Entanglement - the opposite spin

She couldn’t remember how she got here.

So, I am sitting in a bubble where everything’s blurry around me, I don’t have any idea why or how, and there’s a plate of butter chicken and rice in front of me.

Sally pinched herself to ensure she was awake. It made her wince and that was scary. She looked around at the blurred phenomenon again. There were muted conversations coming from all directions, in English, mostly. Sally rubbed her eyes, blinked a few times and then peered around again. Was she in a-?

OMG! I am at an intersection. An actual, stable intersection!

The edges of the sphere were blurred, as if she were sitting inside a glass marble with a frosted surface. 

So, this is how an intersection feels. I can't wait to tell dad!

***

“Dad,” Sally called out to the man hunched over his desk with a lamp partially illuminating his head while the rest of the spread, and the spill, illuminating his disorderly paperwork, “Did you work through the night again?”

“Huh?” her father looked up at her and then flopped back down.

Sally walked behind him and ruffled his almost grey, curly hair. “It’s 8:44 a. m.” she announced.

“What?” exclaimed her father and stood up. “I must be in the lab by 9:30… at least!”

“Good luck with that.” Sally teased him even as he rushed to the bathroom.

***

Sally sat awestruck in the intersection, admiring the spectacle, almost tempted to peep through the hazy boundary.

Would it still be stable if I stepped back and reentered?

She stood up and walked a few calculated steps behind. She was back in a cavernous hall teeming with food stalls, familiar noises, and people. One of them landed a few metres away, his jet-pack, hissing lightly, no bigger than a rucksack. On a reflex , Sally looked at the ceiling which displayed a perfect day with a few white fluffy clouds and an occasional bird flying by. As the man gave her a quick smile, and walked off, Sally took a deep breath and stepped back into the intersection that was, thankfully, still in front of her, though barely visible.

The other world in the intersection didn’t appear to be hostile, and that was a relief. With so many accidents during the beta phase, there was a chance one could be killed instantly; by a toxic environment, or untamed inhabitants, or simply because the intersection snapped shut without notice. 

It brought back memories of her dad, and his disappearance.

***

The transporter dropped them off at the lab, save a few minutes of walking. Sally struggled to keep up with her dad who strode ahead with an old-fashioned leather bag in tow.

Once the biometric scanners were satisfied, a seemingly impenetrable wall disappeared and they paced to the meeting room where an eager group of scientists were busy chattering. On seeing Dr. Kross approaching, they began an applause worthy of the highest Scientific honour. Sally beamed at the standing ovation given to her father.

“Please be seated… friends.” Dr Kross grinned, “All of you deserve the applause too, perhaps more than I do. Let’s not forget the power of a team. We are so much more together than just the sum of all!”

“So, when do we test it?” exclaimed someone from the back of the room.

Once the laughter had simmered down, Dr. Kross said: “We have confirmed the theory so far which, which is brilliant in itself. I double and triple checked it last night. However, the task of ensuring we can actually see an intersection, or feel one, or even enter one ourselves begins now.”

“So, it’s just an engineering problem now, is it?” someone quipped and the room filled with laughter again.

That was nine years ago and a lot had happened since. The first intersection was created. It lasted less than a second but was enough to win her father the Science Maestro award and he had dedicated it to his team.

Meanwhile, Sally completed her doctorate and now headed the lab that her father built. The nine years also included the time when her father disappeared into another Universe, through an intersection that closed sooner than predicted.

Sally hoped he was still alive in that parallel Universe and her mission was to perfect the predictability, stability, and destination of intersections, if at all possible. 

I'm coming for you dad. Hang on, stay safe, and stay alive!

***

Sally was pleased the current intersection was stable. Yet, she worried how the intersecting Universe differed from her own. Often it was a minor difference, like a universal constant, and that made each one unique. She began eating her lunch and was in the middle of a chew when someone said: “Is this seat taken?”

Sally almost gulped down the food in her mouth and managed to nod her head. A young man sat down opposite her, holding a burrito.

“What I meant to say was that if this seat was taken, it wouldn't be here.” she told him and he just smirked.

There were a couple of things Sally noticed about the intersecting Universe: People looked almost identical to her own Universe, and the one who ended up in the intersection was not a bad-looking specimen. She was also hoping that her dad was somewhere in that Universe, or one very similar, so that he could be alive.

Meanwhile, the guy was trying to make conversation when, all of a sudden, he started choking and coughing violently.

Too much chilli!

***

When the first time the O appeared on her CommD, she was still not over the fact that her dad was just… gone. He had been confident the intersection he was entering would lead to a collaboration between Universes. It was a stable Universe, almost identical to their own, and was the third time he had met the same person, from the other Universe, in the intersection.

“This guy,” her dad had gushed to her, “is a scientist… like you and me, but has built something far more impressive than our research into intersections.”

“What is this impressive technology?”

“It’s a time relay device that allows him to communicate with himself, in the future or the past!”

“I guess it needs a wormhole of some sort. We have put extensive research into it but so far there’s no evidence we can have a wormhole big enough, or one that lasts long enough for any practical use.”

“Thank you for the clarification, Doctor,” her dad had laughed. “That’s exactly what I intend to discuss with him should I meet him again.”

“How can you be sure you will meet him again? How will he know where the intersection opens? Does that Universe know of the intersection?”

“Ah, you see, we’ve managed to add a new feature to the intersections. It works a bit like entanglement, and once established, we can open the intersection repeatedly to the same Universe, and provided we have piqued the interest of our… counterpart, we can effectively have a series of conversations!” her dad had given a final clap to make his point.

So what was the final conversation that caused dad’s disappearance?

Sally had been seeking to locate the same intersection since. She had gone through her dad’s devices and lab interfaces. Audit logs revealed little more than the number of times her dad had been a party to the intersections, how long did each one last, and information on the target Universe’s suitability to sustain life. One particularly disturbing incident involved a sword brandishing knight who had found his way into the intersection and her dad had barely managed to exit the intersection alive.

That’s why she was intrigued when the O kept appearing in mysterious ways on her CommD and got increasingly intrusive. When it caused disruption in her work, she decided to investigate.

***

Even as the young man in the intersection recovered from his struggle with pungency in the food, she realised that the Universe was eerily similar to the one described by her dad.

I must make contact in this Universe.

The young man offered the opportunity to delve into the intersecting Universe but it was a daunting unknown. Sally decided to explore the ‘connection’ further but when the young man started rubbing his eyes, blinking rapidly, and surveying the spectacle, she knew there was no use pretending ignorance.

“It’s OK”, she patted his hand, “It’s the same here: just you in focus.”

After a bit of struggle with his hands, the guy pulled out a device she had seen in archives and museums: a smartphone. She watched him unlock it and go wide-eyed. Then, he stood up, as if to leave, but teetered on his feet.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she offered, “Hi! I’m Sally!”

She learned that his name was Peter and appeared to be ill at ease. She also learned that the Science in the intersecting Universe was decades, if not more, behind her own. Assuming there was still a lot of mysticism in that Universe, she asked him: “Peter, are you a sceptic, or a believer?”

As the conversation progressed, Peter asked her about the intersection and how she knew of it. He then tried to probe her about the Universe she came from, which she found a bit juvenile but understandable given the difference in the timelines of their Universes.

“Tell me, Sally. ” Peter had asked her, “Did you have an X and an O messing with your brain too?"

This led to the discovery that Peter had started seeing an X on his ‘phone’ (as he called it) and it led him to the intersection. She couldn’t help sharing the fact that an O had been nagging her too.

"Are you implying opposites? Male Female? Yin Yang?" Peter had asked, a bit startled.

As she said it aloud, she knew why she had ended up in the intersection with Peter.

Entanglement, or as Einstein had put it, Spooky action at a distance.