Orionae sat hunched over the coil’s diffraction grating, apparently not listening. A strange light gleamed in his eyes as he murmured to himself.
“What is it, Orionae?” Asura asked.
“Don’t tell me we’re trapped inside this barrier or something like that,” Siddhārtha grumbled.
“That’s it, I’ve got it!” Orionae shouted. “There’s been a terrible mistake!”
“What kind of mistake?”
“Asura. We must leave this place at once. I must find a safe location where I can repair the coil.”
“I see,” Asura said. “But, Orionae, in order to move, we will have to drop the barrier on that coil, and the barriers around each of us, and our external barrier as well—but, surrounded by imaginary numeric space as we apparently are, I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
Orionae held his head in his hands and moaned.
“What happens if you touch imaginary numeric space, Asura?” Siddhārtha asked.
“You generate a perfect void at the point of contact. Energy is consumed in order to create the void, and then negative energy will wrap around the void like a shell, spreading almost instantaneously into a limitless pool the ancients called ‘Dirac’s sea’ . . .”
The city flowed on through them without the slightest break, buildings and streets appearing like phantasms, then disappearing into the distance.
“Look! The city is alive!” Siddhārtha spread his arms wide, as if to push the cityscape that surrounded them off to one side. The corner of a building passed through one of his hands. They saw buildings and hallways and beltways, then many men and women wearing outlandish clothes, walking through the streets. No one seemed to notice the three travelers at all. Nor did they notice that they were passing through the side of a cliff on top of a gigantic glacier. Their city was grand and beautiful, protected from all unhappiness and decay.
Orionae abruptly lifted his face. “If we combine our energy together, I wonder how much we could generate?”
“Roughly 1.1 billion megawatts, I should guess,” Siddhārtha replied.
“Ah! If we truly can generate that much, then, for a very short period of time, we could control the flow of negative energy through the diffraction grating.”
“I see. And how long would this very short period of time be?”
A shadow crossed Orionae’s face. “At most, 0.08 seconds. We could not hold it much longer.”
“Will we be able to move far enough in 0.08 seconds?”
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Orionae said.
“What if it is?”
“Then all of the energy we’ve used will convert into a massive amount of heat radiation from the surface of the diffraction grating . . . I think.”
“And all of us will be swallowed in a sea of negative energy.”
“I could set it up so that, in the case that we did overstay our allotted time, the circuit would automatically collapse. However, quite a bit of energy will have already been consumed by that point, so I think it would be best to arrange it in such a way that the very first recovery circuit to activate will absorb any excess radiation. Then at least one of us will be able to recover their original form.”
Siddhārtha shook his head. It seemed their options were limited. “All right, Orionae. Let’s go with that plan.”
“Orionae,” Asura spoke up. “What was that you said a moment ago about a mistake? Whose mistake?”
Orionae looked back at the coil. “Do you know of a material called orichalcum?”
“I do! You’ve spoken of it—the special alloy used in creating the royal palace and other grand structures of Atlantis.”
“When I was still in Atlantis, I once looked into the origins of that mysterious alloy. I discovered a few fairly interesting properties, and by far the most interesting was that orichalcum is an incredibly stable substance. Reflecting back on it now, I realize that each element of the alloy must contain a perfectly sealed heat-entropy world. Each segment of the orichalcum alloy would be able to contain a massive amount of energy. Furthermore, it could be used as a filter for negative energy.”
“So what brings this up now?” Siddhārtha asked, growing impatient.
“As it so happens,” Orionae said, “this coil is made out of orichalcum.”
Asura and Siddhārtha stood for a long while in silence, watching the phantasmal city flow through them.
“So,” Asura said at last, “we can imagine that at some point in the distant past, someone brought a bit of that strange metal to Earth and tried to explain its miraculous properties to humankind—perhaps even gave them the technology to understand it. Then when those bent on destroying our world arrived, they eventually discovered the orichalcum and took great pains to completely remove it from the planet, wiping mankind’s collective memory as they did so. Siddhārtha, Orionae . . . it’s very possible that there were other such materials on Earth that were subsequently removed by an external force. In fact, roughly three thousand years ago, a fragment of pure tin was discovered on Earth. One hundred percent pure tin does not occur naturally on that planet. Perhaps this too bore some great meaning, and yet the tin and all records of it have been entirely lost. And there was another material, tektite, that resembled obsidian. This too has been entirely lost. Our enemy is nothing if not a perfectionist.”
“I only wish I had looked into the matter more closely back then or discovered the truth behind this destruction earlier. It is most unfortunate,” Orionae said, sighing.
“No,” Siddhārtha said solemnly. “I believe it was our world’s destiny to walk this long road to ruin.”
“Well . . . let’s continue on then, shall we?” Orionae said, moving the secondary coil deflector to the zero mark, then withdrawing an impressive number of imaginary numeric circuits from the diffraction grating. These he wrapped around another pipe, creating a new induction coil.
“This is a response circuit—a fourth dimensional circuit, you might call it. In an emergency, this should absorb any excess energy generated.” Orionae adjusted the sliding cover, closing off the diffraction grating. “All right, I’ll go in last again, after which I’ll open the imaginary numeric circuit. I’ve set our time window to 0.076 seconds. Now, quickly!”
First Asura, then Siddhārtha, then finally Orionae dived into the darkness inside the coil. A fraction of a moment later, the imaginary numeric circuit connected. The space linked to the coil emitted a tremendous burst of light, turning the icy glacier into a sea of incandescent flames. Quite suddenly, the buildings of the phantasmal city nearest to the blast broke into a million glowing fragments and scattered in all directions. A massive wave of energy crashed into the remainder of the city, and it burned, exploded, shrank, faded, then disappeared altogether. In the wavering blaze, light from the sky pierced through, swirling with imaginary space.
Another city, another civilization destroyed. It was meant to happen, as the three travelers had been meant to come to that place.