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.
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The topic for tomorrow: Cave.