[Phibius]

Synposis: A novel use is found for a defective teleporter

Once or twice a week, I and a few comrades-in-lab-coats used to meet for a drink or three in "our" pub. Unusually for pubs within strolling distance of universities, this particular establishment was not overrun with hoarders of yard-of-ale swilling undergraduates - not actually barred as such, they were quietly but effectively 'discouraged' (by the simple, if un-subtle means of neglecting to serve them - Alf, the bar man, had an uncanny knack for detecting education, and based his service levels strictly according to academic merit and would not stir for anything less than a Bachelor's, Hones, Second Class).

This blatant discrimination and elitism made the establishment a favourite with post graduates and tutors like ourselves, seeking a haven where informal debates, cod philosophising and the slandering of our professors could be lubricated with reasonably-priced alcohol. An additional attraction of our favourite corner in this peaceful place was the window, which allowed us the innocent pleasure of "scoring". This was a kind of group sport, in which we would collectively pass judgement on the physical beauty, sexual mores and general intellect of passing undergraduates.

However, I digress. On the evening of my story, our minds were on higher things: Ann, who was studying Philosophy, and therefore had to put up with a lot from the "hard" science types predominating in our little circle, had decided to fight the physicists on their home ground for once. Her particular target on this occasion was a concept she'd been reading about in one of those pop-science books: parallel universes.

"So, without a shred of proof, we're expected to believe in the existence of millions - or even an infinite number - of universes just like ours? Your lot might as well be shamans, making up a new creation myth whenever the fancy takes you!"

Jeff, our resident quantum physicist and token Scot leapt to the defence of his discipline. I will spare the reader the jargon and the hieroglyphics with which he covered several beer mats, but since the topic is central to the story, I have prepared a short digest of his exposition of the subject, which went something like this: All possible things must, by definition happen. For example, when a coin is tossed - he borrowed a quid to demonstrate - it can equally well land heads-up, tails up, and might even land edge on. According to Jeff, every coin lands on both sides and the edge - but with each outcome happening in a new, independent version of the original universe. So, while his borrowed-coin toss placed us in the "tails-up universe", somewhere else an identical Jeff and friends were looking at a coin which had landed heads-up.

"The coin toss", expounded Jeff, "was just an example, and was not necessary to this "probabilistic forking". Any "non-deterministic," sorry Ann lass, random event must produce a similar "forking" of universes - even the hits and misses of the air molecules he was breathing, or the patterns of bubbles forming in our beer - so that for any given universe, there must exist a near-infinite number of almost parallel instances, differing only in the most trivial of details - like the side on which a coin landed, or the path of a particular molecule of oxygen. So, there now existed at least three versions of the coin he had tossed, each in its own universe."

Ann's scepticism was clearly about to produce a caustic response, for which the rest of us waited in happy anticipation. However, Alastair spoke first, and Ann's words were lost to posterity - except, perhaps, in another universe where... but, you get the point. Alastair was that phenomenon common to a good many research institutions - the perpetual
post grad. He was at that time five years into a 'planned' three year doctorate in some physics-based research or other, blessed with a supervisor endlessly sympathetic to his tales of experimental misfortune.

"Jeff," said Alastair, "is perfectly right. I proved it ages ago, by experiment".

As friends of Alastair, long familiar with his world-beating series of negative results and disastrous equipment malfunctions, it is fair to say that we did not quietly accept the claim of a perpetual post-grad to Nobel-prize worthy work. Sipping his beer and smiling quietly, the combined jeers of his fellows fazed him not at all.

"Accidentally, of course," he added "when I was trying to perfect my teleporter." This reduced the well-oiled company to helpless laughter.

"Let me guess," said Anne, raising her voice above the general hilarity, "and then the lab caught fire, with all your notes inside?"

"Not at all. I just took it apart when I was finished, and left my plans somewhere safe."

"Because you didn't want to risk actually graduating and having to work for a living?" Ann said again, slightly acerbic this time:

A general "OOH" was heard from the rest of us, looking forward to a good fight.

"Not at all. It simply wouldn't have been a very socially responsible thing to do, letting a machine like that loose on the world, besides, there was a crucial limitation which made it quite impractical for everyday purposes."

Jeff, who had almost drowned in his Tennants at the "teleporter comment", recovered enough to make the obvious point.

"Come off it Alastair, if ye'd actually managed that, which ye could not, you'd not be sitting here, drinking Alf's special offer - ye'd be off to the sun somewhere, wi' yer doctorate in your pocket and a few million in yer wallet!"

Alastair's smile actually broadened.

"Why bother with the doctorate, if you can have the millions? Anyway Jeff, where's your ambition? A million doesn't buy what it used to. I decided to go for the really BIG money, and you don't get that by commercialising - the college would take the lot, and all I'd get would be a lifetime professorship, or some such nonsense. I used my head, I made my billions, and very soon - by this time next week, in fact - I shall be spending them quite a long way from you doubting Thomases."

The assembled "Thomases" did not greet this assertion with unqualified credulity. Unwilling to wait for the proof of Alastair's wealth, a general calls were made for immediate production of evidence, ideally in the form of another round of beers, to be donated by our self-proclaimed billionaire. Alastair rejected these pleas: he seemed to feel that he had not been given a fair hearing, and was unwilling to reward our disbelief.

"Happy", said he, waxing biblical, "are those who have not seen, and yet believe."

"Okay Al." said Krispin, our pet Canadian and favourite mathematician (we counted him as being practically a scientist, for all that his kind use no experimental equipment more complex than the blackboard). "Convert us, tell us how you did it."

"Well" began Alastair," as I said, I don't think it would be a very good idea to let an invention like this one loose on the world, but I suppose there's not much danger the likes of you lot could replicate such brilliant work anyhow, even if I did tell you everything." - cries of "so modest too".

Waiting patiently for silence, he was evidently preparing to tell us a story, and quiet was soon restored. Based on his serial tales of scientific calamity and endless excuses for extending his studies, Alastair was commonly believed to be the finest liar on campus, and therefore well worth listening to. When he was satisfied that his audience were paying attention, he began to speak, and I have done my best to bring you, word for word, the story which he told us.

"As Jeff has said, building a working teleporter is quite impossible. However, I did come very close - as close as is possible, within the laws of physics. It took me two years to build the first prototype, and at first I thought something was wrong with my set-up. I'm not going to waste the technical details on you lot, but what I did was build a transmitter, which I intended to use to send small sample objects across the lab. Well, when everything was ready and I'ld run a few preliminary checks on my set-up, I looked around for something to send. There were a few limitations, of course, since the sending chamber was very small, and I couldn't use too much power, for fear of causing a black-out. Oddly enough, I hadn't given much though to the problem of what to send. So, I tore a page out of my notebook, scribbled 'just a test', balled it up, and locked it in. You can imagine my sense of anticipation as I prepared to throw the switch - I was about to witness the culmination of twenty fourth months of solid work, based on nothing more substantial than a (rather brilliant, as it turned out) bit of theorising I'd been doing about wormholes."


"I pressed the send button: click. There was a small "pop" from the sending chamber, which I opened immediately: empty! Now, for obvious reasons, I didn't want the test object to materialize inside me or some crucial piece of equipment, so I'd selected a target zone at the far end of the lab, about a meter and half above the floor. I hurried over, and found... nothing! Of course, I assumed that I had somehow made a trivial error when calibrating the sending apparatus, most likely in the vertical axis, so I searched about a bit on the floor.

Imagine my surprise when I heard a loud pop, and a ball of paper hit me on the back of the head! Apart from the shock, it could have killed me if I'd not bent over to look under the bench - the delay puzzled me. There was nothing in my calculations which suggested that the transfer would be anything other than instantaneous since, well, I won't bore you with the maths, pearls before swine anyhow..." - he paused to take a drink, and enjoy the "boos" from the audience, which considered itself, not unreasonably, to be rather above the average in matters of numeric.

"So, I picked it up, somewhat shaken I admit, and opened it out - and there, in my own handwriting, was the word 'testing'. I was half-way to the door of the lab, off to bring the good tidings to my supervisor, when the first niggling doubt struck: hadn't I written 'just a test'? Now doubly confused, by the odd wording and the almost-lethal lag, I went
back to my notebook to solve the latest mystery. Thinking perhaps that I had thought one thing, but written another, I looked closely at the first blank page. Sure enough, the pressure from the pen on the page I'd torn out had left a shallow but legible indentation on the page beneath - to my astonishment, I read the words 'just a test'."

"At first, I thought it was a prank: so I flattened out the mystery sheet on the bench, and, notebook open at the stub of the page I'd torn out, and thinking to prove the thing a hoax, compared the tears... which matched exactly! I didn't believe my own eyes, checked the name on the front, checked the writings on preceding pages, but there could be no doubt. Only one page had been removed from the note book, and I was holding that page. Even the writing matched my own but how then to explain my memory of what I'd written, and the corroborating indentations?"

"Of course, when I had had time to think about it, the solution was quite obvious - in fact, I expect you've already guessed " - he stopped to drink again, looking around over the top of his glass to gauge the response from his audience.

Ann broke the waiting hush.

"Oh come on, you're trying to tell us your got your mystery page from a parallel universe - where your other self had written the shorter phrase and torn it just the same way, from an identical notebook?"

"Well done! Not bad thinking, for a philosopher, I'm surprised you didn't see it at once. Jeff, Ann is quite right. And of course, this explains exactly where my own sheet went".

"To the 'Testing' universe?" laughed Ann, "you sent your page to a parallel universe?".

"Yes and no. You see, when the molecules of the object to be sent are being measured prior to transition, there is an inherent uncertainty - Jeff can tell you all about the Heisenberg principle, can't you Jeff? - which means the destination has a realistic component, whose solution in our own universe evaluates to zero - but to one, or a certainty in 'another universe.

"So, you swapped pages with the other you?", said Ann. "No - you see, the two experiments are entirely independent, no connection whatsoever, and of course there are any number of parallel universes - so my page did leave our universe, but almost certainly not for the one where the 'testing' page came from. In fact, I think it is quite possible that the universe in which it arrived was one where no such experiment was ever conducted. Actually, saying the universe, singular, in which it arrived is not quite accurate - due to the realistic nature of the transition, it probably 'arrived' in more than one, perhaps a quasi-infinite number, like the coin."

Seeing furrowed brows around him, he tried again.

"It is really very simple, my page went somewhere else, and a page from some other place came here, just by accident. So, you see, the reason for the timing difference was simple - the parallel me had taken a few extra seconds to start work, or perhaps waited slightly longer for the lift. The fact I got his page was pure luck - 'he' may not have got any, and thought his equipment was defective."

Ann spoke up again.

"So, about these universes where the experiment didn't happen, wouldn't they have to have a receiver set up to get your sheet?"

Alastair was obviously ready for this objection.

"Not at all, you see, it isn't like a radio - a catapult would be a better analogy. You send your object, and it goes - and quite possibly creates some very interesting problems for the poor chump on the receiving end."

"But," said Anne, "supposing another you did get it, could they send something back to you?"

Alastair sighed, like a teacher whose patience is sorely tried by a student who can't quite seem to grasp the fundamentals, despite careful coaching.

"Honestly, if you won't listen, I don't see why I should bother. I told you already, there is an inherent uncertainty about the destination. It simply isn't possible to choose a target universe, even if you had some way of knowing which one you wanted to send to, which is what makes teleportation completely impractical, for normal purposes."

"Ha!" Said Jeff. "By yer own admission, ye could nae' make it wurk reet, so how did ye make yer billions, wi' yer useless machine?"

"Very simply Jeff, as I will tell you. Now, as you remember, there exist a quasi-infinite number of 'almost' parallel universes in which another me did indeed construct this machine. At first, I thought, like you, that all that work of myself and my analogs had been wasted, but then I fell to pondering on the sheet I received, and how unlikely it was that it would reach me, and not one of the quasi-infinite numbers of other-mes. Of course, being brilliant, I realised the answer at once - if a quasi-infinite number of Alastairs should transmit 1 sheet each, then at least quasi-infinite number (allowing for realistic duplication) would also receive 1 sheet, not the same sheet, but something similar. Puzzling out the implications of this, I conceived the scheme which made me rich."

"Have you any of you ever got a chain letter, the ones that tell you to send x amount to such-and-such an address?"

"My scheme was very similar, but far more ethical and effective! I locked up the lab at once, and went straight to the bank, where I withdrew two hundred pounds. Back at the lab, I composed a short letter, which was addressed to myself, and copied it out a second time. I popped each letter in an envelope, accompanied by one hundred pounds each, and sent them off with my machine, one at a time." He paused for another sip, smiling smugly as he surveyed his rapt audience.

"What did you write?" asked Ann.

"That," said he, with great satisfaction, "was the cleverest bit. After a few opening pleasantries, complimenting myself on my brains and beauty and so forth, I outlined the mechanism I was using for transmission in terms only myself, or someone very similar to me could understand and asked that the recipients each do as I had done, and send off two copies of the same letter, with a hundred pounds each, or another item of some small value which my analogue could afford to part with."

"And that's how ye got rich? Pull th'other wan laddie!" said Jeff "Even if wurked and I'm no gi'ing ye that it did - ye'ld get nowt back fer yer trouble, wi' the random nature o' the system and th'impossibilitae o' targettin it".

Krispin spoke up again, the first to actually intercede for Alastair.

"Actually Jeff, the infinity math doesn't add up that way, he'd get rich all right, if he could do it."

Alastair paused a moment, he did not like help in telling his stories, only hecklers to make the telling more interesting.

"As I was about to say, Jeff, that was the same naive mistake that I almost made myself." Alistair said in his most patronising tone. "But fortunately, I realised my error at once, since there are a quasi-infinite number of analogs, then so long as more than half send on the cash, a quasi-infinite amount of loot would soon be flying randomly about the multiverse. Of course, there would be a quasi-infinite number of possible destinations, but since each sender was to transmit twice, a quasi-infinite amount of cash would be available to land in each of the possible universes! All I had to do then was sit back, and wait for the many 'mes' to get the message, go to the bank, and send on the cash. Most of it would go to other places - but a tiny fraction of a quasi-infinite number is still a pretty significant figure - so, just by random fluke, a fortune should land right in my lab."

"And it wurked?" asked Jeff, the avarice in him almost overcoming his scientific scepticism - the rest of us were still trying to get alcohol-befuddled brains around all those infinities he kept throwing about.

"Of course it did. Naturally, there were snags - some of the notes that came through had odd serial numbers, or the Queen's head was looking the wrong way - I even got a few thousand-franc notes, with the head of "Bonaparte VIII, Empereur d'Europe. But, by the end of the day, I had a tidy little pile at the end of the lab, most of it perfectly good legal tender, to my own eyes at least."

Ann, who was obviously thinking furiously, had a question.

"So, if you did all this three years ago, why didn't you take off then?"

Alastair smiled sadly and shook his head, to show how hurt he was by the general disbelief.

"For two excellent reasons. One was that there really wasn't enough, only a few million had arrived, when the obvious duds were put to one side and the other was that, although they had almost stopped coming, there was still an occasional 'pop' of a late arrival. You see, I was the first to get my machine ready - most of the other me's had not completed the assembly, and were therefore not ready to transmit. So, the money would continue to stream in as more and more machines were completed. The arrival in mid-air of banknotes and begging letters was bound to raise the eyebrows of any visitors to the lab, so something had to be done immediately."

"Of course it did." Said a triumphant Jeff. "Because I've been to your lab any number of times, if you had a magic fountain of cash, I'd probably have noticed."

Alastair, perfectly untroubled by this objection, had a perfectly reasonable answer.

"Of course you would Jeff. But you didn't, which shows just how clever I am... working through the evening, I built a kind of 'post box' out of spare equipment, to contain the target space. A couple of blinking lights on the outside, a few hazard signs to deter the nosy, and, in a lab full of odd equipment, I thought I had a decent change of escaping detection, even the popping sound as arrivals displaced the air would be explainable as normal operating noise."

Glancing at Jeff, I noticed that, for the first time, he was looking rather thoughtful.

"At first, I thought it would be easy." Alastair continued. "That it would just have to stay put for a few days, a week at most, till the flow would dry up. The only danger was that someone would try to move it out their way - I needed to move my work to that end of the lab, so that no-one would interfere."

At this point, Jeff interrupted. "Ah remember ye moved but it was because yer prof wanted yer space for summat else and ah've seen yer popping box, but that could be anythin'. Ye'll have tae tell a better one than that."

"If," said Alastair evenly "as you say, he needed the space for something else, why keep me in the lab at all? But, no matter, the point is, I had to wait for quite some time, because in some universes, that other me was doing entirely different work, although in the same lab - some letters came from biologists and earth science people, who had to devise all sorts of excuses to even assemble the equipment - and brilliance notwithstanding, the instructions were, of necessity, rather brief and cryptic. Hence, my three-year wait, to be reasonably sure the flow has finished. Anyway, I had my work cut out, trying to find a way to deal with all the cash that was coming in..."

"Which," I finished for him, "is why you can't buy those drinks for us - you've hidden it all away in Swiss bank accounts!"

His story apparently finished to his own satisfaction, Alastair sat back to general laughter and applause, even Jeff conceded that it was a good story. The audience broke up then, and went back to their drinking and gossiping, as Alastair turned in his seat and started to give his attention to something on the window pane. Suddenly, Ann gasped, and I looked up to see what had startled her. She was looking at what Alastair had written on the window. Well, not written, scratched really.

"ALL TRUE." Cut with the help of... stunned silence from all... a diamond, which was not quite so large as a hen's egg.

Feigning surprise, a perfectly casual and collected Alastair took in our reaction.

"Oh, you're wondering about this little thing," he said, "didn't I mention it? One of the other Alastairs was a geologist. Apparently, they're as common as rock crystal in his world."

[Lubesh]

Quite tecnical and jargon based at times but the overall tale was a good one.

[joshuaw1]

i enjoyed this one. the technical jargon added to getting to understand the character, along with the style of writing; it was very much the character's and not a writer's. to me the only part that could use some more consideration was the dialogue. it did kind of seem steeped in the nickel stories of the 30s. but it would make a very nice story to read between train stops. interested in the next one...

[alja123]

This is a fine science fiction story.
The crazy science is indeed crazy, but at the same time logical, and the jargon fits in nicely (Heisenberg's principle for example. For that matter perhaps more mention of actual scientists would have made it a bit more believable and entertaining.). The term "quasi-infinite" stands out a bit - it's no concept i've ever heard of, so presumably a made up word. I reckon if i was writing it I would have said "uncoutably infinite", but I dunno - your way works really well also.

I was curious as to why time is almost synchronised between the paralell universes. If you're to add anything to the story - more discussion on the concept of "time" could be interesting.

The characters are simply great - exactly what slightly arrogant academics are in real life. The narrator is a little odd, since he seems to speak only at the very end.

The end is fairly funny (as is the rest to be honest)

Jeff's lines are a little hard to read, thankfully they are short.

[superbum]

This is great, I was entranced, didn't look away. I had a real vivid picture of who the characters were and I couldn't wait to find out how he got so rich. It probably helps that I'm a science geek, it may not be for people that don't like i.

[Ferris]

Awesome (Like hotdogs) story!

I have to say I got a bit confused about who was saying what at certain times. I think you could do a bit more to let us know about the participating characters, perhaps a physical trait to help remind the reader.

Other than that, I thought the jargon was kept to a minimum, I'm no scientist but could follow roughly - what I could not follow I skipped over, I figured it would not detract from the story too much!

Think you need to keep Jeff's dialogue either phonetic or not though, he seems to change halfway through!

Good read, entertaining and easy flow!

Ferris

[ea_blue]

I really enjoyed this one a lot. It reminds me of Golden Age Science Fiction (1950s & 60s) when it was very much about science and not just another excuse for a Schwarzenegger film. Scientists were the primary characters of the stories in a time ruled by John Campbell.

I thought the science was very believable and well-explained. Fabulous plot! I loved every moment of the story! Good characters. They were very believably depicted scientists and nerds. Great job!