Chapter 18

A couple days later Big T found me in my own lab. I was conjuring a week’s supply of new antivirus machines. “Hey boss, I have an idea, do you have a minute?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Can pearls be inside each other?” he asked.

“I don’t know why not, should I test it?”

“If you could, that would be great.”

I found a nearby fiber optic pearl, and my power entered it. I examined the way the fiber optic lines all ran thru the space, entering one side, exiting in a different spot. I conjured a pearl in an empty corner, and cast my power into it, it came out at a Val in flight school.

“It works, no problem.”

“I discovered that conjured pearls always have whatever spot they have that enters the pocket universe in a different spot. The pearls are not exact replicas of each other.”

“Actually, they are identical, they have to be. It’s just that the cover I put in the place to protect it is a perfect sphere, as is the gateway that it is guarding. I think the actual connection remains undefined, right up until you stick something in. Once something crosses the boundary between universes, then that spot becomes open, and fixed in place until the item is removed, and then the door can shut again.”

“Then what I need is a pearl with a fifty meter diameter interior, and a 2mm exterior. Then I need a second with a 1 meter interior and exterior. They all need to have the same physics as our universe. The first one will be for connecting data and power, the second one will be for getting myself physically inside it to run wires and data cables.”

I thought about it for a moment, speeding up time for all my selves to see if I could come up with any flaws, or other improvements.

“Can we try an experiment with a pearl with a 1 meter exterior, and a 1mm interior?” I asked, “I know that items stay the same size as they pass through the pearl wall, I just wonder what would happen if the interior was considerably smaller. It would be nice to be able to use a pearl as a gateway, but not need to spend time traversing it’s interior.”

“Interesting idea,” he admitted, “I did discover the solution to the paradox where energy is being spread equally between pearls.”

“Good, I was hoping you would find an explanation for that.”

“There is a spot exactly opposite of any entrance into a pocket space that opens into all other pearls equally. Because our laser and energy conversion methods always passed into the pearls thru their midpoint, the output always came out equally spread between them.”

“That’s very cool to know,” I said.

“Additionally, any effort to escape a pocket universe from the inside opens a random door into one pearl. You can try the same spot, repeatedly, and each time it will be a random pearl that has been conjured. The only exception is pearls that are stored, it doesn’t seem to recognize them as existing, so it never connects to them.”

“So you want to have a pocket universe where you can be inside to connect things up, because each pearl has only one tiny exit spot, that’s only really usable when you stick things inside,” I guessed.

“Right, and because things entering a pocket universe can arrive at any spot on the interior, it might take a while to find and connect the cables.”

“That’s partially the fault of the shielding I put around pearls. I started doing it when the only pearls I had were copied from the Valkyrie collective. They could still be affected by the pearls that were connected to the collective. I can forge custom pearl covers that you can add to the pearls after you put a cord or cable thru.”

“Then I can feed the cable from the inside!”

“You won’t know which pearl will get it, but if there is a you on the other side, that won’t matter. You just slide the cover over, and screw it closed. The cover will prevent future items from being able to pass thru at that point again.”

“That brings up a question, what happens when you store a pearl with something sticking out of it?”

“I know that the interior of the pocket universe doesn’t store with the pearl, but I can store and conjure inside a pearl separately.”

He handed me a phone, “Store this, then conjure it.”

I did so, then handed it back to him. He checked it for a minute, “It lost the data connection. The fiber optic cable was pulled tight, putting it under tension, as soon as the phone was stored, the cable was pulled out, disconnecting it.”

My power reached into the phone, following the cable to the pearl, and then inside the pocket universe. I grabbed the cable, and pulled it back along the path of my power to the phones connection, then I forged the two pieces back together, “I fixed it.” I told him.

“So it won’t happen again?”

“No, I fixed the cable. I think to keep it from happening again you will need a mechanical method of holding the cables in place. A conjured pearl remembers where it connected previously into the pocket universe.” I conjured a second phone, it was disconnected also.

I held up the phone showing no data, “But a second copy can’t connect to that same location that is already in use, because there is no second cable wherever it connected previously. The advantage of our laser pearl system was that if the signal was strong enough it could be sent to multiple devices at once, and conjuring more didn’t matter because each new transmitter exited at a different location on the pearls. There was no internal hardware it had to connect to.”

“So I need tiny radio transmitters?”

“I think a mechanical connection on the interior of the pocket universe is sufficient. I’ll forge something that might work.

“Have you considered how big a sphere is with a fifty meter diameter? You are going to need hand holds and maybe flippers.”

“Flippers?” he asked, confused.

“No gravity inside a pocket universe,” I said, enlightening him.

“Ok, I was also thinking it would be a great place to keep our secure server. The one that controls all communications between members of the brotherhood on and off Earth.”

“If I made it so time ran faster inside the pocket universe, it would give us a super powered supercomputer.”

“That might make working on the inside difficult.”

“Consider it for a future project then. I’m not sure if you would actually be able to enter and exit the pocket universe with biological issues as you moved between the different time streams.”

“Like a limb exploding because your heart is beating at fifteen hundred times faster than normal?”

I nodded, “You would have to be conjured in and out. Of course you could just stay conjured in, having one of your other selves pass food in, and a way to dispose of wastes.”