Entanglement: Prologue (Patreon)

Prologue: Causality is a Harsh Mistress

Causality is a strange and slippery thing.

In the macro-scale of the observable universe, event A leads to consequence B. Things happen in a logical fashion; there is a timeline that the theoretical observer can follow, to learn how things happened.

However, when events are being observed in the pico-scale universe, down near the Planck constant, events sometimes occur simultaneously with results, or even occasionally after them. Cause does not necessarily lead to effect. Quantum entanglement experiments have famously shown that photons can be linked over quite a substantial range, to show identical reaction to stimuli despite not being connected in any understandable way.

For the most part, however, these causal oddities do not affect the macro-scale universe. However, in the odder corners of the multiverse, reality may be nudged in unusual ways. Take a variant Earth, with a few minor but significant changes. It is shadowed, separated by the thinnest of dimensional membranes, by another Earth. The sister planet – call it Terra – holds many similarities to this particular version of Earth, but there are also a few definitive differences. Certain cities and islands, for instance, are still there, while super-powers – and the changes wrought by them – are not.

The multi-dimensional spacegoing parasites which have infected this Earth's local sheaf of possibilities with parahuman potentiality are unaware of Terra. It exists in a dimensional direction along which they are unequipped to travel. In a very real sense, the laws of physics that hold Terra in their sway quite literally do not allow these creatures to exist in that specific local spacetime.

And yet, causality intrudes once more. One might assume that, having a vastly different history over the previous twenty-nine years and change, these two worlds would be literally poles apart, with no similarity, no shared frame of reference. And for the most part, this is true.

But for a certain few aspects, it is not, because causality has decreed otherwise.

The nexus point is the L̵̯̙̹̟̺̤̓͑ͫǒ̢͉̥̣̾̇̉ͩ̃c͍̰̬̞̞̺͗̓ͨ͊͊k̈́̐̇̓҉̭͈͍̹͚e̪̯̠ř̟̮̣͙̣̤̋͛ͤ͊ .

Many millions of words have been written about the Locker, and the consequences of what happened there. Sentient beings who know nothing else about the history of that Earth are aware of the Locker. It is where, in one particular world-line known as Earth Bet, a girl was set upon the path that led to her greatest feat and her darkest fall; an apparent death which led to a life renewed.

This … is not that story. Or rather, it is not precisely that story.

For in this story, there is not one Locker, but two. There are two girls called Taylor Hebert, both betrayed by a girl whom they considered their best friend. Each one is imprisoned in the Locker, mired in filth, screaming, begging to be let out. How each of them came to this point is a slightly different tale, as Earth is different from Terra.

But now, events begin to converge. The screams are approaching the same pitch, the motions of attempting to escape are mirroring one another. And then, for one significant moment, within the noisome prison, that curtailed micro-universe known as the Locker, they are identical to one another.

Entanglement.

Part 1