Chapter 6 - Universe Beta[1]
Chance woke up and got out of the bathtub. His fingers had wrinkled up like raisins and his nose was runny. He dried up with one of the new towels and slipped into some Hilton-labelled single use slippers. He walked to his bedroom and took out his sleep journal to write down the set of formulas he just received for the Rosen bridge tunneling. It was good that he had a tunneling solution, because this meant that he could open wormholes to other exotic locations. Doing so without taking precautions would only make the situation worse than it already is. Furthermore, he noticed during his gravity trials that there are effects such as nausea affecting his body. The breakings had some sort of unknown toll on him and trying out new things without foreseeing the side-effects was no longer an option. Breaking entropy could very well have affected the burning of oxygen in the mitochondria of his cells. Going to anywhere with Rosen tunneling would mean him ending up in non-friendly locations that are either the vacuum of space, places with extreme temperatures, extreme gravity or none at all, high radiation areas, places that lack breathable air and the list goes on. Humans are fragile and he needed to make himself more robust.
One thing that he could do, is to keep entropy broken around his body to prevent any kind of decay by radiation, space vacuum pressure and temperature, but this would still not solve the access to oxygen issue. What would need to happen is a complete transformation of his body into a new type of being capable of harmless space faring, while preserving biological brain function and the tattoos on his skin. No easy task.
"If I were to travel close to the speed of light, I would need to have zero mass. This means that my body would need to be composed of matter that is similar to photons or neutrinos. Of these two, the latter can even pass-through objects. However, my brain functions based on a biological structure and electronic impulses in the brain. Even the electrons in my brain have too much mass for them to ever be able to go at near speed of light limit without the requiring of near infinite energy… I'd have to break E=mc2 in order to access the limitless energy required for propulsion.
Additionally, I'd have to incorporate a self-repair instinct into my body that is no longer connected to my conscious effort. It would have to be similar to an external force field or an extra membrane layer around my body that would fix me back in case I get accidentally hit by a piece of micro-meteorite while I am hurtling through space. Regarding the oxygen intake, I could use extreme pressure to compress oxygen and CO2 so that I have easy access to produce breathable air. This would be a solution for short journeys…"
…
He got out of the house to get himself a quick breakfast and then go back to work. He was mumbling on his way to the store and thinking of new and better ways to achieve a perfect body. When phrased like this, the science question began to sound more like a marketing campaign for a new gym. Chance was merely interested in a means to an end. Something that will get him through the vastness of empty space, unharmed. He felt giddy, like a superhero designing his first costume. If he fails to consider the full extent of the extreme conditions, he may lose his life or multiple body parts.
After breakfast he removed his upper clothing to reveal all of his tattoos and wore a pair of blue swim shorts. This allowed him to have visibility over his lower leg tattoos as well. Now, he had the following ones:
- Newtonian Gravity (both Newtonian and Einsteinian gravity can define the trajectory of a thrown baseball unless the baseball is the size of quantum particles and is flying near the event horizon of a black hole… for people sized objects inside the solar system, the time effect of relativity is not as great as to require breaking),
- The second law of thermodynamics (defining entropy and the way energy is transformed, transferred and wasted in the process),
- Archimedes' Law (defining the behavior of objects submersed in fluids and the buoyant force),
- Lorenz Force equations (defining the electromagnetic force that forms between two charged particles such as protons and electrons),
- Pressure Formula (Pressure = Force/Area),
For Radiation, it is a little more complex, but it starts out with replicating the Magnetic shielding that planet Earth has:
- Magnetic Force formula,
For stopping radiation, the ideal formula would be Planck's radiation law, which Chance added just to be safe:
- Planck's radiation law (defining the energy distribution of radiation emitted by a hypothetical source),
"However, breaking Planck's law would be too complex since people need radiation in the form of heat in order to survive. We also need light, as radiation, in order to see things with our eyes. What I would need is perhaps something more in line with an extremely strong SPF cream that would withstand ionizing radiation such as gamma rays and galactic cosmic rays. I would need something like SPF 5 billion, given that I plan to travel through space indefinitely passing by stars bigger and brighter than the Sun…
Chance randomly remembered a sunscreen commercial playing out the Beatles' "Here comes the Sun" and now he could not get this song out of his head.
"… the most effective radiation shielding is provided by Hydrogen, so all I need is to apply an ultrathin Hydrogen SPF shield all over the surface of my body."
He tried it and his body suddenly started to glow in moving patches of dark indigo and sky blue. Standing there, in his swim shorts, glowing with all the tattooed formulas on his body, Chance started to look less and less human. He looked in the mirror and couldn't help feeling excited to go and test it out.
…
Chance arrived at his house at nearly 8 in the evening. He took out the keys from his pocket, clumsily trying not to drop the giant beach chair that he just bought from the store. In the end he got in and placed it near the door. He put a microwave dinner plate to warm up and changed into comfortable gray sweat pants and a plain white tank top. He was wearing silly dog slippers. After a non-gourmet slightly above decent meal, he got into his living room and was getting ready to start his first portal experiment.
"Break!" he covered himself in the magnetic, hydrogen (anti-radiation) and pressure reduction layers. He started glowing in the same way as before. The tattoos on his arms that were activated became also had some sort of pulsating light glow effect. Then he activated the self-regenerating entropy as an automatic reflex, just in case something happens to him, like an arm suddenly freezes and gets ripped out, and he can't react fast enough. He darkened the hydrogen barrier around his eyes to look like sunglasses. He also added one more formula for heat transfer.
𝑄=𝑚×𝑐×Δ𝑇 (Q = Heat transferred; m=mass; c=specific heat; Δ𝑇= difference in temperature);
This is to prevent harm arising from extreme temperature variations. Essentially what it does is it slows down the effect on Chance's body that arises from either sudden temperature risings from phenomena such as Solar flares and it protects his body from the coldness of empty space.
"Break!" – Chance opened the portal to the moon. He picked up the beach chair and as he threw it inside the portal towards the surface of the moon, he whispered "Break!" again in order to break gravity and increase the mass of the chair four times during its midair toss. The chair landed on the other side of the moon without flying off onto the moon's orbit. Chance jumped in after it. He broke the law of gravity again in order to generate on the moon a comfortable gravity similar to Earth. The temperature was fine, but the air was getting a bit thin and it was giving him a buzz in his head and slight panic. He broke all his body layers and extended them to the nearby 1 square kilometer area. Now there was a patch of the moon with magnetic layering and what seemed like a small atmosphere. He broke entropy and electricity in order to free the oxygen trapped in the moon's upper regolith layer and fill the area with breathable air. Now he could breathe easily. He read somewhere that the Moon's top layer has enough oxygen to sustain as many as eight billion people for 100,000 years. This is why, the moon seemed like a decent first destination for him. He ended up on the sunny side of the moon, which was his intention from the start and he used part of the oxygen to form a thin ozone layer above him using electricity (break Lorenz force). This would dim the sunlight even further and it would aim to reduce the radiation. He restabilized his heat transfer formula. Once all of this was done, he opened the beach chair and sat on it in order to watch planet Earth.
"I will build a small base here on the Moon.", thought Chance. "Just the minimum requirements needed for space exploration, but it will have to be autonomous and not too dependent on my breakings."
Chance started coughing heavily and watched his hands get droplets of blood on them. Break! – he covered the flooring of his isolation zone with a protective layer. Only now did he realize that the Moon dust that was all around was also irradiated and harmful for his lungs. Break! – he repaired his lung and body damage resulting from the dust exposure.
"A base would have to be about 1000 square meters with partial glass ceiling, radiation protection, temperature insulation. For the first period, I would produce a stable air quantity with Nitrogen, CO2 and Oxygen, but in time I will bring some plants here in order to create a more stable ecosystem. I will produce water from the available oxygen here and perhaps this will improve the breathing experience…"
Chance was watching Earth and thinking of how fragile people really are and how much it takes to protect them from the harshness of empty space. How improbable is the fact that life on Earth exists for nearly 3,7 billion years already. People acting so self-entitled and all knowing, when in fact they are naked in the vastness of space. A minor change such as the shifting the attraction between protons and electrons on the orbit of a common element could easily wipe out the entire biosphere. He sat there, pondering. Even he was part oblivious to the nature of the cosmos; meaning that he sat there in a seemingly static environment, on the Moon, while in truth the whole cosmos was expanding around him. All cosmic objects around our galaxy are departing from one another at an accelerating rate. The beginning of this terrible race was an even crazier explosion at the beginning of everything. He was sitting on his beach chair on explosion debris.
Chance opened a portal and jumped back to his apartment. This time he did not fly into the wall because he increased his weight mid jump in order to land firmly on his feet. He did crack the wooden flooring of the apartment though and he immediately fixed it so that it is not deducted from his security deposit at the end of his lease. Just to be sure, he healed himself to 100% one more time with entropy breaking. The first experiment was surprisingly successful.
He put a sticky note on the fridge with a short 'to buy' list. He needed a Geiger counter for detecting high levels of radiation, an oxygen meter, a pressure meter and a hygrometer for measuring humidity. Probably a digital thermometer as well. Normally space suits are equipped with multiple sensors for all these things, but for Chance this information is essential. His barriers need to filter out sunlight on the moon during the day. For someone on the moon surface, the difference between being in the light and being in the shade can cause a variation of more than 250 degrees Celsius.
…
A few weeks passed and Chance managed to solve the basic problems, one by one, around building a small lunar base. He broke down the upper layer of lunar regolith in order to free up enough oxygen for a bigger air capsule. The heating system he invented was based on one very long pipe that went around the moon's equator. The pipe was supposed to collect the heat from the sun-exposed half of the moon and deliver it to the dark side of the moon. The pipe was filled with a freon like gas that Chance invented to act as an extremely good heat conductor and its purpose was to ensure a more balanced temperature of around 0 degrees Celsius in his lunar base. After getting a tattoo of the law of friction, he broke it and created a few perpetuum mobile pumps on the pipeline in order to keep the gas in motion. With slight adjustments, this system was enough to guarantee a stable not too hot, not too cold temperature in Chance's base.
He built a gigantic dome with a glass ceiling and filled it with coniferous pine and cedar trees, that are more resistant to low temperatures. The end result was a lunar self-sustaining base with oxygen, heating and a safe environment for humans. He thought that if something terrible was to happen to Earth one day, he could temporarily host a small colony of humans. He sat on his chair among the pine trees, dressed in a yellow Canadian-flagged jacket. He was sipping his warm tea and looking at the pitch-black sky filled with stars. He took a safe bet coming here on the moon, where he already knew most of the characteristics. On other planets, of increasingly higher difficulty, he'd need to be even more industrious.
Chance was making plans and enjoying the view. It was more comforting for him to visit his lunar base during daylight. One day, as he was walking through his forest, he suddenly saw a giant tree fall down and then another. The light was getting dimmer and it suddenly became terribly cold. He quickly set a barrier around himself and watched as his whole vegetation instantaneously freeze. It was one of those quite rare Earth eclipses.
…
Chance's creation was destroyed and even if he could have easily rebuilt it, he decided to go back to Earth. Once again, an experiment gone wrong. The base itself was not the problem, but the ability for Chance to oversee all possible scenarios was severely limited. Here, in Earth's orbit a miscalculation that was so easy to predict turned into a disaster. Chance was asking himself: "What were to happen on a planet in a whole other solar system or in a whole other galaxy? In a place that has phenomena like geomagnetic storms or severe solar flares or simply stars exploding nearby that could destroy several planets at the same time…"
…
Chance was extremely self-critical and his past failures were not helping him with objective self-assessment. He was blind to his obvious growth and his capacity to silently learn from past mistakes. An experiment with no human casualties is in truth, never a complete disaster.
...
[1] Universe Alpha is the Universe in which Chance is forgiven and understood for his past mistakes. In redemption, he connects with his students and they all work together on his space exploration project. Probability of universe destruction estimated at 99%
Universe Beta is the Universe in which Chance is left alone to atone for his sins. He is neither understood nor accepted by Yuri and her peers. This distance makes it more difficult for him to process through his grief and it ends up spiraling down. Instead of growing outwards, he is pulled inwards to crash into his own singularity. The schoolgirl scientists are working to prevent an absolute disaster. Probability of universe destruction estimated at 100%.