Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [116]
Is it possible to release the energy within these knots – within the heart of matter itself? The sudden expansion of Space must surely be absorbed by the particles around it, radiating outwards over time until equilibrium is achieved once more. If this assumption is correct, then these radiation waves created by the birth of the universe itself must still be detectable. Indeed, the universe must continue to expand wherever knots of super-compressed Space are split apart. To an observer at any point of expansion, it would seem that that point was itself the heart of the cosmos. Ultimately, variance might only exist between a few massive knots of ultra-compressed Space. Space will thin as the universe dies. But as long as a trace of variance remains between the last dark leviathans, then a breath of Space remains. Like massive ships sailing a vaporous and ever-diminishing sea, it is not inconceivable to imagine a collision between them. Were such a collision to occur, these ships might break apart, spilling their holds and thus creating a new sea through which the remaining vessels might continue to sail.
Maskelyne set down his pen and rubbed his temples. He was making too many assumptions, sailing down too many channels without stopping to look around him. How did any of this account for the electrical fluids used by the Unmer? Were they merely the propagation of variance? And what about the expansion of heated gas? Did adding energy to a system expand Space only when there was Space to expand? He lacked any mechanism aboard this vessel with which to test his theories. Such sorcery belonged only to the Unmer.
He gazed out of the window at the setting sun, marvelling at the ferocity of its fires, which now turned the sky and sea to blood. It was just one of countless stars in a cosmos he could not understand. The universe was so vast and unknowable, so far beyond imagination. Had the Unmer even fully understood what they were doing?
Lucille didn’t come to bed that night. Maskelyne lay in his bed and could not sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw Unmer warships in a harbour that no longer existed. The old wooden ship pitched and growled, as gales whipped rags of spume from the Mare Lux and flung them against the cabin windows. It was growing cold.
At some point he must have slept, because he woke in the dark before dawn, gasping and terrified, certain that someone had placed the Unmer spectacles over his eyes. He could not shake the feeling that someone had been watching him.
Had he been dreaming?
He recalled something . . .
Adrift in the vacuum, spheres of starlight expanding into dead vacuum. He had dreamed of an explosion in the darkness, a great fuming bubble of energy, its edges uncertain. It grew larger than imagination. He realized that the particles of light were separating as they flew apart, leaving waves of energy in their wake, leaving variance. There could be no space between them because it had not yet been created. Space and Time existed only in the great froth of energy they left behind. The shortest distance between different particles was a wave. Space itself was merely the potential between any two points. He saw the universe as ripples of energy expanding across a pond and bouncing back, but the pond did not really exist, only the ripples.
The dull glow of morning shone through the windows. Maskelyne sat up and shivered. He must have fallen asleep again. He got up and got dressed and then took a long draught of water from his personal supply. Then he glanced at his journal.
At the bottom of the page he spotted a paragraph that he didn’t recognize. He sat down slowly, and picked up the journal. The passage was undoubtedly written in his handwriting, but he had no recollection of ever doing so. It was a riddle.
Two brothers were separated at birth. They