Taken from the other side

“Sir, I believe yesterday’s experiment yielded some rather interesting results, the conditions within the containment cube have actually stabilised this time and so far it appears to be holding this state indefinitely”, Dr Aaron Yang said this as he handed a vacuum sealed glass cube to Dr Peter Mitsko.

“Well that is surprising indeed, the new experimental parameters I proposed were not really based on much more than a hunch.” replied Mitsko.

“Well your hunch must’ve been correct. Using human DNA as the pairing mechanism, meant we’d find another universe in which human DNA could exist. I still don’t understand why it didn’t work with mice or bananas though.”

“I believe I understand now. I wonder, perhaps we should’ve held back on this. I really didn’t think this would work, but it did and its implications worry me, have we just given a parallel universe access to ours, a parallel universe that has another me in it.”

1 Day Earlier



Through his earpiece Peter heard, “Okay, all transfer parameters have been set, are you ready?”

All outer faces of the cube except one were made of glass two inches thick with metal corners, essentially it was an open box. Peter placed a strand of his own hair inside the cube and put the metal lid back on over the cube’s open face. The lid had its own mechanism that pressure sealed it into place. Finally Peter wrote his name on a piece of tape and stuck it to the box.

“Yeah, I’m ready, just bringing it over now Aaron.”

He handed it to Aaron to conduct the transfer experiment and headed home for the day, he had little hope that it would be successful.

Aaron placed the the cube containing Peter’s DNA in the transfer chamber and then activated the the process from the terminal. What he saw through the window of the chamber was just the same as all of the previous experiments, he watched as tendrils of electricity within the glass cube snapped at the contents inside until disintegration, whether that be a banana or a mouse, it didn’t matter, only ashes were left. After a few minutes the transfer process ended, but this time something peculiar caught Aaron’s eye, the streaks of electricity remained and seemed to be holding the hair in place at the center of the cube. The blue currents rooted themselves to the inside walls of the cube but unlike a tree’s roots, these did not appear stationary, instead they were constantly morphing. Aaron removed the cube from the chamber and watched the hypnotic show.

Present

“So you say you understand why it worked? Why then?”

“Have a look at the label on the lid” replied Peter.

“It says ‘Pete’?”

“Yes it does, but I wrote ‘Peter’.”

“Some ink came off during the process? So what?”

“Come on Aaron, remember you’re a physicist too.”

“Ah I think I get it, so the parallel universe that we managed to exchange with is not exactly like ours, things are slightly different, their Peter is called Pete. Yet I still don’t understand why it worked this time.”

“Well listen closely, we’d made the assumption that we were only attempting to transfer the contents of the cube and not the cube itself. And we were only using the contents as our mechanism for finding another universe. It’s much like when we search for something on the internet, we type something in and receive a list of all the websites that contain the search term. Well for us whatever was inside the cube was our search term and our results were all the universes that contained that term. But as it stands, since there are infinite universes, we would receive infinite results so our system is setup to make the exchange with the first one we find such that our systems don’t run into an infinite process and crash. Do you follow?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Okay, so the reason it didn’t work with the banana was that it found the first universe that had that exact banana, but unfortunately that universe didn’t have the cube nor did it have the means - that is, a transfer chamber of its own - to transfer a cube to us. Because we now know that we were attempting to exchange not just the banana but the cube too and we know that the process would only work if both universes had a cube and a transfer mechanism, we can conclude that the reason the experiment with the banana failed is because the odds that the first universe we found out of infinite universes that contained an identical banana to ours also happened to contain this machine I’ve invented is essentially zero. However, if we use my DNA we are much more likely to find a universe that also contains the cube and the transfer chamber I invented since we know we will make an exchange with a universe that at least contains my DNA so its likely I invented those things in that universe too.”

“Hold on, hold on, that’s not right. If there are infinite universes, then that shouldn’t change the odds at all. There will still be infinite universes in which your DNA still exists but in which you didn’t invent and activate the transfer chamber at all. Even if the chance of finding a universe that contains both your DNA and the transfer chamber cube were to increase from one out of infinity to ten billion out of infinity you still end up at exactly the same result, 0% chance.”

“Ah yes that is correct if we assume our assumptions are correct, perhaps they may need revising though, perhaps that was the entire purpose of this experiment.”

“I see, so you’re proposing that there are not infinite universes, just a lot of them. That is a bold claim. And what about that electricity held within the cube, that wasn’t there before.”

“Well, it seems the universe we exchanged with wasn’t a perfect match since we’re now missing the ink of the letter ‘r’ from the label. But to exchange with another universe we are not allowed to make a net energy loss. So instead of the ‘r’ we have its equivalent in energy, taken from the other universe and now trapped within the cube. You know our old friend Einstein figured that out, energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, the mass is the ink in the letter ‘r’ and the energy is the electricity we see inside. It just so happens that the energy is small enough that it can be contained within the cube without destabilising and undoing the exchange like in all the other previous experiments, when the difference was more than just the ink of one letter but in fact an entire cube.”

Aaron slouched into his seat and let out a sigh. Though he was the assistant to one of the greatest minds of the century, he never considered himself to be incredibly intelligent, above average maybe, but when around Peter he felt like a fool. All this revelation was rather overwhelming and Peter stated everything so nonchalantly too, as though it were all so obvious, and by all means it did become obvious once he’d stated it too. Aaron started again, “So essentially we got lucky?”

“Yes, and I’m somewhat annoyed it was luck too. It feels rather inelegant.”

The other side

“Sir, the experiment is complete and has yielded the intended results, the conditions in the containment cube have stabilised this time.”, Dr Pete Mitsko said this as he handed a vacuum sealed cube to Dr Amon Yang.

“The link has been made then, good.” replied Yang.

“Yes, the new pairing device you designed worked even better than I expected, we found another universe with a cube containing my DNA, its an almost 100% identical match, the only difference is the label on their cube reads ‘Peter’ instead of ‘Pete’. I wonder what sort of pairing mechanism they used to find us though?”

Dr Amon Yang smiled assuredly, the man’s genius was far beyond what anyone believed possible for a human, he obviously knew the answer. Though Pete himself was one of the smartest people alive, compared to Amon he felt rather ordinary.

“Well, you see the reason I designed a new device in the first place was so we wouldn’t need to rely on the other side having to find us as well, all they needed to do was provide the right conditions for us. Those conditions being a cube with your hair. They could be bumbling idiots and it would still work as long as they had an identical cube holding an identical strand of your hair.”

“So what was the point of the hair then? We could’ve just found another cube?”

“Ha-ha-ha, my own amusement I suppose. I wanted to find another you. The next step was to find another me, but I wanted to be sure it was safe first.”

“So you used me as guinea pig!”

“Not just you, you from the other side too. Well it all worked out didn’t it, don’t worry I was quite sure you’d be fine. Its only if I open the cube that you should be concerned for your safety.”

And at that moment Dr Amon, activated the lid’s depressurisation by turning a small knob on its face and pulled it open. Instantly the hair flew out and attached itself back to Pete’s head, slipping right back in to the follicle he’d removed a hair from the day before. Though the hair was identical in every way, it was not his hair, it was Peter’s from the other side. Pete had even felt a little magnetism as his head lurched forward when the hair flew towards him. Even after it had reattached itself he felt off, a headache began to emanate from the spot it attached to. With a broad smiled wrapped around his face Amon said “I wonder if that did something to the other side.”

Peter noticed that the hair had now changed position, its tip was pinned right into the corner of the cube and it was straight like an arrow too, pointing directly at Peters head. At the same time Peter felt his head being pulled toward the corner of the cube. The force was so powerful that he couldn’t maintain his grip on the cube and it flew out of his hands and its corner smashed right into his head, leaving him dazed and bloody. Aaron jumped out of his seat and rushed over to assist. He grabbed the cube and reached for the depressurisation knob on the lid. Just as he was about to turn it, Peter began thrashing, screaming in agony and Aaron lost his grip. He quickly grabbed the cube again. He gripped the depressurisation knob again and twisted. Nothing. It wouldn’t twist, it was jammed - that or the pressure was just too high. His hands bulged as he desperately hung onto the cube, doing his best to keep it steady. And then Aaron felt a massive jerk and the screaming stopped. The cube sucked in Peters entire head. The gap between the lid and the rest of the cube was microscopic, so small that not even oxygen atoms could pass through. But Peters head had just gone through that and been turned into paste. The rest of his body followed soon after and Dr Aaron fell to the floor in shock as he looked into the glass cube which now contained a super pressurised dark red cube of human matter.

In his head, Pete felt the pressure grow, his headache intensifying. It felt as though something were trying to suck his head through a hole. “Amo…”, he winced in pain, “Amon, I think it did something to me, my head hurts. What do I do?”

“I greatly appreciate all your help and everything you’ve contributed to science. Farewell.”