The Causal Corridor
In a secret laboratory buried beneath the Himalayas, It is discovered that some questions are not meant to be answered by physics alone.
This is the sixth story in the Tensor Krishnan Iyer series. Read
- The Monogamy Virus,
- The 713 Connection,
- The Protocol Provenance,
- The Feline Factor and
- The Examination Extinction
first.
The television was still showing the 7.13 PM news.
Tensor was watching.
I was not.
I was looking at Tensor.
There was something about his face that evening.
He looked… impatient.
Then he turned towards me.
And the room changed.
Not dramatically.
No light.
No sound.
No tunnel.
One moment I was sitting on my sofa.
The next moment I was standing in snow.
The Himalayan Door
Year 2042.
Somewhere in the Himalayas.
A road ended at a steel door.
Beyond it was a laboratory.
There was no name.
No signboard.
No government emblem.
Only a small red light.
And a security camera.
Shankaran got out of the vehicle.
He was older.
Not much.
But enough.
The boy from Tirunelveli had disappeared somewhere between IIT Madras and Lausanne.
The eyes were the same.
And the curiosity.
It had become sharper.
Vector jumped out after him.
A security officer looked at the cat.
Then at Shankaran.
“Mr. Vector?”
Shankaran smiled.
“Yes”.
“He is authorized!”.
“He usually is.”
The door opened.
Shankaran have no clue know who is waiting for him.
Vector does.
Old Friends
A woman was waiting inside.
She was wearing a dark jacket, expensive-looking boots and a scarf that had absolutely no business being inside a government laboratory.
Shankaran couldn’t hide his shock.
Yet he felt a relief.
A sense of undescribable relief.
She smiled.
“Late.”
“Your letter said 9 AM.”
“It is 9:02.”
“I was told this place doesn’t tolerate punctuality.”
“It doesn’t.”
She hugged him.
Not ceremonially.
Not like an old friend.
Few seconds of embrace brought back a month long memories from the past.
Ayesha Zaidi Kuttimol.
Microbiologist.
Five years older than Shankaran.
They had met at EPFL when she was finishing her programme and he was beginning his.
She had come from Abu Dhabi.
Kuttimons are from Malabar district of Kerala.
They played a significant role in building the nation(UAE).
Before and during the oil boom.
They never forgot their roots.
Ayesha had an impeccable taste on how she wears.
And what she carries.
If not a Birkin it will be Céline or a Chanel.
Inheritance, from her French mum.
And, according to Shankaran, completely incapable of owning a boring cat.
Something orange shot past them.
Vector stopped.
The orange cat stopped.
They looked at each other.
Ayesha smiled.
“You remember her.”
Shankaran laughed.
“Scalar?”
“Full name.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Scalar Zaidi Kuttimol.”
Scalar too had a fashion statement.
She was wearing a tiny Madras-check bow tie.
A small jasmine garland sat perfectly between her ears.
She looked at Vector.
Vector looked at her.
Adjusting his black bow tie.
Don’t know how, when and from where he got the tie.
Then both walked away.
Together.
No surprise.
No drama.
It was like the meeting had been scheduled from the future.
“Still the same,” Shankaran said.
“Who?”
“Vector.”
Ayesha looked at him.
“No.”
She pointed towards the corridor.
“We’re still the same.”
Shankaran followed her gaze.
Scalar was sitting outside a locked laboratory door.
Vector was beside her.
Neither cat was looking at them.
Both were looking at the door.
“What is inside?”
Ayesha didn’t answer.
Instead she opened another door.
“Come.”
The Problem
The laboratory was underground.
The Himalayas were above them.
Three hundred metres of rock.
Ice.
Silence.
Then machinery.
Lots of it.
Cryogenic systems.
Vacuum chambers.
Quantum processors.
Superconducting magnets.
Ayesha walked through them like someone walking through her own kitchen.
Shankaran stopped at a circular chamber.
“What is that?”
“The problem.”
“That is a very large answer.”
She smiled.
“We’ve spent six years making it smaller.”
Inside the chamber there was nothing.
Nothing visible, at least.
Ayesha brought up a simulation.
A cluster of particles appeared.
“They enter here.”
The cluster disappeared.
“They should lose coherence.”
“Yes.”
“They don’t.”
Shankaran looked at the graph.
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
He looked again.
The curve was wrong.
Not noisy.
Not unstable.
Wrong.
It behaved as though the system was receiving information from somewhere it shouldn’t.
“Where is the missing information coming from?”
Ayesha looked at him.
“That is the project.”
“Meant for you.”
There was confidence in her eyes.
Vector and Scalar acted as if they have nothing in it for them.
The Long Nights
For several weeks, Shankaran worked.
He slept less.
Then lesser.
Soon, sleep became something he scheduled between experiments.
The equations were not the problem.
The answers were.
Every result contradicted something they believed.
Every correction produced another question.
Ayesha noticed the change before Shankaran did.
She began leaving coffee beside his console.
Then food.
Then reminders to go outside.
He ignored the first two.
He listened to the third.
Sometimes they worked until three in the morning.
Sometimes until sunrise.
When Shankaran’s eyes turned red, Ayesha would quietly close his laptop.
“Enough.”
“Five more minutes.”
“You said that forty minutes ago.”
“I am almost there.”
“You have been almost there for three days.”
He smiled.
She didn’t.
She simply stood there until he got up.
There were nights when Shankaran said nothing at all.
Ayesha didn’t force conversation.
She would sit beside him.
Sometimes their shoulders touched.
Neither moved away.
That was enough.
Vector became part of the routine.
He slept near Shankaran’s chair.
Scalar preferred Ayesha’s laboratory.
The two cats often disappeared together for hours.
Nobody knew where they went.
They always returned.
Usually at precisely the wrong moment.
Or precisely the right one.
One night, after another failed experiment, Shankaran pushed his chair back.
“I think I’m not good enough.”
Ayesha looked at him.
“You are tired.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
She paused.
“But tonight it is.”
Shankaran looked down.
For a few seconds, he tried very hard not to cry.
Ayesha didn’t look away.
Neither did she say anything.
Vector jumped onto the table.
Scalar appeared at the laboratory door.
Both cats watched them.
Shankaran wiped his eyes.
“I hate this.”
Ayesha smiled gently.
“Good.”
He looked at her.
“Good?”
“It means you still care.”
That night, nobody discussed the experiment again.
They sat together until the machines became the only sound in the room.
The next morning, Shankaran returned to work.
Ayesha was already there.
Vector was asleep beside the console.
Scalar was nowhere to be seen.
The experiment began.
They changed the apparatus.
The result remained.
They changed the algorithm.
It remained.
They changed the researchers.
It remained.
Finally, Shankaran looked at Ayesha.
“We have made a mistake.”
“We have made thousands.”
“No.”
He pointed at the graph.
“One fundamental mistake.”
Ayesha leaned closer.
“What?”
“We’re assuming the system is communicating with the present.”
She became silent.
For the first time in weeks, neither of them looked tired.
“What else could it communicate with?”
Shankaran looked at the graph.
“Something else.”
The First Living Thing
The first biological experiment was Ayesha’s.
A microscopic organism.
Nothing glamorous.
No heroic science.
A little organism inside a tiny chamber.
Ayesha watched the monitor.
Scalar sat beside her.
Vector was on the other side.
The experiment began.
The organism disappeared.
Seven hundred milliseconds later…
It returned.
Alive.
Everyone cheered.
Ayesha didn’t.
She was looking at the microscope.
“Shankaraa.”
He came closer.
“What?”
She pointed.
The organism had divided.
Once.
He checked the timestamps.
Impossible.
The entire transition had lasted at nanoseconds level.
The high precision clock displayed a teeny tiny number.
“It shouldn’t have had enough time.”
Ayesha nodded.
“Exactly.”
Nobody spoke.
Scalar suddenly got up.
She walked to the chamber.
And scratched the door.
Once.
Then walked away.
Shankaran watched her.
“Does she always do that?”
Ayesha shook her head.
“No.”
The Cats Know
That night I saw something I hadn’t expected.
Tensor had brought me here.
But I wasn’t merely watching Shankaran.
I was watching the cats.
Vector would enter a laboratory before an experiment.
Scalar would arrive before a particular calculation.
Sometimes they sat together.
Sometimes they disappeared for hours.
Nobody questioned it anymore.
That was the strange part.
Scientists who would reject a decimal error of twelve places were perfectly comfortable allowing two cats to wander around a classified quantum laboratory.
I asked Tensor:
“Why?”
He looked at me.
No answer.
The Impossible Transition
Three months passed.
Ayesha changed the experiments.
No more particles.
Living organisms.
Microscopic.
Under the nanoscope, the process was almost beautiful.
A cell would begin to split.
Not die.
Not break.
Disintegrate.
Piece by piece.
Then, moments later, the fragments began moving back towards each other.
Reassembling.
Integrating.
The first organism survived.
The second didn’t.
Then another survived.
Another didn’t.
Almost fifty percent.
The remarkable part came afterwards.
The survivors showed no visible change.
No mutation.
No cellular damage.
No memory loss.
Nothing.
Ayesha watched.
She invented the quantum nanoscope.
Her first contribution to the laboratory.
Shankaran watched the quantum readings and the graph progression.
At nanoscale.
Two scientists.
Two completely different languages.
One impossible phenomenon.
“The disintegration is happening,” Shankaran said.
“So is the integration,” Ayesha replied.
“But not fast enough.”
She looked at him.
“How fast should it be?”
He pointed at the equations.
“Fast enough to preserve coherence across the transition.”
“And if it does?”
Shankaran stared at the numbers.
“If we can make that transition faster than the causal limit…”
He stopped.
Ayesha understood.
“Quantum coherence.”
He nodded.
“And then?”
For the first time, Shankaran smiled.
“Then there may be no meaningful limit to what we can do with it.”
Behind the glass, Vector and Scalar watched the chamber.
Ayesha said “A new universe”.
She was calm.
Neither cat moved.
As though they had heard this conversation before.
Now I am used to these travels.
Not tired.
No fatigue.
The television was still showing the 7.13 PM news.
Tensor was sitting exactly where he had been.
I stared at him.
“You knew.”
He looked at me.
Nothing.
“Those cats knew.”
Still nothing.
I leaned forward.
“Vector knew?”
Tensor slowly closed his eyes.
Opened them.
Then looked towards my computer.
The screen was dark.
For several seconds.
Then it came alive.
No keyboard.
No mouse.
Nothing.
A blank document.
A cursor blinking.
Once.
Twice.
Then words appeared.
PROJECT: CAUSAL CORRIDOR
I stopped breathing.
A second line appeared.
STATUS: INCOMPLETE
Then a third.
OBSERVATION BEGINS: 2013
I looked at Tensor.
He wasn’t looking at the screen anymore.
He was looking at the clock.
7:13 PM.
And suddenly I understood the one thing I had been avoiding.
The laboratory wasn’t studying something that had happened.
It was studying something that was still happening.
Continued in The Missing Variables