This is a direct sequel to the first part of Wormholes: Endless Possibility.
Will slammed his hand onto the disconnect button on his tablet. The other Fiona winked out, while
his
Fiona stood open-mouthed in shock.
'What the fuck was that?' she asked.
Will tapped through the archives of his notes quickly. 'There was an original hypothesis, early in the days of wormhole tech, that we could reach other worlds, other
universes
, through the wormholes, even without a destination ring, by opening a hole to the same physical space in a different quantum state. Here's the quote: "It is theorised that an instantiated wormhole may arrive at a state with zero physical distance but a quantum displacement of some large quantity. Degenerate states will result if the quantum displacement is insufficiently distant from the opening state, with respect to the expected observational component of those initialising the quantum delocalisation". Let me just take a minute on that'.
They digested this for a second, and Will resumed. 'What we've done here is opened a path to an infinite number of worlds. We could travel to a world where I was never born, or where a man in Brazil coughed twice yesterday instead of once'.
Fiona shook her head. 'I'm not sure about that last bit -
observational component
. It can't just be a little different, it has to seem different to the people observing it. It has to be different to
us
'.
Will nodded along. 'You're right. And more,
insufficiently distant quantum displacement
; based on this, it has to be quite a bit different, or the states will snap together and we'll end up back here'.
'So we could go to a world where you're left-handed, but not one where I have one less eyelash, because it's too similar'.
'Seems like it. So, that was a different me?' Will asked.
'It must have been. And a different me. They looked the same, didn't they?'
'I think so. I'm not sure I look at myself enough to know. You looked the same, and I look at you quite a bit'.
'Ditto'. They shared a quick grin.
'So'. Fiona heard the question and hours of discussion condensed into a single word. She agreed. They were doing it. She turned back to the ring, giving Will a thumbs up. He re-initialised the entanglement sequence, and the wormhole hazed into existence, revealing a reflection of them again. Will looked closer, and noticed the mirror-Fiona had hair that was a touch shorter than his Fiona. This wasn't the same pair as last time, but they were clearly doing world-exploring of their own.
'Hi Will, hi Fiona', his fiancée said.
'Hi Fiona, hi Will', her image responded, as if this were a conference call and they weren't talking through the fabric multiple universes.
The four sat in silence for a moment. The Wills attempted to break it, but stumbled as they spoke at the same time. Eventually, the "real" Will, as he thought of himself, spoke. 'This is revolutionary, and I know for a fact we all agree. We've made a huge discovery, but to know how useful it is, we need data. Lots of it. First thing, physical samples. Can you give us something?'
Mirror Will pulled a pen from his pocket, and tossed it through the wormhole. Fiona caught it, perhaps unwisely given they didn't know how their quantum states would react. Will then realised that billions of air molecules were probably getting along just fine on either side of the barrier. Will picked up a piece of scrap paper, balled it up and tossed it through the wormhole, where mirror Fiona caught it.
'Appreciated', mirror Will began. 'You seem to have beaten us by a little bit, Fiona and I thought this could happen, but we didn't want to try it until we were sure it would work. And it looks like it does! But this is only the first step, we'll need mo-'
'Will', mirror Fiona said urgently, and both couldn't help turning to look at her. 'Konstantin is on his way again'.
Mirror Will shook his head, clearly frustrated. 'We'll pick this up another time. Good luck'. He reached towards them, pressing something on the outside of his ring, and their view dissolved into a haze.
Fiona and Will shared a look, each bursting with thoughts. Fiona got in first.
'Did you see how their ring operated differently? They had tablets, but your opposite pressed something on the ring itself. We just use remote control!'
'Forget that, Konstantin is there! Do you think they had him burst in like we did? Maybe he did, and he's already back?'
'Maybe it was a totally different Konstantin! Maybe everyone in that world is called Konstantin except us! Them. Whoever'.
'The mirror us-es'.
'I just think of them as other-us'.
'We need better names'.
'We need better data. Look at this pen Will! It looks so normal, but it's from
another world
'.
'Give give give'. Will could barely handle his excitement. He pulled the quantum analyser from his pocket; a device that had started as a wormhole ring and grown with his experiments that had lead them here today. He activated it, dropped the pen through the ring, and then turned to his tablet for analysis. Fiona moved to seat herself beside him, excitedly pointing at interesting parts of the rich and bizarre quantum dataset.
Some time later, they had developed a method to uniquely identify the quantum signature of any object. They tested it with several items from their own world, and set their origin as world zero. The pen, both as a whole and when disassembled and fed through as parts, resulted in a world hash of 011. The diagnostic software would try to keep the numbers small while allowing for variation. Will cloned this to several rings to speed up the analysis of any future items, and gave a few of them to Fiona.
the night had worn on. Will checked the time, and saw it was nearly time for breakfast, but despite their total lack of sleep, the couple were insatiable.
'Let's try it again', Fiona said, 'and see if they were able to reach the same conclusions'.
They resumed their previous positions, Fiona by the ring, Will behind her. Will started the quantum interconnect software and tried to find world 011. He was surprised when this failed. He pointed this out to Fiona, and she, too was shocked. They hadn't moved the wormholes. They hadn't changed any settings. But the entangled states available were different. Worse, reviewing previous data, Will found that there was no way to link the quantum signature of world 011 to the quantum state of the wormhole they had generated. They would be flying blind.
They accepted this, and opened a connection to a new world. Will had just noted that the initial entanglement procedure had taken considerably longer than last time, when he felt a wave of scalding air blast over him. He shielded his eyes with one hand, and slammed the emergency close button with the other. He and Fiona looked at one another, frazzled. Fiona's hair was blasted back, and he was sure his looked no different. 'What in the
fuck
was that?' he asked.
'I think their building was on fire. Or maybe their
world
was on fire. The whole thing looked like a sheet of flame. I think we're jumping in a little too fast here'. Will briefly mused on the irony of them noting this was too fast, but not professing love, moving in together, and getting engaged all within a few weeks. But he agreed. 'Next time, let's at least use the energy filters. We can set thresholds on the amount we want to let through'.
'Good. Next time. For now, I need to sleep for a week'.
'Still going to take that other research job then babe?'
'Not on your life'. Fiona took Will's hand, and they stepped through their home wormhole.
* * *