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.