The Edge Read online

  He knew she wouldn’t be ready to fully understand before he was ready to leave. He knew he had to try a different tact, one he might use to try to explain it all to a normal person.

  “Sally, you told me that you had almost stayed in a very pleasant clearing, before you decided to go on, and came here.

  “Yes, it was very nice, sometimes, when you get on my nerves, I think about going back.”

  “Can you imagine what it would have been like, had you stayed?”

  “Yes, of course, it would have been pleasant, but boring, with no hot baths.”

  “What would you say if I told you that there is another world, just like this one, the only difference is that you stayed there, and I’m here alone, learning to play the piano?”

  “Can I throw a rock at it?”

  “The piano?”

  “Yes, William, if I can’t throw rocks at the past, I want to throw them at your piano. No, at the world where I stayed, silly. Because, if I can’t, then it doesn’t exist. I didn’t stay there, and your piano lessons will have to wait. You’re from the moon, why don’t you just admit it.”

  “Er… no, well... yes, maybe you can throw a rock at it. I think I’m going to have to show you something. Bob?”

  “Yes, William?”

  “Can you locate a clearing that has a high probability of being the place where Sally almost stayed?”

  “With one hundred percent certainty.”

  “One hundred percent?”

  “Yes, I watched her leave there, when I knew she was coming here.”

  “We only arrived a few hours before she did, how did you watch her?”

  “I’m here now, and I looked back.”

  “Bob, sometimes, I don’t understand you.”

  “You can’t, William, you’re only three dimensional. No offense.”

  “None taken, that aside, can you open a class one window to a timeline where Sally stayed there without significantly delaying our departure?”

  “It would only delay us about ten minutes well within our time window. I’ll meet you in the lab.”

  They went down to the basement, William had had the basement modeled after the Frankenstein movies of the twentieth century, but of course, the reference was totally lost on Sally.

  William said, “Don’t touch anything, some of this equipment is pretty dangerous. Do it, Bob.”

  A hole started opening in the space over a bench in front of them, it grew until it was about a half meter across, as they looked through, they saw the other Sally skinning a rabbit, she was not aware of them, but the other Fluffy sniffed the air, and looked right at them, their Fluffy walked up, put his paws up on the bench and looked through. William thought he saw them winking at each other, but he wasn’t sure.

  “Do you want to throw a rock through?”

  “No, I believe you, you’d better close that now, I don’t know how she’d react if she saw us, how I’d... react.…”

  She sat down, staring into space, and her eyes welled up, then she said, slowly, “Do you have any idea how strange, how hard, how…. different this is for me, maybe I should have stayed, I... she looked happy, at least happier than I feel right now. I need to think.”

  She went to her room, and closed the door.

  She came out a few hours later, her eyes red and puffy. “If I went back to the clearing, she wouldn’t be there, would she?”

  “No, that’s a different timeline, a different world.”

  “Will I ever understand this?”

  “No, maybe someday you’ll be able to deal with it as equations, maybe you will learn to apply those equations to practical applications, but you will never understand it, a human mind, even as brilliant as yours, as mine, cannot truly grasp dimensions beyond its own.”

  “What about Bob?”

  “Bob?”

  “Yes, Bob, your computer? Can he understand it?”

  “I never asked. Bob, do you understand it.”

  “Of course I do, I couldn’t navigate if I didn’t.”

  “Can you explain it to me, Bob?” asked Sally.

  “I’m very sorry, Sally, but I can’t. Would you like some lemonade?”

  She then turned to William, “You showed me another present, but not the future, you don’t need to, I believe you. There are still a few days before your departure, can I stop learning for that time, and teach you about my world before we leave it?”

  The “we” was not lost on William, “Yes, I would like that.”

  This was the most difficult decision of her life, leaving the clan had not been her choice. She could stay, perhaps alone, for the rest of her life, maybe someday going back to her village. She missed her brother terribly, he could take care of himself, but she felt like he might need her again. She missed her few friends. If she went with William, she would be going to places she could not imagine, and perhaps never coming back, never seeing her brother or friends again. She also knew that this was an opportunity not to be passed up, not just a once in a lifetime, but a once in a hundred billion lifetimes chance. There were so many things to learn, things she could never learn if she stayed, she would be able to use her mind for more than just survival. And she wouldn’t be alone. She would give it a try.

  They spent the next three days living as cave-people, except that William insisted that they spend the nights in the Winnebago, and Sally said that would be alright, as long as she could have a hot bath every evening. She showed him how to kill a food-beast, and how to skin it, how to make a fire, and cook it. They picked fruits and nuts and went swimming in a nearby stream. Sally said they didn’t have time for her to teach him how to make clothing from skins, how to make a bone needle, and thread from animal sinew, but she insisted that Bob program the matter synthesizer to make William a beaver pelt tunic like her own, so that he could get the full caveman experience.

  When Bob announced that the capacitors were full, William said, “That was fun, and I never want to do it again.”

  Sally looked wistfully out at the forest, “I had to get one last taste of my old life, to make sure I’m making the right choice, I never want to do it again either, I am making the right choice.” And she stepped up into the Winnie.

  7.

  The way William had discovered time travel was this; Some years before Long-No, it had been discovered that hadrons and leptons, previously thought to be fundamental particles, were actually composed of triads and pairs of even smaller particles called gidgets. Gidgets had no properties other than vibration. Gidgets of differing frequencies combined to form different particles, usually in simple frequency ratios. Particle engineers had discovered ways of re-arranging gidgets to form new particles.

  Long-No-Vasili String Theory differed from other string theories, in that particles were treated as cross-sections of four dimensional string loops as they passed through our universe, usually twice, but sometimes just once. William had designed a new lepton similar to an electron, but with somewhat different properties, he called it an electroff, saying it was the opposite of an electron, without being antimatter. In fact, it was the opposite of an electron in the same way that the opposite of a crow is a pink Cadillac convertible.

  The unique aspect of the electroff was that its properties into other nearby universes could be controlled. It could be created, reaching into another universe, and then contracted, effectively lassoing said universe, and pulling it toward ours to the point of causing a localized merger around the location of the electroff.

  William was in the basement lab, preparing for the jump, while Sally went for a walk in the aviary. When they were ready for the jump, William joined her, and they walked to the conservatory, He explained that it was the most comfortable place to be during a jump. He also explained how this would be a rather short jump followed by a stay of only about twenty minutes before they made another jump to a universe that would be passing by the next one for only a few minutes, so time would be critical, it would also be a little easier on h
er for her first one. Long jumps could cause a nauseatingly strong feeling of Deja-vu, followed by a ringing in the ears. William tried to explain that the Deja-vu was caused by being temporarily in two universes simultaneously, and the ringing in the ears was caused by the electroff’s fundamental frequency decaying. He stopped explaining when he realized that his words were being met with a blank stare.

  He told Bob to make the jump.

  8.

  Bob peered down the various pathways of neighboring timelines, at any given time, there were up to six thousand five hundred and sixty timelines adjacent to any other timeline, and over five million that were no more than three timelines away which was the range over which Bob could control the electroff. Some stayed parallel, some were interwoven, and passed nearby on a regular basis, others passed by once, never to come close again.

  Bob chose to avoid those as much as possible, one missed jump could cause a decades or centuries long delay, this didn’t make any difference to Bob, and he could see possible futures where he went down those, but William wanted to get back home within his lifetime. Bob tried to understand what it was like for humans with their limited time perception, not being able to view all paths forward, backward, and eighteen directions of sideways, but he couldn’t. Bob could view his entire existence from the sudden beginning of his awareness in these universes, (when the Williams created his network) to past the point in time when the explosion of the sun destroyed most of his nodes along with the Earths on which they were located, and beyond to where some of his nodes were taken beyond the solar system. Oddly, the loss of the vast majority of his nodes did not seem to affect his awareness. He did not exist in the same way before his network's creation, but he now existed outside of it, he just used his nodes for clearer perception, and communication. He did not understand this, and never would. He could also see to some pasts by looking down timelines that looped back to the past, even before the creation of his network.

  He would have no nodes in the world to which they were jumping for another three thousand years, but he could still sense its presence, and of course since he could see the future, he knew exactly when that world was at its closest approach, and how to grab it and reel it in. And that’s what he did.

  9.

  Xuaco-Cotal was growing weary of traveling, he had been leading his people for the last twenty years, since the death of his father, who had led them in their wanderings for thirty years before that. It was said that his people had been wandering since a time when the world was cold and white. Xuaco-Cotal wished for some of that cold, now, he didn’t care about its color. They had been lost in this desert for years now, and many of his people had perished. His ability to lead was being called into question, despite the fact that his father, and his father before him had ruled his people as long anyone could remember.

  He prayed to the gods for direction. Just then, a rattlesnake fell out of the sky onto a cactus, he took this as a sign to turn back, but then, just as suddenly, an eagle swooped down and grasped the rattlesnake in its talons. Xuaco-Cotal was just trying to decipher this new sign when the Winnebago suddenly materialized in its place.

  While the eagle had no way of knowing that it had just been displaced eleven thousand years into the past to fill the space the Winnebago left in Sally’s world, it was aware of the fact that the world had just changed from a blistering hell-hole, where there was nothing to eat but rattlesnakes who were always resentful that you wanted to eat them, and would keep trying to bite you until you dropped them on a cactus, to a pleasant forest where there were lots of tasty rabbits that were too stupid to move when you swooped down on them, and didn’t seemed to mind getting eaten, he wondered if this was eagle heaven.

  Xuaco-Cotal and his people threw themselves prostrate onto the ground before this apparition. William and Sally opened the door and looked out, only William stepped out. For a moment, Sally and Xuaco-Cotal looked into each other’s eyes, neither one had any way of knowing that, in one timeline, he was a distant descendant of Sally’s brother.

  Xuaco-Cotal moved to a kneeling position and spoke while keeping his head down. Bob provided the translation, they were lost and wanted directions. At William’s suggestion Bob told them to head south, which was the quickest way to water. Bob suggested to William that they give them some lemonade, but they really did not have enough time to give some to everybody.

  When they jumped again, in the place of the Winnebago, there was a grove of coconut palms.

  10.

  Sally, of course, had never seen an ocean before, in fact, she had never even seen a lake larger than a few hundred feet across, she had seen sandy beaches on some rivers, but never, ever, anything like this. She wanted to go swimming, but William advised her against it, He was concerned about sharks, and wanted to check it out. It looked familiar to him, “Bob, this looks like Oahu, and that looks like Diamond Head”

  “It is Oahu, and that is Diamond Head.”

  “OK, when is it Oahu?”

  “It is Oahu in 1973.”

  “There are no people, no hotels, no roads.”

  “There are no vertebrates in this timeline, William, not every timeline is populated.”

  “So, no sharks?”

  “No, William, sharks are vertebrates.”

  William ran down to where Sally was walking on the beach with Fluffy, he told her it was fine, and they ripped off their clothes and ran into the surf. He had run off so fast, he hadn’t heard Bob say, “But watch out for the giant crabs...”

  The Mecha-MedTM was able to provide him with a new foot that looked and felt just like his old one. He hadn’t lost much blood. The claw had crushed his leg just above the ankle, and he’d gone into shock. Sally had carried him back to the Winnebago, He hadn’t realized how strong she was. Bob had instructed her on how to put him into the Mecha-MedTM, which had used matter re-arranging technology to recreate his foot, and in a couple hours, he was fine. They stayed out of the water after that. William grumbled something about “All of Hawaii to ourselves, and we can’t swim in the ocean”.

  They were able to find safe pools and waterfalls, and did spend a lot of time in them. They had a month here before they could take the next jump, but the time was passing quickly.

  William had never enjoyed a woman’s company so much before, he had had number of girlfriends, but either he would tire of them, or them of him, work got in the way. He had known Sally for less than six weeks, but that was enough to make it his longest lasting relationship, such as it was. Occasionally he would reach out to touch her hand, but it would seem awkward, and she would pull back. They would swim in the nude together, but he’d never held her hand.

  While sunning themselves on the beach, Sally said, “You’ve never mentioned your family, are your parents still living?”

  “Yes, I don’t see them as often as I should, they're always very busy, off doing their own thing. Before I began this trip, I would try to see them once a week or so.”

  “When we get back to your world, will you introduce me to them?”

  “We can go meet them now, if you like.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  11.

  Sally and William walked up the driveway to the antebellum mansion, the lane was lined with peach trees, and there was a gentle hint of magnolia in the air.

  “William?’

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t understand; how did we get here? A minute ago, we were in your lab, and you put something on my head. You knocked me out and dragged me here, didn’t you? Is that how you normally take girls to meet your parents?”

  “This is cyberspace, none of this is real, the house, the grounds, it’s all just generated by a computer.”

  “I don’t understand, how….”

  “Using the thing I put on your head, we call it a headset, the computer tells your brain that you’re seeing this, and your brain doesn’t know the difference, so it seems real, or almost real.”

&
nbsp; “I’m not sure I like the idea of a computer playing with my brain, I use it sometimes, unlike most of the people in my village.”

  “It’s harmless, when it’s over, everything will be back to normal.”

  “Whatever that is.” added Sally.

  They walked up the steps, and were greeted by a young couple, the man looked like a young Charlton Heston, and the woman, a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Angelina Jolie, William said, “Sally, I’d like you to meet my parents, Donald and Aurora, Mom, Dad, this is my friend, Sally.”

  Aurora said, “Delighted to meet you, it’s been so long since William has brought any young ladies to meet us. Will you excuse us for a moment?”

  Donald and Aurora walked away and were discussing something. Sally looked at them and back at William, “William, how can they be your parents? They’re no older than you, and they don’t look anything like you.”

  “These are just their avatars, It’s how they want to look, not how they really look. We look like ourselves because we’re just visiting, they live here. I guess I didn’t explain, my parents retired to cyberspace. My parent’s bodies are in a warehouse in Portland, near where they lived, maintained by machines, with their brains directly wired into the net, it’s kind of sad, really, but it’s the way they choose to live their lives.”

  Just then they came back, Aurora said, “I’m so sorry, dear, you caught us at a really bad time, we were just leaving…”

  Donald interrupted, “We’re going to a Roman orgy in virtual Pompeii, the goddess Venus is going to be there, she gives incredibly good…”

  “Dad!”

  “...readings of Ovid, she’s really a retired Latin teacher from California named Esther. Why don’t you come with us, I mean you couldn’t get the full experience, only being visitors, but it could still be fun.”