The Outsider: a man travels from our world

I was in an open-air coffee shop on a busy street in downtown San Diego when I met her. Almost immediately after the woman entered the shop and ordered a latte, she pulled my attention away from my own java, and the book I was reading, with her intensely frantic appearance. It was more than the expression on her face: every muscle in her body, from her hunched shoulders, to her jerky movements, to the way her eyes darted around the café, screamed out her intense nervousness.

A glance around the café showed that I wasn’t the only patron who had looked up and was watching this odd newcomer with mild interest—even alarm.

After the barista had served the woman her coffee, she looked around the tables on the sidewalk patio as if she was searching for someone. To my surprise, her gaze alighted on me and fixed on me with a startling intensity. The woman promptly strode over to my table and sat down wordlessly, then started to sip her coffee.

“Ah … can I help you?” I asked, attempting to be polite.

“Yes. Yes, you’ll be perfect,” she declared. I wasn’t even sure that she was speaking to me; she seemed to be talking more to herself than anything.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Young, fit, healthy … you aren’t married, are you?” she asked. “Kids?”

“Uh … what?” I was getting a bit nervous. Normally, being asked if I was single by an attractive woman was a pleasant experience—and despite her highly bizarre, erratic behavior, this woman was undeniably attractive, albeit at least ten years my senior.

“Are you married?” she repeated, insistently. “You’re not wearing a ring.”

“I … no, I’m not married,” I said at last, seeing no reason to lie, though I still wasn’t exactly comfortable with the question.

“And no kids?” the woman persisted.

“No, I…. Hey, listen, what’s this all about?” I asked firmly. “Who are you?”

The woman shook her head impatiently. “That’s not … I’m…. Look,” the woman said insistently. “I’ll explain, but you have to come with me.”

“I don’t think so.” I shook my head, and stood up from the table. This was starting to become a little too disturbing for my taste.

“Wait!” she protested, sounding panicky as she saw that I was about to leave. “You can’t go! Not now! I need…. Look, just come to my lab, and I’ll explain everything, I promise.”

“Your lab?” I asked incredulously. “Now this sounds like something out of a cheesy sci-fi flick,” I said. “I think I’m going to go home, lady. You have a nice day.”

“Wait, please!” she begged. “I only have two more hours! There’ll never be another chance like this! Please!”

“I’m sorry, lady,” I told her. “But I can’t help you.”

“No, wait…. Please, wait,” she said, standing up to follow me as I went to the counter at the café and left a tip for my waitress, not wanting to leave the money on the outdoor table.

I left the café and headed down the street, but to my dismay the woman followed alongside me.

“Please come with me,” she pleaded. “I need someone to help me finish my work, and I can’t wait any longer. It’ll take _forty minutes _just to complete the process, and it’s a fifteen minute walk to the lab! I don’t have time to find anyone else.”

“What on earth makes you think I’m going to go off with … no offense … some crazy lady to ‘her lab’ to be a guinea pig in her experiments?” I asked acidly, not slowing my steps as I addressed her.

“But…!” she seemed taken aback by my protest. “I’m not crazy!” she said indignantly.

“You sure aren’t doing a very good job of not looking crazy,” I said pointedly.

She paused in her tracks for a moment, drawing herself up and appearing to take stock of the way she was shuffling along with nervous excitement and chattering fervently at me. I hoped she would stay rooted to the spot, allowing me to leave, but after a moment she hurried forward to catch up to me, and fell in beside me again. Now, however, she was walking normally, holding herself upright and striding along with deliberate, confident steps.

“I’m … sorry, I suppose, for my behavior,” she said grudgingly. “But it’s simply so urgent that I not miss this window!” she explained fervently. “And I’m not crazy. This isn’t some dank basement lair I’m talking about, here. I’m a professor of physics at the University of California in San Diego, and I need to you come to my lab there.”

I turned and looked at the woman quizzically. “Physics?” I repeated. “Why would you need a random volunteer off the street for a physics experiment? And why didn’t you just use a student, if you were in such a hurry?”

“No, I … that wouldn’t have been possible on such short notice,” she said. “There are all sorts of forms students have to fill out and have approved to do that sort of thing. I needed someone immediately. Please, please just come with me!” she begged. “If we don’t go now, I’ll never know if it would have worked!”

“If what would have worked?” I asked, curious despite myself.

“I can’t say,” she replied evasively. “It’s very, um … sensitive work. I can’t discuss it. I promise it isn’t dangerous. It isn’t like it’s a medical experiment; you’re not going to swallow anything or get a shot or anything like that.”

“Why don’t you just do it yourself, then?” I asked dubiously, giving her a knowing look that said I didn’t buy her “not dangerous” line for a minute.

“I can’t!” she said. “I need to…. There has to be two people, and one of them needs to know how to work the equipment. Please, won’t you just come to the lab, and at least see it for yourself?”

I finally stopped walking, and gave her a long, hard look. “Okay,” I said at last. “I feel like this is a big mistake, but I admit you’ve made me curious. I’ll go check out this lab of yours.”

“Great!” she said.

“But I’m not promising anything about any experiments,” I warned her.

“Of course, of course,” she dismissed my caution with a wave of her hand, and hurried off in the opposite direction without even waiting to see if I was following.

After a moment I shook my head, sighed, and followed after her. I wondered what I was thinking, to be going along with this insanity.

Fifteen minutes later, we really did arrive at the UC campus, and headed to one of the larger buildings. She led me downstairs (a basement after all, I thought to myself ruefully) to a largish room fitted out with a host of heavy equipment, most of it very high-tech. I didn’t know much about theoretical physics, but from the snatches of “science news” stories I’d caught, the stuff reminded me of particle accelerators or MRI machines or something like that: big, complicated machines with lots of parts and computer hookups.

The woman immediately began moving around the room working on the various machines, all of which were already running.

“So what does all of this stuff do?” I asked.

“Lots of things,” she said. “Let me concentrate, please.”

I shrugged, and watched her work for the next half-hour or so. I might have gotten bored and left after so long a wait, except that the work she was doing was very interesting. The machines were all thrumming with life, and everything she did seemed to bring the activity to an even greater buzz of intensity. Finally, she had the whole room humming with power, and she turned to me.

“Okay, it’s ready,” she announced. “We only have fourteen minutes before the field is out of alignment! We have to start now.”

“Start what?” I asked. “Remember, I didn’t agree to anything yet.”

She frowned. “Have you ever watched a T.V. show where the characters go to an ‘alternate dimension’?” she asked. “You know, where everything’s the same, but different somehow?”

“Sure,” I said. “You’re not telling me that’s what this stuff does?” I asked incredulously.

“No, no … of course not,” she said impatiently. “That’s an absurdity. Alternate ‘dimensions’ are sci-fi bullshit … pardon my language. Any first-year undergrad knows that. The whole idea is absolute nonsense.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Just for the record, I didn’t think it was anything but bullshit,” I said. “I’m not a complete lunk. But you asked, so I thought….”

“I just needed to know if you understood the concept,” she explained. “Anyway, another universe existing with a different space-time from our own is theoretically possible, but the idea was considered pointless to consider. If they don’t share the same space-time, then neither universe would ever have any effect on the other, or be observable from the other, so there’s no point in even thinking about it.”

“Okay, so?” I prompted.

“So … I think I found a way to transfer matter from our universe to another one,” she said triumphantly, with a brilliant smile lighting up her face.

“But I thought you just said….”

“It’s impossible to interact with a universe in another, independent space-time,” she repeated, nodding. “But what I suggested … not that anyone took me seriously … is that you could transfer matter as part of the same process in which you create a new space-time based on our own universe.”

“Create a universe?” I asked dubiously, giving her a look that conveyed my renewed doubts as to her sanity.

“It’s not as grandiose as it sounds,” she asserted. “The new universe wouldn’t be created from scratch: it would essentially be this same universe, except that something would have to be different, so that they wouldn’t be identical, and would exist with separate space-times. Theoretically, it happens all the time anyway. Other people before me have already hypothesized that universes are splitting off from each other all the time. Not like in science fiction … two universes for each possible choice or people’s dreams or anything silly like that. Just random divergences on a quantum level that split each universe into two, over and over again. Nobody in any given universe would ever notice, because from the perspective of anyone inside a universe, they only experience the single branch they’ve followed all the way through.”

“Okay, I think I get it,” I said. “But what would your idea do? If we’re already splitting all the time, how would I even know the difference if you made it split? Wouldn’t everything just seem normal for me from that point on?”

“It doesn’t work like that. Like I said: this isn’t science fiction. The difference doesn’t have anything to do with the moment of divergence. Anything in all space and time could be different. The entire universe and all its history diverges at once. The universe might have split five minutes ago, but the change could have been a star exploding a thousand years ago instead of ten thousand—not something that happened five minutes ago when it split. Understand?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied. “I guess that makes sense. But then, why don’t we notice the difference if the universe splits all the time?” I asked.

“Well, normally, if the universe splits, there’s a new you in the new universe, who thinks that everything there is exactly the way it’s supposed to be,” she explained impatiently. “But that’s not what I’d be doing. This process is designed to send you into the new universe.”

“Will the … uh, other me come here?” I asked.

“No, it doesn’t work like that. You might not even exist in the new universe,” she pointed out.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought everything was supposed to be the same, only … you know, different.”

“Don’t think like science fiction,” she urged me. “If the Roman Empire fell two hundred years earlier, or later, don’t you think different people would have married than in our history, based on the different social situations? As the differences spread in history, everyone born in Europe would eventually be completely different than in our history. By the time of globalization, the changes in lines of descent would spread beyond Europe. You would almost certainly never be born.”

“Okay, I get the idea,” I said. “But why is the difference supposed to be something in human history?” I asked. “Isn’t that pretty … science-fiction-y?” I asked. “I mean, wouldn’t it just be, like … a particle out of place or something?”

“Yes, the random, natural divergences that occur are something very simple like that,” she agreed. “But natural, molecular differences could cause differences in human history. A different outcome of genetic selection when someone is born which means Julius Caesar isn’t the man we know but someone very different, who doesn’t become a general or emperor, so history is different from that point on … you get the idea. Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-and a whole bunch of other nines-percent of the time, human history would be unaffected even if by changes which occur right here on earth, but every so often it would be, purely by chance.”

“So…?” I prompted.

“So, I’m going to be the one causing the alteration when I create the alternate universe. That’s how you create a variant,” she said, growing even more impatient. “And so we’ll know if it worked at all, I’m going to make sure that I cause a divergence that will have a noticeable effect on human history.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Do you know much about the history of the Hapsburg family?” she asked me.

I quirked an eyebrow at her. “No, can’t say that I do,” I admitted with a sardonic chuckle.

She sighed and shrugged. “Well, it would take too long to explain. Let’s just say that European history should turn out very differently if that family’s key founding ancestor is never born.”

“Okay, fair enough,” I replied, happy to be spared the history lesson.

“So, will you do it?” she asked with growing urgency. “We only have a minute or two left to try.”

“Well … can I come back?” I asked.

She hesitated, which gave me my answer. I saved her the trouble of lying to me.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me,” I said. “I guess … I guess I can’t pass up this chance to see if it all works, same as you.”

She smiled at me for a moment, then quickly grabbed me by my shoulders and maneuvered me onto a spot marked with an ‘X’ made out of red tape on the floor between two of her machines. “Stand here,” she said unnecessarily.

“But how will you know that it works?” I asked. “That I’m not just … you know … vaporized, or something?”

“Oh damn!” she whispered, a horrified look crossing her face, then she turned and fled to one side of the room, and came dashing back hurriedly with what looked like a thick, intricate laser pointer. “I would have just sent you off, and completely forgot…!” she was mumbling as she pressed it to my ear and depressed a button. I heard a hissing noise, and felt a pinch inside my ear, as if a Q-tip with a pointy end had been pressed a little too deep.

“I thought there were no injections?” I asked nervously.

“Don’t worry,” she assured me. “It’s not a chemical. There’s some saline solution in there to help it get in, that’s all.”

“‘It’?” I repeated, even more worried.

“A special transceiver. I, uh … borrowed it from a friend of mine in astrophysics.”

“‘Borrowed’?” I asked sardonically.

“Well…. It uses quantum entanglement of coherently oriented subatomic material in magnetic suspension to transmit data instantaneously, even from across the universe,” she explained—not that I knew what any of that meant. “It’s supposed to be for astronauts to use on deep space missions to communicate back to home base instantly, no matter how far out they get … except we don’t have any astronauts going on deep space missions. So the thing was just going to sit around for who knows how many years … even decades. I’m doing him a favor, really … proving that it works at greater-than-solar distances. If I’m right about the way the entanglement and the space-time bridge will interact, it’ll even transmit between universes.”

“So, uh … what is this thing going to transmit?” I asked.

“Well … it’s going to migrate to your brain and form connections with your sensory nodes.”

“What!?” I shouted, jumping back.

“Don’t get out of position!” she said, pulling me back onto the red ‘X’ on the floor. “And don’t worry. The seating vehicle and sensory integration has been thoroughly tested. As I understand it, a similar device is already used by classified military operatives. The only thing unique about this thing is the quantum transceiver.

“It will send audio and visual data to my equipment here … though I’ll have to move that, obviously. And I’ll be able to transmit audio to you, too. It’ll sound to you like you’re wearing an earpiece, as I understand it.

“There’s no more time,” she announced abruptly. “Don’t move. I’m going to create the bridge, then split the universe.”

“You say that like it’s nothing,” I mumbled under my breath. “‘I’m going to split the universe.'”

I expected some sort of flashy light show, some kind of prolonged transition. But I suppose that was just me still thinking like we were in a science fiction movie. In fact, as soon as she hit a particular button on her machine, everything just changed between one blink of the eye and the next.

And I do mean everything. I wasn’t in a lab anymore. I was outside, on a street in San Diego, and I quickly jumped back onto the sidewalk before the oncoming traffic a few hundred yards away could get too close. I looked around and saw that the university was still close by, but the layout was a bit different and the spot where I was standing was just outside the campus, not inside it.

Obviously the changes in the whatever-burg family had enough impact on the way the world had progressed since that time that the civic development of San Diego, at least, had moved in a slightly different direction.

I looked around curiously. To initial appearances, at least, things seemed more or less the same in a generic sense: street lights, cars, people’s clothes, and so forth were all more or less what I would expect. The exact models of the cars driving by were all unfamiliar, which I supposed wasn’t surprising, but that was the only difference I was able to spot at first glance.

“Um … Professor?” I muttered, trying not to look as if I was talking to myself. I realized only then that I’d never asked the professor’s name, nor had she asked mine. “Can you hear me?” I asked softly.

There was no response. Maybe her transmitter wasn’t working the way she’d hoped. Well, if that was true, then I felt a bit sorry for her sake that she’d never know that her experiment had been a success after all, but at least I knew that it had worked: I really was in an alternate universe!

I started walking along the sidewalk, not really sure where I was headed. If a version of myself hadn’t been born in this world—a real possibility, based on what the professor had told me, if events had gone differently enough that my parents or grandparents or whatever hadn’t married—then that would mean I had no identity here: no house, no job, not even a social security number. It would be pretty tricky establishing a life for myself here without getting mistaken for some kind of criminal or illegal immigrant or something. If a version of me had been born, things might be even trickier—I could be accused of identity theft or something.

Before I’d walked too far, I stopped in my tracks and stared at a woman walking the opposite direction, on the sidewalk across the street. She had long brown hair, and looked to be around college age—probably a student at the university near which we were both walking. What struck me immediately upon catching sight of her, however, was the fact that she was completely and utterly nude.

After a moment of gawking at the pretty girl, however, I noticed something even more incredible than her public nudity: no one else on the moderately busy street seemed to notice—or at least, nobody seemed to think that the girl’s state of undress was at all remarkable. Sure, a fair number of people’s heads turned to watch her walk by, and I did see a passing group of young men nudge one another and point her out with grins—but nobody was shouting or even saying anything about the wandering exhibitionist.

Apparently public nudity was legal in this universe’s San Diego—if indeed it was limited to this particular city. On the other hand, it obviously wasn’t commonplace enough—at least not here, downtown—that it didn’t draw at least some attention.

After staring at the nude girl for another minute, I shook my head to clear it, then continued down the street. Whatever happened, first I needed to figure out what was going on.