#7 - Fred Comani discusses the Elementals, Gravity, and Parallel Universes with the Scientist Ghosts

This is an entire deleted chapter.

EVENT: DAY 13, 1500 GMT

“…the creatures aren’t normally within our universe.”

“Instead, we believe that they are intelligent wormholes self-translating between another universe and ours, or a parallel component-universe to our own. When they are captured, their properties are confined to our ‘membrane’. Is this clear? I’m leaving a great deal out.”

It was not clear. The information clogged Comani’s neural pathways.

They had been explaining about String Theory and Membranes. The best he could make out, without some sort of visual aid, was that there were many universes, and they were like amorphous parallel planes, existing with some ‘dimension’ between them. Was that the fourth dimension? What about time? He voiced his question.

His patient instructor replied, “Not necessarily; time is set aside for the considerations of this question. The term ‘dimension’ is used in different ways here. Between the membranes, we use the analog of physical space, but this place could be one of many types of dimensions for which the human mind has no frame of reference. More likely, you would think of it as timeless.

“Time is often called the fourth dimension as it relates to the first three we experience, and theory tells us there are other dimensions; these are all conceptual, but irrefutable within the theoretical framework. They are effectively invisible, but we can sometimes see how they affect things. Take gravity…”

Comani felt his question remained unanswered. A new voice interrupted, usurping the explanation about gravity. “It was once believed that gravity leaked away from our reality, making it a ‘weak force’. In fact, what we now think is that gravity is a very strong force somewhere else, and its gravitons leak into our universe. This place could be referred to as the ‘singularity’ dimension—a sub-universe, either packed into our membrane, or maybe existing in a separate membrane, yet still somehow interacting with ours. It would be an odd place, were we able to view it, since one could say that it only exists in infinite dimension, but the reverse of our own. There would be no time or space in that dimension.

“With the apparent exception of these creatures—we are calling them Elementals—only gravitons can escape the bounds of this place. And do so with regularity—the walls of this neighbor are sieve-like, allowing enough gravitons through to keep our universe balanced and happy.

“In many places, we reason that the graviton filter is torn, damaged by stellar objects in our own sub-universe as they experience violent deaths. The tears are black holes.

“Black holes are like open windows into this sub-universe where gravity is a ‘strong force’. They let the gravitons flood into our perceivable dimensions.

“Our gravity machines, the Gravity Rejectors, are like crowbars on the filter pores between the realities; we’re prying them open a bit. To everyone’s good fortune, the fabric of the universe appears to be idiot-proofed against mankind’s typical folly; it’s rather elastic at these levels of change. Which is why the first artificially-generated, microscopic black holes quickly evaporated—the openings snapped back shut.”

The first, less exuberant voice remained silent as this one continued. “Now, setting all that aside for the moment,” as if Comani had comprehended it, “we were perplexed by the time-related experiences; just as surprised as you were in your science pod. Very personal for a few of us, these events forced certain assumptions.

“Trying to explain what had happened, we started with the wild assumption that, somehow, time was a force, like gravity. As a force, it was leaking theoretical ‘time’ particles to or from our universe. For this theory, an Elemental was seen as an organic machine, analogous to the Gravity Rejectors.

“If we believe that they somehow straddle or bridge the singularity universe—their birthplace, we think—and our own, then we decided it was not too big of a leap to have them bridge over to our theoretical ‘time’ sub-universe.

“Finally, that brought us to the assumption that these ‘machines’ could pry open doorways to time.

“So now we had a postulation for the time-reversal effect that we’ve witnessed.”

Comani took a mental breath, sensing an end point, but no.

“That’s where we began, it was the start of a pretty neat hypothesis. But it all fell apart, and we ended up somewhere else. If you think that’s wild, wait ‘til you hear what comes next.”

The terrologist wasn’t sure what to think. He had a hard time even formulating a question around the confusing things the voices were saying.

“Are we alone? That has been a question for the ages, and I don’t mean ‘aliens’, visible beings. I mean higher, invisible intelligence, universal guiding principal and whatnot. As scientists we normally shy away from the question. Metaphysics.”

Oh mio Dio, Comani thought, no more, please.

The first voice cut back in with an annoyed tone. “Hold on there, Phil, you’re wandering away from the point. Besides, that wasn’t even what I was going to say about gravity.”

Phil didn’t apologize but excused his tangent by addressing himself to Fred. “Don’t get me wrong, Doctor Comani, I’m not a God-freak, I didn’t even believe in a Supreme Power until I woke up here. That was shock, let me tell you.

“Supreme Power, now there’s a…”

It was too much. Comani jumped in quickly, before they went on with their tangled account. He tried to direct the conversation back to an area that he could relate to his own experience. “So, you named the things Elementals?” Agreement. “And BUMP has teased out the technique of expanding the Elemental’s entropic field, like the one that I saw around my stone…”

Several voices at once began objecting and talking over one another in a babble. “Entropic? I like it.”—“How would that apply? A measure of energy not available?”—“Hold on, now, you can’t see the field, whatever you want to call it; that’s just ridiculous…”

Comani cut them off, debating the last thing he heard. “Wait a minute, Jessica said that the pirate girl’s ghost saw these… things; how could she see if they’re invisible?”

“We see differently on this side, son. We see more.”

Fred was irritated. “Alright. Whatever. I saw something.” No one argued. “Just let me see if I understand what you’re saying.” They remained quiet, he went on. “So, the gravity-controls coerce the creature to expand its wormhole forces to include the ship, the less gravity, the larger the influence field, and vice-versa. The magnetic field contains the Elemental itself.”

Someone corrected him, adopting his term for the effect. “The plasma also has to be shot into the creature’s field or sphere of influence for your entropic field to grow. Like feeding it. And the gravity and magnetic fields act together as the control and containment. And the larger the bubble, the slower the travel.”

A deep voice then spoke up. “Unfortunately, for me, they didn’t figure out in time that the field must be expanded and contracted within milliseconds. When the controlled and energized field sweeps across the human body, the portion of living matter at the field edge reverses its aging process, regressing, while the other portion continues static or standard aging. That creates a disassociation factor between the separately affected cells.

“Such a field cannot be allowed to pass slowly over the body. A certain experiment ended with unfortunate results—my death. The disassociation of cellular structures at the terminator of the field wave—essentially, cellular disruption—caused me a quick but painful and horrible death. Bit of a mess that I was glad I didn’t have to clean up.” There was a background tone of respectful agreement.

Fred was beginning to feel restless and it made him think of Angelo; he had never seen his uncle remain silent for this amount of time. “Uncle, you here?”

“Yes, my boy, still here.”

The shipwrecked terrologist was sitting in the escape pod, his first return since his arrival here. The bloodstains and gore around the interior of the small space were unavoidable; he was happy not to recall their source. He intentionally kept his focus internal, avoiding too much review of the environment.

The older escape pod survival suit’s resources had been strained during his interactions with the ghosts—he’d been pacing his subterranean cave, carrying on his conversations, waving his arms and gesturing to no one in particular—so he was plugged into the little pod’s micropile output, augmenting his charge.

“So, you’re saying the energia mostro has total control of the wormhole and time-reversal effects until it is imprisoned and controlled with magnetics and Gravity Rejectors?”

The first, reserved voice picked back up. “Well, Phil did not finish; there is no time-reverse, properly speaking, and referring to your experience, no translocation of bullets for that matter. As it turns out, when the pirates shot you with those energy bolts, you actually were hit. That might have killed you, or possibly it did kill you, but the Elemental you were hosting used its innate talent to regress your body backwards to the state it was in before the shot was fired. You lost the memory of those next fractional moments, yet time did not change. You saw the gun fire but it seemed that the bolts simply disappeared and reappeared behind you.”

Comani was shocked: he might have been fatally shot and he couldn’t remember it? His scientific curiosity brought him back quickly. “But my body is whole? At least I think it is. I cannot say for sure in this suit. How would there be no evidence? And you think that there are a lot of these Elemental beings? And on Earth too?”

That had been an unpleasant revelation. It was the consensus that these things existed in and out of the universe—one of many universes—he’d been corrected on that several times,

“Yes, your body is whole; yes, there can be no evidence, and yes, they would be too numerous to count, given the infinite nature of universes. There will be plenty of inert creatures on Earth.” His summary answer received a general murmur of concurrence. “I will explain how the first can be in a moment, but I will begin with the latter questions. Generally speaking, the controlling gravity ratios work out something like this: One earth-g, the Elemental is solid, and the function of its properties are confined very close to the parameters of the Elemental’s ‘body’—the stone-like sphere. The identification of one on Earth is near impossible. The vertigo that you say you experienced, that is an amplified version of what a person feels in one-gravity, when near a stone-elemental form. There is confusion and forgetfulness. For this reason, rarely does a person ever actually complete the action of picking up one of these objects. Its quantum nature is only decipherable if one knows to look for it with very special equipment.

“Past five earth-Gs, the Elemental’s qualities are undetectable. It remains in the solid state until removed from gravitational influence. If this happens, it will begin to ‘thaw’ as it gathers energy from its surroundings, faster or slower, depending on the energy around it and the depth and time of its former gravity-imprisonment. In your case, it had been feeding on you readily for some time when you noticed its return to the energetic, unconfined state.”

The thought of that thing feeding on him twisted Fred’s insides badly. The visceral emotion brought back the moments of his desperate escape in this pod. His closed eyes, shut against the evidence of that trauma, did not protect him from a crystal clear flashback of the decapitated pirate’s head, floating with him on the pods decent to this wasteland. It caused him to abruptly vomit into the well of his helmet. There was immediate hush from the “scientific community.” Jessica spoke for the first time since the meeting started. “Oh Freddy… We all know how you feel. Some of us have been through the same thing that you went through, and we’d all probably be throwing up if we had a physical body.”

His suit cleaned up and processed the vomitus, doing a passable job with the odor. Comani struggled to restrain his gag reflex. Through his embarrassment, he managed, “Thank you, Jessie, molto generosa.” He took a pull on his water tube. A deep breath. “Bene, bene, sto bene. You can go on.”

The same educated voice that had been offering most of the explanation made a throat clearing sound before continuing. Fred wondered if ghosts had throats, and how was it that they all happened to know Italian. And who was the man speaking so much; why he had been chosen to do most of the talking? He decided he did not wish to know what experience might have qualified him.

“Well, let’s see… oh yes, when the creature is in a zero-g environment, the field extends 1.5 to 3 meters from its “body.” At that point, it becomes hidden from sight in some manner—transformed.

“Its true nature, we believe, is being displayed at this point, that of the wormhole influence. A conflict we cannot resolve in the theory has to do with the proposed home universe of these creatures. If they inhabit the singularity universe, it would be a state of infinite gravity. Maybe something like our universe before the big bang took place. This conflicts with their response to gravity in our universe, but leads to other wonderful theories and questions about augmented laws of physics. These are not important now.”

Comani was thankful for small mercies.

“In our knowable reality, these objects would not normally progress to any greater state than that of the zero-g state, given the fact that the laws of physics don’t provide for a naturally occurring, steady-state of true, non-relative ‘negative gravity’. Leave it to humans to rewrite the law. The containment and control sphere is a ‘La Grange’ point on steroids.

“This is where BUMP comes in and muddies up the natural order of things. If you apply minus zero Gs, variable, the field potential will expand. It is limited only by the amount of plasma energy and the force of negative gravity built up by the spherical arrangement of Gravity Rejectors. All of this takes place inside the sphere, exerting a simultaneous, all-directions pull on the Elemental. A human would be ripped apart if inside this container. Tests have given a very grand upper limit of the field diameter before the containment sphere implodes.”

Comani was doing his all-out best to avoid thinking of the Elemental that had been packed into his ship’s drive. The entire time he’d traversed space it had been only a bulkhead away.

Questions nagged. “If the thing healed me with its power, why wouldn’t I remember it? And I don’t quite understand why the field does what it does for the ships? Why, or how, does it change time?”

“No, you’re not thinking of it right.” The man’s shell of patience cracked. “There is no ‘change’ in time. Inside the field—the controlled and rapidly expanded field—we are at the effect of the Elemental’s primary wormhole nature… Don’t interrupt.” Comani’s mouth hung open, a question cut short. “When we encounter these things, uncontrolled, we experience a reversal or skip in personal time but the static reality does not reverse. Remember the déjà vu you experienced?” Alone in the pod, Comani nodded. “Well, that’s what the poor, consumed soul experiences. You got a small taste of it. It is the secondary effect.

“The primary effect is what BUMP ships exploit. Wormholes are a gravitational exploitation, allowing jumps across distorted sections of spacetime, as if those sections didn’t exist. For a ship’s crew, all are within the simultaneous wormhole event, so all appears completely normal.

“These entities are tied to their stronger gravitational reality. That singularity universe does not come within our experience fortunately: we benefit from it and still have no dangerous gravity wells to fall into. It is this tie to their universe that allows them to warp spacetime; in fact, it is suggested by some that the bubble that is created around a ship is a temporary universe. I won’t get into that here.

“The secondary reversal-effect exists on the bow-wave of the expanding field of the wormhole, and it expands so rapidly across the occupants of a ship, there are no noticeable effects. In your pod, as you interacted with it, you were only partially affected by a field that was small, not perverted and expanded to a larger, abnormal radius. Your observations were bouncing back and forth in the ‘rewrite’ effect that these things have.”

Now Comani shook his head. “Hang on—‘rewrite’, what does this mean?”

The excited scientist broke in again. “Yes, that’s what I was going to say earlier…”

“Phil, if you don’t mind, let me continue.”

Comani sensed some hard feelings. There was a conspicuous silence before Dr. Education resumed. “You shared with us your initial experience with the object, when you thought the water had somehow traveled forward in time.”

“Yes, that is right, it went from my squeeze-tube into the field, and then it was all around me. There was no transition; it was just there, everywhere. Little droplets drifting around.”

“Yes, I can understand how it must have seemed that it went beyond time. But, tell me, how much more do you remember before you found you had become a prisoner of the Elemental?”

“Actually, very little.”

“Mmm, yes, you were brought under its influence shortly after. What you witnessed, Dr. Comani, was a loss of a part of yourself; the same as with the gunfire experience. It is the nature of what occurs with the mind when it is regressed by this intelligent force. The water droplets had spread out normally, and you likely watched it happen, but then you were regressed a small amount, and to your witnessing consciousness, there was a gap. Not a simple forgetting, rather, an excised memory.

“Just to complicate things a bit more, we can say from the observations we’ve had the misfortune to make, the regressive event follows the individual’s actual development in reverse. How is this possible? What is telling reality how to create each younger manifestation of the regressing human? How is it that this new, younger form matches the moment of its existence in the past? It is not a biological regression: certain markers, like scars, are removed from the regressed body.

“The answer: there is a record somewhere in these invisible dimensions, of that person’s past. Their physical past, down to a record of each and every atom of their body as it existed in each fraction of a second in their past. And so, all of the past, every bit of it, is all “writ in stone” somewhere.

“These colossal stores of life records must represent a resource of raw energy; the being taps into them by drawing the record, from wherever it is stored, through the human attached to that recording. During the time the human is in the influence-field of the Elemental, the flesh becomes morphic, plastic, allowing the physical body to follow the reversing record that is being drawn out. In our experience, it must use another human as an interface device.”

The things that the scientist spoke of now were intangible, but these things were much more understandable to Comani than the hard science. He had lived through such an event.

“We suspect once this energetic recording has been ‘vacuumed’ in this way, there is no trace of that person left in this Universal Record. We are not certain, but it’s possible that their souls—we accept soul as a concept, but our definitions vary—their souls are consumed. As we said, these individuals don’t show up here after this kind of death. These questions are really beyond us, as you might imagine.

“It’s possible the morphic quality of this field is also what allows the human bodies of ship crews to survive the destructive side-effects that we would normally attribute to wormholes. Unobservable events may occur between translation points in space. We would love to study this question, but considerations for the safety of our race will prevent that. With the kind of gravitational resource that these things represent, the potential for forward time-travel is also something we wish we could study.”

Comani had reached a mental saturation point; he did not understand the last references, but held his tongue for fear of opening up new areas of explanation.

“With our new knowledge of this life record, we believe that if we just could access this recording, we might be able to review time. It would be nearly as good as traveling backwards in time.”

He paused. No other eager voice weighed in, so he continued. “So, the Elemental not only drains the life force, but simultaneously feeds the recorded past to the matter-reality as the form disintegrates. The victim is an interface through which to feed upon this energy-record.

“It isn’t time-travel, but the person appears to be traveling back along their own timeline. A deadly personal rejuvenation.”

It sounded like the man had tried to make a joke, but there were no laughs. His scholarly voice droned on but Comani’s attention wandered, the image of the regressing, shrinking pirates filled his mind’s eye. They’d had a look of horror on their face. At the time, he had assumed them to be in great pain, especially since the energy he was penned-up within seemed so hostile. As he thought about what the scientists were saying, he had a doubt. He considered his own disorienting déjà vu and what they had said about memory loss.

Those pirates would have been witnessing something through their eyes, which were wide open, but each of those people would have progressively forgotten the context of each moment. The look on their face might not have been one of pain. And it couldn’t be fear; they would not have existed in any one moment long enough to experience anything other than utter surprise or shock at finding themselves someplace that did not fit with the resident memories of each previously-lived moment in time. The look was frozen because they were experiencing the same feeling up until the moment they no longer had a coherent recollection of their past, around infancy. It was a look of stark surprise.

He shook his head to clear the vision of bulging eyes, tuning in again to what the man was saying.

“…all points are the same point in singularity non-space, but that’s a tangent, as I said earlier.

“So, to summarize, there are three effects: the wormhole point-to-point effect, the plastic morphability, and the regressing of the timelines of living matter—the latter effect explains the results you witnessed, uh…” the man realized he was treading into sensitive territory; he didn’t want to make Fred ill again. He tactfully avoided more details. “The first saves us from the experience of time-dilation, wherein all that we’d known at the beginning of a journey would be years-gone when we arrived at a destination.

“When we expand the field, we expand the wormhole effect simultaneously, to envelop all of the matter that we wish to move through space. The known star charts guide the course that we set, and our movement within the effect has an intelligence to it beyond our own. Which is to say: we do not run into things.

“When the field is expanded—but we are between translation points—things that may not show up on our charts, like meteors, comets, rogue bodies, may be disregarded. This intelligence nature is what the military ignored…”

“Thank you,” Comani interjected, trying to politely cut him off. “I think I need to digest all that. Wormhole studies weren’t part of my course curriculum. What about all of you? How is it that all you scientists involved in this are Italian?”

There was a pause until one of them surmised what he was talking about. “No, sir, we aren’t Italian, or at least most of us are not. I imagine that your English must be weak, so you are hearing us in your own language. Interesting.” The others caught on and Comani could hear their various comments of mild surprise. It was interesting.

He set that puzzle aside, pursuing another query. “I would think that you’d be done with the land of the living. Is there anything you are able to do with your understanding of these things?”

The deep voice spoke up again. “Well, young man, our little collective of brains on this side of the curtain grew to a certain number rapidly in the beginning. We found each other and actively sought out any new crossers, as we call them. But as the military got their bearings on these things at our expense, the number of new minds to focus on this problem dwindled. The truth is, we are at a dead-end. We understand the nature of the Elemental better than any living scientists, but we have not been able to bridge the gap.

“That’s where you come in, son. We’re hoping you’ll join the cause, as it were. We need you to get the information back to people who can take some action on behalf of the human race, and the danger it has brought down upon itself—yet again.”