Chapter No. 55. Transition

The journey through hyperspace was short. When we reached the near Earth-node we experienced the light flash but no ringing, and when we dropped out of hyperspace, we didn't see any anomalies. Our ship ended up in the Kuiper belt, a region of the solar system populated by dwarf planets like Pluto and many smaller planetoids beyond Neptune's orbit.

"Well, that's a good sign," Janet said. "Pluto and its moons look the same as we remember them."

"Hopefully, Earth will be somewhat the same.

"It'll take us several days to get back to Earth safely, sir," Janet said.

"That's fine. We have no reason to hurry."

"Maybe we should have stayed in the last timeline, sir," Natale said. "It didn't have any threats."

"That's true, but we didn't belong in a universe that had no humans. We would essentially be an anomaly."

"Our chances of finding our original timeline are not good," Kali said. "We could be going through timelines like women go through wardrobes."

I smiled. "Yeah, a new timeline every month."

"Speaking of wardrobes, ours is rather boring," Natale said. "It's only white."

"Maybe there's a way we could dye them," Bridget said.

"You two are in charge of that project," I said.

Kali gave me a smirk.

"The Earth is still blue, sir," Sharon said. "It's too distant to see any details."

"That's a good sign. Maybe we'll get lucky this time."

"The Sun's spectrum and temperature indicate that it's the same as we remember it, but that's only good to plus or minus a hundred million years."

I turned to Janet. "Is the Sun in a maximum or minimum?"

"It appears to be in a minimum. It's only showing two small sunspots."

"Good. It means that we won't be blasted too much with radiation."

"Do you think that radiation has any effect on us?" Kali asked.

"That's a good question. Since we don't age, I wouldn't think it does, but who knows."

"I'm having trouble understanding how not aging works. Does that mean that our cells are continuously renewed?"

"Actually, it involves our atoms down to the quarks," Bridget said. "Quantum particles can appear and disappear, which in our case means that our atoms are constantly renewed, which renews the atoms that make up our tissues."

"That violates thermodynamic laws," I said.

"Evidently quantum laws trump the laws of physics."

"Who am I to argue," I replied with a smile.

She laughed.

"That would explain how your wound healed so quickly," Kali said.

"That makes sense. The scar is long gone."

"I think it's ironic that going through hyperspace allows us to remain young but with terrible consequences."

"I think it's a good price to pay for eternal life," Kali said.

"I doubt that we have eternal life. Nothing lasts forever."

There wasn't much else to say. We really didn't understand what was happening.

When we finally achieved orbit around Earth, what we saw gave us hope.

"Earth looks the same as it was when we were here in our timeline," Sharon said. "The dome city is fully visible, the crashed saucer is still in Porto Rico, and the alien communication tower is still in Panama."

"That's encouraging," I reacted. "See if you can get a communication link."

"I've got it, sir," Natale said, smiling.

Amar's image appeared on the main screen.

"Is something wrong?" he asked. "You just left yesterday."

I exchanged glances with Kali before turning back. "We've encountered an anomaly that causes our vessel to enter alternate timelines. Fortunately, we were able to return to this one."

"I am not familiar with alternate timelines."

"Apparently, there is an infinite number of timelines that exist in different quantum existences. If one goes through hyperspace nodes that are positioned at fixed locations throughout the universe, one can enter and exit these timelines. Our problem is that we don't know how to control which timelines we enter."

"I am happy to see you back," he said. "As you can see the tree seeds you gave us are thriving. The overall temperature of the planet has decreased."

I had trouble understanding how that could have happened in a single day, but the way things are going anything is possible. "That's the result we wanted. Have you any idea how many humans are still alive?"

"Our estimates place it at a few million, but it's only a guess based on what we've encountered."

"Have you had any violent attacks?"

"Only sporadically. There doesn't appear to be much movement, at least not around here."

"Okay, we'll see if we can get a more accurate count."

"Good luck," he said before ending the link.

"What are we going to do now, sir?" Natale asked.

"I think we should try to get a better human population count. We also should see if any aliens are coming here to abduct humans."

"Those two tasks are not congruent," Kali said. "If we hang in orbit to survey the planet for people, we probably won't see any aliens approach Earth."

"Yeah, you're right. Let's do the survey first and then we'll hide."

She smiled.

Our survey didn't really give us reliable data. Although it was possible to see human activity, such as people working in makeshift farms, it was difficult to get an accurate count because most people were hiding in what buildings were still standing and crude huts and structures that were not really organized into towns.

The one thing we did notice is that most of the humans were in the Americas and Africa. From what we could determine, Europe and most of Asia had not really recovered that well from the climate disaster.

Janet spent her time surveying space around Earth for possible asteroid threats. Sharon did infrared and radar scans of the surface for evidence of human activity. Natale's job was to watch out for any alien intrusion, while Bridget worked on trying to come up with a way to predict what a specific timeline was like based on the spectrum of the light flash we experience when we passed through a node while in hyperspace. Apparently, the flash had both gamma rays and visible spectral components.

Kali and I spent our time improving our laser weapons. Kali knew of a method to improve the power levels without depleting the batteries. It had to do with the efficiency of the actual production of laser light."

My contribution was to make better shoulder harnesses for the rifles.

However, I came up with an idea that would change everything. I brought it up at one of our communal suppers.

"I wonder if there is information in NASA's headquarters that could aid us in our attempt to understand the timeline phenomenon."

"Do we know if NASA's headquarters is still intact in this timeline?" Kali asked.

Janet stood up. "I can check that out, sir."

I waved my hand. "Sit down and relax. We have plenty of time to do that."

She smiled and sat down.

"Even if we did understand how timelines work, we require a way to control the process," Kali said.

"I agree." I looked at Bridget. "How's your work on that coming?"

"I've narrowed it down to a couple of equations involving atomic clock time."

"Atomic clock time?"

"Yes. It's based on the cesium 133 atom's radiation. We have one of them on this vessel. I believe that its radiation is affected by the nodal transit and it exhibits a tiny change depending upon which timeline we are in."

"That would suggest that the laws of physics are not the same in each timeline," I said.

"I don't believe they are, sir, but the differences are not enough to cause any sort of physical existence problem."

"Maybe a slight difference in physical laws is why there are different timelines," Janet said. "It would be consistent with the theory about parallel universes."

"You might be right, but we'll have to see if it's something we can use."

"I should have something more definitive soon, sir," Bridget said.

"Okay, if NASA's headquarters is still intact, we'll go down and see if we can find anything that would help in your effort to understand timelines."

No one objected, and what we found was hard to believe.