Coin #2 - Quantum Coin (29 page)

Hugh placed his left hand on the left corner of the lid. The box beeped, and a light on his side turned green.

Ephraim put his right hand on the right edge. The box beeped, and another green light flashed.

The lid unlatched. They lifted it together.

The box contained a black foam rectangle that was flush with its sides. A smaller one-inch-deep rectangle had been cut into the middle of the foam, with an audiocassette nestled in the cushioned hollow. “Play Me” was written on its label in fading pencil in handwriting Ephraim didn't recognize.

“What is that?” Hugh asked.

Ephraim glanced at him in surprise. “It's a cassette. A way of storing audio on a strip of magnetic tape.”

“Like reel-to-reel tape,” Hugh said, his voice filled with wonder. He picked up the cassette delicately between his index finger and thumb and examined it. “I heard someone was working on this. But I never dreamed it could become so compact.”

“The Summerside Library has a ton of audiotapes like this in storage. But the format's way old-school, even in 2012. I mean,
vintage.
In my universe, anyway.”

“My other self resisted change as he got older,” Hugh said. He rubbed his thumb across the label. “This is our handwriting.”

“At least he left us a way to follow his instruction.” Ephraim pulled the tape recorder out of the cardboard box, its purpose now clear.

He plugged the device into an outlet on the lab table. He pressed the black button marked “Eject,” and the tape deck popped open. He took the cassette from Hugh and inserted it in the machine open end first, with the “Play Me” side facing up. It didn't fit.

Ephraim rotated the cassette so the tape end faced out and tried again. It slid in easily. He pushed the deck down until it clicked closed.

“Should we get the others?” Ephraim asked.

“This was meant for the two of us,” Hugh said. “Let's listen to it before we decide whether to share it with a broader audience.”

“I don't know,” Ephraim said.

“We don't have much control in this situation, Ephraim. But knowledge is power, and I won't give up that advantage easily.”

Ephraim hesitated, then nodded his assent.

They pulled two stools over to the table and settled in front of the tape recorder. Hugh lit another cigarette and puffed on it, staring at the tape recorder intensely.

Ephraim pressed “Play.”

The tape played the soft hiss of air and a series of clicks and pops. A man cleared his throat. Then Ephraim heard Hugh's voice.

“This is Hugh Everett III. I am eighty-eight years old as of the date of this recording, August 12, 2019.”

The recorded voice sounded rougher and more tired than that of the younger man sitting next to Ephraim. “The first thing you should know is: I'm a fraud.”

Ephraim and Hugh exchanged curious looks.

“People credit me with the theory of many worlds, but the proof that they exist found
me
,” Everett's voice said.

Hugh gripped the seat of his stool with both hands and leaned closer to the tiny speaker, tipping his head with his eyes closed as though praying.

“It took seventeen years for me to unravel the secrets of wave harmonics and develop a machine that could generate the quantum vibrations necessary to reach other worlds. But the coheron drive, my life's work, was nearly useless.

“Rather than creating a two-way door between universes, as I had intended, it simply made things…disappear. Like half of a magic trick. We didn't know where the objects went, or
if
they went anywhere at all. And if they were not destroyed, as my critics claimed, we had no way to bring them back.

“Even if someone were foolish enough to step inside the machine, we would never be able to learn what he found on the other side, if he survived the trip. My crowning achievement was a failure.

“We sent recorded messages into the machine, in every media format and language known on our world, in the hopes that another Earth with the same technology would be able to respond. What you don't know is that one day, we got an answer.”

The voice paused. Ephraim heard the clink of ice in a glass and a match being struck.

“You won't read anything about this in any history books, or even in my autobiography. Only a handful of people, sworn to secrecy, know about the small metal capsule that appeared at the base of our gyroscope, in the exact spot from which we'd sent our own probe. The cylindrical container was of an alloy that included elements not found on this planet, at least not in this reality. Inside was a metal disc the size of a quarter, made of the same material. It was suspended in a Meissner-Ochsenfeld field, releasing a steady amount of heat and harmless EM radiation.”

“Uh-oh,” Ephraim said.

“Shh,” Hugh said.

Everett wheezed and started coughing. Ephraim heard fumbling at the microphone then a loud click and a second of silence before the sound resumed.

“Ephraim Scott,” Everett intoned.

The back of Ephraim's neck crawled.

“Everyone knows the name of the first man from our world to visit another Earth,” the recording continued.

“I'm famous?” Ephraim asked. That was why everyone in the supermarket had been staring at him. He must have looked similar enough to his analog to make people notice, even after all this time.

He heard liquid splash into a glass and the clink of ice and crystal. Everett sipped at his drink and his voice rasped.

“But his first trip didn't happen the way you heard. In fact, it happened a year before the public demonstration we staged, and it was entirely an accident.” Everett laughed. “Just like many great scientific discoveries.

“You see, Mr. Scott was studying the capsule in my laboratory late one night when instruments detected that his scans were disrupting the magnetic field. When the disc began to fall, he instinctively reached out and caught it. And disappeared.

“Footage from surveillance cameras revealed that at the moment the disc landed in his hand, he was transported elsewhere. A spike registered by the coheron drive left no doubt that he had gone to another universe.

“Three days later, he phoned me from Seattle.

“He refused to say where he had been or how he'd gotten to the Pacific Northwest—he would only tell me in person. I picked him up myself in our private jet. On the way home, Mr. Scott told me he had been to a universe on the brink of death. An advanced human civilization had been trying to contact their ancestors in a parallel timeline, so that our universe might avoid their fate.

“I might have thought Mr. Scott was attempting an elaborate hoax, but he brought back more than a wild story. He delivered the key to interdimensional travel: a
portable
coheron drive, which negated the need for a machine in the destination universe to enable a return trip. I had considered that as a solution, of course, but it's impossible to build one with the technology available today. It would be like trying to manufacture a wrist-computer in 1910. Even if you had detailed schematics or a working device, you need the intervening one hundred and nine years of industrial, scientific, and technological advancement just to fashion the parts you need and understand how to put them together.

“Mr. Scott explained that the ‘transhumans’ who summoned him had been waiting for a younger world to discover interdimensional travel so they could help us move forward.

“Though anything that
can
happen in the multiverse necessarily
does
happen, the probability of that event can be infinitely close to impossible. Our universe was the only one in all the multiverse that discovered coherence at a critical turning point in history. According to the transhumans, man's ultimate role in the cosmos is being determined
right now
, in every choice we make as a race.

“If our technology grows
too
quickly, beyond our ability to use it intelligently and morally, then probability dictates that we will destroy the planet or kill ourselves off. If our technological and sociological development lags too far behind, our universe will begin to burn out before we can transcend to the next level—just as it did for the transhumans. As Goldilocks would say, this universe, this particular moment in time, is ‘just right.’ And with the transhumans' gift, we remain on track for our great destiny.”

“No pressure,” Ephraim said.

Hugh looked at him sternly over his glasses. He'd picked up that mannerism from one of the Jenas, Ephraim was sure of it.

“Mr. Scott and I agreed not to reveal the true origin of the device, to give mankind the best chance at achieving its best possible future. But he had two conditions: He wanted to use the device to visit as many other universes as we could find that were like ours. According to the transhumans, recording the coordinates of other universes with the controller affords them permanence in the ever-changing multiverse and links them to our own. When our descendants millennia from now reach what some call the Omega point—the transition from corporeal life to noncorporeal existence—all the universes we've visited will make that final journey with us.”

Hugh widened his eyes.

“This seems a frivolous use of the technology to me, but since the coin was configured to respond only to Mr. Scott's touch, and currently only he is able to assign new users, I had little choice. In return for my endorsement and his continued employment here, he has graciously authorized me to use the coin as well,” Everett said.

Ephraim frowned. Hugh shot him a disconcerting look.

“He similarly programmed the controller to work only for his friend Nathaniel Mackenzie—his second condition,” Everett said. “This seemed like a sensible security measure, and in return I gained the benefits of Mr. Mackenzie's loyalty and expertise. He has already modified what he's now calling the Large Coheron Drive to match the functionality of the portable unit.”

The older Everett drank, then coughed violently. He slammed his glass down with a thud and a clatter of ice.

“We are still unable to replicate the coin, and I'm running out of time to continue this phase of my work. I've decided to recruit someone to replace me. And I can think of no one better than myself.” He chuckled. “One day you will hear this tape and you will know the truth. It's up to a younger mind than mine to figure out what to do with it. Don't make the same mistakes I did.”

The recording stopped, and a couple of seconds later the machine clicked and the “Play” button sprang up.

Hugh jumped. “Don't stop there!”

“The tape ended,” Ephraim said.

Hugh let out a long breath and ran his hand through his hair.

“He was so hard on himself,” Ephraim said.

His mind spun, trying to figure out his analog's part in all of this. He'd set all these events into motion. He'd been complicit in Hugh's decision to keep the origin of the coheron drive a secret and use it with no consideration about the consequences, on the word of strangers who had essentially abducted him. What had he seen in that other universe?

“The first Everett was a failure,” Hugh said. “And he had to live with that every day. No wonder I couldn't find any notes on the Charon device—he was taking credit for technology from the future. On one level, I understand why my analog did that. I hate the thought of only achieving mediocrity. But lying about it…I'm disturbed that I'm capable of that.”

“Join the club. I've had analogs like that,” Ephraim said. Nothing bared the soul more than seeing the choices your other selves made—and the consequences. “Just keep in mind that you aren't him. You shared the same potential, but your actions, your beliefs, your choices make you different. You can follow the same path and lead someone else's life, or make your own course.”

Hugh nodded. “Your analog went along with this when he could have taken the device and claimed it as his own discovery.”

“He didn't want the responsibility,” Ephraim said. “Or the attention. I think he just wanted to help people, help them to transcend to this other plane of existence.”

“Assuming that those transhumans were honest with him. Or that he was honest with Everett,” Hugh said.

“You're a very suspicious man,” Ephraim said.

“It's no worse than being
too
trusting,” Hugh said.

“Was there anything else in the box?” Ephraim asked.

Hugh pulled up the foam from the lockbox, but there was nothing under it. Ephraim turned over the cardboard box and shook it out, but it was empty.

“You still want to share this tape?” Hugh asked.

“I don't know,” Ephraim said. “I think there are too many secrets around here already.”

“I'm very close to figuring this out. I just need more time. Maybe we don't need to spoil Dr. Everett's legacy,” Hugh said.

“There's a lot more than his reputation at stake,” Ephraim said. “Dr. Kim told us that the second Everett insisted on trying to build a portable device of his own—out of pride. But if he heard this tape, he knew that it was an impossible task.”

“And he was trying to buy himself time to figure it out. Like I wanted to.”

“When he failed, it killed him,” Ephraim said.