Chapter 5
1168 Words
5
“There are two theories,” I began. “Well, really three. Well, really there are lots of theories—” I stopped myself. Keep it simple.
Lydia always makes snoring sounds whenever I talk about too much about science, so I’ve learned to keep it short. People don’t have the patience for it the way I do.
What I needed was a visual aid.
I untangled myself from the dog, stood up and found a stick. Red immediately got up, too, tail wagging, obviously thrilled I was going to throw the stick for him. Instead I used it to draw two lines in the dirt.
“Let’s say this line is my universe,” I began. “Everything in the universe—all the stars and planets and everything on them—humans and everything else—we’re all confined to this one membrane. A three-dimensional membrane—they call it a ‘three-brane.’” I stopped for a moment. “Is this . . . too much?”
“No,” Halli said. “Go on.”
I pointed to the second line. “Over here is your three-brane. Your whole universe.”
I dug both lines a little deeper. “Usually we just exist side-by-side—maybe even a fraction of a millimeter apart—but we never actually touch. We never communicate or even know the other one exists. Then every trillion years or so, the membranes collide and they blow each other up and we start the whole cycle again.”
“Is that true?” Halli said. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”
“Well, right now it’s just a theory. It’s called cyclic cosmology. There’s a lot of math and physics to support it, but so far nobody’s really been able to prove it.”
Until now, I thought. I was going to be the youngest Nobel prize winner for physics ever.
I drew five more lines in the dirt. “There are other scientists who say there are multiple universes, not just two. It’s the multiverse theory—a different universe for every possibility. So maybe in Universe X your parents meet and have you, but in Universe Y they meet and hate each other and marry other people and have Child Z, not you. Does that make sense?”
“I think so,” Halli said.
“Okay, so back to our original two universes and their membranes. Whether there are two parallel universes or five million, the fact is none of us knows the other ones exist. We might guess they’re out there, but we can’t prove it. We can’t communicate with each other.”
“Until today,” Halli said.
“Exactly.” I was happy she caught on so quickly. I figured she was ready for the next step.
I drew some squiggly lines in the dirt. “And that’s where string theory comes in.”
Halli blew out a breath. “I’m going to need some tea for this.”
I’d done it again—lost my audience. At least Halli hadn’t made snoring sounds yet.
“Sorry, I’m not very good at explaining—”
“No, you’re great,” Halli said. “It’s just a lot to take in. Without tea.” She smiled encouragingly. “But this is really helping. Don’t stop.”
It was amazing how good that made me feel. Even though technically it might look like it was me telling myself—like I was giving myself a pep talk in the mirror.
But this wasn’t a mirror and she wasn’t me. Halli was a different entity. We might be the same, but we weren’t the same.
Maybe I needed some tea, too.
She quickly brewed some up, first crushing some seeds into the bottom of her cookpot, then adding some sort of ivory-colored liquid on top. The steam from it smelled rich and spicy—something like cinnamon, but not quite.
She poured half of it into a mug for me and the rest into a bowl for herself. Which made sense, I thought, since she wasn’t really expecting company and wouldn’t have brought along a second mug.
But then I did something really stupid. I waited until Halli looked away for a moment, then quickly wiped off the rim of the mug with my sleeve. And instantly felt ridiculous. Because if she had any cooties, weren’t they my genetic cooties, too? We could probably share the same toothbrush and it wouldn’t hurt me. Not that I ever would.
“Okay, so string theory,” I said when she’d settled back down again. I gave her the shortest version I could.
At the end of it she pulled her sweater away from her shoulder. “Strings?”
“Strings,” I confirmed.
Halli pointed at Red. “Different strings?”
“Well, same strings, just like atoms are all the same, but let’s just say they’re vibrating differently to make up the particles that make him.”
Halli considered that a moment, then nodded. She pointed at one of the pines. “Tree strings?”
“Sure,” I said, just to keep it simple. “We can call them that.”
“Fine,” Halli said, “go on.”
The last piece was the meditation CD. And how I’ve been trying to vibrate differently all these months.
“I thought maybe I could do it if I just concentrated really hard.”
“Or maybe if you didn’t concentrate at all,” Halli said. “That’s what I try to do when I meditate—just completely empty my mind.”
“Sure. Okay.” I was too into my own story at that moment to follow up on what she’d said, but I was going to find out more soon enough.
“So I had this idea,” I said, “that in the same way there are gravitational and electromagnetic and other kinds of fields, maybe there’s also a vibrational field that no one’s ever discovered. Maybe they just haven’t been looking for it. And I thought maybe that could be the way to bridge the gap between the two universes.”
I drew a short line in the dirt connecting two of the longer ones. “If I could vibrate past the field, across one three-brane into the other, maybe I could contact that other universe. Your universe. And this morning it finally worked.”
Halli had lifted the bowl to her mouth, but now she paused mid-sip. “Oh.” And then she smiled mysteriously.
“What?” I said.
“Now I understand,” she said. “It happened because of me.”
“What? No—” Hadn’t she been listening?
“I’m saying it wasn’t just you,” Halli went on. “It had to be me, too.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“How long did you say you’ve been trying to do this?” she asked. “Six months?”
“Right.”
“And it never worked.”
“I was always too distracted,” I said. “I’m not good at settling down and just meditating.”
“Well, I am,” Halli said. “I’m actually quite good at it. I’ve been doing it since I was little. But do you know when I haven’t been doing it? These past six months. Not until today.”
She sipped her tea and studied me over the steam. Like she was waiting to see the moment when I finally got it.
And then I did.
“You think it’s two-way,” I said. “Sender and receiver.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been calling out, but there was no one listening at the right frequency—until this morning.”
“Right,” Halli said.
“And no one else was ever going to answer because she wasn’t you. She wasn’t like me. It had to be you because our brains are made the same.”
Halli smiled. “And look how smart we must be.”
I closed my eyes. My head was feeling spinny.
“Why today?” I asked her. “Why today and not the last six months? If I’ve been calling and calling to you, why haven’t you answered?”
Halli paused. She set down her bowl. I could tell she was stalling.
Finally she looked me in the eye. “It’s because I haven’t wanted to meditate for the whole past year. My grandmother died a year ago today. She’s the one who taught me to do it, so I guess it’s been my own personal protest not to meditate anymore. I thought it would be too intense—I’d be too sad. So I just gave it up.
“But yesterday I thought I should honor her. So I came up here to camp, and this morning went out on that cliff to meditate. And I called to my grandmother and asked her to come to me.
“But then you showed up instead.”
- Writer
