Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [18]
To begin with, there was the problem of similarity versus identically. In spite of the Sarpeidan and Dyson quantum spacetime anomalies, as near as Dalen’s crew could tell, every electron and proton in Dyson’s hull was identical to every electron and proton everywhere else in Dyson, and everywhere else in the universe. In physics, the sameness of the individual bends in spacetime that built quarks and gluons and beget protons was absolute sameness, a sameness very unlike Data and his “identical” twin brother, unlike any two of the insulin molecules that ran through Picard’s veins. Though similar, it was impossible to make any two androids or insulins absolutely identical.
And why is this? Dalen thought. “Why,” she said aloud, “are all protons, for all their infinite opportunities for uniqueness, exactly the same? Why all electrons? And neutrons?”
The other Horta seemed unsurprised by her sudden questions, but then they were all undoubtedly brooding upon the same matters as she was.
A long time before, as Picard and his species measured time, the human physicists John Wheeler and Richard Feynman had theorized that every proton was identical to every other proton because there was really only one proton in the entire universe. In this case, it simply raced back and forth in time, again, and again, and again—appearing to show up everywhere at once. Starting off from the Big Bang, it would be shooting through Dalen’s present, where she might catch a glimpse of it in Data’s fingernails, or in Picard’s insulin, or in Dyson’s rivers, before it bounced back from the remote future and reappeared in her present as a proton moving backward in time, where some distant corner of the universe, or the antimatter pods of the Darwin and the Enterprise, would perceive it as a forward moving antiproton, before it reversed course, again, from the Big Bang. This being true, the same would hold for all the anti-electrons coursing through Data’s positronic brain.
Wheeler and Feynman had buried their theory, or so those human physicists had thought. And then the discovery of subspace had made spacetime itself a cosmic free-fire zone. And now the discovery of subspace anomalies, Dalen mused, had made all things possible.
Was it possible, now, she asked herself, that a proton bouncing back from the future could dictate the present?
Yes.
Was it possible, then, that the present could dictate the past?
Oh, yes.
“I can picture it, now,” Dalen said, suddenly wanting to share her insight with her sisters and comrades, “one antiproton and one positron in all the universe, running head-on into the proton and the electron at the bridge of time, at the moment we call the Big Bang, thereby guaranteeing that the universe will be created.”
Sherd, Jee, and Kodo were silent for several moments. Then Sherd said, “Is it possible, then, that whoever created subspace planned it that way— perhaps even tampered with the manner in which the Big Bang would occur, reshaped the cauldron of creation?”
“Yes,” Dalen answered. “I believe there has been a great deal of tampering; more than any of us may ever realize.
CAPTAIN’S LOG, STARSHIP ENTERPRISE IMPACT MINUS 12.5 DAYS EGRESS MINUS 9.5 DAYS
Dalen Base was established only twenty minutes ago. My chief engineer has confirmed for Captain Dalen that the moon has its own subspace anomaly—which acts as a defensive barrier against our transporters. The Dysons made sure to button this place up tightly. Luckily for us, they did not anticipate Hortas. Captain Dalen’s away team has saved us hours, perhaps a full day of work. Still, we may have to move even faster than I had hoped.
Data tells me that the larger Sphere is accelerating, and if one watches very carefully, one can actually see the Great Scott Sea moving perceptibly nearer. On the Sphere’s walls, we cannot discern any inertial effects whatsoever arising from the acceleration.
On the wall opposite Great Scott, however, on the side moving away from us, the sacrifice to inertia is already horribly apparent The