"I don’t know how it does it, but that’s what it does."

"So it negates quantum entanglement?" I sat on the bridge still in my bulky spacesuit, helmet on the knee, trying to do something with myself while the captain listened to Andrea's preliminary report.

"That would be easy. With some sort of... magic... it manipulates photons and replicates particles' quantum states without breaking entanglement... without the observer effect. It changes direction and location of photons without changing momentum or spin scalars. Scientists have been trying to build fiber-optic couplers that could do that for centuries but they never even came close to this thing here. It's composed of crystalline hyper-polytopes... or irregular n-dimensional polytopes. And it seems to be able to re-arrange its conduits like a learning quantum computer. Theoretically it could store information in a similar way to our brains: not a single cells holds the information, but every bit is coded to be held in the entire network."

"Can someone explain to me what the hell you’re talking about?"

"That’s going to take some time."

"Try me."

"Uhm… where to begin. It has to do with the dual character of photons… they're like particles and like electromagnetic waves... they share characteristics with both. Like throwing a pebble into a pond. Waves will propagate with a certain speed in a growing circle, away from where the pebble dropped into the pond."

"Go on…"

"Imagine electromagnetic waves… or photons… propagating like the waves in the pond, with light speed. The difference between photons and water waves is that when a photon hits an object like a small cup, the pebble can jump back out of the pond into the cup, and the entire wave will immediately disappear everywhere, without any delay to its disappearance anywhere. If the pebble jumps out of the pond into the cup, the wave, no matter how spread-out it already is, may never hit another cup to spawn another pebble. If it did, we could get two pebbles out of a single one, creating a pebble out of nothing. And that would break the laws of thermodynamics."

"And what’s that got to do with this thing?"

"Now think of the circular wave in the pond being split into two separate waves, by a wall in the pond for example, both created by a single pebble. The waves will share some characteristic like size, dependent on the size of the pebble. We can let our waves propagate so they end up being very far apart. We can even cut them off from each other completely by adding new walls after they passed, so that they seem to be totally independent and isolated from each other. But what happens is that if we absorb or alter "one" of the EM waves, the other wave must also disappear or be altered in the same way, or we’d be violating the laws of thermodynamics or mechanics again. No matter how far apart in space and time, those waves are still linked through their origin. Or in another word: entangled."

"Ok. Get to the point."

"Usually what I just mentioned is just an oddity to our understanding of location, causality, and relativity, but it still wouldn't permit us to transmit information faster than light, or backwards through time. Because we’d have to send both entangled waves away from each other with finite speed to separate locations first, and the two separate observers wouldn’t be able to observe one wave without destroying its quantum state with the observer effect. Or by superimposing them, which can’t be done unless they’re in the same place. So we were never able to pull any benefit from it."

"I said get to the point." Like everyone, O’hara was visibly affected by prolonged radiation exposure and sleep deprivation.

"Continuing the pond analogy, the crystals this thing is made from are somehow able to make two pebbles jump out of the pond from time to time. Two photons from one. That made it look like it’s phosphorescent after it captured some light. But it’s really trapping the light and then releasing a few extra photons without losing any of the trapped ones. It's even gaining them with time."

"It’s creating energy from nothing? Maybe it’s radioactive and turning mass into energy?"

"No for both questions. It just keeps and amplifies the energy it received. It needed something to start multiplying the photons, like a positive feedback loop."

"Got any guesses why they would do that?" O’hara was getting annoyed.

"No educated guesses. Just some century-old theories. Some of those assume the pebble jumps out of the pond where-ever it can possibly hit something, but every "hit" happens in another reality. Think of them as parallel universes existing along an additional dimension: the dimension of all possible states consistent with our laws of nature. To reconcile aspects of quantum mechanics, general relativity, and gravity scientist made theories involving 11, 22, or more dimensions. They introduced invisible characteristics that exist in dimensions we can’t perceive, but which govern what happens in the spacetime manifold with a hidden implicate order. We see only its consequences but not the actions or states. But those are just mathematical constructs. Those theories date from before the great war, before science focused solely onto finding new ways to kill people."

"Are you talking about the many-worlds or multiverse theories?"

"It’s not as esoteric as it sounds. The “real” many worlds end up being very similar, differing only in quantum states on a sub-atomic level. The sub-atomic fluctuations are completely random, so they average themselves out at larger scales. Well… except here. This thing made of... hyper-crystals I guess we can call them... somehow manages to bias the random fluctuations. But if it’s sending more photons into one “world” through the additional dimension, it must be draining them from another."

"Could that also be linked to why I was seeing something different from you in that mirror trap? The waves were reflected back at me through another dimension, while they were being let through on your level?"

"I wondered about that when I noticed there was no polarization in the reflection from the mirrors in the asteroid. That can’t happen during reflection on a two dimensional surface or a dipole. So maybe there really was an additional dimension involved, giving access to different realities. Or maybe one spatial dimension became inverted at the surface of the mirror. The inside became the outside, like flipping the sign on the axis. Kind of like a Dyson sphere can be seen as a planet turned inside-out. Don't know if that entails a left-handed instead of a right-handed universe though. I was building a theoretical model called the Peterson Sphere but didn’t get to finish because I had to revive you. "

"I’m sorry for the inconvenience."

"It’s alright. We all do what we can, sweetie."

"Please, call me cupcake." Nobody beats me at passive aggressiveness, don’t even try.

"Then there’s also the black impenetrable surface of the station. No matter how much energy you throw at it, it reflects nothing but doesn’t heat up or send back blackbody radiation. Like it has unlimited heat capacity. Everything sub-atomic just leaves the universe through it as if its a... cosmological horizon or something."

"Back to the crystal hyper-thing in the cave. It breeds energy or something. What else? Or is that all?"

Andrea paused to think for a while. "If it's really able to deviate the vector and replicate sub-atomic particles without affecting them in any other way, one could do some pretty incredible things with that, which our scientists tried and failed to accomplish. Like sending information from one location to another instantaneously, or backwards through time. You just have to entangle two particles, then keep them looping around in two separate containers which you take with you. By changing the state of one entangled particle you change the state of the other one, independently of time, and independently of place."

"Doesn't sending things back in time create a paradox?"

"Only if sending the information would cause the information not to be sent, which doesn’t necessarily have to happen. If it doesn’t, you should be good."

"But that would make sending information back in time somewhat pointless..."

"The information can still be used if you give it to yourself again in future."

"And what if I send different information than the one I received, just for the heck of it?"

"I guess it would be impossible for you to stop it being sent in the future. It would be like… you know… an inevitable fate. At least if you’re trying not to eliminate yourself from the universe with a paradox. "

"Eliminated from the universe... and stop existing?"

"At least the part... or version... of you that caused a paradox couldn't be in our non-paradoxical universe. But maybe you'll end up in one where the laws of nature are different. That would be yet another dimension, different from the one of all possible states: the dimension of impossible states."

"So what you're saying is that I could be granting myself access to another dimension if I did that."

"No, that's..."

"Enough of that. So they could be communication devices?"

"To the past, future, or to far away locations. Possibly even to another universe or reality. As long as sender and receiver have some entangled photons with them."

Chris, who had said nothing so far, spoke up.

"Look at what my imager is transmitting. The thing looks like it’s halfway transparent now."

"Being able to re-direct photons and particles with ease should also allow for some pretty good cloaking devices. "

O’Hara’s expression changed from somber brooding to surprised alertness in a split second.

"It’s transparent? And can cloak?" That must have triggered traumatic memories from the Kennedy Station massacre.

"In theory. I haven’t seen it happen yet."

"It’s also glowing blue pretty intensely now. Maybe it kept breeding and breeding the light Kara shone onto it? I think I can see pulsating white lights inside."

O’Hara jumped up and grabbed Chris’ screen to stare at it closely. He looks panicked and out of his wits. With a weak trembling voice, he croaked: "Sidd, send the Omega signal."

“We are currently out of communications range, and have lost access to both drones.”

O’Hara nodded as though he just remembered that, and sat down hard on the chair. How could he have forgotten? What made him freak out like that?

He turned to Andrea, and asked her in an almost pleading tone: "Will a nuke destroy them?"

"I… I don’t think a nuke from the outside would even put a dent into the station. But… brought inside and detonated next to those things? They’re made from materials that would vaporize instantly. Those quantum machines, at least, would surely be destroyed. Why? What’s the matter?"

The captain pushed himself up from the chair like a decrepit old man. He was searching for words.

"Sidd…" He wet his tongue before continuing to speak. “Play back Atticus Rockford protocol. Clearance O’Hara."