Saeko stared at the images on the screen. Her eyes had gone blurry from the rubbing and the volume was too low to hear anything. It looked like something from a foreign drama — searchlights flashed up and down; a chase scene through the desert perhaps — but there didn’t seem to be any actors. She watched the searchlights drag across a barren-looking landscape. Then she saw the object of their focus: a black abyss, a huge rift in the ground. The chasm was so deep the searchlights were unable to penetrate its depths. Saeko turned up the volume on the old set and started to flick through the channels. Each and every channel was showing the same set of images. She held her breath; if all that was broadcast was news, something really huge had happened.
Saeko switched the TV back to the first channel. The viewpoint was bearing downwards, closer to the ground. The roaring of helicopter blades filled the room as the camera’s line of sight came level with the edge of the chasm. It continued to descend until it eventually stopped, hovering just above the top. The image below the edge was pure black.
A reporter was shouting commentary over the roar of the blades:
… reporting from the desert between Route 101 and the Interstate Highway Route 5 here in California. Here, you can see the spot where the state highway linking the two routes has been ripped apart. If anyone is listening to this in their cars, please exercise caution driving. Those driving down state highway routes 58, 46, 41, 198 … The roads are now considered dangerous … Repeat, it is extremely dangerous to be on those routes …
The camera panned across the landscape, following the descriptions of the female reporter. The screen traced the line of asphalt, up to where the road met the chasm’s edge. The edge looked unnaturally straight, as though it had been cut out of the land with a sharp knife. The reporter continued:
No one knows at this point what has caused the appearance of this gigantic rift in the ground. It has been reported that it appeared yesterday, sometime between early evening and the middle of the night. The exact time of its appearance is as yet unknown. No seismic disturbances were reported around this timeframe. It is highly unlikely that this is the result of seismic activity …
Using sonar-based measurements scientists have already ascertained the rift as being up to 2 kilometers deep. It is almost impossible to convey the scale via camera. What power is capable of creating such a vast rift through the earth? Is it something beyond the boundaries of human comprehension? All that’s left is this edge. The earth that was here has just vanished without a trace. Could this be the wrath of an angry god? There’s something eerie about the silence here.
Saeko immediately recognized it as the same phenomenon she had seen earlier back in Atami; there, a crater had just appeared out of nowhere. Now the same thing was happening in California, and the only differences were the scale and the shape — a crater-like hole in Atami compared to this canyon-like chasm in America. It was as though a second Grand Canyon had just appeared overnight. Saeko suspected that the chasm was actually larger than the Grand Canyon.
She gathered her thoughts. The mechanism and its significance were the same as for the crater in Atami. The reporter could only suggest that it was something beyond human understanding, and she sounded terrified. Saeko stood, surprised at the sense of calm she now felt as she watched the chaos unfold on the screen.
Despite having had a few drinks, Hashiba had yet to feel the effects of the alcohol. Someone had suggested having a drink and at that point everyone in the room seemed to suddenly realize just how thirsty they had become. Hosokawa had pulled a couple of bottles of beer from the fridge and poured them into glasses to hand around. Everyone downed their glass in a single draught, prompting Hosokawa to pull out another couple of bottles. The alcohol had been necessary to calm the tension in the room.
Eventually, Hashiba asked the question that hung on the minds of the rest of the film crew. “I guess you’d better let us know just what this ‘phase transition’ is.”
There was no way to decide what to do next without understanding the basics of the situation. Someone had muted the volume, but the images of the gigantic chasm continued to loom on the screen.
Isogai first translated the English phrase into Japanese for the rest of the crew. Only Hashiba and Kagayama seemed to recognize the term even in Japanese, but they too had scant idea what it meant.
“The best way to explain a phase transition is to take the example of water.” Isogai held up his glass to drink his beer but saw that it was almost empty. Instead of moving to refill it, he raised up the glass. “Let’s say this glass is full of water. Water, as we all know, is defined as being in a liquid state. If you heat it to 100 degrees centigrade, however, it boils and becomes gaseous. Conversely, if you cool it below 0 degrees, then it freezes and becomes solid. In other words, water is said to have three ‘phases’: a gaseous phase above 100 degrees, a solid phase below 0 degrees, and a liquid phase in between. That’s the basic meaning of the word. Phase transition is simply the transition from one of these phases to another.”
That was easy enough to follow. The properties of water, H2O, changed between the three phases of solid, liquid, and gas depending on the temperature of its molecules. These states were known as phases. Isogai’s appeal to everyday experience allowed Hashiba to quickly grasp the fundamental concept.
“In the same way,” Isogai continued, “the universe itself also has a phase. Our perception of space is three dimensional, and time flows in a single direction. Our universe is founded on the balance of the four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. A particular set of physical constants is required to support the balance and constitutes a phase.
“However — and this is key — if the phase changes, so do the laws of physics in play. Going back to the example of water, we know that the speed that sound waves travel through it differs depending on whether it’s in its gaseous, liquid, or solid phase. The same is true for light; the angle of refraction depends on the current phase of the matter it travels through. A phase transition means a change in physical constants and a shift in the mathematical structure underpinning our world.”
Hashiba felt his body grow increasingly tense as he listened to Isogai’s explanation, immediately taking in the implications of what he was saying. If true, then the shift in mathematics — the appearance of a pattern in the value of Pi, the collapse of the Riemann hypothesis — would no doubt express itself in ways that they’d seen.
Until this point Hashiba had been willing to dismiss the idea that a shift in numbers could have tangible, real-world implications. If the irregularities they had witnessed were some sort of prologue to a phase transition … He shuddered at the idea. Hashiba had conceived of the world he inhabited in terms of gas. Fish inhabited the world of water. Worms, the solid world of earth. If such an order were to be suddenly flipped on its head … It would be as though people were suddenly cast in concrete, or shackled and dropped out at sea, left to drown. Hashiba finally came to understand why Isogai and Chris had been so agitated. He understood the fear in their eyes.
“You don’t mean to say that a phase transition is actually about to happen?”
Isogai coughed awkwardly and brought his head up to meet Hashiba’s stare. He nodded briefly. “Unfortunately, that’s exactly what all this is pointing towards.”