It’s very early morning in both Xi’an and Karaganda when Altynai calls her mom.
“I’m glad you’re up,” she says. “I just sent you a link.”
“Why are you calling this late?” her mom asks, half annoyed, half concerned, over the background noise of the tv. “Is someone making you give them money?”
“No, it’s an announcement. It’s — it’s about my work. Kind of. It’s really important.”
“Okay, hang on, I’ll put you on speaker phone.”
Altynai waits patiently.
“What, it’s in English?”
“I’ll translate it for you.”
“Then why do I have to watch it?”
“Just — it’s starting.”
____________
The nondescript man with close-cut hair stands in front of the camera. He wears a poorly-fitting lab coat. He looks like he’s a ball of nervous energy. Behind him is a row of similarly-attired, similarly-uncomfortable colleagues.
Behind the camera, the operator nods to him.
“On behalf of my colleagues who make up the International Study of Variables Beyond Possibility, ah, research team” (his voice is nervous, too, and he reads from a script, barely glancing up even as high as the mic in front of him) “I would like to thank CERN for the use of their facilities, and the Coalition for Theoretical Investigation for their funding, and you, our viewers, for tuning in to this very important announcement.
“We were hesitant to make this information public, partly because of how difficult in would be for the public to accept, but more because of how truly shocking they are — we could scarcely believe them ourselves. But our findings have been validated time and again, and it is time to present the public with an overview of the results and implications of our research, hypothesizing, and experimentation.
“We have discovered what lies outside of what we believed to be our universe. Not beyond the reaches of space, millions of lightyears away, but next to us, literally within our grasp, every moment.
“What we sense and experience — what we call ‘reality' — is the solution to the equation of reality, a toweringly complex equation that knows the locations, trajectories, qualities, and momentum of every particle in four-dimensional spacetime. This has been the deepest foundation of humanity’s science, from the first time numbers were counted: that reality is definite, that it can be measured, that it can be predicted.
“Our discovery is that this foundation is faulty, though in a way we did not think to anticipate: Reality is not the solution to the equation of reality.” The scientist looks up, staring directly into the camera, nerves gone. “Our reality is a solution to the equation of reality.”
He pauses for a moment too long, giving the words time to make an impact before realizing he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say next. He looks down at the script again.
“Every moment, we travel along a line of cause and effect away from the Big Bang, in the direction of time. To every side of that line, though, are possibilities: all the things we didn’t do; all the actions we could have expended energy doing, but didn’t; all the roads not taken. And anyone can change or turn from what is probable at any moment — but,” and a small smile here, "they usually don’t. Such is the margin of error of the universe.
“Beyond the reach of real, physical, possibility, we come to impossibility, and this is impossibly, impenetrably thick, a paraphysical substance we call the interstice. And beyond that, things are different enough that they become possible again. They become so possible that they become probable. And eventually, things become so probable that they become real: another solution to the equation of reality.
“We have found a way to peer through impossibility to the other side — to another, another strand of possibility, to where things are real again, in another version of our own reality. We have only begun to compute what that other strand looks like — but we have verified beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is there.”
The scientist clears his throat. This part visibly worries him.
“It is not difficult to infer from this the possibility that we as a human race have been visited by the inhabitants of some of these other versions of reality, perhaps for thousands of years, or more. We are confident in asserting that many of the unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, both that have been witnessed and recorded through history and that are still being seen today, are of this nature.”
There’s an audible murmur from behind the camera as everyone in the studio struggles to wrap their heads around that information.
“There is much work to be done, and much to be learned. Our research is being made public and available to all for study, analysis, and replication in the hope that together we can explore what is quite literally a new frontier. We call for cooperation between our governments and institutions — whether social, educational, religious, or economical — may we work to understand the interstice, and the strands beyond our own, together.
“Uh, um, thank you.”
__________
“That’s it?” asks Altynai’s mom.
“That’s it,” confirms Altynai.
After a moment, her mom says, “Huh.”
Hello hello!
Welcome to a post-interstitial-annunciation world where the cat is now officially out of the bag. You can now tell all your friends that you know what the UAPs are. And where Bigfoot lives. And where Nessie lives. And where They watch from. And how They see. Please consider nominating me and Bigfoot for a Nobel prize.
What do you think it would actually look like, though if somebody worth listening to came out and just explained a bunch of weird stuff like that, and had proof to back it up? How would you process that? (I don’t have an answer.)
Thanks for reading! Storywise, this “public revelation” is something I’ve been building toward for a long time, but it’s also been an exciting challenge working through how to explain the concept I have in my head in the simplest way possible. I’m practicing explaining big ideas for real life, so let me know if it made sense to you, or if you’re confused, or if nothing really matters (as anyone can see).
Tune in next week to find out about black swan events and faerie circles (and make you’re subscribed if you’re not already:
)!
Again, as always, thanks for reading, reader — I appreciate it and I hope you’re having fun. See you soon!
:: Jaer