based on those from the other. The system is stable because when a rock moves toward another reality and away from the other, the forces of the other become stronger and they pull it backward. This sounds paradoxical, but it is due to the strage fifth-dimensional inverse geometry of the reality edges, and exactly that mathematics we were able to solve.
- Hell with your fifth dimensions! Just hear what I will tell you about alternative...
- Enembe, shut up! ... please, I cried. Enembe fell silent. I was not sure what Enembe was about to disclose but I was sure that he would not have done it in a constructuve way and also he would have messed up what Dr Kroonstad was telling us. - Please, Enembe, although the story sounds impossible, I am sure that we must listen to all of it before we start shooting it down.
Both Enembe and Ismen seemed to understand that I excplicitly wanted to hear this full story first before telling anything about ours. In any case, we did not know anything about him. Luckily he could not see my facial impressions. He did not seem to mind our dispute.
- No problems, I understand that you are in a stressful situation. So I try to be brief and avoid technical jargon. In any case, if our hypothesis was true, it would predict that the rocks stabilise each other and removing one of them would cause instability in the edge and three other rocks would fall out of the edge and onto the ground. So we decided to test this hypothesis, but we wanted to do it so that it would have no effect on your test routines. We wanted you to continue just as before, so we did not tell you I was coming.
- So you came here, stole a rock and exploded it in a safe place, Ismen asked.
- Well yes, that is what I did today. I thought that as an extreme way to shake the balance by destroying one of the rocks. But even that did not have an impact on others rocks, so I have to reject my hypothesis. As this experiment failed, I may as well tell you everything because this does not have any impact on your experiments any longer.
- And what was your prediction about events on the edge of realities if you shake it, I asked.
- There are many things we should have observed. In addition to a few fallen rocks, there should be a slight disturbance of realities, so that different things could happen in the different realities at the same time, and we should be able to measure it if we could get an equipment split temporarily into both.
- How could that happen, if an detector is in one reality, it could only detect that reality, Ismen said, intentionally trying to keep his voice calm, but I could see that he was getting really excited.
- That is an interesting question. You see, if the detector is in the same place at the same time, the wave function from the other reality should be detectable, and the detector could detect both realities, as if it was in two places -- I mean, because it is in two places. But if they are not in the exactly same spatiotemporal location, the wave function collapses.
- So you are saying that if a person is for example in bed...
- Oh no, heavens. That is something that definitely should not be tested with humans. When I removed the rock, I had several cameras and a seismograph monitoring. But all of them detected just a single signal. So the wave function hypothesis did not work after all.
- So, what are your plans now that your experiment failed, I asked.
- Oh, the experiment did not fail, Dr Kroonstad said happily, paused for a while and then sighed. - The experiment successfully proved that the double-reality-edge wave function does not describe reality. But now we don't have an alternative hypothesis, so we are back in the starting corner of our game.
Enembe had been quiet for a long time, but now he had an objection.
- Why do you say that you had several cameras and a seismograph when moving the rock. But that is impossible. The probe removed the rock only a few hours ago, and we were there very soon after that. You possibly couldn't have moved the equipment and analysed the data in such a short time period.
- Of course not. That's what I did with the first rock, not the third one.
Suddenly I started to feel alarmed.
- Er, you have removed three rocks already?
- Yes, today was the third one. The second one I removed on Friday more than a week ago.
- And when was the first one, I said, trying to prevent my voice from trembling.
- The first experiment was, let's see, it was Tuesday night two weeks ago. On mission day 323.
___________________________
Your topic is Match.
- They probably have explosives inside, Enembe reminded.
- There is no reason to think that they are violent. They have advanced technology and they haven't used it against us, I said. - So let's go.
We walked downhill carefully, listening. There was no sound from the tent. It was a round army style tent for maybe eight people, with a high pole in the middle. The eaves was just high enough for a man to stand up straight. There were a few plastic storage boxes outside. Enembe looked hesitant, so I took the lead and walked into the tent.
- Hello?
It was very dark in the tent, when coming from bright sunshine, and it took a while for eyes to get used to it. I heard a sound when someone was moving just two metres from me.
- Ah, doctor Mariental. It is good to finally meet you, a voice said.
I startled when hearing my last name that nobody had used for a year. I started to see things from inside the tent. A man was sitting in front of me on a saddle chair beside a desk. He stood up and took two steps toward me. He was at his sixties, and his dark skin was grooved like someone's who has spent a lot of time outdoors. He was wearing dark sunglasses and a cap. He reached out his hand.
- Er, and you are? I asked, hesitantly.
I reached out my hand but he did not take it. It took half a second to infer the obvious with the white cane and sunglasses in the dark: he was blind. So I took his hand and shook it.
- I am doctor Kroonstad. Welcome to my quarters. And you should ask your colleagues come inside.
- Enembe, Ismen, I shouted. - Come on in, we were expected.
When Enembe and Ismen pulled the tent door open, more light came in and I could see that he had a laptop on the desk but with Braille screen. In addition to the desk, there was only a simple bed and a dozen storage boxes. I also noticed two camera lenses on both sides of his cap. He must have had some kind of video system embedded in his gear, but why if he was blind?
- These are Enembe and Ismen, I said pointing with my hand. - And this is doctor Kroonstad.
- It's a pleasure, the doctor said. - I am sorry that I have not prepared anything. You came sooner than I thought. Would you like to have some tea?
- What do you mean sooner? Have you been spying on us? Enembe said offensively.
- Oh, no, heavens. I have no reason to spy on you. I just saw your cameras near the Floating Rocks -- I mean my probe saw them, so I knew that you would see my probe and where it would go and that you would search for it. But I thought you would only come tomorrow after you have checked your videos tonight and that it would take more time to actually find your way here.
- Well, we triangulated the sound of explosion when you destroyed the floating rock, and walked directly to the crime scene, Enembe said.
- Ah, excellent. Very good thinking. Great work.
- We are not interested in your opinion about our work. But what right do you have to come here and destroy the holy relics of the native people?
The man laughed. - Oh, they are not really holy relics. We just told you so so that you would not touch them too soon.
There was an unpleasant quiet moment for three seconds. We were looking at each other.
- So you are saying that you are actually some big boss in the Repopulation Research Organisation and you made us come here on false premises? I finally said, without being able to hide increasing tense in my voice.
- Oh please do not get me wrong. Yes, I am working for the R.R.O., but no, I am not a big boss, I was just aware of this story. And no, you are not here on false premises although this one detail was indeed exaggeration. (He heard Enembe grunt disapprovingly.) OK, it was a lie, but it was thought as a necessary extra measure.
- I think you owe us a good explanation, Ismen said.
- Yes, you are right. Please be seated, although the boxes are somewhat uncomfortable. I'll make some tea. And you may also want some light here.
He leaned toward the table and switched a lamp on. Then he filled and electric kettle with water from a canister and turned it on. We sat on the boxes and watched him. He seemed to remember everything in the tent, as he rarely hesitated or missed an object he reached for. The silence was a bit awkward, but none of us was able to think of anything that would have been less awkward. He seemed to be happy about guests, as he was silently humming while picking bisquits and plastic cups from somewhere. He put the cups in a row on the desk with tea bags, poured water into them and then handed them over to us.
- Okay, you must be wondering why I am here, so I'll tell you. About a month ago, we made a major discovery related to the Floating Rocks. Based on the videos and recordings you had sent earlier, we developed a hypothesis that they are on the edge of alternative realities, which made them behave partly based on the physical forces from the one reality and partly based on those from the other. The system is stable because when a rock moves toward another reality and away from the other, the forces of the other become stronger and they pull it backward. This sounds paradoxical, but it is due to the strage fifth-dimensional inverse geometry of the reality edges, and exactly that mathematics we were able to solve.
- Hell with your fifth dimensions! Just hear what I will tell you about alternative...
- Enembe, shut up! ... please, I cried. Enembe fell silent. I was not sure what Enembe was about to disclose but I was sure that he would not have done it in a constructuve way and also he would have messed up what Dr Kroonstad was telling us. - Please, Enembe, although the story sounds impossible, I am sure that we must listen to all of it before we start shooting it down.
Both Enembe and Ismen seemed to understand that I excplicitly wanted to hear this full story first before telling anything about ours. In any case, we did not know anything about him. Luckily he could not see my facial impressions. He did not seem to mind our dispute.
- No problems, I understand that you are in a stressful situation. So I try to be brief and avoid technical jargon. In any case, if our hypothesis was true, it would predict that the rocks stabilise each other and removing one of them would cause instability in the edge and three other rocks would fall out of the edge and onto the ground. So we decided to test this hypothesis, but we wanted to do it so that it would have no effect on your test routines. We wanted you to continue just as before, so we did not tell you I was coming.
- So you came here, stole a rock and exploded it in a safe place, Ismen asked.
- Well yes, that is what I did today. I thought that as an extreme way to shake the balance by destroying one of the rocks. But even that did not have an impact on others rocks, so I have to reject my hypothesis. As this experiment failed, I may as well tell you everything because this does not have any impact on your experiments any longer.
- And what was your prediction about events on the edge of realities if you shake it, I asked.
- There are many things we should have observed. In addition to a few fallen rocks, there should be a slight disturbance of realities, so that different things could happen in the different realities at the same time, and we should be able to measure it if we could get an equipment split temporarily into both.
- How could that happen, if an detector is in one reality, it could only detect that reality, Ismen said, intentionally trying to keep his voice calm, but I could see that he was getting really excited.
- That is an interesting question. You see, if the detector is in the same place at the same time, the wave function from the other reality should be detectable, and the detector could detect both realities, as if it was in two places -- I mean, because it is in two places. But if they are not in the exactly same spatiotemporal location, the wave function collapses.
- So you are saying that if a person is for example in bed...
- Oh no, heavens. That is something that definitely should not be tested with humans. When I removed the rock, I had several cameras and a seismograph monitoring. But all of them detected just a single signal. So the wave function hypothesis did not work after all.
- So, what are your plans now that your experiment failed, I asked.
- Oh, the experiment did not fail, Dr Kroonstad said happily, paused for a while and then sighed. - The experiment successfully proved that the double-reality-edge wave function does not describe reality. But now we don't have an alternative hypothesis, so we are back in the starting corner of our game.
Enembe had been quiet for a long time, but now he had an objection.
- Why do you say that you had several cameras and a seismograph when moving the rock. But that is impossible. The probe removed the rock only a few hours ago, and we were there very soon after that. You possibly couldn't have moved the equipment and analysed the data in such a short time period.
- Of course not. That's what I did with the first rock, not the third one.
Suddenly I started to feel alarmed.
- Er, you have removed three rocks already?
- Yes, today was the third one. The second one I removed on Friday more than a week ago.
- And when was the first one, I said, trying to prevent my voice from trembling.
- The first experiment was, let's see, it was Tuesday night two weeks ago. On mission day 323.
___________________________
Your topic is Match.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Amirhan, Part 21 - Discovery
Amirhan desert mission, day 337
For the past two days we have been forced to see the world a little differently than usually. We have looked at everything as a potential part for a vehicle that would get us to Ashakati. We have been looking for things to build the thing we can sit on, the part we call the sled, and the thing that will propel us forward, the motor.
In those two days we have managed to build us a vehicle that will take us to Ashakati. I hope. We have so far only tested it in a range our ropes can reach, just in case it doesn't work and Ismen (who has been driving) would have to get back to the hub some other way. That did happen, a the first few times, and a few times since we got it to work. But we hope it is ready now to use to cross the desert without safety ropes attached to something stable. We are calling out little vessel Discovery, since we hope it will help us discover a way to find our colleagues.
The hub and the barn are both a mess. We have used anything we have thought might be useful, since we are probably not coming back. We are using a few thin plastic panels from the roof of the barn as the base. The material doesn't have to be thick or especially durable, since the friction that would wear through it is so low, and light materials require less energy to move around. However, the bottom needed to be something that keeps its shape, since we have to attach the propeller to it for it to work properly. Yesterday at first we tried only sitting on a plastic sheet and holding the propeller in our hand to move and steer, but it did not work very well. So a proper solid base was a better choice. We attached sides to it, so we or more likely some of the equipment we are taking with us would not accidentally drop off in for example a curve.
The propeller was a much more difficult matter. We didn't have anything big enough that would use electricity to rotate something fast for it to work. We do not even have a fan, despite the fact we are in a desert. We tried many things before something finally worked. I have to admit though, Ismen was the one who took care of the motor. Being scientists, both of us are a far cry from a proper engineer. Note for any future missions in Amirhan desert, or probably other missions too: take with you an electrical engineer. It may save your life one day.
Either way, Ismen was able to build a strong enough a motor to rotate big enough blades to accelerate both of us and the equipment. That assuming there are not any bigger hills on the way, which there should not be. At least there was not the last time either of us visited Ashakati, which was months ago. Although the others have been discussing the hills too, and Ismen says Ndali and Enembe both say there are no hills too big on our way. If there somehow happens to be some (this is Amirhan, after all), going around them should not be too big of a problem, unless the detour turns out to be very, very long. We will take all the rest of the food we have with us. Ismen also had to take apart one of our computers to build the motor. I don't exactly know what parts he needed from it, but he said it was essential. and I was busy with other things at the moment. We will not be needing those computers in the future any way,
Another, bigger problem we may face is wind. We are moving with solar energy turned into wind, and if the wind blows against us, we will have to counter the acceleration caused by the push of the wind on us, and possibly keep ourselves moving uphill. Luckily it is rarely very windy in Amirhan. Of course the air is moving all the time, but we only get strong winds during sand storms, so we will probably be fine.
We are spending one more night in the hub, since it would make no sense to leave any more tonight. So tomorrow morning we will leave. We sent the others a message through the microwave oven so they will know we will not be able to communicate anymore, but they know Ismen knows what is going on with them. I am still not sure if this is the right thing to do, since there is no way to know how any of this two time lines -thing works, but having given it a lot of thought in the last two days, I believe this gives us a better shot at finding each other again that anything else we might do, even if the probability of this working isn't too high. I also admit I am completely tired of this snow. It was quite fascinating at first, when it was only snow, but not being able to go out and do measurements and research is not good for me. So if there is a chance we will get to a place with no snow or even only snow, I will take it. It is not a scientific reason, I admit, and I feel like I should be taking more out of this incredible once in a lifetime opportunity to study this place before leaving, but there is not much we can do in these conditions we have not already done. Of course since we now have Discovery for moving around in these conditions, if we can not find a way to the other time line, we could come back and continue our research as best we can. At least we would no longer be confined to the hub.
So we are leaving tomorrow. I need to stop writing now, since I am moving all the data and everything else from the last two weeks to an external harddrive to take with us, including my logs. Even if we can not do any more research here, there is no reason to throw away everything we have done since the snow came.
__________________________________________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Quiet.
~matu
For the past two days we have been forced to see the world a little differently than usually. We have looked at everything as a potential part for a vehicle that would get us to Ashakati. We have been looking for things to build the thing we can sit on, the part we call the sled, and the thing that will propel us forward, the motor.
In those two days we have managed to build us a vehicle that will take us to Ashakati. I hope. We have so far only tested it in a range our ropes can reach, just in case it doesn't work and Ismen (who has been driving) would have to get back to the hub some other way. That did happen, a the first few times, and a few times since we got it to work. But we hope it is ready now to use to cross the desert without safety ropes attached to something stable. We are calling out little vessel Discovery, since we hope it will help us discover a way to find our colleagues.
The hub and the barn are both a mess. We have used anything we have thought might be useful, since we are probably not coming back. We are using a few thin plastic panels from the roof of the barn as the base. The material doesn't have to be thick or especially durable, since the friction that would wear through it is so low, and light materials require less energy to move around. However, the bottom needed to be something that keeps its shape, since we have to attach the propeller to it for it to work properly. Yesterday at first we tried only sitting on a plastic sheet and holding the propeller in our hand to move and steer, but it did not work very well. So a proper solid base was a better choice. We attached sides to it, so we or more likely some of the equipment we are taking with us would not accidentally drop off in for example a curve.
The propeller was a much more difficult matter. We didn't have anything big enough that would use electricity to rotate something fast for it to work. We do not even have a fan, despite the fact we are in a desert. We tried many things before something finally worked. I have to admit though, Ismen was the one who took care of the motor. Being scientists, both of us are a far cry from a proper engineer. Note for any future missions in Amirhan desert, or probably other missions too: take with you an electrical engineer. It may save your life one day.
Either way, Ismen was able to build a strong enough a motor to rotate big enough blades to accelerate both of us and the equipment. That assuming there are not any bigger hills on the way, which there should not be. At least there was not the last time either of us visited Ashakati, which was months ago. Although the others have been discussing the hills too, and Ismen says Ndali and Enembe both say there are no hills too big on our way. If there somehow happens to be some (this is Amirhan, after all), going around them should not be too big of a problem, unless the detour turns out to be very, very long. We will take all the rest of the food we have with us. Ismen also had to take apart one of our computers to build the motor. I don't exactly know what parts he needed from it, but he said it was essential. and I was busy with other things at the moment. We will not be needing those computers in the future any way,
Another, bigger problem we may face is wind. We are moving with solar energy turned into wind, and if the wind blows against us, we will have to counter the acceleration caused by the push of the wind on us, and possibly keep ourselves moving uphill. Luckily it is rarely very windy in Amirhan. Of course the air is moving all the time, but we only get strong winds during sand storms, so we will probably be fine.
We are spending one more night in the hub, since it would make no sense to leave any more tonight. So tomorrow morning we will leave. We sent the others a message through the microwave oven so they will know we will not be able to communicate anymore, but they know Ismen knows what is going on with them. I am still not sure if this is the right thing to do, since there is no way to know how any of this two time lines -thing works, but having given it a lot of thought in the last two days, I believe this gives us a better shot at finding each other again that anything else we might do, even if the probability of this working isn't too high. I also admit I am completely tired of this snow. It was quite fascinating at first, when it was only snow, but not being able to go out and do measurements and research is not good for me. So if there is a chance we will get to a place with no snow or even only snow, I will take it. It is not a scientific reason, I admit, and I feel like I should be taking more out of this incredible once in a lifetime opportunity to study this place before leaving, but there is not much we can do in these conditions we have not already done. Of course since we now have Discovery for moving around in these conditions, if we can not find a way to the other time line, we could come back and continue our research as best we can. At least we would no longer be confined to the hub.
So we are leaving tomorrow. I need to stop writing now, since I am moving all the data and everything else from the last two weeks to an external harddrive to take with us, including my logs. Even if we can not do any more research here, there is no reason to throw away everything we have done since the snow came.
__________________________________________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Quiet.
~matu
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Amirhan, Part 20 - Blind
We walked down the hill to the plain that was between us and the northern hills. It was dry and poor and boring land, and the sand was red because of all ferrous compounds. Nothing much grew there because it was also acidic soil, and the winds blew dust around freely. Luckily the weather today was mild, as in a sand storm the plain became almost inpenetrable. It continued dozens of kilometres to the East so it could be really dangerous to get lost there. But we were heading North to the valley, and in this weather it was just a pleasant twenty-minute walk.
Enembe did the orienteering, and we slowed down when we approached the place from where the bang had been heard. There could also be signs of a thunderbolt or a fire, but everything looked just normal. Small dry bushes were growing between rocks on the hillslopes, and there was dry grass on the valley floor. That implied that there was at least some water available during the rainy season.
Enembe stopped, and we knew that this was the exact spot we were looking for. The valley made a slight turn so that we just could not see the hill where the Floating Rocks were, and thus our camera could not see here.
- Look at the grass, Ismen said after a while. I tried to look, but it was just lying there, dry and flat just like dead grass. - It is bent toward the ground, but always away from this place. There was indeed an explosion here.
Enembe kneeled down and put his face into the grass. He crawled around and stopped and observed and went on again. After a while he stood up.
- There are no signs of any burns on the grass, but there is a smell of sulfur, not like gun powder but more like pyrite. That is strange, because pyrite does not explode.
- But it looks like pyrite dust on the grass, and on this rock as well, I said.
I remembered when we had collected pyrite from a river sediment when I was child. It was on the rocks and in the river sand, and we had thought that we had discovered a huge motherload. I had been so disappointed when my brother had told me that it was just cat gold, not real gold.
- OK, it seems that something has exploded a pyrite-containing object into dust, and that dust has then settled on surfaces. Do you think that it could be the Floating Rock that the Dark Probe took?
We looked at each other. Ismen was right. The Rocks don't explode by themselves, so it must have been somehow caused by the Probe - or someone who was steering the Probe. And the Rocks did contain a lot of pyrite, we had checked that with XRF just a few days ago. We started looking for any signs of human activity. And indeed, there were footprints in the sand. We followd them, being carful not to mess them with our own feet. The sand was too dry and coarse to reveal any details of the shoes, but clearly a human had walked up and down the hill toward a large rock.
Behind the rock we found a pair of earplugs, several cigarette butts and burned matches. Someone had been here, probably waiting for some time, and having been prepared for a bang. We concluded that this person had exploded the Rock on purpose in the valley, and they also owned the probe because if they hadn't owned, they would have had to stop the probe violently and we would also see remains of that around.
All that had happened less than two hours ago. Where was this person now? And where was the probe? We looked for any signs of footprints around the area, and indeed we saw a faint trail continuing from the waiting place further up the hill. We started following the tracks. The trail was straight and thus easy to follow, and we came to the top of the hill. On the other side we saw another valley. It was not as deep, but there was a steep cliff, and a tent was erected below the cliff. A white cane was placed beside the tent door.
________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Discovery.
Enembe did the orienteering, and we slowed down when we approached the place from where the bang had been heard. There could also be signs of a thunderbolt or a fire, but everything looked just normal. Small dry bushes were growing between rocks on the hillslopes, and there was dry grass on the valley floor. That implied that there was at least some water available during the rainy season.
Enembe stopped, and we knew that this was the exact spot we were looking for. The valley made a slight turn so that we just could not see the hill where the Floating Rocks were, and thus our camera could not see here.
- Look at the grass, Ismen said after a while. I tried to look, but it was just lying there, dry and flat just like dead grass. - It is bent toward the ground, but always away from this place. There was indeed an explosion here.
Enembe kneeled down and put his face into the grass. He crawled around and stopped and observed and went on again. After a while he stood up.
- There are no signs of any burns on the grass, but there is a smell of sulfur, not like gun powder but more like pyrite. That is strange, because pyrite does not explode.
- But it looks like pyrite dust on the grass, and on this rock as well, I said.
I remembered when we had collected pyrite from a river sediment when I was child. It was on the rocks and in the river sand, and we had thought that we had discovered a huge motherload. I had been so disappointed when my brother had told me that it was just cat gold, not real gold.
- OK, it seems that something has exploded a pyrite-containing object into dust, and that dust has then settled on surfaces. Do you think that it could be the Floating Rock that the Dark Probe took?
We looked at each other. Ismen was right. The Rocks don't explode by themselves, so it must have been somehow caused by the Probe - or someone who was steering the Probe. And the Rocks did contain a lot of pyrite, we had checked that with XRF just a few days ago. We started looking for any signs of human activity. And indeed, there were footprints in the sand. We followd them, being carful not to mess them with our own feet. The sand was too dry and coarse to reveal any details of the shoes, but clearly a human had walked up and down the hill toward a large rock.
Behind the rock we found a pair of earplugs, several cigarette butts and burned matches. Someone had been here, probably waiting for some time, and having been prepared for a bang. We concluded that this person had exploded the Rock on purpose in the valley, and they also owned the probe because if they hadn't owned, they would have had to stop the probe violently and we would also see remains of that around.
All that had happened less than two hours ago. Where was this person now? And where was the probe? We looked for any signs of footprints around the area, and indeed we saw a faint trail continuing from the waiting place further up the hill. We started following the tracks. The trail was straight and thus easy to follow, and we came to the top of the hill. On the other side we saw another valley. It was not as deep, but there was a steep cliff, and a tent was erected below the cliff. A white cane was placed beside the tent door.
________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Discovery.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Amirhan, Part 19 - Expose
Amirhan deser mission, day 335
Our bread had gone through. Ismen told me in the morning the others had gotten our message and they had spent the evening trying to come up with plans for us to get out of here. They think we should get to Ashakati, and to Khorixas' home, because they got through to the other time line through there. I am not sure I agree with their conclusions.
First, we do not know if they are in the real world and we are in the not-real weird parallel world. We do not even know if there is a real and not-real world to label the time lines we have in any meaningful way. This time line is clearly real also, since we are here and experience it. However, the time has obviously split in two, and if there is no one else in this world except me and Ismen, which we obviously do not know, but the empty Ashakati would seem to vaguely implicate, this is a lot worse at least harder time line to be in, we should try to get to the other one. Of course it may be everything else is here, and only the people Ashakati and now Ndali and Enembe and the other Ismen are in the other time line. I do not know how likely it is, however. All we know is that we are now separated, and we should get back to the same place, and that that same place should more likely be the snowless time line than this one, since it is a less hostile place to be, or at least more predictable, which decreases the exposure to danger.
Second, I am not sure we should try to get to Ashakati. Ndali and Enembe got moved to the other time line from there, but there is zero guarantee it would work again. It would also mean we have to leave behind the only means of communication we have to contact them, the microwave. Of course we could take it with us, but again there is no guarantee it will work anywhere else the same way it works here, and it is very heavy. The other down side of leaving the hub is that it is safe here, at least relatively safe. If we leave and the temperature rises again, the ground might become sticky again, we will get stuck in the middle of a desert and slowly starve to death, like they in the other time line also noted. And that is only the most obvious and predictable danger we expose ourselves to if we leave. Then again, we do not know how to get to the other time line if we do stay here, since we have no idea how to get there. Going to Ashakati is the only way we know of that it has been possible for someone to pass between the time lines, so the probability it will work again is greater than the probability of us getting there if we stay here. Not to mention we will run out of food if we stay here for too long. So in the end, even though going to Ashakati may be dangerous and there is absolutely no guarantee of it making anything better, it seems to be the least bad plan we currently have.
This brings us to the question we have been trying to answer all day today: how to we get from here to Ashakati? The final answer we have come up with is that we need a motor of some kind that will push air from one direction to the other and so push us in the opposite direction. Like a fan, except with enough power to move to human beings and some equipment along an almost frictionless surface. I slid Ismen around the yard again today, so we could see the equipment we have in the barn. In the end of the day we had a plan of what equipment we need to use and what to do in order to build a fan-powered sled that we can use to move relevant equipment (we are using this opportunity to get some parts of machines from here to the other time line to be used as spare parts, since they now exist in both worlds and are thus doubled in number, and will not be needed here after we leave) and ourselves to Ashakati.
We baked some bread to send the others a message of our plan. The bread disappeared from the microwave, even though I was afraid it was some kind of an anomaly that only worked yesterday, so I suppose they got the message. I have been thinking throughout the day of other explanations for all of this, of course. In the end, even if we are wrong about everything that is happening, that we are delusional or hallucinating the communication with the other time line, there is enough evidence that it truly does exist that it seems best to act like it is all true, no matter how weird.
___________________________________________________________
Your topic for tomorrow is Blind.
~matu
Our bread had gone through. Ismen told me in the morning the others had gotten our message and they had spent the evening trying to come up with plans for us to get out of here. They think we should get to Ashakati, and to Khorixas' home, because they got through to the other time line through there. I am not sure I agree with their conclusions.
First, we do not know if they are in the real world and we are in the not-real weird parallel world. We do not even know if there is a real and not-real world to label the time lines we have in any meaningful way. This time line is clearly real also, since we are here and experience it. However, the time has obviously split in two, and if there is no one else in this world except me and Ismen, which we obviously do not know, but the empty Ashakati would seem to vaguely implicate, this is a lot worse at least harder time line to be in, we should try to get to the other one. Of course it may be everything else is here, and only the people Ashakati and now Ndali and Enembe and the other Ismen are in the other time line. I do not know how likely it is, however. All we know is that we are now separated, and we should get back to the same place, and that that same place should more likely be the snowless time line than this one, since it is a less hostile place to be, or at least more predictable, which decreases the exposure to danger.
Second, I am not sure we should try to get to Ashakati. Ndali and Enembe got moved to the other time line from there, but there is zero guarantee it would work again. It would also mean we have to leave behind the only means of communication we have to contact them, the microwave. Of course we could take it with us, but again there is no guarantee it will work anywhere else the same way it works here, and it is very heavy. The other down side of leaving the hub is that it is safe here, at least relatively safe. If we leave and the temperature rises again, the ground might become sticky again, we will get stuck in the middle of a desert and slowly starve to death, like they in the other time line also noted. And that is only the most obvious and predictable danger we expose ourselves to if we leave. Then again, we do not know how to get to the other time line if we do stay here, since we have no idea how to get there. Going to Ashakati is the only way we know of that it has been possible for someone to pass between the time lines, so the probability it will work again is greater than the probability of us getting there if we stay here. Not to mention we will run out of food if we stay here for too long. So in the end, even though going to Ashakati may be dangerous and there is absolutely no guarantee of it making anything better, it seems to be the least bad plan we currently have.
This brings us to the question we have been trying to answer all day today: how to we get from here to Ashakati? The final answer we have come up with is that we need a motor of some kind that will push air from one direction to the other and so push us in the opposite direction. Like a fan, except with enough power to move to human beings and some equipment along an almost frictionless surface. I slid Ismen around the yard again today, so we could see the equipment we have in the barn. In the end of the day we had a plan of what equipment we need to use and what to do in order to build a fan-powered sled that we can use to move relevant equipment (we are using this opportunity to get some parts of machines from here to the other time line to be used as spare parts, since they now exist in both worlds and are thus doubled in number, and will not be needed here after we leave) and ourselves to Ashakati.
We baked some bread to send the others a message of our plan. The bread disappeared from the microwave, even though I was afraid it was some kind of an anomaly that only worked yesterday, so I suppose they got the message. I have been thinking throughout the day of other explanations for all of this, of course. In the end, even if we are wrong about everything that is happening, that we are delusional or hallucinating the communication with the other time line, there is enough evidence that it truly does exist that it seems best to act like it is all true, no matter how weird.
___________________________________________________________
Your topic for tomorrow is Blind.
~matu
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Amirhan, Part 18 - Flash
- The bread disappeared, shouted Ismen. - This proves that the original bread came from Svetlana from the snow world!
- No it doesn't, argued Enembe. - Be scientific. It proves that something is going on with the microwave that is not caused by some outsider making practical jokes. The two alternative hypotheses are still valid, namely alternative reality and hallucination. And don't forget hypotheses that might be possible but that we are not clever enough to think about.
- Oh come on, this is good news anyway, I said. - If we cannot think about something, the only way to prepare for it is to be ready for surprises, and that's what we have already learned in this place. And if reality is something completely different from what we think it is, all our actions are random and everything is meaningless. And if that is the case, we can as well pretend that we are not hallucinating and that our actions are meaningful.
- If you are referring to the sure thing principle that we would act identically in any of the potential realities, I agree. Of course we should act as if the bread came from Svetlana. But we must not confuse that with proof. You must know about Re-scartes' "Cogito, ergo..."
- OK, I get the point, Ismen interrupted. - There is no proof ecxept in mathematics, and we must always doubt what we know. Now that we probably know that there might (he stared at Enembe purposefully) be a way to communicate, should we try and send something else?
- No, we still don't know what happens on the other side and if it goes to the other microwave when there is still something else inside, we might get some problems. Instead, let's start the cleaning while we wait for her response, I suggested. Enembe looked displeased when he realised that it was Saturday, but he knew enough not to object.
The cleaning day was pretty normal except that all of us went to the microwave every now and then and peeked inside. We did not want to keep opening the door, so Enembe left his pocket light beside the oven. But nothing happened despite our eager observations.
Finally, in the evening, the microwave beeped. We all rushed to look inside, and indeed there was something. We opened the door and took a hot bread out. It was much smaller than the previous one, but smelled as delicious. We cut it carefully and found a note.
It was from Svetlana - and Ismen. Ismen looked startled when we got evidence about what we had just hypothesised about people being in two realities at the same time. What we had not anticipated was that their Ismen could actually hear our Ismen during sleep and that they were pretty much aware of what was going on here, while we had only indirect hints about their reality, and those hints were already several days old.
After I finished reading their letter, everyone fell silent for a long time. Now we knew much more, and we also knew that somehow we should get them out of that reality that had turned much weirder than just snow on a desert.
- They will run out of food in a month even with strict diet, I said worrying. - And the snow-ice is too slippery to get anywhere away from the hub, not to mention to Ashakati, which is hours away even with wheelbarrel in easy conditions.
- Don't forget that we have the wheelbarrel here from their reality, so they'd have to walk, said Enembe.
- And going out for a long trip is also dangerous if the weather warms up. If the ice-snow turns again into gooey-snow that she described, they - I mean we - will get stuck like flies on honey and starve to death, Ismen added.
- Wow, you are right, I said.- We must develop a plan for them quickly and let them know. It's good to know that they hear us anyway so that the microwave is only critical for us to hear them.
- My first idea is that they should try to get to Khorixas' place. That's how we got out of there. Although we don't know why and whether it would work again. But then they would at least be in the village and could by food, started Enembe, but after a second of though, he added: - Although the snow-world village seemed abandoned when we were there.
We went on discussing and developing rescue plans. It had been good to hear that they were OK for now, but worrying to hear about the new problems. Ismen wrote down all our ideas and said he would memorise them in bed so that the snow-world Ismen would have it easy to probe his thoughts.
~x~
The next morning we went to field work again. We had to replace batteries to the Floating Rock cameras anyway, but we thought that we should check our crops at the outer fields first. So we went there via the badger's nest (which was still uninhabited) to collect some crop samples. They were not quite ripe last time, but now they could be. The days were so short and air so cool that if they wouldn't be ripe very soon, they might not be before winter. Then we should rethink the suitability of those cultivars in this environment.
We were glad to see that they were now ready for harvesting, and we could plan for that within the next few days. I was making an audio log about these plans when I was suddenly interrupted.
There was a flash of thunder that made me jump. The light was remarkably bright. It could not come from clouds, because there was nothing like a thunderstorm anywhere in sight. I counted seconds as I always did since childhood, and after seven seconds there was a loud bang. It was not like thunder but rather like a cannon, and the sound continued as a high whistle whose pitch gradually lowered together with the volume. That was clearly not a thunderbolt.
The sound faded away, but we stayed quiet for a long time, listening and looking around. Nothing new happened. Then I realised that I still had my portable recorder in my hand, and I had recorded everything. I finished my audio log, and then we started heading to the Floating Rocks.
There we had a surprise waiting for us. The cameras had detected something and made recordings. First we did not notice anything strange in the area, but then we realised that at least one of the Rocks was missing. We downloaded the videos to our laptop for analysis.
It was the Dark Probe again. It came from north betwen the hills where it had disappeared last time. It came directly here, and the other camera pointed to the Rocks showed clearly how it approached one rock, opened the door and engulfed it. Then it headed back north again, and disappeared between the two hills. A second later there was a bright flash, which was seen on both cameras but seemed to come from the hills, although no clear lightbolt was visible. Six seconds later there was the loud bang we had heard just an hour ago, followed by the whistle. After that, there was a silence, and as there were no movement on the videos, they ended as the cameras had been automatically turned off.
When Enembe saw this, he grabbed my portable recorder and downloaded my audio log into the laptop. Then he opened it together with the videos with a 3D analyzer software.
- Look, I can triangluate the flash. I have three recordings, each of which have and audio with a timing precision of one millisecond, and two of them also have video. The flash appeared exactly at 14:67:23.893, and the bang was heard from the first camera at 14:67:30.845 which means that it came 2366 metres away from this point. The other camera was 20 metres away, and the log recorder was about 1830 metres away from here, which implies that the bang came from ... that valley of Alephho. He pointed a spot on the map on the screen with his index finger.
- That's were the Probe went! said Ismen. - So it exploded immediately after it disappeared in the
valley.
- You are jumping again to conclusions. The probe was very near there, but we don't know what exploded if anything, and whether probe was involved or not.
- In any case, now we have enough evidence that something interesting is going on in that valley, I interrupted. - We should check it immediately. Let's go.
________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Expose.
- No it doesn't, argued Enembe. - Be scientific. It proves that something is going on with the microwave that is not caused by some outsider making practical jokes. The two alternative hypotheses are still valid, namely alternative reality and hallucination. And don't forget hypotheses that might be possible but that we are not clever enough to think about.
- Oh come on, this is good news anyway, I said. - If we cannot think about something, the only way to prepare for it is to be ready for surprises, and that's what we have already learned in this place. And if reality is something completely different from what we think it is, all our actions are random and everything is meaningless. And if that is the case, we can as well pretend that we are not hallucinating and that our actions are meaningful.
- If you are referring to the sure thing principle that we would act identically in any of the potential realities, I agree. Of course we should act as if the bread came from Svetlana. But we must not confuse that with proof. You must know about Re-scartes' "Cogito, ergo..."
- OK, I get the point, Ismen interrupted. - There is no proof ecxept in mathematics, and we must always doubt what we know. Now that we probably know that there might (he stared at Enembe purposefully) be a way to communicate, should we try and send something else?
- No, we still don't know what happens on the other side and if it goes to the other microwave when there is still something else inside, we might get some problems. Instead, let's start the cleaning while we wait for her response, I suggested. Enembe looked displeased when he realised that it was Saturday, but he knew enough not to object.
The cleaning day was pretty normal except that all of us went to the microwave every now and then and peeked inside. We did not want to keep opening the door, so Enembe left his pocket light beside the oven. But nothing happened despite our eager observations.
Finally, in the evening, the microwave beeped. We all rushed to look inside, and indeed there was something. We opened the door and took a hot bread out. It was much smaller than the previous one, but smelled as delicious. We cut it carefully and found a note.
It was from Svetlana - and Ismen. Ismen looked startled when we got evidence about what we had just hypothesised about people being in two realities at the same time. What we had not anticipated was that their Ismen could actually hear our Ismen during sleep and that they were pretty much aware of what was going on here, while we had only indirect hints about their reality, and those hints were already several days old.
After I finished reading their letter, everyone fell silent for a long time. Now we knew much more, and we also knew that somehow we should get them out of that reality that had turned much weirder than just snow on a desert.
- They will run out of food in a month even with strict diet, I said worrying. - And the snow-ice is too slippery to get anywhere away from the hub, not to mention to Ashakati, which is hours away even with wheelbarrel in easy conditions.
- Don't forget that we have the wheelbarrel here from their reality, so they'd have to walk, said Enembe.
- And going out for a long trip is also dangerous if the weather warms up. If the ice-snow turns again into gooey-snow that she described, they - I mean we - will get stuck like flies on honey and starve to death, Ismen added.
- Wow, you are right, I said.- We must develop a plan for them quickly and let them know. It's good to know that they hear us anyway so that the microwave is only critical for us to hear them.
- My first idea is that they should try to get to Khorixas' place. That's how we got out of there. Although we don't know why and whether it would work again. But then they would at least be in the village and could by food, started Enembe, but after a second of though, he added: - Although the snow-world village seemed abandoned when we were there.
We went on discussing and developing rescue plans. It had been good to hear that they were OK for now, but worrying to hear about the new problems. Ismen wrote down all our ideas and said he would memorise them in bed so that the snow-world Ismen would have it easy to probe his thoughts.
~x~
The next morning we went to field work again. We had to replace batteries to the Floating Rock cameras anyway, but we thought that we should check our crops at the outer fields first. So we went there via the badger's nest (which was still uninhabited) to collect some crop samples. They were not quite ripe last time, but now they could be. The days were so short and air so cool that if they wouldn't be ripe very soon, they might not be before winter. Then we should rethink the suitability of those cultivars in this environment.
We were glad to see that they were now ready for harvesting, and we could plan for that within the next few days. I was making an audio log about these plans when I was suddenly interrupted.
There was a flash of thunder that made me jump. The light was remarkably bright. It could not come from clouds, because there was nothing like a thunderstorm anywhere in sight. I counted seconds as I always did since childhood, and after seven seconds there was a loud bang. It was not like thunder but rather like a cannon, and the sound continued as a high whistle whose pitch gradually lowered together with the volume. That was clearly not a thunderbolt.
The sound faded away, but we stayed quiet for a long time, listening and looking around. Nothing new happened. Then I realised that I still had my portable recorder in my hand, and I had recorded everything. I finished my audio log, and then we started heading to the Floating Rocks.
There we had a surprise waiting for us. The cameras had detected something and made recordings. First we did not notice anything strange in the area, but then we realised that at least one of the Rocks was missing. We downloaded the videos to our laptop for analysis.
It was the Dark Probe again. It came from north betwen the hills where it had disappeared last time. It came directly here, and the other camera pointed to the Rocks showed clearly how it approached one rock, opened the door and engulfed it. Then it headed back north again, and disappeared between the two hills. A second later there was a bright flash, which was seen on both cameras but seemed to come from the hills, although no clear lightbolt was visible. Six seconds later there was the loud bang we had heard just an hour ago, followed by the whistle. After that, there was a silence, and as there were no movement on the videos, they ended as the cameras had been automatically turned off.
When Enembe saw this, he grabbed my portable recorder and downloaded my audio log into the laptop. Then he opened it together with the videos with a 3D analyzer software.
- Look, I can triangluate the flash. I have three recordings, each of which have and audio with a timing precision of one millisecond, and two of them also have video. The flash appeared exactly at 14:67:23.893, and the bang was heard from the first camera at 14:67:30.845 which means that it came 2366 metres away from this point. The other camera was 20 metres away, and the log recorder was about 1830 metres away from here, which implies that the bang came from ... that valley of Alephho. He pointed a spot on the map on the screen with his index finger.
- That's were the Probe went! said Ismen. - So it exploded immediately after it disappeared in the
valley.
- You are jumping again to conclusions. The probe was very near there, but we don't know what exploded if anything, and whether probe was involved or not.
- In any case, now we have enough evidence that something interesting is going on in that valley, I interrupted. - We should check it immediately. Let's go.
________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Expose.
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Amirhan, Part 17 - Mission
Amirhan desert mission, day 334
Since it is a Saturday, in the morning I was preparing to take a day off the work, and have a cleaning day, like every Saturday. Neither of us felt like doing anything special for our mission anniversary, and we figured some routine would do some good, with the mission getting messed up with Ndali and Enembe in different time line (which we have now concluded - if they were here, they would have been back by now) and no way to neither communicate with them nor get to them.
This, however, turned out to be an even weirder Saturday than I was expecting. I decided to bake bread this morning, since it has been a while since I last baked, and to be honest I did feel like doing something nice for Ismen and me. It was Ismen that noticed something weird first. When the microwave oven beeped to signal the bread was ready, he was there first. Only he discovered there was nothing in the oven. I discovered the same thing coming into the kitchen about half a minute after he had started scratching his head over the bread that was not there. We pondered over it for a moment, but there didn't seem to be much to do about it. It was Amirhan. This was not quite Amirhan's usual kind of weird, but it was also not quite as unusual weird as the other resent events. So we decided to clean up the hub, attempt our best to go check the solar panels and get some more sap from the mata'ir, and after all that was to be done today bake another bread, to reward ourselves for a good day's job.
Since getting something to drink was a priority for us, we got to work on that first. It did not take us long, when we put our minds to it, to come up with a solution to our problem. The ground is still covered with the ice that could not be ice, so what we did was tie a rope (that we luckily had in the hub instead of having to figure out how to get to the barn first) around Ismen, who then carefully sat outside, on the slippery ground. I then gave him a push in the right direction, not hard enough for him to hurt himself when he hit something, since that would be the only way from him to stop aside from being jerked to a stop by the rope we had tied right next to the hub door. It took a few tries (and was quite a lot of fun, which is not a thing I write down lightly, since it is not important), but I finally managed to push him in exactly the correct direction to hit the mata'ir. It was also lucky most of our canisters were in the hub instead of stored in the barn, where we often store the empty ones out of the way. So in about an hour we got tall the canisters full again. I was nervous before we got to the mata'ir it may have finally frozen over, it has been below freezing for over a week now, but it seems my worries about it freezing are pointless.
We filled the canisters, cleaned the solar panels and the hub. From the two of us it took most of the day.
We found a bread in the microwave oven when we began to prepare dinner. Not the bread I had baked, though Ismen tried to argue with me about it. But it did not look like a bread I would bake. It was clearly too raw in places and burned in others. When we cut into the bread (which we first argued about doing. If it was not my bread, it must have come from nowhere, in which case it may not be safe to eat it. We soon agreed, though, that cutting does not require eating, and that cutting it might give us more information about it. However, we did the initial cutting carefully), we found a note inside it. This whole separate time lines thing was weird as it is, but with that note it got even weirder. The note was from Enebe, Ndali and the Ismen with them. They said a bread, my bread, had appeared in their microwave this morning. They had even known it was my bread, had recognized it from the taste and texture. They thought they would try out baking a bread of their own, to see if it disappeared and appeared in our oven. Their alternative hypotheses were that the bread did not exist, or that someone not a part of our mission had come in and baked the bread. The microwave oven working as a means of communication between the time lines seemed far fetched, but why not try, if there was a non-zero probability of it working, which there should not have been. This, again, is weird even for Amirhan, although I can see a certain recognizable amirhaninan logic under it all.
We baked another bread, to see if we can send a message back, to explain our situation. A much smaller bread, this time, since we had not had the new supplies from town as the others had in their time line. We were due a supply run in a few days, and we did not know if we could make it. We could not waste our baking supplies. Either way, the bread did disappear the moment it was supposed to be done. We are in wonder and have no idea how this is working. We do not even know, in fact, whether the message inside the bread and the bread itself were from Ndali and Enembe, or if the desert is playing its tricks on us. It would not be the first time, though it would be the first time on a scale like this.
For the last thing about today I do want to turn my thoughts to our mission for a moment. We have been out here for a year now. We came out here to make sense of how Amirhan worked, how the weirdness, the desert and the things living here interact and affect each other. We came to study the Floating Rocks, the Parallel Streams and other seemingly unnatural structures and places here, the flora and fauna, how to grow things here that didn't grow here naturally and see how they are affected by this place. After a year here, trying to understand the logic of how this place functions, I have become certain that everything that grows here, that lives here for long enough a time, will be affected, and will never be the same, even if they some time left. I have learned to see Amirhan's logic in the world, even though I can not put it into words, or numbers. I have also learned that what seemed unnatural when we first came here, is in fact not unnatural. All of it, even if it is not natural to the rest of the world, is as natural as anything can be to the Amirhan, more natural even than the things we have learned to see as natural in the rest of the world.
______________________________________________________________
Your topic for tomorrow is Flash.
~matu
Since it is a Saturday, in the morning I was preparing to take a day off the work, and have a cleaning day, like every Saturday. Neither of us felt like doing anything special for our mission anniversary, and we figured some routine would do some good, with the mission getting messed up with Ndali and Enembe in different time line (which we have now concluded - if they were here, they would have been back by now) and no way to neither communicate with them nor get to them.
This, however, turned out to be an even weirder Saturday than I was expecting. I decided to bake bread this morning, since it has been a while since I last baked, and to be honest I did feel like doing something nice for Ismen and me. It was Ismen that noticed something weird first. When the microwave oven beeped to signal the bread was ready, he was there first. Only he discovered there was nothing in the oven. I discovered the same thing coming into the kitchen about half a minute after he had started scratching his head over the bread that was not there. We pondered over it for a moment, but there didn't seem to be much to do about it. It was Amirhan. This was not quite Amirhan's usual kind of weird, but it was also not quite as unusual weird as the other resent events. So we decided to clean up the hub, attempt our best to go check the solar panels and get some more sap from the mata'ir, and after all that was to be done today bake another bread, to reward ourselves for a good day's job.
Since getting something to drink was a priority for us, we got to work on that first. It did not take us long, when we put our minds to it, to come up with a solution to our problem. The ground is still covered with the ice that could not be ice, so what we did was tie a rope (that we luckily had in the hub instead of having to figure out how to get to the barn first) around Ismen, who then carefully sat outside, on the slippery ground. I then gave him a push in the right direction, not hard enough for him to hurt himself when he hit something, since that would be the only way from him to stop aside from being jerked to a stop by the rope we had tied right next to the hub door. It took a few tries (and was quite a lot of fun, which is not a thing I write down lightly, since it is not important), but I finally managed to push him in exactly the correct direction to hit the mata'ir. It was also lucky most of our canisters were in the hub instead of stored in the barn, where we often store the empty ones out of the way. So in about an hour we got tall the canisters full again. I was nervous before we got to the mata'ir it may have finally frozen over, it has been below freezing for over a week now, but it seems my worries about it freezing are pointless.
We filled the canisters, cleaned the solar panels and the hub. From the two of us it took most of the day.
We found a bread in the microwave oven when we began to prepare dinner. Not the bread I had baked, though Ismen tried to argue with me about it. But it did not look like a bread I would bake. It was clearly too raw in places and burned in others. When we cut into the bread (which we first argued about doing. If it was not my bread, it must have come from nowhere, in which case it may not be safe to eat it. We soon agreed, though, that cutting does not require eating, and that cutting it might give us more information about it. However, we did the initial cutting carefully), we found a note inside it. This whole separate time lines thing was weird as it is, but with that note it got even weirder. The note was from Enebe, Ndali and the Ismen with them. They said a bread, my bread, had appeared in their microwave this morning. They had even known it was my bread, had recognized it from the taste and texture. They thought they would try out baking a bread of their own, to see if it disappeared and appeared in our oven. Their alternative hypotheses were that the bread did not exist, or that someone not a part of our mission had come in and baked the bread. The microwave oven working as a means of communication between the time lines seemed far fetched, but why not try, if there was a non-zero probability of it working, which there should not have been. This, again, is weird even for Amirhan, although I can see a certain recognizable amirhaninan logic under it all.
We baked another bread, to see if we can send a message back, to explain our situation. A much smaller bread, this time, since we had not had the new supplies from town as the others had in their time line. We were due a supply run in a few days, and we did not know if we could make it. We could not waste our baking supplies. Either way, the bread did disappear the moment it was supposed to be done. We are in wonder and have no idea how this is working. We do not even know, in fact, whether the message inside the bread and the bread itself were from Ndali and Enembe, or if the desert is playing its tricks on us. It would not be the first time, though it would be the first time on a scale like this.
For the last thing about today I do want to turn my thoughts to our mission for a moment. We have been out here for a year now. We came out here to make sense of how Amirhan worked, how the weirdness, the desert and the things living here interact and affect each other. We came to study the Floating Rocks, the Parallel Streams and other seemingly unnatural structures and places here, the flora and fauna, how to grow things here that didn't grow here naturally and see how they are affected by this place. After a year here, trying to understand the logic of how this place functions, I have become certain that everything that grows here, that lives here for long enough a time, will be affected, and will never be the same, even if they some time left. I have learned to see Amirhan's logic in the world, even though I can not put it into words, or numbers. I have also learned that what seemed unnatural when we first came here, is in fact not unnatural. All of it, even if it is not natural to the rest of the world, is as natural as anything can be to the Amirhan, more natural even than the things we have learned to see as natural in the rest of the world.
______________________________________________________________
Your topic for tomorrow is Flash.
~matu
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)