In the vacuum of an unknown dimension, the Orion-nebula looking entity was switching off its Tiberius Chance TV Screen. "So nice of his students to have organized this", it thought. "Onsen and Japanese food are a multiverse delight. To think that in the 300,000 years of human race timeframe, to be born in the exact window of time that Japanese food is available. Not too soon, when Japan was still an isolated country, building its own culture and traditions, not too late, when the Japanese people go completely extinct due to the declining birthrates. Yellowfin tuna sashimi. What an elegant cosmic output!"
The entity shifted to the pocket dimension of the schoolgirl scientists.
"Dear colleagues, how is progress on our Chance project?"
"Oh, hey. It's going steady. We did not anticipate him to connect to the Splitter in such short time, so that is new. It was nice that they helped one another, as humans.", said Stephen, "we told him that he'd collect scientific data for us, and that we'd use it to continue our research. He does not know about her, nor about our task force."
"This was the deal, colleagues. Knowledge comes at a high price in the afterlife."
Albert was depressed about this whole knowledge endeavor. He had worked his entire life developing an elegant system of connecting the laws of physics together, only to discover in the afterlife that his understandings pertain to the one universe that he was in. It was like becoming an expert in only one type of bacteria after a lifetime of research. What was promised to them, was the possibility to continue studying physics, but the latter revelations made their mission meaningless. They were employed in the 'clean up' crew of the entity. As it was explained to them, the multiverse is like a large tree that needs pruning. The dead and old branches need to be cut out, in order to save resources for the newer branches. Keeping this practice, ensures survival of conscious existence and it prevents, or better yet delays, the vanishing of everything into nothingness.
The Orion-entity is the designer behind this universe pruning system, and it is the last remaining specimen of an alien civilization that went extinct after discovering the multiverse fallacy. One of the responsibilities of the Orion-entity is to monitor the seed entity, the splitter. A virus-type being that intrudes into the mind of a vulnerable, in our case, human, and feeds off its uncertainty. Each strong uncertainty, serves as a basis for a universe split.
Earlier in our story, when Chance told Yuri, the world splitter, about his actions that led to the death of innocent people in Pakistan, she was faced with an impossible choice of trusting or not trusting Chance. On one hand he was understandably good intentioned, on the other, mass murder of human beings is unforgivable. Ordinarily, her simple biological mind would have been overwhelmed by this serious dilemma. However, her virus infested neural pathways found a way to process this fork in the road. When she had to choose whether to trust Chance or not, the universe split into two almost identical copies. In one universe, she accepts Chance for what he is and organizes the school trip as a form of group therapy to get him through his grief. In another, her own grief makes her start fearing Chance and seeking to avoid him. As the only person that may save him from a terrible fate, she withdraws from this responsibility and allows him to spiral down into darkness.
As dramatic as it may sound, to the Orion-entity this process was as ordinary as an apple falling from a tree. The universes multiply, like cell mitosis. One divides into two, then two divides into four. Four divides into eight and so on. Yuri, was the splitter. The universe seedling. The splitter is present in all universes due to contamination and multiplication.
To combat the effects of accelerated splitting, a proverbial self-destruct button was created and planted in each universe. A fail-safe, that allows for the Orion-entity with its clean-up crew to eliminate excess universes when the splitter surpasses her production quota. This universe self-destruct button is called, Tiberius Chance. Each universe has one. The activation of the universe self-destruction sequence starts with him receiving a gift that can break every law of physics. Statistically, until this moment in time, 100% of cases of Tiberius Chance receiving this gift resulted in the assured destruction of his host universe. In few instances, he succeeded destroying more than one.
When the Orion gave Chance his gift, it was like marking a tree for death, only instead of a tree, he marked that particular universe for annihilation. Chance, a simple being that wishes to surf the expansion wave of his universe has no way of reaching this dream other than creating either infinite energy, infinite mass or surpassing the speed of light, all of which are spacetime fabric breaking.
…
The schoolgirl scientists reached this pocket dimension of their own volition, but some of them, like Albert were starting to get annoyed with the strong interreference that this supreme alien race had on the multiverse. It was noise in their data and it was ruining their efforts to understand the cosmos in its natural state. Laws breaking, pruning of universes, controlled self-destruction, all of this was changing the game in which they were all stuck. They signed up for an eternity in a hybrid purgatory based on a false promise.
Stephen and Albert devised an exit strategy and decided to enter a wager with the Orion entity. If they were to support Chance and prevent the destruction of his current host universe, whilst still achieving his dream, they would get a second chance to get unstuck and reach the afterlife. The bet was on. The Orion entity was interested in Chance for the sport of it, and it never care much for anything else beyond the gardening of the multiverse. Pakistan, grief, experimentation, to Orion it was all just late-night cable entertainment.
The scientists, were Chance's support group now and they needed to start figuring out ways to get the cookie without breaking the cookie jar. "There are millions of ways in which this can go wrong, and only one way in which this can go the right way. We have to find it.", said Albert to Stephen as soon as they set out on the path to win the wager.
…
Yuri, a girl from the distant Fukushima area, left her house when she was 16 to get college education in Tokyo. After five years of living alone in a small Tokyo room and going through several part and full-time jobs, she is now enrolled in the Astrophysics track at Tokyo University. As a loner, she often faced emotional strain, depression and mild anxiety. Her part-time jobs had a strong anchoring effect on her mood swings. Good grades, stable finances, no relationships and she was on a steady no incident streak, up until the moment she reached Pakistan. Despite keeping her calm, she was barely holding on and after Chance told her about his truth, something broke inside of her.
Yuri, the world splitter, was faced with an impossible choice and this resulted in the formation of two new universes. Following that event, her emotional state never recovered back to its equilibrium. As a human being, growing up meant that her doubts and fears would only increase. As her capacity to make easy decisions was hindered, her universe-producing capacity was growing more robust. Focusing on research or going towards a company career. Staying in Japan or moving abroad for more opportunities. Getting a cat or getting a dog. The virus in her mind was harnessing this uncertainty and every opportunity for new universe creation.
At first the uncertainty manifested only for serious dilemmas, but in time the virus became better adapted to harness everyday trivial choices. Each morning, when Yuri was not sure of what outfit to eat or wear, the virus was creating a universe for every single option… for each outfit, for each different pair of shoes - a new universe. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of universes a day were generated through this method. Yuri was seeing glimpses of them all. The split process implied her envisioning fragments of each outcome. She always saw the 'what ifs' and as it got worse it was difficult to say if her anxiety was generating the universe splitting's or if her glimpses of other universe was feeding into her anxiety.
When she was walking in the park, she kept seeing glimpses of her being mugged, raped, crushed by objects dropping from passing airplanes. She saw nuclear bombs exploding near her house. She saw herself drowning, choking on food when eating alone, having her head crushed when the elevator doors were closing. She saw food poisoning, her accidentally cutting herself while chopping onions and bleeding to death. All of these universes were created, however the ones that were generated from a death scenario were left sterile. Without a splitter inside of them, these universes would die off without replicating and the multiverse tree was in consequence, suffering.
…
Yuri was happily enjoying the late lunch at the Onsen together with her classmates. She was happy and she forgot for some time of her mood swings. Chance was protective of her, and this made her feel safe in a this newly found family-like environment. Her future may be uncertain, but her present was serene. She was smiling and laughing for the first time in many weeks.
…
In the Beta Universe, Yuri just landed from her airplane and said goodbye to Chance in order to get out of there as soon as possible. As soon as he was out of sight, she ran towards the nearest metro station and rushed to her home. She uploaded videos, photos and audio recordings of her conversation with Chance that she discretely collected during the Pakistan trip. There were enough materials for launching an international police investigation into the Pakistan mass murder case. She put all of the materials into a cloud server and left the following instructions to her classmate and friend, Ema. "If something happens to me in the next days and I end up disappearing, use my OnlyFriends account to upload all of the materials on this cloud server" to which she attached logins and passwords. The evidence of Chance's crimes would reach 60,000 people, the press and the police. Overwhelmed by anxiety and paranoia, she created this safety net for herself and only then went to get some rest.
Chance got out of the metro near Shibuya and was pulling his trolley through the crowd in the direction of his apartment building. He had a good 20 minutes of walking before reaching home. His mind was still lingering on the Pakistan incident, and when he passed by a tattoo salon, he decided to take a quick detour. There aren't too many people that go in for a tattoo on Monday morning, but the salon was open and ready. Took no more than 15 minutes and he was already on his way to the nearby shopping mall. He bought some sandalwood and cedar essential oil, a few green tea scented candles, vanilla bath bombs, biodegradable bath foam and two gigantic white towels. He walked to his apartment with his trolley and two big shopping bags. When he got home, he was exhausted, sweaty, sleepy and in pain. He was worried about the incident in Pakistan and he scrolled his phone for news updates on the fixed houses, but he found none. He went to the bathroom to open the bathtub faucet and he left the bathroom to turn on the AC and do the SPA goods unpacking. He lit the green tea candles, and poured a few drops of essential oil in the water. He put all the rest of the goodies on the giant new towel, next to the tub. When the tub was filled to the brim, he kneeled to watch the last few drops falling and switched off the faucet. Chance knew that one glass of water would be enough to make the bathtub water overflow. Perfect. He undressed and got ready to step into it. Break! He got into the tub in order relax but also to test his new tattoo. It was the Archimedes law. His body except for his left arm was submerged and the water was not overflowing. The effect was soothing and he laid his head back on another small towel and fell asleep. He was feeling himself go into a state of much needed rest.
In his dream, he was in Abu Dhabi driving a Red bull Renault white care on the Formula 1 racetrack. He was in the lead and was doing great time for the first 10 laps, but then after a minor mistake at the turn, Chance fell behind. Now he was in the top 6 drivers and he felt his car slowing down. It was either the tires or the engine that needed changing, and he nervously sipped water from his tube. He was called in for an emergency pitstop, so he slowed down and managed to avert major damage to his car. When he stopped there, they started with the tire change and what he saw was Stephen, Albert, Edwin, Christian, all dressed up in Formula 1 themed school uniforms rushing to his car. Chance, you need to use the safety car to finish this race and come talk to us immediately after. Now go!
…
Chance finished the race and returned to the pitstop. He left his safety car and got inside the classroom, where all the scientist girls were waiting for him.
"The initial arrangement was that we would just use you to collect data from the farthest corners of the universe, but now we have a new proposition for you, Chance. We will be coaching you all the way to the finish line. In order to achieve success, and not break everything in the universe while doing so, we have devised a three-phase plan for your journey to the expansion line.", said Stephen while jumping straight into the matter at hand.
Stephen knew that time was limited and they needed to deliver the strong messages as soon as possible. Their time frame was dependent on the adrenaline levels of Chance during his dream experience. This is why, for the first dream they chose a romantic beginning and for this one they chose the world's most intense race as a scenario. These dreams are more likely to be remembered in their entirety, and they even suggested that Chance record all that he remembers on a notepad as soon as he wakes up. Like a news bulletin, every session begins with a bang.
"… in order to complete your journey, you will need a precise pattern of law breakings for each phase. We noticed that you already started experimenting with tattoos. You got to as far as three by now and the success ratio of your experimentation were quite troublesome.", said Stephen hinting at the Pakistan disaster.
"How can I do things better next time?", asked Chance.
"Christian, would you do the honors?", asked Stephen.
"Yes, of course," responded Christian Doppler as he walked towards the gigantic blackboard. Every step ringed of high-heels hitting the wooden hard floor. Christian took a piece of chalk and separated the board into three parts.
"For now, we suggest being more cautious in experimentation but we cannot stop you from getting new tattoos. Just know that in order to reach your objective, you will need to have a more methodic approach. Our three-phase plan works in the following way. The sum of laws you will have to break will revolve around these:
1. Finding a way to travel faster than the speed of light;
2. Finding a way to obtain a body that is able to withstand extreme cosmic radiation, temperature and gravity;
3. Come up with an equally sturdy and magnificent board. For surfing past the expansion line.
For the first phase, we will go in the direction of breaking the Einstein-Rosen bridge equation. We will be working in the direction of developing a wormhole portal system that can be used with a precise coordinates system. This will prevent you from accidentally opening a portal to the center of a singularity that may end up sucking the entire Earth into it."
"Don't worry, Chance. You will surf the expansion line of the universe!"
...