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.

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The topic for tomorrow is Expose.