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After that cryptic teaser Raemi stood up and left the room, without checking to see if I was actually following her. A part of me just wanted to stay at my desk and drink my coffee in peace, but curiosity got the better of me.
"Will you at least tell me where we are going?"
"To the computer lab."
"I thought you made your discovery on paper."
"Initially, yeah, but the calculation quickly becomes overwhelming when you do everything by hand. And it's much nicer to have it visualized."
What could she possibly be talking about? Well, I suppose I'll find out soon enough. The walk to the computer lab is quite long however. Had she just told me to meet her there in the morning we wouldn't have to trek through half the campus. And unfortunately the route there goes straight through the Department for Extended Standard Model Medieval Era Worlds. I can already see Derek approaching.
"Raemi, Niki! Good timing, we have prepared a new setting and need testers to check the world for internal consistency by simulating a narrative, would you-"
"Sorry Derek, we are kind of in the middle of something."
The ESTMEW department tries really hard to hide the fact that all they do is play a glorified version of Dungeons and Dragons. Except that, given the nature of the Institute, everyone here wants to be on the world building side, so campaigns are usually played by single players with a team of five or six DMs. That's why they always try to rope anyone in who passes through their hallways, but I really have no time for games when I have yet to figure out definitively whether uranium decays more quickly when it is made out of eels rather than salmon. It is interesting because even if the electricity makes no difference, eels are so longitudinal that they might approach a limit beyond which the fractal quantum field theory-
"Where are you going Niki? That path collapsed three months ago, remember? We have to go outside to get to building B."
"Oh, right, of course."
This whole time Raemi was only looking straight ahead, I'm surprised she had enough awareness to notice my wandering off.
"You were spacing out thinking about the fish again, right? I told you, you don't have to worry about that anymore. Here, take your helmet."
"Thanks."
Earths atmosphere has not quite yet become unbreathable, but prolonged direct exposure is still not recommended. We put on our suits and go through the door.
Even though we are seperated by over a hundred million kilometers of deafening vacuum, I still feel like I can hear the suns self-sustaining nuclear fusion as it beats down on us with its deadly radiation whenever I go outside, loud enough even to overpower the harsh winds. I know for a fact that I am just imagining it, but that doesn't improve the situation. This trip to the computer lab better be worth it.
"Do we have an ETA on when the bridge will be rebuilt?"
"No, but we have a very good idea of the distribution of universes where it was fixed already. Most of them involve a version of the Institute that does not exclusively constist of theorists."
"I see. Looks like we'll just have to learn to live with this."
"You should be glad it was just a connecting corridor that collapsed and not one of the buildings, Niki. And besides the computer lab there isn't much intersting going on in building B anyway, just the constructed language department."
"Oh don't be so closed minded, Raemi."
"I'm just saying, it would be helpful if they knew how to construct bridges instead."
Even after living here for two years, I still can't get used to the view of solid land. For the longest time all I knew was the sea, which seemed more infinite and empty than the sky, and my city fleet of ships. Of course I had seen pictures before, but most of them were of the long gone past where there were vast flat areas of green forests and meadows. None of them prepared me for the Tibetian desert, with its extreme height differences, gigantic rocks puncturing the sea, and barren valleys. What little vegetation there is was mostly planted by humans - which in this case means us, since the Institution is isolated in this area even by desert standards. The only other instance of civilation visible from here is the port by which I arrived, but not a soul lives there.
The four buildings of the institute are each on top of their own rocky peaks. It is a steep climb down from building 1 and an even steeper climb up again to building B. Fortunately the emergency stairs and railguards survived the recent storm which demolished the bridge. Another strange feature of this place - lightning storms and extreme winds are very common, but in all my time here I haven't seen a single drop of rain. Fortunately we have an extremely efficient water filtration system. Mars colonization efforts have never been fruitful, but it turns out the techniques developed for them prove very useful for suriving on our own planet.
Pretending not to be out of breath Raemi proclaims,
"We're here."
TO BE CONTINUED
Posted 2021-07-14
2022-12-01 | What???
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