“Please don’t do this,” interrupted Polaria, stepping between Nes and Zhaos.
Nes sighed as Zhaos awkwardly excused himself, navigating around inactive lab equipment to escape.
“There’s still time to stop,” continued Polaria. “Please, you can—”
“I know how you feel, Pol,” cut in Nes. “You’ve told me a hundred times. And as you know, we’ve checked the math and done thousands of simulations. We have a killswitch, and the protective equipment is orders of magnitude more powerful than necessary. I even requisitioned a timed Nuclear Freezer.”
“But you don’t know what’s going to happen!” responded Polaria, her calm facade giving way. “How can you protect against something you don’t understand?”
“That’s the whole point of experimentation, Pol! We’re all here to figure out what we don’t understand!” Nes waved her hand around the room, gesturing at the twenty-odd members of her lab. They all continued their preparations, clearly pretending they couldn’t hear the argument between the lab leader and her best friend.
“This is different and you know it,” said Polaria, crossing her arms. “You aren’t trying to figure out how the world works, you’re intentionally perverting physics.”
“I don’t see how this is any different from the team that smashed the first atoms together, or the—”
“Don’t give me that bullshit.”
The noise in the lab died briefly as Nes’s face contorted in a quick series of shock, then anger, then forced calm. “Doctor Black and I are going to have a discussion outside,” she announced without breaking eye contact. “Carry on. I’ll be back shortly.”
She promptly turned and stormed to the exit. With a mental command from her Brain4, the door slid open. She stepped through, quickly followed by her friend. As soon as the door closed, she whirled to face Pol.
“Look, I’m—” started Polaria.
“Don’t you ever swear at me in front of my team,” Nes hissed. “You get away with a lot of shit for being my friend, but you will not lower their morale today.”
“Someone has to question you,” responded Polaria in an equally aggressive whisper. “They all see you as some flawless deity. None of them have the courage to ask if you know what you’re doing.”
“So now you’re insulting my team! These are the brightest minds in physics, and you know it. We’ve been working for years in preparation for this experiment. I can guarantee it’ll be safe.”
“You can’t know that.” Polaria’s eyes drifted to the floor. “I’m… Nes, I’m scared.”
Nes’s eyes softened and her fists unclenched. “I know, Pol. But it’ll all be okay. I promise.” She stepped forward and wrapped Pol in a hug.
Polaria kept her arms down at her sides. “If you go through with it,” breathed Pol, “I’ll leave Mars. I’ll go back to Earth.”
Nes released her friend, stepped back, and stared. “You can’t mean it.”
“I do.” Polaria looked up with a renewed intensity. “I’ll resign my position.”
Nes gaped for a few seconds. “You’d throw everything away just like that?”
Polaria shook her head. “I’m not the one throwing it away. You are.”
“Pol… please don’t make me choose.”
Polaria stayed silent.
“You know I can’t stop now,” whispered Nes. “This could change the world.”
“Well then,” said Polaria. “I guess you’ve chosen.”
Polaria turned away and walked down the hall. Her steps barely made a sound as she traveled through the light Martian gravity. Nes stood in a daze, watching her friend disappear around a corner.
“Doctor Chamberlain?” called a voice from the lab, breaking her out of her trance. “We’re almost ready to start.”
“Okay,” she said, briefly considering going after her friend. But Pol had to come back eventually — she was just being dramatic, as usual. So Nes took one last glance down the hall, then turned and walked back through the door.
Quiet, excited conversation greeted her as she re-entered the room. Bright, disinfected light shone through the dry air. All-environment space suits hung on hooks next to arrays of pristine machinery. In the middle of the lab — the first Mars-based quantum physics lab — stood all the employees, each hand-picked by Nes.
Directly across from her was a NuGlass wall. It was virtually indestructible, offering protection from both extreme temperatures and projectiles. Nes was convinced it was unnecessary, but knew that Pol was right to take precautions — no one really knew what could happen.
“Raizel,” said Nes, approaching her Chief Engineer, who was entering commands at a rare physical control panel. “What’s the status?”
“Almost ready,” responded Raizel without taking her eyes from her work. “We ran all the failsafe checks, and Zhaos has been re-checking the math for hours. After I finish calibrating the detectors we’ll be all set.”
Nes thanked her, then turned to the congregation in the center of the room and spotted her Chief Security Officer, Ithgar. He was in the middle of a conversation, but he promptly cut his sentence short when he received her mental connection request. He excused himself from his coworkers and sat down, his eyes unfocusing.
[“A secret message from Anesidora? Now this is exciting,”] thought Ithgar to Nes. [“Either you’re giving me a giant bonus or something has gone horribly wrong.”]
[“Neither yet,”] replied Nes. [“We’ll see about that bonus depending on how flattering you are when you introduce me.”]
[“That would have been good to know before I wrote my speech. So, what’s up?”]
Nes hesitated for an instant. [“I want you to know that I don’t doubt you. I just want to check one last time that you’re sure this will be safe.”]
She could feel his confidence flicker.
[“Of course. Why, have you found something wrong?”]
[“No. It’s just that Pol is really worried…”]
[“Ahh, don’t worry about her,”] sent Ithgar. [“You know how worked up she gets over nothing. You think I’d let you blow us up with all of Earth watching?”]
Nes laughed out loud, releasing some of the tension she hadn’t realized she was holding onto. [“For some reason I think you’d love nothing more than that.”]
[“Okay, yeah, it would be pretty funny.”]
Nes smiled as she cinched the mental connection. She heard the experiment room’s door thud closed, then acknowledged a nod from Raizel and exhaled deeply.
“All set,” said Raizel. “The video stream is on standby.”
“Thank you, Raizel,” said Nes, keeping her voice as steady as she could. She didn’t love the idea of being seen live by everyone in the worlds, but it was necessary now that her funding was running dry. They had to increase public excitement about physics research somehow, and this was the flashiest way she could think of.
“Let’s begin. Start the countdown.”
Everyone but Nes, Ithgar, and Raizel sat down to watch. Raizel held up three fingers. “Three… two…” She mouthed “one,” and pointed ahead. They were live.
Ithgar made his way to the center of the feed and paused there dramatically. Then he inhaled deeply and began. He described the lab’s founding, its purpose, and Nes’s list of accomplishments. Nes barely registered his words. All she could do was focus on his lips moving and hold her exterior composure.
“…so here is the smartest, strongest, most impressive person I have ever met: Doctor Anesidora Chamberlain.”
Everyone in the lab cheered as Ithgar stepped away from center-stage. He smirked at Nes as she rolled her eyes, unable to hide her grin. As he sat down, she took his place, exuding confidence that she didn’t feel. Without a preamble, she began.
“At the human scale, we can predict accurately what will happen based on specific inputs. For example,” she drew a rubber ball from her lab coat’s pocket. “We know that if I drop this ball from right here in these conditions, it will fall and bounce in the same spot every time. No randomness.”
She released the ball and it fell to the ground, then bounced back up, where she caught it and slid it back in her pocket.
“However, at a quantum scale, it is no longer possible to accurately predict what will happen — you can only make probabilistic guesses. Enter the Multiverse Hypothesis. This states that every time there is some random quantum event, the universe splits. For example, if a quantum event would lead to an electron either being in Denver or Los Angeles, there would be a universe where it’s in Denver, and another where it’s in Los Angeles. This hypothesis has never been demonstrated to be false, but we have no absolute proof to support its validity either. But today that will change.”
Nes stepped to the side to present the room behind her, visible through the NuGlass wall. In the middle stood a metal box, half a meter wide in every direction. It was held up by a rubber table, and its back was connected to surrounding machines via a plethora of metal tubes and wires. On the front of the box was a simple digital display that read 20.164 °C.
“This tungsten box contains many particles, but one lucky particle will be selected. We’ll call it Aleph. At the moment there’s nothing extraordinary about Aleph, but we’re going to change that.
“There is a concept called quantum entanglement, in which two particles are linked together through space and time. We, however, are going to entangle Aleph with itself. Raizel, would you activate the entanglement please?”
Raizel entered a command at her terminal. A moment of silent anticipation passed.
“Aleph has been selected and self-entangled,” said Raizel.
“Thank you,” said Nes. “Now that Aleph is entangled, we’ll freeze the Box, dropping the temperature to nearly absolute zero. Raizel?”
“Initiating freeze,” said Raizel, punching in another command. The reading on the temperature indicator began to drop, accelerating as it continued its descent.
“Any time you stop looking at a quantum particle, its qualities are no longer concrete. Instead, they are in a superposition. However, once we look at the particle again, it collapses the superposition, which creates a split in the Multiverse.”
She waved in the direction of the box. “Once the box has frozen completely, we’re going to stop measuring Aleph, and then re-measure it, splitting the Multiverse. Depending on the resulting state of Aleph, our machines will then either pump heat into the box, or do nothing at all.”
The temperature reading behind her reached nearly absolute zero, then stopped. Nes turned around to face the experiment room.
“Raizel, please deactivate all measurements.”
“Blinding,” said Raizel. A second later, she followed up. “Blind.”
After a few tense seconds, Nes nodded to Raizel, who then entered a final command. “Observing.”
A message flared to life on a screen next to the Box. It read, “No heating.”
“We’re in the cold universe,” whispered Nes just loud enough for the microphones to pick up. “Based on our calibrations, if the box heats up any faster than one degree per second, it must be stealing heat from our twin universe that we just split off from in the Multiverse. That would prove our hypothesis correct.”
Everyone in the room stood paralyzed, gazes fixed on the temperature readout. Silence wrapped around the scientists like a python constricting its prey. Nes wrung her hands as the readout slowly ticked upward, updating once a second. It steadily increased by one degree. Come on, she thought. Just a little faster.
Suddenly, it went up by two degrees. Then three. Then five.
Nes turned around to her lab, her eyes wide. “It worked.”
The lab exploded into cheers. Ithgar hugged everyone around him, Zhaos punched the air wildly, and even Raizel’s lips twitched into a smile. Nes grinned widely as several labmates jumped to her and shook her hand.
After allowing a reasonable celebration, Nes motioned for calm. “This is incredible. Over a century after it was proposed by Schrödinger, we have solid evidence to back up the Multiverse hypothesis. This is a giant leap, but it’s only the beginning. We…”
Suddenly she faltered, seeing Raizel’s frown. Raizel pointed at the Box, so Nes turned around again, then froze as she tried to understand what she was seeing.
The temperature had risen over two hundred degrees, and the rise was accelerating.
“It seems to be sharing a lot more energy than we anticipated,” she said slowly. The temperature continued to rise, faster, faster.
“Raizel, please flip the killswitch,” said Nes with as much calm as she could muster.
“Disentangling Aleph,” came Raizel’s voice. Nes couldn’t look away from the numbers, which continued to accelerate upward. It shouldn’t be possible - all this energy was coming from a single particle?
Raizel’s tight voice cut through the silence. “Disentanglement failed.”
Nes let out a choked gasp, along with several members of the lab. “You’re sure no heaters are on?”
Raizel nodded curtly. Nes stared in shocked silence as the numbers continued their upward trajectory. Within seconds, they hit 999 degrees Celsius, where it stagnated for a few seconds. Then the reading was replaced with a single word: “ERROR.”
“Raizel, end the stream. Ithgar, Zhaos, stay. Everyone else, evacuate. Now.”
Her orders met no resistance. A few of the younger lab assistants bolted for the door, while everyone else hastened out professionally. Zhaos’s eyes darted from Nes to the exodus, but Raizel maintained her disconnected demeanor. Ithgar’s face had flushed bright red — whether from embarrassment or fear, Nes couldn’t tell.
“Ithgar,” started Nes, “what the fuck?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand how disentanglement failed… based on Zhaos’s math, it should have — ”
“Don’t you put this on me,” interrupted Zhaos angrily. “My math was re-checked by multiple people, including you. Your failsafes were the problem.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is!” said Nes. “Both of you, get into your environment-resistant suits. You’re going in.”
Ithgar sprinted to his suit and strapped it on while Zhaos opened and closed his mouth wordlessly.
“Go!” shouted Nes.
“Screw this,” said Zhaos. He dashed to the exit and slammed the door behind him.
“I’m on it,” said Raizel, donning her own suit.
“I need you at the control panel!” protested Nes.
“I’ve done all I can from there,” she said as she finished strapping herself in. Ithgar ran for the door to the experiment, then pushed it open. Blazing heat struck Nes, throwing her backward. She screamed, but the rush of heat stopped and dissipated as Raizel ran through the entry and slammed the door shut. Nes jumped back up and watched as Raizel and Ithgar ripped the tungsten tubes off the box. Ithgar grabbed the Nuclear Freezer, capable of absorbing a gigajoule of heat, from the wall and activated its timer. Raizel grabbed the handle of the box as Ithgar drew back his hand, ready to toss the Freezer. She yanked the box open.
In a flash of white light Ithgar and Raizel’s suits ignited. The Freezer dropped to the ground and exploded uselessly as Ithgar collapsed and writhed briefly before succumbing. Raizel lasted only a second longer. The blazes of their suits met as everything in the experimentation room melted.
Nes fell to her knees as she felt her skin begin to burn. Smoke from her burning hair filled her nose, and the air she sucked through her mouth scalded her throat. She found herself unable to scream as her clothes burst into flame and all moisture was ripped from her eyes.
In spite of her pain, Nes’s second-to-last thought was that she had been right. Physics would be changed forever.
Her last thought was a desperate hope that Polaria was far enough away to survive.
Polaria was not.