Surfing Chance - Chapter 8

Universe Beta[1]

Chance was talking a morning walk through the Sequoia forests of Sierra Nevada. He was thinking about his latest lunar base project failure.

"These giant trees can live as long as 3,000 years surviving through various droughts and forest fires. In this perfectly balanced environment, life can thrive for thousands of years and on the lunar base all it took was a few days for all of it to be ruined. Human created environments don't match their ambition. Scientists often say that there are harsh environments on planet Earth such as the arctic zone or the dry Atacama in Chile where people don't live. People never settled in these areas due to the unavailability of drinking water, extreme temperatures, the terrain being unsuited for any kind of agricultural activities. Even today, if someone were to get lost in the Gobi Desert or in the Siberian tundra, unprepared, they would have a hard time surviving. When we talk about colonizing Mars, this automatically means the worst conditions that we have on planet Earth plus the lack of breathable air plus drastic temperature fluctuations plus radiation plus lack of any kind of animals or vegetation. Mars, a relatively harmless planet, is posing many challenges to its future colonizers. The climate change of Earth is threatening our perfectly balanced environment and it will take considerable effort and resources to replicate this environment on other worlds. The lunar base, was just an example of how fragile a human built environment can be. The moon, Mars, places about which people have a certain understanding of. Conditions that can be managed. However, if we go as far as Venus that has an average surface temperature of 470 degrees Celsius and sulfuric acid rains, this would mean human inhospitability of a much higher degree…

Perhaps humans were not designed for space exploration. Technology enhancements are bridging the inherent condition of people that seem to have been bred to survive in this bubble world that we call Earth. Life is not something that belongs in the cosmos and it is not something to look for on the outside. Perhaps it will not even outlast the next mass extinction or the next nuclear holocaust…"

Chance returned to Tokyo and submitted a request to terminate his rental contract. For the small apartment that he was in, it was too expensive. He started to pack all of his belongings in boxes. He packed all of his things in boxes and opened a portal to Redwood National State Park in California. A remote place, with a sea view that has much more open space. A forest cabin to act as temporary housing was what he needed now. After finishing the moving process, he opened a portal and went to the university to start his work day.

…

Prior to starting his lecture, he was scribbling in his notebook and he decided to compile a list of his current tattoos:

- Newtonian Gravity,

- Second law of thermodynamics,

- Archimedes' Law,

- Rosen bridge tunneling formula,

- Lorenz Force equations (F = qE + qv x B),

- Pressure Formula (Pressure = Force/Area),

- Magnetic Force formula (F = qvB sinθ),

- Planck's radiation law (defining the energy distribution of radiation),

- Heat transfer formula,

He decided to complete his formula list with Einstein's general and special relativity. These were the only missing ones if he were to venture further into deep space. The solar system would act as a testing ground for all his new skills.

The lunar base was his last humanity-centered experiment. He thought that if a meteorite or other kind of global disaster were to happen, he'd try to save as many as he could. Chance gave up on that thought. People don't need saving nor do they need to be taken outside Earth because they are part of a single ecosystem. They live and die in this closed circle and he was no longer belonging to it. He needed to get rid of his food and water dependency. He needed to get rid of his oxygen dependency. He needed to get rid of his heat dependency and obtain a body that is not just shielded on the outside, but is structurally different than the ones of human beings.

He needed a body capable of withstanding any temperature, pressure or amount of radiation. In his mind, there was only one object that is capable of withstanding many if not most of these conditions. A planet. His new body should take the characteristics of planet Earth with radiation protection, geomagnetic protection, with hosting of species that are capable of transforming sunlight into energy and other species that are consuming this energy. A delicate balance of synergetic beings living in harmony. He needed to create an ecosystem within himself that would preserve the consciousness of his mind and the full functioning of his brain.

Chance was designing his new self from the inside out.

"This new creation would need to have a hot molten core. A constantly spinning molten iron-rich core, that would continuously emit heat outwards but also produce a geomagnetic field. The next layer would be a thick layer of crust that acts both as a heat insulator as well as a strong foundation for the upper layers. The next one would be the life layer with flora, fauna and all kinds of life that would strive towards perfect symbiosis. The brain functions and consciousness would be divided among the intelligent living beings of this layer. The next layers would be the atmospheric ones with nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon, oxygen, ozone and all the right ingredients for a semi-cloudy sky. Now in addition to having such a structure, Earth is always spinning around its axis and this keeps its molten core in motion. The inner layers of my body would have to be spinning and retaining the outer illusion of being static. The upper most layer of skin, even if it is reduced to an ultrathin transparent membrane, would have to retain the tattoos that I already have…Also, this body would have to keep my eyes, my face, my hearing, my ability to feel the things I touch.

Finally, the sun dependency problem could be solved by a swarm of rotating suns that would spin around me like bees providing enough sunlight for life to thrive."

Chance ate another potato chip and was staring blankly into space. People were walking past him in the park and some even thought that he looked like a homeless person. While he was pondering his evolutionary advantage and his new body structure, he was just another park dwelling chip eating individual. He stood up, opened a portal and leaped through it. The people in the park did not notice it because they were all minding their own endeavors.

The red planet proved to be colder than expected and Chance immediately adjusted his 'thermostat' formula for heat transfer. He was walking on regolith sun-lit surface of Mars looking for a place to start his exploration of the planet's underground layers. Mars doesn't have an Earth like atmosphere, but its thin atmosphere is composed of 95,32% carbon dioxide, 2,7% nitrogen, 1,6% argon and 0,13% oxygen. Chance transformed a few patches of his skin into a plant like structure that is capable of photosynthesis. As long as he stood in sunlight, his skin could convert carbon dioxide into oxygen for breathing. He also defrosted a huge patch of ice in order to increase the humidity of the air around him.

His excavation started by marking an area of about 100 square meters for his first dig site. Then he decreased the mass of the whole 10-meter-wide upper regolith layer. In order to remove this almost weightless layer he magnetized it and pulled it towards an outside spheric rock that he lifted high into the air. He created a huge boulder, which he then pushed farther into the desert. Now he had a 10-meter-deep hole in the ground. He was inspecting the walls carefully. He was looking for signs of organic life. More specifically, he was looking for fossils and bones.

He took out another 100-meter-deep layer and formed another gigantic regolith sphere, which he then casually dropped to roll away from the dig site. He was flying and inspecting the walls, but there was not too much light inside this hole. He used another powerful magnet in order to extract iron out of the iron-rich regolith. He placed all the pure iron on a giant round tablet that he created from compressed regolith. Through melting of the upper layer, he created a smooth mirror like object to be used to redirect sunlight into his excavation sight. As he was digging deeper into the Martian crust, he was slowed down the process so as not to disturb the more subtle artefacts. He stopped at about 500 meters deep where he discovered a labyrinth of tunnels and underground caverns. These types of caves seemed to have been carved by an underground river. He entered the tunnel of the cave and he followed as it led him deeper into the crust. He used a portal to go back to Earth and get a lamp and was back in less than five seconds. The walls were covered in volcanic minerals much like the ones on Earth. He heard dripping sounds from nearby stalactites and upon closer inspection it was water. Chance took samples to be teste in a lab back on Earth.

…

Yuri was at home, enjoying her day off. She was watching an American comedy sitcom about the Big Bang and eating popcorn. She moved the laptop from one side of the room to another so that she also does her laundry. Yuri took a break and made herself a warm cocoa. The dating app Finder was quite popular so she decided to try it out for herself. Quite bored of it, she was swiping through possible matches. In her quest to cope with boredom, without even realizing, Yuri ended up splitting her universe in about one hundred and eighty new versions. She stopped swiping when she received a message notification from her friend, Mia. It was a conspiracy website link with the title "Are aliens living on the dark side of the moon?". The article stated that the Chinese space observatory has captured documentary proof of alien structures on the dark side of the moon. Mia sent it to her in order to have a laugh. Yuri immediately understood what she was seeing and this was not the work of some aliens. There was only one person that could build these kinds of things on the moon… Chance. There is so much fake news being published today, that it is difficult to keep track of all of them and it is possible that a fact-based article gets mistaken for a fake one. One scroll and it is gone forever into the internet archive of oblivion. However, not everyone ignored this news publication and a certain group of NASA investigators linked it to the recent anomalies related to the moon's orbit. Their evidence was building up and as soon as they will make the connection between these two incidents and the Curiosity Rover footage of the giant floating boulders of Mars, the internet will blow up. Yuri had no way of following the NASA investigation developments, but she had a feeling that Chance was about to get himself in big trouble. Yuri did not know what was the right thing to do. She did have the information on how Chance was connected to the Pakistan murders, but she kept it hidden to be used as her own safety guarantee. What if she was considered to be a co-conspirator based on the eye-witness testimony of someone in Pakistan that might have seen the two of them there? The adrenaline levels grew and Yuri was growing anxious. Like it or not, she was bound to Chance and had to warn him of all of this. Both of their lives were at stake.

She picked up her jacket and rushed off to his house. His irresponsible behavior was ruining her day. She was annoyed and mad at Chance for putting her in this ridiculous situation. In her mind, she was exercising her angry speech about how Chance's actions were affecting other people. How he was irresponsible and causing more damage than he already did. When she reached his apartment, the door was left unlocked so she entered. The apartment was empty and all of Chance's belonging were no longer there.

…

"Houston, we have a problem. Did you see the latest split readings? We need to get in touch with Orion.", said Stephen to the other scientist girls in the Limbo dimension. Houston stopped writing and answered in a defensive girlish tone.

"Don't use that specific wording. It's annoying and unfunny every single time."

"The world splitter, she is having a mental breakdown."

"Are these readings even possible?! In her panic she is creating many new universes of her panicking in each one of them. It's branching out exponentially and it reached a critical billion universes per minute ratio. This never happened before."

…

Yuri's first universe split happened when she was with Chance. The spiraling down of her fragile mind started with that incident and it grew like a tumor. Initially, the splitting occurred only in very demanding situations. Traumatic life-changing forks in the road. Like a nuclear reactor that was not cooled down, her brain started to race into various manic episodes, self-harming thoughts and anxiety. She was splitting the source universe over what jeans to buy online or what hair color brand to use for her dye. Her imagination was conjuring complex lifeline scenarios out of simply seeing strangers during her morning commute. Flirting, window-shopping, choosing bike roads or what movies to watch… all of these daily dilemmas were overloading the multiverse. The failsafe system, Chance, was not fast enough in destroying them.

When she did not find Chance in his apartment, she knew that sooner or later the whole world would start suspecting him and her altogether. She could not escape the paranoia resulting from being monitored by international federal investigators, the pentagon, the Interpol and Chinese secret intelligence. She just wanted her carefree life back and she regrated ever having started her stupid fan page. She tried to imagine what her life would be like, had she not run away from home, had she not done all the mistakes that led her to the current predicament. Instead of alleviating the situation, this contributed more to the multiverse meltdown.

As she was standing there, on her knees nearly out of breath she felt a throbbing pain unfolding in her stomach that ended in a stabbing-like cramp in the uterus area. She knew that her period was too soon to arrive, but for some other reason her body was collapsing from the inside. Moments before fading away, she saw an older man running towards her and trying to keep her awake. The man was in his sixties, spoke fluent Japanese and looked a little bit like Chance. He was calling for an ambulance. He told her that she is going to be fine and she felt safe enough to rest her head on his shoulder before blacking out.

…

Beta 1, Beta 1A, Beta 1AB. Billions upon billions of new universes. Yuri blacked out, simultaneously, in all of them. The critical readings flatlined and the meltdown was avoided, for now.

...

[1] Universe Alpha is the Universe in which Chance recruits Fermi, Mia and Serghey to help him explore the Kepler system. Probability of universe destruction 99%.

Universe Beta is the Universe in which Chance loses interest in the human world and pursue space exploration on his own. Due to his sudden disappearance, Yuri feels lost and disoriented. Probability of universe destruction estimated at 100%.