A Brave New World Ch. 06

As Albus did this, his frown deepened. "There is no similarity," he muttered, confused. "Did you draw it correctly?" He inquired sincerely.

Madeline didn't answer. "Try these two," she simply said, handing him what she had been working on. "It's the same thing but I used the star patterns for the Southern Hemisphere on this one and the sky we see from here on this one." At that, the young woman sighed and stood to meander as she kept her gaze upward. "You should do the same thing too, Istvan," she advised. "The more data points, the better."

"And what does this tell us?" Albus asked, although both Istvan and Albus already knew the answer.

"That we aren't from the same planet," she said bluntly without turning to look at him. "And that neither of us, you and me I mean, are from this planet, wherever that is. We'll see about Istvan here in a second."

Albus was silent and looking at Madeline with a different sort of expression. Albus had nothing to teach her regarding Astronomy, it seemed, and she had figured out the big secret in an impressively short amount of time.

Istvan did a rudimentary look at the star patterns before smiling. It was true; she had used the stars to determine that this world was indeed something new to them all.

"Well Albus, I think Doctor Parker has shown she is more than knowledgeable of this subject. I admit that I did not think any would uncover this mystery so quickly. I... I am impressed, m'Lady," he offered quite genuinely.

"This also would explain the language variances. As I told you before Albus, I was considering that languages independently developed on different worlds, or even lands in some cases, could be quite different and used for different purposes.", he told his friend with a happy smile, one of the first he had worn in this new world.

Looking at Madeline, he took out his own book and jotted down quick notes.

"If you don't mind my extended presence, miss, could you entertain some basic questions on theology or perhaps ecology? Firstly, and this is just to dispel the conjectures already reached by...others. Other than the demons...ummm.. aliens, does your culture have any knowledge of demons or devils, monstrous servants of the darker powers and Hells?", he asks curiously, clearly trying his best not to offend her, at least not until he had his answers.

Madeline gave him a skeptical look. "Of... what? Uh... no, no we don't... I mean the aliens... look, I already gave you the missals," she said hesitantly. "If you want to know about the devil, you should probably talk to Antonio. He's the expert there," she added, apparently finding this statement to take away from her train of thought. In it, however, was an interesting revelation. Madeline referred to devils in a singular sense; the devil. Similarly, she and John often referred to their god as the god. John's hesitation toward accepting a pantheon made a lot more sense in the context of a single deity world.

"But... So let me get this straight: Antonio can speak Latin, which, by the way, is a language of knowledge and religion, you nut jobs blow a fuse because you think it's some devil worship thing, and you somehow concluded that we must all be from different worlds?" She asked, obviously not understanding where he made the connection. Of course, she had no idea that Albus had made the discovery the previous day with his scry.

"If anything, the fact that we all speak the same language should be sending up red flags. I mean, the fact that we all seem to be human is confusing enough if we are all from different planets..."

"What do you mean?" Albus asked, not necessarily following.

"Because isolation breeds uniqueness," she answered as though it were obvious. "Haven't you ever gone to some far off and excluded place and the people and plants and stuff are all completely different? What is the probability that eighteen people, ostensibly from multiple different worlds, all happen to be human and all happen to know the exact same languages? I mean, you have to factor in that all of these different worlds had such similar geological developments that all the same conditions resulted in the exact same evolutionary and genetic path development to produce humans, let alone humans that all speak the same language? I mean..." Madeline's expression took on a daunted look. "It's freaking astronomical..."

Albus squinted his eyes as he looked at her. "You speak of mathematics," he ventured, testing again the limits of Madeline's knowledge.

"Well, yeah I guess, but it's just basic math," Madeline answered casually, obviously not seeing what Albus was asking and clearly deep in thought. An idea seemed to hit her that sent her daunted look into an overwhelming on. "I... I've gotta go..." she muttered as she collected her things.

"Wait, why?!" Albus let out. Madeline had now intrigued him and he wanted to learn more. "Wait, I must know, what is your knowledge of mathematics? Your machines? I must know of them!"

Madeline paused and gave him a mild look of disbelief at the outburst. "My what? Uhm... look, it would probably take like months for me to go over all the ridiculous math I know so... I mean, can we do that later? and... I don't know, just tell me what machines you're talking about, ok? Ok. I've gotta go."

"But why?" Albus continued, obviously very confused.

"Because if I don't get this idea written down, I'm going to forget it," she said shortly.

"Wait!" Istvan called after her, trotting up to her and motioning to reach out and stop her before second guessing himself. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the movement and spun violently around, casting him a look of complete distrust. "Please wait," he added. That she loathed him so strongly bit at his self esteem. Nothing could injure a Raotian more than break down of community.

"We... we have paper here," he offered in a pleading tone. "And you shan't find better minds than present company. Albus's god rejoices in the sharing of knowledge. If you have stumbled upon an idea... it would be a great honor to him to have it shared."

Madeline continued to give him a look of distrust. Eventually she broke eye contact long enough to consider Albus, before letting out a frustrated sigh and walking back to him. Inside, Istvan was silently rejoicing.

"Ok, listen," she said in her normal all-business tone. "That our stars don't match means one of two things. Either we are from different planets, or, we are all from the same planet in different timelines."

Albus and Istvan blinked together in confusion.

Madeline rolled her eyes slightly. "It's way to hard to explain right now, so just listen. It was you guys who wanted me to explain all of this, remember? If you think probabilities is a challenge, wait till you hear about quantum mechanics. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Honestly, I think the latter is what's going on here. The statistics required to make the multiple world theory actually valid would require 85 universes worth of elementary particles. Last I checked, uni meant one. String theory, on the other hand, and general relativity too I suppose, allows for multiple timelines in order to avoid time travel paradoxes and adjust for universe expansion and particle creation. I think it explains black holes too, but who really knows."

"Basically, the universe is nothing but a huge Boolean super computer. Anytime any choice could be made, the timeline splits, one for each possibility presented by the choice. Simple choices lead to very similar timelines. The more branches you have, though, the more different the world becomes. This sort of branching isn't limited to the simple human decision making splits either. Pretty much anything can represent a branch. In some timeline somewhere there are still Dinosaurs roaming the earth while in another we fought the aliens with super duper advanced technology and kicked their asses."

Maddy paused here, offering a vindicated grin at the assessment. Somewhere, in her way of viewing... everything... they had won the war and this knowledge obviously gave her a degree of comfort.

Albus and Istvan continued to blink at her in confusion. "...I..." it was the only word Albus managed to get out.

"So... we are from your history?" Istvan stumbled around his confusion.

Madeline took on a patient expression. "No," she answered, calming down having spilled everything her mind had put together. "No, we are from the same relative time on different time lines. Here," she said stooping to the ground and tracing out what looked like a river delta. "The timelines are like roots or a tree or something. Time itself flows linearly, we think, but it's not some straight line. There are lots of paths for time. We humans can't exist outside of the flow of time though, so as far as our minds are concerned, we float regularly in a straight line, completely unaware of all of these other branches and all of the people who float on them." Madeline bisected all of the lines with a horizontal cut. "See this line? It represents the relative "now". If you think about it, you could be sitting on this branch, me on this one here, and Albus over there, and we would all cross this line at the same time. "Now" for each of us is the same, but the way we experience it is different because we're on different paths."

A chill went down Istvan's back as he regarded the young noblewoman before him. Oddly, her explanation seemed to make sense.

"So, we're all humans in the actual definition of the word and we all have similar languages because we must all be from co-located time lines. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a strong overlap to some people's star patterns," she added with a grin. Maddy suspect none of them would match hers with any fidelity. "Actually, I also wouldn't be surprised if the aliens attacked us all simultaneously. They had some way to alter how time flowed; it wouldn't be surprising if they figured out how to hop across these lines in order to accomplish what they did."

Madeline looked up again to see that their confusion was only mildly abated. "Look, guys, I get that you think this is cool and all..." she offered, trying to back-step her way out of this discussion.

Albus used the opportunity to regain his awareness. "My dear lady, please forgive me," he offered in a quiet and humbled voice. "I came here this night with the intent to teach you of the great knowledge and have instead learned that it is I who requires instruction. Our ignorance has tested your patience and you have been kind to attempt to remedy this, but alas... such vastness of knowledge could scarcely be digested through the course of this one evening, let alone understood. If is amicable... perhaps you could come to the library and instruct us in this knowledge...?"