Over the next few months, Roy, Harold, and other physicists gathered in Waxahachie, and pored over the accumulated data from the SSC. Once again, Harold and Roy found themselves in Roy’s office, discussing the experiments.
“It looks good,” Harold told Roy. “We seem to be close to confirming the existence of the Higgs boson.” The two scientists tossed the physics back and forth for a while. The Higgs boson, a particle formed only at extremely high energies, was the key particle in the Grand Unification Theory. Discovery of the particle would indicate that three of the four fundamental forces—the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces—were actually aspects of one overall superforce.
“That still omits gravity,” Roy pointed out.
“Who cares? If we can get just one more run out of the other universe’s accelerator, we’ll have gotten closer than anyone has before. Even Einstein.”
Roy nodded. Einstein had spent the last years of his life trying to unite gravity with electromagnetism. If only he had known that gravity would be the hardest force to unite of them all.
“The next step would be an accelerator of even higher energies. Probably have to build it around the Moon.” Roy sighed, and smiled. “Too bad we won’t be around to see it.”
Harold chuckled. “Roy, God Himself could appear in front of you with the one ultimate equation that explains all of physics, and you would shrug and think about how it would put all of us out of work. Forget about it! We’ve accomplished what we set out to do. Many-worlds and Grand Unification in one year, when just a few years ago we thought the SSC was long dead.”
Roy laughed. “It’s been a long, hard project, Harold. I’m just as happy as you are, but I’m exhausted from all the political stuff as well as the physics.”
“Well, relax. Just one more run of the accelerator, and you, my friend, will be on stage in Stockholm getting your Nobel prize.”
7. Spin Up
“That’s even more preposterous than your original theory,” Ray said. He and Kristin were eating lunch in the cafeteria. The mood around them was somber, and yet people were still joking here and there.
Kristin nodded. “I don’t care. We’ve got less than a month before they close us down forever. I think I have a right to request these runs.”
“What possible good could it do?”
“What possible harm?”
“Look, Kristin, I’m busy with a lot of other things. There’s paperwork to do, there are reporters to talk to—”
“Why won’t you let me try this experiment?”
Ray put down his sandwich and looked straight at his former student. “Because the truth is, I don’t believe you, Kristin. I’ve been humoring you about this alternate universe stuff. And we’ve got more important things to do in the final few days of the SSC than test your theory!”
A few people’s heads turned at the sound of Ray’s voice, but then they quickly went back to their own conversations. Ray’s shouting stung Kristin, but not nearly as much as his words did. It took her a moment to find her voice, and when she did, she spoke softly. “You—you don’t believe me?”
Ray sighed. “I’m sorry for shouting. Look, Kristin, it’s not that I don’t think you’re doing excellent science. And I wasn’t about to kick you off the program because of your strange ideas. I had a friend once who had some very weird ideas on Grand Unified Field Theory, but he did top-notch science otherwise, so—it’s just that we don’t have time.”
Finding her courage, Kristin said, “Let me run it by you one more time, Ray.”
Ray turned around to look at the clock on the wall behind him, then looked back at Kristin. “OK, one more time.”
She took a deep breath. “Fine. Let’s assume, for the moment, that I’m wrong, that I’m talking through my hat. Then you have two choices, either do the runs I suggest or do what’s scheduled. If you do my experiment, then yes, I admit, we lose out on whatever data we would have had otherwise. You’d be playing it safe, assuming that the data we’d be getting in these last few weeks would have any value at all.
“But now let’s assume that I’m right. Let’s assume that there is another universe, and that our current data does indicate feedback from there along an Einstein-Rosen bridge. In that case, whoever is in that other universe has been affecting the beams by taking data. Which can only mean one thing.
“They’re doing the experiments that we’re supposed to be doing.”
“So why do you want to signal them?”
“Well, for one thing, it would be nice to let them know that their days of doing science on the cheap are over, wouldn’t it?”
Ray shook his head. “I still don’t see the point.”
“It’s obvious, Ray! If we can get a message through to them, they can get one through to us. If they’ve gotten good results, they can share them with us! We can present those results to Reichen and maybe, just maybe Congress won’t shut us down!”
“But if you’re wrong, then it would be a complete waste of time.”
“It’s Pascal’s wager,” Kristin said suddenly.
“What?”
“Blaise Pascal, French mathematician—”
“I know who Pascal is.”
“Right. Anyway, he once asked himself if it was worth his time to follow the church, and he set it up as a bet. If God doesn’t exist, and you follow the church, you end up wasting a little bit of your time here on Earth. But if God does exist, and you ignore the church, the payoff is eternal damnation.”
“Those are… interesting odds.”
“So what’s it going to be, Ray? Are we going to take the safe and easy path, and get some last trickle of data which may be worthless? Or will we take the risk that we might be wasting our time, but with a possible payoff that would keep the SSC running?”
Ray looked around him for a moment. All these people, the scientists, technicians, and support staff, about to be put out of work because of a shortsighted Congress. Unless…
“What do you want to do?”
Kristin smiled.
8. Spin Down
Harold handed the sheet of paper to Roy, who leaned back in his office chair. “The beams haven’t been regular anymore,” he said, as Roy studied the data. “We’re not getting ‘Zing! Zing!’ now, but rather, ‘Pop! Pop!’” Harold demonstrated with his hands his interpretation of zinging and popping, and Roy found himself unable to keep from laughing.
But this was a serious matter. “Without proper beams, we can’t finish the experiment,” he lamented.
“You’re telling me?” asked Harold. “We re so close, so very close, and all we can do is hope that they send us what we need. I have to tell you, it’s got me real worried, Roy.”
The last time Roy had seen his friend so visibly distraught was when the proton decay experiments of the 1980s had failed to confirm Volin’s personal Grand Unification Theory, called SU(5). Its name had turned out to be as unimportant as the theory, since it had ended up disproved. Oddly enough, it was that same disproving of the theory that had led to the necessity of the SSC.
“Could the shorter beams be due to anything specific?” Roy asked.
“If so, it’s got me stumped. The beams aren’t cutting off the way my equations predict. It’s almost like they’re doing it deliberately. But why?”
Roy studied the data again, a listing of the different beam lengths. The shorter beam times did seem fairly self-consistent, as did the longer ones that were interspersed. But what could it all mean? He thought for a moment.
“Harold, let’s think this through. If the beams have been coming here, then what’s been happening in that other universe?”