Iris laughed. “Since we established contact with your culture, many Individuals of our world, particularly our science meta-historian specialists, have derived great amusement from your quantum mythology, that area which you call the ‘interpretation of quantum mechanics.’ They were particularly amused by your Copenhagen interpretation, with its state vectors that are altered by the thoughts of intelligent observers, and by your EverettWheeler interpretation, with its splitting and resplitting into multiple universes. In this regard, your culture is unique among those that we have encountered. No other has provided such a remarkable demonstration of fertile creative desperation in seeking to understand physical behavior at the quantum level. We find these myths of yours quaint and charming.”
“In other words, ‘wrong’?” asked Roger.
Iris looked troubled. “No more wrong, say, than your Greek or Norse myths. Your excursions of scientific fantasy are an interesting manifestation of your culture, but they are not an accurate portrayal of the behavior of the universe. Human observers, for example, are not demigods with the ability to collapse a wave function with an act of measurement or of insight. It is better that they are not, believe me.”
“I’m not sure where this is leading,” said George, “or what it has to do with our present predicament. I gather that you were in the process of saying that there is a way of — how did you put it? — nullifying the Hive’s discovery of our universe.”
“Pardon me, George,” said Iris. “Yes, that’s what I was saying. This universe, all Bubbles individually and all of them together, moves forward in time at the quantum level by a chain of handshakes between past and future. The psi-star time-reversed wave functions of your formulation of quantum mechanics, though you have never realized it, represent the future reaching back to make an accommodation with the past that allows a quantum event to happen, to become reality. Each quantum event emerges into reality as the result of a feedback loop between past and future. These are allowed timelike loops that bring the universe into being.
“If we create an artificial timelike loop back to some point of space-time within the negative light cone of the present, we create a condition that nullifies all of those handshakes, those transactions between future and past. The events within the loop are in effect erased or unraveled and the universe starts over from the first instant where the forbidden loop would have begun to exist. The universe is wounded and heals itself with a new set of handshakes that do not bring a timelike loop into being. Nature, as your ancient Greek natural philosophers might have said, abhors a time machine.
“We will attempt to create a time-hole back to an era from which you can prevent the SSC from being built. If we can achieve that, then your world, your Bubble, will be safe from the Hive.”
“Why do we need to stop the SSC project?” George asked. “If the universe really reforms without the timelike loop, why do we need to do anything more? Won’t the universe heal itself to take care of the Hive problem?”
“Not necessarily,” said Iris. “There are many paths that could lead to the absence of a timelike loop. For example, your SSC is built and the Hive discovers your world, but we do not.”
“Does this time vortex thing really work?” asked Roger. “You’ve actually done it before?”
“We have been making contact with other Bubbles for a dozen gross of orbits, over seventeen of your centuries. For about the last half of that period, we have had to deal with the Hive civilization. In our last eight contacts, we were able to provide isolation from the Hive in five cases, and we had to create timelike loops in two cases. The other case was lost to the Hive altogether.”
“I don’t understand,” said George. “How could you know that you created the loop if it erases its own existence? Wouldn’t it erase its traces in your world, too?”
“Excellent question,” said Iris. “As a part of the process of creating the loop, we transmit a complete record to our past. In this way we know what has happened and also preserve all the new information we gained from the contact.”
They had come to a maintenance station, and their way was blocked by another vehicle on the rail. George brought their truck to a stop, and they got out.
“Well, if it ain’t George and Roger,” said a voice. “Howdy!”
George turned.
It was Whitey, dressed in blue SSC coveralls and carrying a toolbox. “You folks have any idea what in God’s Creation is goin’ on round here?” he asked. “The diagnostics say that all hell is breakin’ loose on the east side of the ring, and nobody will answer my phone calls.”
“Hell is indeed breaking loose,” said George. “Poisonous insect things have invaded the ring and the above-ground area too. The people that don’t answer your calls are probably dead. Alice is dead, too. We’re trying to get to the west campus to try to do something about it.”
“Alice is dead?” Whitey exclaimed. “What…? How…?” His face turned the color of his pale blond hair, and he seemed to shrink.
“Here, let me,” said Iris. She stepped forward and placed her right hand on Whitey’s cheek. His dazed expression slowly vanished, to be replaced by a look of calm determination.
“The Hive has invaded your world,” said Iris.
“Yes’m,” said Whitey.
“We are trying to stop this.”
“Yes’m.”
“We would like you to help us, if you’re willing.”
“I surely am, ma’am,” said Whitey. “Just tell me what to do.”
“We need to get to the injector synchrotron power supply complex,” said George. “We need to get there fast.”
“Then follow me,” said Whitey. He led them to his monorail vehicle, which was pointed west. The truckbed was loaded with supplies, including cans of solvent and steel industrial gas cylinders in a variety of colors.
As they were climbing into the service vehicle, Roger glanced up the vertical shaft leading to the surface. “Look!” he said and pointed. At the top of the shaft, illuminated by floodlights, was a gray haze. A cloud of Hive Flyers was just entering the upper part of the shaft.
Whitey moved the controls, and the vehicle moved rapidly down the tunnel.
“Those Flyer creatures are spreading fast,” said Roger, looking back. “How many more maintenance stations do we pass before we reach the west campus?”
Whitey consulted a diagram on the dashboard. “Two more to go,” he said. “No, hold on. There’s a branch beamline tunnel leading up to the injector. We can stop there and walk up the tunnel. That means we only have to pass one more maintenance station.”
47
BELINDA STROLLED ALONG THE BANK OF THE LITTLE brook that meandered through the SSC west campus. She had worked with the architect who designed the campus and had watched him lay out the path of the brook on a CAD machine. She had transmitted the work order to the company that dug its path and lined it with fieldstones. She knew at one level that this was a man-made “amenity” of the landscape design, no different from a streetlight or a parking lot. Nevertheless, it certainly looked and felt natural and wholesome, and she always felt refreshed when she walked along it at lunchtime.
She climbed the spiral path of the cafeteria hill. The building was perched atop a grassy knoll, also artificial, that overlooked the rest of the campus. The place was less busy than usual. Just before her lunch break started, Belinda had heard that there was some problem at the east campus. The phone lines were down or something. Perhaps some of the people who usually ate lunch here were off working on the problem.