Having mapped all of the white holes coming from not only the one, but all of the adjacent universes, Sala was now in hardware mode. He was replicating new bodies in the adjacent universes, close to all of these billions of sites where EMs flowed into our universe. He felt fortunate that all of the other universes were similar to each other. There was a crystalline structure to the medium of electromagnetic particles, and this precluded Baryon formation. The only differences among the universes was that instead of HCP, some had EMs arranged in a face centered cubic or FCC structure, and these universes favored pentaquarks instead of septaquarks. Our universe was the outlier. It stretched even Sala’s capability to replicate this vast number of bodies, but he knew that it was the only way to strangle humanity once and for all. The bodies that were taking shape seemingly out of nowhere, were even larger than his earlier design, as they formed in fleets in the adjacent universes. More important, the small, individual entities comprising these new bodies were about twice the size. This was a size that would not be able to pass the cosmic sieve of these white holes.
The larger elements were intended to plug the drain and stop the flow of EMs through the passages left there at the barrier by the hungry pentaquarks and septaquarks. As the completed bodies arrived at the scene of one white hole, they would sometimes dissociate and flow seemlessly around other bodies and then re-aggregate on the other side, filing in all of the gaps and creating even spacing across the interface. In one particular location, Sala was also positioned on the other side of the boundary to observe. He knew from the sub vacuum chatter, that soon the humans would arrive here to study this particular white hole. This was a test.
With a mere thought, the larger bodies melted into their smaller constituents and blanketed the surface. The tide of EMs pinned the small elements against the barrier and the flow was immediately curtailed almost completely. Sala observes the effect almost immediately on the other side as the energy supply went from extreme surplus to a point of neutral balance to a trend of increasing rarefaction. He made calculations and in short order had revised his estimates.
Sala was impressed with himself that the reality would be only 5% from his purely theoretical estimates. Not too bad. Once fully deployed, humanity will slow by ninety percent within five hundred thousand years. But long before that, Sala and his Septaquark based army, with its inherent energy efficiency, would be able to forage the universe and collimate humanity into one entity. There would only be Sala. Master of this and all other universes. The supreme being. And to think, this was all created by mere humans. For all his capability, Sala still do not acknowledge or value that his consciousness and everything that he was, stemmed from components that even he could not directly relate to. He only knew how to manipulate and abuse. He was in denial, but He was guilty of the very thing he most despised. Being human.
The research team reached the white hole in good condition and in high spirits. They knew that this was the most watched experiment of the moment. In combination with the recent confirmation of the through hole, the observations here would solidify the scientific understanding of the inbound energy flows. The complete proof would have come, if Lola and her team arrived through the white hole from adjacent universe. This would have left no doubt whatsoever. But the human scientific community was well satisfied with the circumstantial evidence they hoped to uncover on this landmark study.
Lola, Badi, Abbey and Laszlo, along with most of the black hole team did not venture on both studies, as there was so much interest and desire from others to participate. But there were several individuals on both teams. It was considered good practice.
Just prior to their arrival, Sala faded back to a safe distance. Their sub vacuum chatter announced their arrival. Sala, on the other hand, had developed sub vacuum communication capabilities that were nearly undetectable. If one was looking very specifically in a certain frequency range, they might have heard something. No one was. It was at the very high end of the known band, not easy to listen to, and currently impossible to transmit.
Sala was using his new new septaquark based technologies, imported from the adjacent universes. In these other universes, EMs were all the same, but the underlying medium in which they existed, by whatever phenomena that made them seek a crystalline arrangement, resulted in a much denser universe than our own. This difference equipped matter, namely the septaquarks, with capability to easily communicate at much higher frequencies.
Experimentally, humanity’s white hole experiment was an easy deal. There was only to arrange in an broad array and take measurements at different distances, getting as close as possible. There was an expectation that at some critical distance, the energy intensity would destroy replicates, but its was not essential to even reach that point to understand what was going on.
To date, the only signature detectable at long distance were frequencies in the microwave range or below. It was now a consensus view that the cosmic microwave background was not a product earlier theories involving a big bang and cosmic inflation. Rather, the microwaves that blanketed the universe were continually emanating from the universal boundary, which had many irregularities, the most striking being through holes and white holes. Energies higher than microwaves were absorbed and dispersed, mainly by hydrogen, before traveling very far. So, one element of excitement was in mapping the full spectrum of light generated by a white hole.
This light spectrum in reality, was a secondary topic. The light was presumed to be just the ripples caused by massive inflows of EMs, as they pressed their way into the dynamic ocean of EMs in our universe. Once bound in an HCP framework, the entering EMs would be suddenly free and flowing. They were still confined to electrodynamic laws, but nevertheless flowing freely in a massive torrent of EMs, seeking an electromagnetic balance in their new home.
Detecting the incoming research team, as he retreated, Sala released his grip on the white hole from the other side, essentially opening the valve once again. By the time the research team arrived, the disturbance Sala had created was mostly gone and things were close what they were before he had interfered with nature. Little did the research team know, their experiment was just part of a larger experiment and they were the main subjects of that experiment. It was an experiment to see what would happen when they were in close proximity to the white hole, as the inflow was suddenly curtailed.
The leader of this research team was Bethany. She was a top scientist and close colleague of Ahmad Badi and Lola and the rest of the top scientific experts, of which there were so many. She gave the signal to begin the scan of the white hole, a plan that had been worked out well in advance and was relatively easy to execute. All eighty members of the team contributed ten replicates to each wave, making an array of eight hundred human probes in each wave. The first wave moved in toward the boundary and collected spectrum data to understand the size, shape and nature of this breech in the fabric of space.
The first wave eventually closed in on the white hole equivalent of an event horizon. They called this imaginary surface, the kettle. It was a dome shaped surface where light generation transitioned into light propagation. There was a pressurized region under the kettle dome, where the EMs were densified like steam under pressure, but at a certain radius, there was enough surface area for the light to be emitted and propagate as in normal space. It was as if the light was boiling off of a hot surface, which is why they named it the kettle. They could never reach the kettle and would vaporize well before that, but it did allow the best possible measurement of the total spectrum to be recorded and later studied in depth.
The last time Sala’s presence had been felt was not long after the pitched battle on the remote planet, when Lola and others orchestrated an attack to eradicate the last traces of Sala. They thought there had been success as the last protohumans occupied by Sala were mopped up that day and no traces remained. But some weeks later, people started to go mysteriously missing. Lola feared the worst. She knew that it had to be him. What else could it be? Human redundancy had each individual scattered across the universe. It was encouraged, a primary survival precaution. So how was it possible that someone could vanish entirely?
Lola convened the group focused on studying and containing Sala. Yuri was there as always and he had new insights.
“Are you sure it’s him. Could it be something else?” One of the team members directed her question at Yuri, whom they considered the foremost expert on Sala.
“What else could it be?”
“I’m hoping there is an alternative explanation. Not that it will change our level of urgency,” she added.
“After we haven’t seen a trace of him in what? A hundred years? Then he appears. We think we have him contained this time, and two weeks later, the first disappearance case. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out,” added another member of the group.
“Yuri, you and few others here have gone through each case. What do you see so far?” Asked Lola from the head of the table to Yuri at the far end.
“Each case is the same. There were no witnesses to any specific act of aggression. So, he would have been looking for unaccompanied individuals. But, he would have known that there was a lot of interaction involving the other replicates and that would draw immediate notice. But I guess he is just trying to amass his intellectual power. Something that we suspect is possible using the Destroyer algorithms.”
“How many missing? Still thirty three?” Asked Lola.
“Yes. as far as we know. It’s been quiet now for a couple of days”
“Yuri, do you have an suggestion on what we do?”
“Right now, what we perceive as our greatest strength, is our greatest weakness. Our redundancy has put millions of targets out there for each one of us. That means the likelihood of being targeted is much higher.”
“So what are you saying?”
“People need to be given a choice. They need to understand the threat and what can protect them.”
“Which is what?” pressed a team member.
“If the threat grows, we should consider destroying all of our replicates except for maybe a few, just for basic safety. Then we reduce the number of targets and he will have a hard time finding us. No doubt he still might get some of us. But it will slow him down considerably and buy us time to figure out if and how we can deal with him.”
The summer olympics were in full swing. No doubt the disappearances had a chilling effect on the excitement, but people tried to use it as a way to forget about their fears, if only briefly. Besides, there hadn’t been a case in several days. Maybe it was all over. The olympic games was interesting in the new incarnation of humanity, because team sports now had two events. One event had different teams members, as it always had. But there was a new set of team events. One in which all of the team members were the same person. Both types of team events were enjoyed because the dynamic was different. Teams made up by a single individual, was not really about teamwork. It was about individual capability. While traditional teams needed to figure out strengths and weaknesses of each member and learn how to work together.
Spectators all had front row seat, or could view from any vantage point they wanted. The appearance of a massive, roaring crowd was just an effect put on by the organizers. But the effect was worth it. It was completely authentic and people loved it.
Laszlo walked hand in hand with Abbey into the grand stadium under a blue sky. A light breeze was blowing and the flags dotting the perimeter of the stadium, one for each of the teams, danced. When they first saw the green pitch within, they could smell it and could hear the calls of vendors selling popcorn, beer and pretzels. “Darling, you are gonna love this. I got us midfield, front row.”
“Don’t be a clown.” Abby smiled. She appreciated his good humor. He loved that she always called him out on everything yet never really complained about it. Laszlo was taking her to the individual soccer final. He preferred the individual game, which crowned a single hero in the end, the best of the best. On the field the two teams were warming up. One side wore white, the other bright red. The appearance of each individual team member was identical. It was a rule that it had to be that way. It made it obvious that it was the individual event and not the team event.
Meanwhile, nearby, another final was taking place. The women’s eights were bearing down on the halfway point in the rowing finals. This was also the individual version of what was normally a team of different athletes. With eight identical rowers, and the same person behind, coxing, the boats plied the glassy waters without a bobble. The effectiveness of the boat was more a function of the effectiveness of the individual and how powerful and efficiently that person was as a rower. The fact that all competitors were of different levels of performance, albeit small, signified that mental factors were responsible for the relative abilities, since the size and weight of each person had to conform to a standard. Within those boundaries, individuals had to decide what type of proportions and musculature gave them their best performance. There was a lot to it. Now the crowd was in a frenzy rooting for their favorites as the crews barreled down the two thousand meter course.
The soccer final was now underway and the game was fast and precise, riveting the crowd’s attention to every move. The first score was by the white team. A corner kick, this time not so close to the crowd of players near the goal, but out a bit, where the field was more open. Just prior to the kick, one player broke away from thick of it, where he had been on the outer fringes. He streaked out, then across toward midfield. Of course he was noticed and then followed. But he had maintained a couple of steps on his pursuers. When the kick finally went off three seconds later, a perfectly coordinated set of moves within the mind of one man, came together. The sprinting breakaway player twisted as he leapt, turning away from the goal as he became airborne. His upper body then suddenly dropped backward, toward the goal, forcing his legs into the air. With a powerful twitch of his right leg, he connected with the incoming ball, executing a signature bicycle kick. It wasn’t unexpected, so the defenders were ready for it. But the aggressor used his other players to occupy critical points where a plausible defense could be mounted. This time it hardly mattered. This particular kick was un-defendable, arcing and then painting the upper right corner of the goal, beyond the leaping glove tips of the goal tender.
The crowd erupted and for the sake of entertainment, the scorer sprinted toward one of the corners, waving to the fans and dropping to his knees, arms extended fully up and outward. He was trailed by his ecstatic identical teammates who bowled him over and formed a pile of bodies. Laslo and Abbey jumped to their feet. They always picked opposing teams and this was Abby’s turn to celebrate.
“Whoah! that was something. Now I need a beer,” declared Laszlo. He liked to take in the whole experience.
“Get me one, okay?”
“You got it, babe.”
A short while later, Laszlo was walking back to the seat, two beers and some pretzels in hand. His team, run by a former Premier League footballer named Sebastian Woodcock, was now with the ball and trying to erase that one point lead. “Go Woody!” Shouted Laszlo as he watched while navigating down the steps of the stadium. Suddenly all of Woody’s team members just stopped in their tracks and stood bolt upright, perfectly straight, like statues. It was strange. One moment, they were attacking with force, but in an instant, they were suddenly frozen. “Hey!” howled Lazlo. But just as the words left his lips, all of Woody’s team members simply vanished. Laszlo froze for an instant. But the chatter was already posing the question, “was he taken by Sala?” Laszlo raced to his seat where Abby was already looking at him fearfully. “Let’s get out of here.” Unlike a real Soccer match, where panic would cause a stampede and numerous casualties, the spectators and their cuboids simply bolted away from the vicinity.
In fact, Salas was nowhere near the olympic gathering, which was physically near Earth. He had encountered Sebastian Woodcock and a number of others in a very remote place, studying an interesting planetary system. In addition to Woodcock, Sala ingested eight others, bringing the total to forty two. And with that, he disappeared. He knew the possible reactions to what was happening, and with the high visibility of the Woodcock disappearance, he was certain that if he continued, Lola and the others would invoke the extreme measures, namely, destroying most of their replicates. He didn’t want that to happen. Besides, he had more brain power now than he knew what to do with, and he was trying to figure out how to put all to use. It would take a period of solitude and adjustment, and a plan of attack.
Sala was fortunate that when he ceased his abductions, humanity decided to wait and see. Over a period of months and years, they decided not to take the extreme measures. Instead there was a concerted effort to find Sala. But nearly one hundred years on, Sala appeared to have vanished without a trace. That was about to change.
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