Quantum Times (15 page)

     “Well well well,” exclaimed Dr. Wheeling. “Curiouser and curiouser!”

     David’s astonishment was phrased differently, “This just gets better and better!”

     General Greene’s response was of a different order. At last he could get an answer to a question that had been front and center in his mind for weeks. “If you are indeed from The Object, why are you here and what do you want?”

     Plato returned General Greene’s steadfast gaze. “Admirably direct, General. Where I come from, directness is respected – though that is not true everywhere else. The answer to your question is simple, though you may not understand it at first. The answer is that The Object, as you call us, is here to save your planet from destruction.”

     The military man stood up even straighter and more combatively. “And who is it that threatens our destruction?”

     Plato looked back at General Greene with the eyes of a man who had seen everything there ever was to see. “I believe you already know the answer to that question. So I will answer it with a question. A few weeks ago, just before our arrival, over twenty million people perished in a brief but horrific exchange of nuclear weapons. Who was responsible for that, General?”

     Greene knew he was trapped before he started. “Well there were complex political issues dividing North and South Korea and the leadership of North Korea was very unstable…”

     Plato held up his hand to keep Greene from continuing. “General, you know better. Do not treat me like an uninformed electorate. The leaders of this world allowed nuclear weapons to be used as toys by a homicidal megalomaniac who was just a child. And that was obvious to everyone here, but no one did anything! And more than twenty million people died – and that is just the beginning. Your world teeters on the edge of one disaster after another. And the consequences of those disasters each day become greater and greater. So I ask you again, who threatens the destruction of your planet?”

     General Greene just looked away.

     Plato then continued. “We have been observing your planet closely for a while now. Our statistical models show a 34% likelihood of a human caused global mega disaster occurring here within the next twenty years and a 63% likelihood of one occurring within the next 35 years. Within that time period there is a 17% likelihood that the disaster will be so great that civilization on this planet will perish and archeologists from other planets ten thousand years in the future will be finding your ruins under the shifting sands of deserts.”

     After stunned silence lasting what felt to them like hours, David replied, “I hope you are here to change those odds.”

     Plato nodded.

     General Greene was still combative. “Plato…you look like us – you look human. Yet you say that you are from The Object –which we believe is not from Earth. How do I know you actually are from The Object?”

     “Yes I see that you need proof. Not unreasonable. What would you like me to do?”

     The General thought for a moment. “If you are from The Object, how about showing me how you got down here? That would be a start.”

     “I like it,” said Plato. “One moment, my ‘ride’ as you would call it, is just on the other side of the beach. I’m instructing it to come here now. As a military man you should appreciate this.”

     Planck looked at David, “This is very cool. I’ve ridden in it.”

     As he finished speaking, a dark ovoid object the size of a city transit bus approached them from behind the mangroves on the beach to their west. Silently it came to hover over them twenty feet above their heads, then it shot skyward soundlessly and was out of sight in seconds then just as quickly it returned to hover above them, then it somehow changed the colors of its skin so that it was almost impossible to see even though it was mere yards away.

     “General, if you had been trying to track it with radar or any other sensing device, your screens would show nothing. Are you satisfied?”

     Greene studied the vehicle silently hovering over them. He looked for a propulsion system and saw nothing, nor did its shape look particularly aerodynamic. What he had just seen did not seem possible and the acceleration and deceleration he had witnessed would have produced G forces that no human could endure. “Our military has nothing that could do that. We have some jets that can approximate it but not soundlessly and not move at such extreme speeds in both directions and come so immediately to a complete stop above our heads.”

     “So, General, go ahead and ask your next question?”

     “You’re right, I have another. How is it that you appear human?”

     Plato smiled, “Of course, that is the question. The answer is that I appear human because my DNA is essentially identical to yours. My ancestors too were homo sapiens.”

     Dr. Wheeling and David shared looks of amazement with the General. “Are you somehow from our future?” David asked.

     “Time travel is still beyond us,” replied Plato.

     “But you are from Earth?” David followed up.

     “No, not the way you think. I am not from this Earth.”

     Dr. Wheeling started nodding his head up and down. David knew the head movement as the indicator that Wheeling now understood. “So you are from ‘an’ Earth but not this Earth. And let me guess, your Earth has developed technologically faster than ours. I guess that makes us the dumb kids.”

     “There are many Earths, Dr. Wheeling. Some less advanced than yours, some more advanced than mine.”

     “How many is many?” David wanted to know.

     “We don’t know. We know once there was just one Earth and then it cloned itself and then the clones cloned themselves. I use the word ‘clone’ because it is a word you are familiar with. What occurs is not actually cloning. We think of it as an original parent Earth and it had daughters and then the daughters had daughters and so on.”

     David saw how it might be. “On each of these Earths, are there people? Homo sapiens?”

     Plato nodded, “Yes, on most of them. But on a number of them, people are no longer on them. Mankind on those planets destroyed themselves, leaving just barren husks of once thriving planets.”

     “Now I get it,” said General Greene.

     “I feel like Charlton Heston at the end of the original Planet of the Apes movie when he sees the broken down Statue of Liberty rising out of the sands on the beach in the Forbidden Zone.” David said.

     Plato suggested that he and General Greene should go and meet separately.

Planck was eager to share his experience and new insights with Dr. Wheeling and David. So they split into two meetings, each going off to a meeting room in the Retreat building.

     As they walked away, Plato towered over the shorter General Greene like a basketball center towers over a six foot guard. But there was nothing in the general’s demeanor that suggested a lack of physical presence, even when in the company of the towering Plato. Greene had an inner force that reduced any physical shortfall to meaninglessness. They entered a meeting room and chose to sit across from each other at a table.

     Plato spoke first, “General Greene I view it as quite fortuitous that you happened to come with Dr. Wheeling and Mr. Randall. I think you are an ideal emissary from your government. You have a very distinguished record of accomplishments – from a Silver Star for heroism in battle to a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and another Master’s Degree in Weapons Technology. Very impressive.”

     “If you know all that about me you probably also know that I am not here in an official capacity – I am not an emissary of my government. And how do you know what is in my record?”

     “We have access to any computer files we are interested in. As to your being an emissary, well, you are here as am I. You would be lacking in initiative if you did not take advantage of the circumstances and nothing in your record suggests that you lack initiative.”

     “Fair enough, let’s talk… Perhaps we can begin by your explaining a little further your statement that there are many Earths?”

     “That is a good starting point. General are you familiar with the quantum physics thought exercise called ‘Schrodinger’s Cat?’ ”

     The General nodded, “In the thought experiment, a cat is put in a box with a poison that has a 50% chance of killing the cat. Until the box is opened, the cat is presumed to be neither dead nor alive. It is a probability function. Only by opening the box and observing the cat is one of those outcomes determined.”

     “Very good. Then you probably also know that some quantum theorists suggest that the universe could divide itself at the moment of the determination event such that in one universe the cat lives and in an otherwise identical sister universe the cat dies. Quantum physics theory allows for all possible outcomes.”

     “Yes but that is just a thought experiment,” the General insisted.

     “The rational mind suggests that, of course. How could a universe instantly duplicate itself? But your problem here is that you think of the universe as being made up of things …. Of matter and of energy. That it is a material universe. But actually, contrary to what common sense would tell you, it is not a universe of matter.  In its raw state it is made up of information. Information that interfaces with what you call Dark Energy and Dark Matter. It is framed by the laws of physics. Its language is mathematics. And the boss of it all is ‘consciousness.’ “

     “So how does that produce many Earths?”

     Plato regarded the General for a long moment. “I cannot tell why it works but I can tell you how. It seems that whenever on any Earth there is a major event where one multitude of people opposes another multitude of people, each group crying out for a victory of their own, the universe provides each of them what it wants. For example, one of my crew members is from an Earth where the Germans won what you call here World War I. On that planet there was no subsequent World War II. Their history from the early 20
th
Century to the Present is quite different from yours. My Earth’s departure from your Earth came more than two thousand years earlier. In my Earth, Alexander the Great died before he moved his army into Asia. His successors kept Greece strong through the build-up of Rome. So Greek thought and culture prevailed into the historical period you call the Middle Ages – where frankly your Earth stayed rooted in ignorance for a thousand years.”

     The General thought he understood even as it occurred to him that he should think he was listening to a lunatic. “So we all have Earth in common, but our histories are different – the difference starting whenever one of these cloning –like events occurs?”

     “That is correct. But we have more than just our Earth in common. We have our ancestors in common as well. Neither one of us is more or less human than the other.”

     “And what about the people alive at the moment of the splitting?  Are they alive on both Earths?”

     “Yes .They would have to be, don’t you see?”

     “The ramifications of that are going to make my head spin. But putting all that aside, earlier during your introduction to David, you said he would be useful ‘in the coming battle.’ What coming battle are you referring to?” The General leaned forward in his chair and his hands on the table curled into fists.

     “And this is why I wanted to talk to you – a leader of your country’s military. Regardless of which Earth one is on, as I said earlier, mankind is the same. Our species seeks dominance and competitive advantage wherever it is and wherever it goes. We are capable of great brutality. We destroy whole cultures without even a qualm of conscience. We of what you call The Object may be the first to arrive but we will not be the last. What brought us here will bring others – others who have far more dangerous intentions than we do for your Earth.”

     “Why now? What has changed from before when we were left alone?”

     “Actually the beacon you sent out to the other Earths technologically advanced enough to assess it is a combination of several factors. One is the growth of your population into billions of people – Your Earth’s consciousness factor increased, also Planck’s manipulation of matter with his mentalization as he calls it, registered on our sensors, and lastly the sudden extinction of the consciousness of twenty million people left a dark hole noticeable for what was no longer there.”

     “So the battle you refer to is coming to us from these other Earths?”

     “The battle – which may come in many forms – is more a result of your geopolitical forces…however visitors from other earths will come here to take advantage of your Earth’s instabilities and vulnerabilities. They will aid and abet animosities, they will instigate violent confrontations. They will do what men do to take advantage of weaker players. If it were not for the present conditions already here, there would be no battle.”

     General Greene knew he needed to stop and think about things. He had outdistanced his protective cover. He should pull back and await further orders. Much as he hated it, he had to get the elected officials involved. Still he had to ask one more question.

     “And what about you, Plato? Are you here to attack us too? What do you want from us?”