We live in a sheaf, not on a timeline, with quantum fuzz at the lowest level.To us, all choices seem binary, but actually, at a sub-atomic level, there is no need for the decision to be absolute. Irreconcilable differences lead to a split, but there are actually tens of thousands of essentially inentical Hals, all doing the same thing, whether they're in Luxembourg, on the Euroship (is that definitively RAH? I'd have expected the Europoliticians to call it the 'Jules Verne' or some battleship name, just so it was obvious they weren't Americans) or on some destination sheaf.
If the origin sheaf splits while they are away, they will come back to both of them, or all of them if it's multiple. Since this is happening all the time anyway, it shouldn't disturb them in the least. If there is a radical split on a sheaf they're visiting, which causes there to be two sets of returnees, the difference in their experiences will be sufficient to cause a major split in their 'home' sheaf when they return, so they will all go on as if nothing has happened (a minor split is likely to be absorbed in the ship sheaf)
Ancient history?
Chrosponarivilkion was human. Certainly his skin was dark browny-red, almost liver coloured, his hair distribution and the difference in length of his fingers would make him noticeable here, but no doctor would have hesitated in having him as a patient.
In any human society he would have been recognised as a genius. A dreamer, certainly, who could not be trusted to leave his sleeping pad without his sister's ministrations, but a mathematician unrivalled in the Freelands, which talent combined with a rare one of being able to visualise how his equations and formulae related to the behaviour of atoms and sub-atomic particles, and a mind directed in the direction of 'reality'.
All of this would doubtless have produced nothing more than forests' worths of incomprehensible theses, if it hadn't been for his collegue Harnochlamerion, head of the mechanical engineering department and his regular companion at – well, think of them as music concerts, it's easier than explaining sonosculpting – his friend, who was also a dreamer.
It is difficult to be a dreamer in Mecheng, but Harn had perhaps been infected by his companion,and was now capable of flights of fancy that would have graced any storyman (he had a sideline in writing speculative histories for a popular magazine, if that tells you how far gone he was) And he had several classes of hard-headed, practical – oh, call them graduate students – for whom he had to find challenging assignments.
So, when the 'Weak Affinitive Force' grew out the head of the head of Abstruce Relations (Pure Mathematics?), it didn't take the standard route into 'Local Cosmology' (Theroretical Physics, as near as may be) where it could have been safely debated and bled dry over a century or two, but fell into the crude, practical hands and flexible minds of a pack of young, bored problem-solvers.
"The basis of the theory, Harn, is that when the state vector collapses it does not produce a unique solution, but a sheaf of near identical lines held together by affinity, but with internal structure. As these are identical down to quantum level, we can experience all of them, and not detect their multiplicity. When the deviance from the norm becomes too great, the choice point merely generates two sheaves, which from that instant on tend to diverge, as the weak affinitive force drops off not as the square of the distance, but the fourth power, indicating that field extends into two supplementary dimensions. If we can manipulate the WAF, using weak nuclear force, which we can modulate..."
Harn had no difficulty by now in translating the abstruce cosmological terms into the equally strange way in which he saw the universe, and thence to the practical viewpoint of his students.
"But if we can alter the probability of quantum divisions, we can increase the output of our power plants ten times. Fifty times. Chrospo, you'll be a hero."
"More than that; we can search the local sheaves for somewhere it's already been done, and bypass all the development steps."
Harns mind did a contotionist trick, and came out of it nearly understanding what his companion was talking about.
"And then we could search for sheaves in which any conceivable problem has been solved. Needle in a haystack, as in most sheaves it won't have been, but we can trade the solutions we find between the different sheaves, and pay ouselves a salary from what we make."
Harn's jaw dropped. His friend had come up with the potential for more wealth than any man in Freeland had ever owned, and he talked of a 'salary'. Still, it was for engineers to be practical; if he started a company with each of the students having one share, Chrospon with a large non-voting block, himself and a lawyer holding the balance... They'd need a direct link to the registration office, and the great thing was, it wasn't only totally legal but everyone came out ahead, even the people in the outlying sheaves who came up with the ideas.
The university would want a cut, too; only reasonable, with the amount of their equipment used tobuild the prototypes. But like most technical institutions they already had contacts with the registration office, and the legal staff; it might be easier to work through them from the beginning.
* * *
A year later, an exceedingly ugly prototype manned vessel was rolled out to the university's park. It contained a gas turbinr generator, requiring earplugs of the occupants, shock absorbing seats, controls salvaged from scrapped personal vehicles, and could hold four people. It did not look like a revolutionary discovery; 'a piece of junk slung together by students as a prank' was a better description. They'd discovered with the first, toy sized prototype that the plus and minus sign in the transit equation meant that the mass was exchanged, rather than exported; a heap of rock on the floor had put the thing below gound level when the automatic return operated. They'd had to dig it out. Several other unmanned models failed to return at all, but this, the first manned attempt, was being floated on the fish pond, so itcouldn't get trapped, and only water would come back.
"You can't stop me going; it's my invention, my theory. I have to go"
"I'm sorry, Chrospo, but that's exactly why you can't go. You're far too important to risk on an engineering lash up, and besides, you can trip over the lines on the road. Until we can build a bigger ship, we can't spare someone to look after you, and we're going to need real money for that, which this trip's going to provide."
This argument had been decided, months ago, but Chrospon had been going into the gym and training (to the shocked astonishment of his other aquaintances, especially his students) and had lost a purk and a half of mass, improved his breathing and built some muscle tone onto a flab that he'd been content with since infancy. He knew he wasn't the explorer type, but this was his baby they'd be taking away. He couldn't see that it was the baby of all the students round him who had put their time, energy and love into it, and were now excluded too, or even those who'd gone on to work, keeping their precious single share certificates in banks, or nex to their hearts in wallets.
Obviously the wheels clogged in the muddy water, and everyone got wet and dirty before the metal egg was floating on the pool. The intrepid explorers wriggled throgh the hatch and into the interior, a flapping valve produced a smoke ring of unburnt hydrocarbons, then the surface of the water was a mass of conflicting ripples, but no ovoid. A wading bird strode over, unafraid of the watching humans, to investigate the disturbed mud. Looking at where the craft wasn't any more didn't seem to be doing any good, so the assembled team looked at each muddy other.
"Two days, minimum, before they can get enough charge on the capacitors to come back." observed an unpleasantly practical student "and even if we were allowed here after dark, which we're not, even if most of us have tried it..." Her teeth and eyes were just visible in the waning moonlight, the rest of her a shadow among shadows "the keeper's not going to be happy at people who use 'keep off the grass' signs as levers to move a hot water cylinder."
* * *
Again, too tell, and a long time infodumping before the action can start (they've got to get back, raise money, build a better craft and set out again before getting caught up in an unpleasantly militaristic sheaf, that decides to invade all its neighbours and build a massive, multiworld empire) but I hope I can get the physic through in the spoonfull of sugar.
