Searching Far and Wide

[intricate_engineer]

Glen was creating a prototype for a new gate design. It was meant to be affordable and provide quick transport between individual homes. She tests several objects and a rat and everything seems to be working.

She steps through. Instead of finding herself in the room next door, she finds herself standing on a sidewalk in an empty city. The buildings are tall and perfect, colorless with doorways far too tall for any human. The roads have no straight lines and twist in on themselves. There is no life or sound.
Glen tries to stay calm. She begins to walk along the road, randomly opening doors and exploring buildings that are as silent as the rest of the world.

She opens a door that she hopes will lead onto a roof and is instead met with warmth, and soft noise, and color.

Comments

[the_very_best]

"- how many dimensions are universes arranged in?"

[intricate_engineer]

"How many dimensions can two objects be arranged in? Up, up and slightly to the left, up and slightly more to the left... There is an infinite number of possibilities."

[the_very_best]

"I don't mean directions, I mean dimensions, like, you could imagine all the universes being in a row, or you could imagine them being in three dimensional space, or you could imagine them being in four dimensional space if your brain is more of a pretzel than mine is..."

[intricate_engineer]

"Ah. They don't exist in any physical space, so that question isn't any more meaningful than talking about directions. It's all metaphors in english. Alright, imagine you are seeing the normal three dimensions, but then you turn and see a fourth, and then you turn again and find yourself existing in five dimensions. The dimensions' existence is similar to that. There is always another dimension curled up in the place you didn't look. Time isn't especially meaningful. A lot of the directions lead to universes we can't understand. We typically ignore those."

[the_very_best]

"None of that made sense."

[intricate_engineer]

"I'm sorry. It's the kind of thing you can take years of classes to understand and yet still not know if any of it makes sense. Working problems and understanding the math helps, but it's always hard to relate it to the physical world."

[the_very_best]

"Fair enough."

[intricate_engineer]

"I can still try though? If you want. I can't promise it will start making sense."

[the_very_best]

"It's probably wasted on me, I don't have a lot of math."

[intricate_engineer]

"There are people way better at explaining this stuff than me. Without using the actual formulas, the metaphors are always pretty sketchy, but it might be interesting at least. I can ask bar for a copy of one of their books?"

[the_very_best]

"Couldn't hurt."

[intricate_engineer]

"I'm just whining though, it really isn't that bad. It's probably actually good for me to go through the whole process once in a while."

[the_very_best]

"If you say so."

[intricate_engineer]

Glen finishes assembling the first portal.
"I'm going to turn it on. This is when you really don't want to stumble through."

[the_very_best]

Bella sits on the ground.

[intricate_engineer]

Glen sits down next to her, and pulls out her computer.
The portal turns various shades of dark.
"I'm not having much luck," Glen says.

[the_very_best]

"Oh well."

[intricate_engineer]

Glen fiddles with it for a few more minutes.
"Yea, this isn't going to work. I haven't even found any universes with life yet."
She shuts the portal off.

[the_very_best]

"It can tell if they have life?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Yea. Universes with life are really really different. You can tell right away and intelligence feels different too. It doesn't always help you find the life inside the universe, but there's no doubt that it exists."

[the_very_best]

"'Feels' different?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Believe it or not yea. We started noticing it when we were still visiting universes randomly. We always knew if there was life before we actually found it. It happened too many times to be a coincidence It turns out life gives off a distinct signature. Universes with life sort of, have a different shape."

[the_very_best]

"How is the feeling transmitted while you're poking around?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Universes without out life feel hollow, like any sound you make will last forever, like every movement is an intrusion. It's subtle and you don't notice it when there is life."

[the_very_best]

"No, I mean - it is not obvious why you would get any directly perceptible feedback at all from the process. How does that happen."