CHAPTER THREE
Future
“Please Captain, hit the lights if you would.”
Major Brendan Alcheck, Director of Special Projects for the U.S. Air Force, was a tall, imposing figure. Muscular thanks to nearly twenty years of military service and whose impeccable posture, whether standing or seated, gave away that military background like the sun gives away the day. It wasn’t just his stature; there was an air of quiet, ultimate authority around him. The man radiated authority without having to raise his voice. In fact, in all the time Melissa and Alex had known him, they had never heard him lose his cool even a little bit. Despite his quiet demeanor, unusual for a career military man, they both knew that this was not a man to be taken lightly, as did anyone that encountered him. In fact, Melissa often joked with Alex that Major Alcheck might be the only man Alex might not be able to take in a fair fight.
Alex had always replied:
Shit babe, Brendan is good enough to know better than to even have a fair fight!
That fact that Alex called him Brendan was the result of an unlikely friendship born of service and respect. Major Alcheck was reaching mandatory retirement age and was Alex’ senior by nearly eighteen years. In most cases, that sort of age discrepancy is enough to keep a friendship from forming. That kind of difference is difficult to overcome in most situations.
But, Alex had served under Major Alcheck since he had switched over to the Air Force and in that brief time, they had become close. As Alex learned early on, Major Alcheck was one of the rare few who, like him, had managed to convince someone to let him jump military branches many years ago. Major Alcheck had spent almost six years in Army Special Forces before the Air Force and had seen action, even more than Alex had in fact. Once Alex discovered that (thanks to a chance encounter with Major Alcheck’s personnel file) he made it his mission to get to know the major.
In the process, they had become good friends. But, friends or not, Alex held a degree of respect for Major Alcheck that he held for few others, and so he never forgot that Major Alcheck was his superior.
Well, almost never - and on those rare occasions when Alex did fail to remember, Major Alcheck took great pleasure in reminding him of it as forcefully and embarrassingly as possible.
So, as the dutiful Air Force captain flipped the light switch, the room went dark, and Major Alcheck sat, that perfect posture that everyone recognized as apparent as ever. He gestured to Melissa that she should begin her presentation. No words needed to be spoken; Melissa knew precisely what was expected of her, and she would deliver. She had been preparing for this moment for the past six years of his life, a fact which Alex was very aware. In fact, he was painfully aware of it because he very much wanted to give Melissa shit right now, trip her on the way up to the podium or something like that, just for laughs. However, even Alex knew that when the Major was in the room, you just didn’t pull those sorts of stunts.
And he knew even better that pulling something like that on his wife at this moment would be deadlier than any fiery jet crash!
A PowerPoint slide appeared on the screen at the front of the room, the title “Project Deep Cover” emblazoned across it. Alex chuckled at that. He always loved the military penchant for grandiose-sounding operation names.
“Gentlemen,“ Melissa began, “as we all know, the X-99 test flight last week didn’t exactly go according to plan.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” sighed Alex. Major Alcheck immediately shot him a glance that everyone in the room knew meant that will be enough of that!
But Alex just couldn’t help himself. He figured he had earned at least that bit of levity after the outcome of the test flight Melissa was now dissecting. The fact that Major Alcheck didn’t say anything indicated his friend thought so too.
“Yes, well,” continued Melissa, “even though the aircraft was destroyed, we were able to obtain the readings we needed thanks to Alex’ quick thinking.”
The alternative was me dying a horrible fiery death and irradiating half of Nevada, but hey, you’re welcome!
Alex figured saying that particular line out loud might be pushing his luck just a little too far with the Major, so it stayed in his head.
“We’ve made the necessary adjustments to the X-100, sister craft of the X-99, to stabilize the power flow through the drive assemblies. We didn’t account for fluctuations in the power transfer matrix of the magnitude we saw, but it was a pretty easy fix once we knew what happened. Given that, we believe we can proceed with the project as planned. Major Alcheck, with your permission?”
Alex knew this part was coming and he was unusually apprehensive about it. There was something different about this particular project of Melissa’s. Alex had over the years become something of Melissa’s “pet” test pilot. Melissa was a superstar when it came to designing and building new, advanced military aircraft and she had been instrumental in getting Alex his current posting. In short order, they had become something of a legend: the super-designer/super-test pilot husband and wife team. It was a perfect match: knowing that her husband would be piloting the aircraft she created made Melissa perform that much better and knowing that Melissa was on the ground counting on him made Alex similarly perform even better than he otherwise would have.
Major Alcheck understood this immediately when he had first met them. He had, in fact, suggested the idea initially, but it took Melissa a while to come around to the notion. After all, it would be putting her husband in danger. But, as Alex had reminded her, he was already at risk every time he stepped into the cockpit of a new design. Better they be her designs, so she had some measure of control over his fate.
Major Alcheck nodded his approval and Melissa continued his presentation, this time directing her comments squarely at Alex.
“With the adjustments completed, phase two can now begin. Alex, what you’re about to hear is categorized at the highest levels of secrecy, beyond top secret. You know I’ve been working on something big, but you have no idea just how big!”
Alex could see the gleam in Melissa’s eyes. It was a look he knew well, but this time it seemed a little more… heightened perhaps? Alex wasn’t sure. In any case, he was aware that she had been working on something special, something even above his clearance level. That was about to change.
“As they say, information on this project is on a need-to-know basis and, until today Alex, you didn’t need to know. As of right now, that changes.”
Alex sat up in his chair intrigued by what he was hearing. It wasn’t like Melissa to play the “good little black ops soldier” part like this. She had always been, more or less, an open book. To be sure, the projects Melissa worked on were pretty much always top-secret, and she was as trustworthy as they came: she never talked to even her own husband about the aspects of her work that she wasn’t expressly allowed to. There had been times in the past where she had to give Alex the brush-off about her work that he couldn't know about, but something about the tone of her voice was different this time. Alex could sense a level of pride of course, but that wasn't unusual for Melissa. She had never been embarrassed to tell you just how awesome her creations were! Here, though, there was something more. Was it perhaps conceit? No, it wasn't that. Maybe the level of pride was a bit higher, but if this were to be Melissa's coup de grace, her greatest work ever, then that would make sense. No, there was something else there, and Alex couldn't put his finger on it. Melissa continued
“This is a real game-changer, one of those rare inventions that represents a paradigm shift in the evolution of the human race. This will set the United States military a hundred years ahead of anyone else on the planet, if not considerably more.”
What was is that Alex was sensing? It was starting to bug him a lot now. He was listening very intently. He was, in fact, hanging on Melissa's every word, and not just in the way a husband is supposed to hang on every word of their lover. It all sounded grandiose indeed, and Alex had heard Melissa talk like this before on many occasions. She could be a boastful person, something Alex enjoyed about her. Her body language was also different now in a way that Alex didn't recognize.
Suddenly it dawned on him what it was, and at that moment, the same moment coincidentally that Melissa had chosen to pause for effect in her speech, Alex’ entire outlook on this meeting changed abruptly.
Fear. Alex was sensing fear in Melissa.
It was at that moment that he realized, quite tangentially, that she had been avoiding him ever since the crash. She had been working even longer hours than usual, and when she got home she was cordial, but then went almost immediately to sleep. Now it made sense: she knew what was coming, and it scared her.
What could Melissa possibly have to be afraid of? Melissa didn't create weapons per se, so it wasn't as if she could have created some new super-bomb. She designed aircraft, advanced aircraft with technology Alex knew he could never understand, aircraft that were used to wage war. Still, they were just fancy planes at the end of the day, and that was the justification Melissa was always trying to sell Alex on in an effort to sooth her own soul. They aren’t weapons of war when I create them; they’re only made into those after the fact by others. That was the justification she had always used. Alex knew this well and so always just nodded and agreed, even though deep down he knew, and he believed that Melissa knew, that she was building weapons.
She was too smart not to understand that.
Alex didn’t get it now though. Melissa had designed plenty of military aircraft. What was so unusual now? What could possibly be so scary to her about a plane?
Could it be something the Major had done to her? Had he pushed Melissa in a direction she wasn’t comfortable with? Major Alcheck had never operated like that before though. In fact, as imposing presence as he was, they never had expressed to each other any real fear of the man. Not to mention that Alex and Major Alcheck were friends and he didn’t expect his friend would do that to them.
One thing was for sure: Alex couldn’t remember a time he was more focused on the words of another person as he was now focused on what Melissa was clearing her throat in preparation to say.
"Alex, do you know what the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is?"
That was just about the last thing Alex expected to hear for a few reasons, not the least of which was that he had a clue about Melissa's science stuff for a change, a rare occasion indeed!
“Actually, I think I do! I remember flipping channels one night and catching a bit of some TLC show. It’s something to do with parallel universes, right?”
Melissa was amazed! It wasn’t like Alex to know more than some basic concepts about science. It just wasn’t his forte. If the knowledge couldn’t be used to help him survive in a combat situation, or improvise an explosive or something of that nature, then it just wasn’t particularly valuable information to Alex.
Melissa smiled as she realized this bit of luck would shorten this conversation substantially.
“Yes, that’s essentially right! In simple terms, the theory is that for each small unit of time, some say for each conscious decision we make, a new universe is effectively spawned, one which plays out based on the decisions made, or the conditions that existed at the last branch point. Depending on how you view it, that could mean that maybe some years ago, you decided to have a hamburger instead of a salad for dinner, and that hamburger was tainted meat, and you died. So, in one universe you don’t exist because you died back then, whereas, in another, the one where you ate the salad instead, you happily continue to exist”.
Everyone in the room was a bit confused, but clearly listening attentively, so Melissa continued.
“I personally prefer to take the decision aspect out of it. There’s something called the Planck time, which is the smallest unit of time that theoretically exists. I believe that at each Planck time interval, a new parallel universe is spawned, regardless of what we do. Now, the Planck time is an amazingly short period of time, something like ten to the negative forty-third power, so that means that there is, as far as our minds could ever possibly conceive, an infinite number of parallel universes.”
“Ok Melissa, I think I get it,“ said Alex, “so what does that have to do with planes? And more importantly, with me?”
“Well, if you think about all those parallel universes, the logical question to ask is where they are. And by extension, can we ever travel to them? Maybe more importantly, what would it physically mean to go to a parallel universe? What would you perceive?”
Major Alcheck shifted in his chair, signaling his intent to intervene in the conversation.
“I think it means you would experience a different reality. You might even conceivably meet yourself, although you could be quite a different person, is that right Doctor?”
“Yes Major, that’s essentially correct. However, there’s a caveat: if my interpretation is correct, then each parallel universe could differ by nothing we could perceive. For example, it could be that the only difference between two parallel universes is the quantum state of a single atom on the other side of the universe. You would never know the difference. In fact, if we follow this model to its logical conclusion, we would have to think that some universes are in a sense ‘closer’ to our own, meaning there are so few differences that they would be inconsequential. But, the further away from a given branch point we move then the more change there are. But, to hammer the point home, we would have to move so far away from a given branch point before we notice anything that effectively we might never be able to.”
"Ok, so you still haven't told me what this has to do with planes," Alex quipped.
“I’m getting to that now Alex. Let’s follow this through one more step. At any moment in time, we exist in a single universe. That is, our minds perceive a single universe. And, each of us must be perceiving the same universe. Would anyone like to take a guess what would happen if Major Alcheck were to wind up in a different parallel universe from us right now?"
Alex and Major Alcheck both thought about that for a few moments. It was finally Alex who was confident in his own thoughts enough to speak up.
“I think it means we couldn’t interact with him, or in fact even see him, right?”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Melissa. She was jubilant that Alex was so on his game today and was getting this all. It would make the information she had to present next that much easier.
“If you and Major Alcheck were in two separate universes, even if those universes only differed by a single quantum state of a single atom on the far side of the universe, you wouldn’t be able to perceive each other. It’s as if there’s an impenetrable barrier between all the countless parallel universes and anything that happens on one side of a given barrier might as well not exist to anything on the opposite side of the barrier. Most importantly for our purposes here, though, you wouldn't be able to see him, or in any way detect his presence. He literally wouldn’t be present in any way we could ever perceive. And that, Alex, is the answer to your question.”
Alex was now confused, but what was interesting is that Major Alcheck didn’t seem to be. This seemed odd to Alex because the Major wasn’t any more scientifically-inclined than he was. In fact, he appeared to be struggling just as much as Alex was to keep up with what Melissa was saying.
Then it dawned on him: Major Alcheck already knew this part, which meant it had to be something more obvious and importantly, more military. In a burst of insight, Alex’ subconscious mind was able to put those disparate pieces together and in an instant, he understood what she was getting at.
“Ah! I got it! If you could ‘push’ a plane into a parallel universe, it couldn’t be detected in our universe. It would be the ultimate stealth mechanism!”
Melissa was extremely pleased and couldn’t hold back her excitement!
“Yes, that’s exactly right Alex, exactly! I call it ‘hyperstealth.'” A smile crept across her face for the first time today, and Alex noticed that. She was so beautiful when she smiled, and Alex realized he hadn’t seen her smile since the crash last week.
“But, okay, help me out here Melissa… how exactly do you push a plane into another universe and how do you get it back?”
“Well, don't take this the wrong way, but that’s where the science gets pretty involved. I’ll try to explain it as gently as I can. There’s something called quantum entanglement that in simple terms is a link between two atoms. Vast distances can separate these atoms, and yet they still have properties that correlate with each other. So, for example, if we change the direction of spin of one, it changes in the other. And again Alex, this is regardless of distance. Put the atoms on the other side of the universe, and their properties will change instantaneously anyway, which means that information is passing well beyond the speed of light. It hints at a deeper level of connection between all matter in the universe, though science is still working on figuring out what that means and how it works. My theory though is that all matter was entangled at the time of the big bang, when the universe was created, and that entanglement persists today. But, all those other parallel universes? There’s a very slight difference in the way their matter is entangled. Each branch of the tree, so to speak, is just slightly different from all the others at the subatomic level. It has to do with quantum resonant frequencies, but that’s beyond anything you need to understand. But, where it matters is that we can change the way the atoms that make up a plane vibrate at a quantum level, and if they match the vibrations of a parallel universe, the matter becomes a part of that universe and is removed from ours. Critically though, there’s still a degree of entanglement between the original universe and the matter. That’s how we can get the plane back, by adjusting the resonant frequency back to its original value.”
Alex noticed now that the smile of pride that had been etched in Melissa’s face had disappeared now. Before he could wonder why he instinctively knew the answer. Suddenly, he understood very well why Melissa was feeling fear. It wasn’t fear of failure.
In a sense, it was fear of success.
“You want me to test-fly a plane that gets pushed into a parallel universe, don’t you?”
Melissa didn’t even have to say the word yes. He could see it in his eyes.
Major Alcheck began to speak before Melissa could.
“Alex, you can see why this is such a big deal. If the X-100 works as Doctor Wakeman’s models indicate it will then the United States Air Force will have in its possession a weapons system more devastating and powerful than anything else that humanity has ever dreamed of. There would be nothing any enemy could ever do to defend against hyperstealth technology. We could send a bomber to Moscow, and there would quite literally be no way whatsoever for them to know about it until the city was turned into radioactive glass. Hell, the notion of nuclear weapons would almost seem childish by comparison! Why irradiate a huge swatch of land just to destroy a single city when you can unleash some precision-guided munitions at your leisure onto whatever target you saw fit? All of the destructive potential with any of the nasty side-effects of nukes.”
Alex processed his words. Major Alcheck was clearly right: a military aircraft with this advantage wouldn’t need to carry the most powerful weapons. It would almost be counter-productive to do so. There’s no need for overwhelming force when you have the element of surprise in absolute terms.
“There is clearly more risk involved in this flight than any you've ever undertaken before Captain. In fact, there’s more danger involved than any test flight that anyone has ever made, save perhaps the early days of Alan Shepard and the Mercury program. But the reward is likewise far higher.”
“Wait, hold on a second. Melissa, what is the risk exactly?”
That look of intense fear poured over Melissa’s face once more as she began to speak.
“There’s a chance you won’t be able to get back into this universe. In order for this to work, we need to push the X-100 just one universe away, which is all it should take to render the plane undetectable. But, getting you back to the exact right universe is tricky. We’re going to use a phenomenon called ‘quantum entanglement’ to do it. That’s an effect where two quantum systems, cesium atoms in this case, become entangled and effects on one are replicated in the other regardless of how much distance separates them, and it happens instantaneously. The theory is this represents a link across universes that we can use to ‘snap’ you and the X-100 back into the correct universe. But…” Melissa paused.
"But?" Alex sensed the but was something pretty big, regardless of the fact that he didn't understand what Melissa was saying anymore.
“But… we also theorize that the link, if stretched too thin will snap, in a sense. It would be like a rubber band. The link gets stretched out the further you move away from the original branch point. To put it another way, if we push you too far away initially, more than one or two universes away, we may not be able to get you back. Each universe we push you into means a barrier that has to be broken, and the math says that the link between the cesium atoms will get weaker and weaker. Plus, even after the initial push, you’ll still be moving further away as each Planck time unit passes because you’ll be still be moving between universes naturally. That’s the result of the normal flow of time. The initial push, you can think of, as a train jumping between two railroad tracks. You’re still traveling along a defined path, but the path is a different one than you would have been traveling. Like train tracks, they can diverge, and in the case of parallel universes, they do, more and more, as time goes by and new universes are spawned. So, the link gets stretched further, becomes more tenuous, and we think, that is, I think, might eventually snap.”
Alex was lost now, his science-brain having long since reached its limits of understanding. He did, however, understand the look of fear in Melissa’s eyes and he knew that meant the danger was very real, a fact that Major Alcheck was about to drive home.
"Alex," Major Alcheck began. Even though they were friends, Major Alcheck using his first name in an official setting like this was highly unusual. Alex understood what that must mean. "As usual, it's your choice whether you want to perform this flight. Usually, I expect going in that you'll agree because that's just the way you are, not much scares you, and you'll try just about any crazy thing that's thrown at you. This time though, you've really got to think this through. I wouldn't be at all surprised or disappointed if you didn't accept this one. In fact, as your friend, there’s a big part of me that hopes you won’t take it."
Alex was thinking this through, and something didn’t jive.
“So, Melissa, what happens to me, exactly, if the link snaps?”
“Well, at first, nothing. You’ll continue to experience a new path through ever-spawning parallel universes, and you won’t even know the difference.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound so risky to me," Alex said.
"I said at first Alex. Aside from the fact that you’ll be cut off from us forever, the more significant problem-“
“There’s a problem more significant than being cut off from you forever?!”
“-yeah, there is. The real issue comes a few minutes later. See, to make this work requires that we create a quantum singularity. That’s where we take an atom of hydrogen and, using a precise arrangement of particle beams, cause it to collapse to a mathematical point. As this happens, its gravitational force increases because it's effectively more mass in a given volume of space. Even though it's minuscule, so tiny in fact that the gravitational force would never effect you, eventually we reach a point where the density is so great that not even light can escape from its gravity well".
“Wait,“ Alex exclaimed, “not even light can escape? I remember something about that on that show I saw: you’re talking about a damned black hole, aren’t you?”
A pained look crossed her face now. She hadn’t planned on going into this particular detail with Alex. He didn’t need to know all the nitty-gritty technical details. His unexpected understanding and opened Pandora’s box. Which, she mussed, was kind of fair given that what she was proposing was opening a Pandora’s box of her own.
"In a sense, yes," replied Melissa, "but not exactly. At the center of a black hole is a singularity, but it's a singularity formed by the collapse of the mass of a star. It's much bigger and has a much greater gravitational attraction and effects things at a much larger radius. That’s why black holes are so dangerous and destructive to anything near them. A quantum singularity, by contrast, is smaller- much smaller in fact than the radius of an atom. But, on that scale, it has the same sort of gravitational attraction of a much larger object. Not as much as a stellar black hole, that is, one formed from a collapsed star, but still very strong gravity. More importantly than all that though is the fact that a singularity, be it quantum or not, bends the fabric of spacetime. That’s what gravity is in fact: the mass of an object is how much spacetime is curved. It just so happens that near a singularity, that curvature is immense- so immense in fact that once you pass what’s called the event horizon, the point at which light can no longer escape, the curvature is effectively infinite. But, infinite doesn’t truly mean anything, contrary to what you’ve always heard. At least, not in a physical sense. The infinite curvature of spacetime at the point of a singularity does have a physical manifestation though, namely a wormhole.”
“I’ve heard that term too, but I don’t remember what that is.”
“That’s just as well Alex, because any time you’ve ever heard it said they were probably describing it using old theories anyway. In my model of how the universe works at a fundamental level, a wormhole is a bridge between two parallel universes. It’s a breakage of the barrier between parallel universe. More importantly, if we manipulate the curvature according to some relatively simple geometric rules, we can cause any object that encapsulates the singularity to be ‘pushed’ through the bridge.”
“An object, like a plane, with me in it?”
“Exactly.”
Major Alcheck noticed that the original question hadn’t been answered. He gazed at Melissa with that look he shot at someone when he felt like he wasn’t getting exactly what he should, which was a look nobody, Melissa very much included, ever wanted to be shot.
“What happen