Infinite Singularity

By Jonathan Blasner

A picture's worth a thousand words... but that was then, this is now. Dr. Michael Norton discovers a picture can easily disclose a billion worlds, if you use the right eyes, or the right program.

Lost love, truth, and the eternal quest. A romance fated to be cursed, a search for resolution that becomes a national security issue, and a quest for answers that uncovers the infinite universe captured in a mere frozen moment in time.

Who knew the universe was interconnected to such a degree? And how can it bring about a much-needed intergalactic escape.

Science and religion both meet reality, and both turn tail and run.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martian Publishing
• Release date: Nov 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463293690

Book preview

INFINITE SINGULARITY

By Jonathan Blasner

MARTIAN PUBLISHING

Copyright © 2018 by Martian Publishing Company

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

No portion of this volume may

be reproduced in any format

without the express written

permission of the copyright holder.

This is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to persons or

organizations, living or extinct,

is entirely coincidental.

CHAPTER ONE

He hit the enter key to start the debug routine on the finished program and his eyes drifted to the unframed photograph leaning against his desk calendar. The face of a young woman smiling as she glanced over her shoulder while walking toward the door to exit his lab; preparing to leave his life forever though neither of them knew it at the time.

Although he had every line of the face memorized, he often found himself staring at the image, wondering if indeed that flat image was containing a universe waiting to be born. Or at least uncovered. Analytically, he knew that even if such were possible, it could not possibly bring her back to life. Struggling with the pain, he fought to keep his mind focused on analytic functions rather than wallowing in emotions. The latter, he was certain, could not assist his quest even if it was the impetus for that search.

Once the routine was completed, he reviewed the status. No errors were detected. Good. He double-clicked the icon on his desktop and started the program. When it prompted him: Target Image, he directed the program to a digitized version of the familiar photograph sitting on his desk.

I took only a few seconds for the image to load. Crisp and sharp, a larger copy of the hardcopy resting on his desk. He examined the larger version and was astonished at the detail in the image. Here, he could make out the lines at the outer corners of her eyes – lines that he supposed most people called worry lines. And yet there was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth as though some secret, shared, was exciting her, expressing itself in the vulnerable and casual moment captured by her merely glancing back. At him.

He did not require either the small photo nor the larger display he was now staring at for these impressions he reviewed at present were the same impressions he had made at the moment the camera's shutter had frozen that instant like some modern digital insect encased in amber for all of eternity.

The larger image did not enlighten, it merely heightened that truth he had always known. And it emphasized more deeply the pain at the loss. He pushed back against the tightening he felt in his chest, the hard knot in his throat, and focused on the work at hand.

Directing the program, he activated the drop-down menu. Rather than play with the program to try and learn its capabilities, he decided to utilize the onboard analytic function. It could tell him all the relational aspects of every pixel in the frame and what secrets they might impart. At least that is what he had hoped it would do. If, that is, he had programed it properly. What it might look like in real-time, he would have to wait and see.

After hitting the enter key again, a new window opened and delayed a few moments before it started filling the empty canvas with the program's analysis of the capabilities of the program.

Once he discovered what it was capable of, then he would be better equipped to run it through its paces.

As the lines of text pushed the header of the document up and out of the viewing window, he moved the mouse up and touched the Print icon.

And in a few seconds, the printer came on. Presently, the first sheet of paper was feed into the bowels of the equipment, the ink disgorging onto it before reaching for another.

While it was busy printing, he returned to the readout window. The text was flying too fast for him to even bother trying to read it. He closed the readout window and squinted to see the small font at the bottom of the screen.

Crap! It was almost two a.m. He sat up straight and rubbed his eyes before applying his fingers to his lower back, massaging the knots out of the muscles there.

Where had the day gone? He chuckled to himself. How long had he been at this?

Reaching for the printer, he snatched the first few sheets from the hopper and started reading. It was a bit confusing. Sighing, he realized he was going to have to tweak the analytics yet again as it was simply not telling him what the program was actually doing.

Sitting back, he went over what he had expected on the analysis of the photograph. He scanned the pages again to try and make sense of what the program was seeing.

Letting the hand with the pages fall to the desk, he reviewed how this project had come about. Perhaps he was expecting something different than what he had coded?

The original idea had been rather simple, even if a bit counter-intuitive to most people: a snapshot of reality recorded within its image all the data in the vicinity at one time, at that single moment, more than just the images captured in the color-coded pixels of the image itself.

This concept was based on a statement he recalled from the second year of quantum physics he had taken at Columbia several years before. Professor Dallingame had posited the concept that since the entire universe was sublimely interconnected at the most basic or quantum levels, one could conceivably pluck a single leaf from any random tree and, through exacting examination of the veins and such, write the history of the entire universe.

As radical as the idea had been, the complete awesomeness of the idea had captivated him from the start and he had fiddled with the idea for years, trying to determine how best to read the data from a leaf.

Still, nothing had come forward in his mind to begin to tease the information out of a leaf. Or out of entire tree for that matter. It was a subject he had discussed with his grad student, Katherina Bishop – she of the photograph enshrined on his desk – and her interest in exploring the idea was what had rejuvenated his curiosity.

His original interest in the quandary had been relegated to the dustbins of the what if's in his mind until that conversation with her. And after a short time, grief and other tidbits of daily life had reassigned it back to the dustbins.

The subject had actually been forgotten until recently when a colleague was tasked with helping the police tease more data from some security footage. A serial killer had been spotted – it was believed – in security camera footage from the train station where it had occurred but the film was far too grainy for anything close to a positive identification.

No one in their right mind could possibly mistake a leaf for a still frame from a CCTV feed but he recalled that photographs could pick up auras and such as had been accomplished in Kirlian photography. He reasoned that if such auras were detectable by the photographic plates, why not this other information as well?

He figured that it should not matter whether the camera was designed to pick up such data because, if the theory was correct, the photograph, like the theoretical all-knowing leaf, should have the data due to the quantum entanglement of the universe.

That is, if the theory had any validity at all. The trick was going to be discovering how to extract that data from the photo, if indeed is existed at all.

That was what the program was designed to do and, for the life of him, he could not make any sense of the analytical readout.

He set the printout aside and looked back at the photograph, propped up against the calendar on his desk where it had stood for these past few months, since the accident. There was no part of that photo which he had not memorized, reviewed over and over, during that time.

Katherina Bishop had been a grad assistant for only one semester.

He had felt the attraction to her immediately but, being professional, he said nothing untoward to her and tried to keep their interactions entirely professional. At least such was what he had hoped. Regardless, after some time working closely together he had begun to get the impression that she was reciprocating.

Had they been equals, it might have gone further. As she was his grad assistant, he thought the ethics of the situation would not smile favorably on them. He remembered the scandal caused by a former colleague some few years before. That relationship had been fairly common knowledge to all who knew of the couple but most had just looked the other way. At least until word got back to the young woman's father, a prominent judge and an alumnus whose generosity to the university could not be jeopardized.

Rather than being so very blunt with Katherina, he had brought up the story of the other professor he had known.

I think it is entirely unprofessional for him to take advantage of the young woman, he had said while packing up after an evening's research. Why couldn't he wait until after her graduation. If there was anything of substance between them it would still be there after he was no longer her boss.

Her reaction had been to simply stare at him before slowly nodding, with a sly smile stretching across her lips before nodding more firmly.

She had evidently taken it to heart and had backed off a bit. They remained close but that bit of tension was removed. He was unsure if she truly felt anything for him beyond the mentor/mentee relationship but he was willing to wait.

The day before her graduation party in the lab, she had come into his office, all smiles and bubbles.

Hey, there! He had grinned. Overjoyed to be saying 'goodbye' to this place?

Her head shook. No, you're not getting rid of me that easily.

He came out of his chair. What do you mean?

Her grin was impish. Actually, Dean Berger has been assisting me in getting a research grant.

His eyebrows rose. For that study on the paintings of the Masters?

She nodded enthusiastically. Yes! It starts this summer!

"And here, I take it?"

Yes! She threw her arms around him. He hugged her back.

I'd say that calls for a celebratory dinner.

Still smiling, she shook her head. Sorry but I'll have to take a rain check. I have got to get my dorm room packed up. I'll be moving in with Cynthia Gordon and a couple of other girls for a while but I have to move ASAP.

Need any help moving?

She touched his cheek. That's sweet of you to offer but it's already covered.

Okay. He nodded. And don't forget the graduation party here tomorrow.

Oh, heck yeah. She winked. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

When her graduation came, he had thrown a party for her – well, for her and the one other grad assistant who was also leaving – and the department came together to celebrate her success. During the festivities, she got a call from her sister in Trenton telling her that she had arrived at the train station. The train from Trenton would take as long to get to the city as it would take her to get to Union Station from the suburbs. An amazing thing, the traffic in this metropolitan area!

Her part in the party was cut short and she left.

Before leaving, she gave him a big hug and took advantage of their proximity to say, Promise me you'll be here when I get back. I want to have a serious talk with you. She pulled back a little, still holding him firmly, looked into his eyes. Promise?

Nodding, he smiled and said, For you, definitely!

She hugged him more fiercely and, before they broke, she had kissed his cheek then waved to the other celebrants while she was heading to the door.

After she left, one of the other grad assistants handed him the photograph of her waving over her shoulder just before she stepped through the door.

Had he known the future, he would have stopped her from leaving.

Futures were Schrodingerian from the present: both dead and alive, good and bad, but once the present catches up to the dual possibilities, one was always eliminated.

The gnawing guilt of not knowing was as human as it was for anyone who had ever lost a loved one.

Sure, it was easy to know this but so much harder to live it.

After his reminisce, he found that he was holding the photo in his hands and finding it far too difficult to swallow the hard lump in his throat. He returned it to the desk and reached for more of the printout. The printer had finished burping out the pages while he had been mentally vacated.

Pulling the final twenty or so pages from the tray, he rifled through them and dropped them with the earlier group on the desk before reconsidering a moment and wiping them off into the trash can.

He would have to redesign the analytic subroutine so the output would be more than marginally comprehensible.

He got to work on it immediately.

The shadows deepened on the off-white collegiate walls of his lab while he worked. At this hour, the remainder of the campus was asleep but for the campus patrol driving the vacant streets ensuring the security of the buildings.

Normally, he had grad assistants working with him –yes, even during the summer session – but had opted out this year because… well, because of Katherina's death and his inability to find any closure.

Still, summer was nearly over and the fall term would find the assistants returning in force and he would have to get back to doing what he had been hired to do.

With grim determination, he focused on rewriting the analytic routine. Hopefully, at the other end of this tunnel lay the closure he so desperately required. Even though he could not see what exactly that might look like, he felt compelled to finish this.

It was what Katherina would have wanted.

~~~~

CHAPTER TWO

While he had worked, the night had turned into morning completely unbidden and certainly unnoticed by him.

He sat back and reread the alterations he had made in the analytics and, crossing his fingers mentally, nodded and saved the file. Then he called on the debugger to run through the newly saved text to check it for any errors of syntax.

He rubbed his tired eyes and leaned back in his chair.

It seemed that the photo was the only thing he had of her anymore. Memories, once very sharp in their immediacy, had already begun to fade by degrees, so he had stared at the photo so much, memorizing as much as he could, committing every nuance gleaned into his mind to reinforce the fading attrition. The light in her eyes, the secret smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth, and so forth.

In doing so, over time, it seemed that he could actually begin to see more than could be evidenced logically. It was as though her eyes imparted some unspoken truth about where she was going, almost as if she knew she would not return. But how could she have possibly known such a thing?

As if rising from the photo, a memory came to him in full relief and sharply focused.

She had come into the lab carrying a large artist's folio.

Oh, and what have we here? Joel Arrington, a younger grad student had commented. Bringing in your art history homework?

No, her laugh was light, I finished that course ages ago. She set the large dark brown folder down on a worktable and flipped it open.

He had walked over to see what she was about.

So, he said, where has your project taken you now?

You remember we were talking about the universal language?

Brad Cooper, another grad assistant, laughed and said, Oh, you're talking about the Masters using the Golden Mean and all that? I read a fascinating study about the way the Masters worked math into their paintings.

She had shaken her head. No, I'm not talking about math.

Brad drew back. What other universal language are you talking about then?

She rolled her eyes and looked at the Professor. Do you know, Dr. Norton? She struggled to keep a grin off her face.

Michael nodded. I believe, Mr. Cooper, that Miss Bishop is referring to the universal language of emotion.

Brownie points! She beamed. Very good, Professor.

Since it was something we discussed just the other day… He shrugged. I'm not senile yet!

She chided him, Silly! Turning back to Brad, she continued, The great ones used color, light, and texture to elicit emotional responses from the viewer. The greater the talent, the more focused and subtle they could be. Certainly Van Gogh used his wild brush strokes to imitate movement and overstated emotions but the more ancient Masters could do the same thing in much more subtle manner.

Nodding, Michael said, So how do you plan on isolating the unquantifiable emotional content into a form you can actually analyze?

First, I am going to photograph certain works and then run them through an analytic synthesizer to try and focus on which colors, textures, and so forth relate to which emotion being targeted.

Shaking his head, Brad walked away. I'll leave you to it. I'm afraid you lost me.

The Professor had shaken his own head as the one student left, commenting in a low voice, He's more a nuts and bolts kind of scientist. Anything slips over into the touchy-feely areas and he throws in the towel immediately.

She chuckled. I'm afraid most of the other physics students and professors would likely take the same out.

Yes. And I know you've been interested in art for quite some time. When did you decide to tackle this project? He leaned against the work table.

It was something that Marcia was talking about last week. You know, the Mandelbrot program with the ever diminishing but repeating figures?

He nodded. Yes, the Julia sets.

Exactly! And she was saying what beautiful art it made and I got to thinking about using an analytic based on the Julia sets to try and understand what the artists were trying to say. Exactly, I mean.

He nodded and pushed himself off her worktable. That sounds intriguing. If you need anything, let me know. He turned to go but stopped. And you will keep me abreast on your progress? I'd like to see the analytics you design.

She grinned and winked. Of course!

Programming was not her strong suit but dogged perseverance was. She had to come to him a couple of times when she ran into difficulties. And at one point, she was ready to throw in the towel.

Frustrated, she threw her pen down and it bounced off her worktable and onto the floor.

Grinning, he retrieved the offending utility and returned it to her. Having a problem?

Yes, it's just not working right!

He stepped closer to see what she was working on. All right. Tell me about what you expected to see.

She explained the analytics and what she had imagined the output would resemble but it was coming out garbage.

You debugged it first?

Her eyes narrowed. Of course! I'm not that lame!

He grinned and nodded. All right. Let's see what you've got.

She passed over several sheets of printout and he reviewed them.

He pointed to an area of the routine. I see you've got the Julia sets established as the core processor…

Yes, that's so the output can be randomized rather than what I or someone else may be anticipating.

Yeah. He nodded. "You