drama: top-of-the-class-nerd is approached out of the blue by the prettiest girl in class
mechanism: a college senior discovers something remarkable, they are living in a world within worlds, a tesseract.
concept: an ambitious pretty girl offers a nerd a huge wad of cash to partner on a Ph.D thesis, because she has to complete hers to get access to a huge trust fund bonus. When he runs an experiment to produce net-energy, it opens a macro-scale quantum decoherence field (many worlds), and she touches it.
concepts
the quantum decoherence takes on different colors from different consciousness (orange for Leeza, and her eyes glow orange when she's there)
promises
Romance - Sean gets a girl (of his dreams)
Drunk with Power - Leeza abuses her power against Sean and everyone.
Believing their Lies / Does not like Men - Leeza makes the world a place where women rule, even though it's even more distorted than when men ruled.
Limitations
the tesseract doesn't change anything, only navigates it... once one realizes the universe is all things, it no more power over them
the illusion of power the tesseract creates is one of the most powerful attachments, trapping one within one world
... could turn it around, where sean abuses the power of the tesseract, and leeza realizes the truth, tries to free him, and ultimately gives up, returning to the origin of the tesseract and saving sean
random event ideas
?? leeza could initially be more much more limited in her understanding and control of the field, and use it in more direct ways, to earn her massive trust fund
?? maybe Sean tries to connect with the field, but he can't, not the way leeza can.
?? leeza could 'enhance' his body a bit, to have a sexy frolic
?? leeza explores the many-worlds while leaving him a super sexualized version of herself to contend with (and maybe giving him a big package)
...and maybe later shifting him into a different multi-verse...
?? leeza could immediately become power hungry. sean could try to shut down the experiment, and she could use her powers to stop him... she also needs him (for his brain), so she entices/seduces him into helping her
?? leeza could use the machine for power, but need Sean because he understands it.
?? leeza could use the machine for trivial things like vanity and power, and Sean could build another machine to stop her... setting them up for a reality bending face-off where sean chases her through parallel universes, and she tries to distract and deter him with carnal pleasure. (this really needs some limits to their universe bending rules)
what motivates the characters?
leeza is vane. wants her trust fund. she thinks money will make her powerful and she wants it. she wants to be gorgeous.
sean wants to understand what they have created, doesn't want to hurt anyone, doesn't think they deserve to control it or use it for power. wants to share it with mankind.
what is the progression of navigating many-worlds like?
(1) she can peer into divergences in the field, allowing them to see the other worlds (and also to seemingly "materialize" or "make things happen" inside the field), but initially they don't cross the field
(2) once the field is in her brain, she can see randomness unfolding (as blue fields), and steer the outcomes by connecting with the fields to turn them purple... like being able to always flip heads.
at first it takes her lots of effort, but eventually it becomes easy for her to influence randomness fields, and she starts to do it all around her all the time. (like a walking good luck charm)
(3) she learns to change small things in their world using the field (miracles)
(4) she learns to traverse many-worlds
she traverses to a world where their phd is accepted and she got her trust fund already, and they are best friends and roommates
and then she realizes it's not the same Sean, because he's not surprised by the changes
(5) she puzzles about what happened, and decides she wants to teach him how to use the field
she 'shares' the field with him, and he is able to make some things happen.. she finds it exciting, and takes a bigger step, taking him along with to another many-world
.. where he is floored (style is different, all cars are electric, female president)
then she tries to get him to try it on his own / he doesn't understand how it works..
she goads him to try anyway. 'I'll help you hold the field, and you just imagine the world you want to exist in."..
Take 2
?? sean could shut down the experiment, and leeza could convince him to start it back up, learn more about it..
at first nothing happens, then sean turns and his chair knocks his coffee mug off the table, and she sees the blue field and semi-slow motion as she sees possibilities branching, and almost like a video-game she focuses on the coffee not spilling, and the cup makes an improbable tumble, lands, swirls around, and comes to a rest with only a couple drops spilling
"well that was lucky", sean comments....
leeza tries to explain what she experienced "sean, this is going to sound strange, but I think I made that happen. i stopped it from spilling"...
after her long explanation, sean is fascinated and wonders if the field is giving her some visibility into randomness... he searches for a coin, can't find one (who has coins anymore), and takes out his driver's license instead, and asks her to make it land face up. He flips it, and she experiences the same blue field, and the same branching possibilities, but they are coming at her too fast, and it lands face down. ("so much for that theory", he says), but she disagrees, "it happened again, i just couldn't keep up with the branches. Give me another try.Sean tosses the ID and it lands face up, and she smirks, "see".
"Sorry," he says, picking up the ID, "one out of two is just randomness. Let's start with five tries.")
(Sean flips it five times and sees random outcomes, but she sees it land on the face five times... they argue a little about their different observations)
She asks him to flip it again, and it lands perfectly on the corner, improbably hovering there for a full second or two before it falls over, face up. He looks at her, dumbfounded, "Whoa. Did you do that?"
"Yeah," she smirks, "I was trying to get it to stay standing up on the corner, but I couldn't hold it there."
"That's remarkable. What did it feel like?"
Leeza explains what it feels like to see the probability fields. and while she does, she picks up the ID, and flips it in her hand to watch the blue field, explaining the experience... and by the time she's done, she's balancing the card on her finger.
"That's remarkable. It's like the tesseract is giving you influence over macro scale quantum randomness. I can't think of another explanation."
"I don't know what that means, but it sounds pretty cool.." She blows on the card, and it spins in place for a moment, but then falls off her finger. As it does, she works harder, and the field expands, and she is aware of possibilities that whiz by in a flip book that almost look like time is retreating, as the card finds it way back up onto her finger, where it's balanced and spinning from the air movement. "Whoa, did you see that?!?! The card fell, and it felt like I was rewinding time!"
"Uhm, the card didn't fall. You just blew on it and it started spinning. Which is mighty impressive, but it didn't fall. Or at least *I* didn't see it fall." Sean squinted his eyes as he considered the possibilities. "Did you see it fall?"
"Totally. Here, I'll try it again." She blew on the card, harder this time, and it flew up in the air and possibilities expanded, and she chased and chased until she followed the thread that brought it back to spinning on her finger. "Wow, that was cool!"
"What was cool? I didn't see anything happen. What did you see?"
"I blew on the card, and it flew several inches off my finger, and then it felt like I was rewinding time until it was back where I wanted it."
"This is fascinating. I don't think you rewound time. I think we've just proved the many worlds interpretation. That's why you saw the ID land face-up five times, but I didn't, and why you saw the card fly off, but I didn't" She gave him a wry look of confusion, so he backed up to explain. "There are two interpretations of quantum randomness. One is the Copenhagen interpretation, that says quantum randomness stems from local decoherence, which contains multiple simultaneous possibilities and which collapses to produce a single outcome. The *other* interpretations is many-worlds, where all possibilities always occur in different parallel universes, and we only observe the concrete outcome that occurs in one of those universes. If my suspicions are correct, you're not rewinding time, or controlling the card, but navigating between limitless parallel universes! This is too cool. Take your hand out of the field, I want to try it."
This experience was making her feel so special, so important, she didn't want him to take that away. She wanted to stop him. Suddenly, the big blue field appeared around him, and like before, she started navigating the possibilities, trying to change the outcome. The field grew bigger and bigger, until it covered them both, and she felt like she was watching herself from outside herself as she spoke, "Won't that pollute the results? You can't be both the observer and the experiment. I think you should remain objective." As she finished, the blue field collapsed, and she felt like she was inside herself again.
"Good point. I hadn't thought of that. I'll remain the classical observer. Let's think of another experiment to try. Maybe I could toss a bunch of coins, or ...."
Leeza felt her heart beat faster. Had she just made Sean change his mind? She concentrated on him, trying to make him raise his arm, and the blue field appeared around him. At first she didn't see any possibilities, so she focused on his hand, and her desire for it to be higher, and the possibilities appeared, rising it higher and higher, until he was holding his hand above his head. When she let the field collapse, he was still talking.
"..or maybe we could try spontaneous emission." Sean could see a funny look on her face, and she was looking up at his outstretched arm. "What? I'm just stretching?" He continued the stretch, and brought his arm back down.
"I made you do that," she declared, convincingly.
"No, you did not. My arm was sore, so I just needed to stretch. You think you made me do it?"
"That's how it felt to me. Can you tell me more about this many-worlds interpretation?"
"Well, many-worlds says there is literally an unlimited number of universes, where everything that can happen is happening in one of them. Or perhaps there is one world per conscious observer. We wouldn't have any way to determine the difference. That's why I didn't notice the card flying off your finger. A different version of me did see it fly off your finger, but he's in a different parallel universe.
"If this is really happening, then the tesseract is allowing you to navigate to different parallel universes. To you it feels like you are controlling randomness, or rolling back time, but you can't change anything, you are just *navigating* to universes where highly improbable things have occurred.
"Wait, like I could change the past? What kind of changes are we talking about here?" She looked at the coffee cup on the desk, and concentrated. The blue field appeared, and she navigated the possibilities until the cup was taller and fatter. Sean didn't seem to notice.
"If this is in fact many-worlds, you would feel like you can change absolutely anything, but to me it would seem like nothing changed at all. Because each world would have a different version of me."
"Wait, anything?" She felt her heart beat faster again, as her vanity got the best of her. She concentrated on herself, and this time she felt something really strange. A buzzing energy running through her. She looked down at her flat chest, and thought about how she always wanted to have more womanly curve. As if on command, the shape of her top pillowed outwards as her flat chest swelled into gentle but womanly breasts. She felt the field collapse and excitement run through her. "Holy crap!"
"What? Did you change something?" He looked at Leeza, and the room around her, wondering if there was any way for him to notice.
"You mean you can't tell? What do you think of that red coffee cup?" Sean looked over and picked it up.
"Looks the same as I remember." As he held it, she concentrated on it, and changed it, making it more angular and blue. "Why, did you change it?"
"This is fucking surreal. You really can't see that? A second ago it was rounder, and red."
"Red? You just said it was blue. You said 'what do you think of that blue coffee cup?'. Are you screwing with me?" His eyes looked away as he puzzled out what was happening. He had seen her impossibly spinning the card on her fingertip, but the rest of her story could have been made up. "Okay, I can't perceive these changes. Can you make something else improbable happen? Something that shouldn't occur, like the card spinning."
"I have another idea. When I made you raise your arm, the field surrounded us both, maybe I can take you with me, so you can see the changes." She concentrated on Sean, and when the field surrounded him and the coffee cup, she thought about the coffee freezing, and navigated the possibility space.
"Holy crap," Sean exclaimed, as he felt the cup get cold in his hand, and then watched the formerly warm liquid crystalized and turn solid. Eventually the cup became cold enough it was uncomfortable to hold, and he set it down. "That was remarkable. I felt it get colder and saw the coffee freeze. That was amazing! I want to try it!"
"No you don't," she said with a funny confidence, pushing just a little on his probability field, "remember, you are the observer. You want to help me understand and control it. How could we make it smaller, and portable, so I could wear it?"
"That's an interesting idea. Once it's running it actually outputs power, so if we run the pulse management on a small microcontroller we'd only have to plug it in to start it up. Probably it could be small enough to wear, I guess."
"Excellent." She looked at the tesseract field, and imagined Sean having done as he said, designing it with a small microcontroller, and made it much smaller. As it shrank, the figured a wristband would be the most practical, and the entire apparatus shrank and embedded itself into a wristband around her wrist, with a small wire connected to the desktop computer. "So you're saying I can just unplug this wire then?"
"I have no idea! I saw it change, but I don't remember making it like that." Leeza realized bringing him with her meant he didn't know this universe. She navigated again, leaving this Sean behind and finding the one who designed this smaller tesseract. The new Sean turned to the computer, pressing a few buttons to bring up a status readout, "yes, it's stable, you should be able to unplug it now."
Leeza removed the tether and immediately felt a rush. Her Ph.D no longer mattered. Her trust fund no longer mattered. She was wearing a wristband that allowed her to change reality itself, or at least do something that felt like she could. Though she remembered what Sean said. She wasn't changing anything, just moving between worlds. She expanded the field around the new Sean to bring him with her. She wanted to have a confidant, an observer. Afterall, what was the point of having this kind of power without showing it off.
"Let's see if you notice this change," she said a bit sarcastically. She thought about herself and let her vanity take over. The field expanded, and she again felt like she was a third party observer, looking at the two of them like they were puppets. Why stop at fixing her flat chest? She imagined herself like the female fitness models she envied, not just pretty, a perfectly airbrushed goddess.
Sean's jaw dropped as he watched her body change. Seeing the coffee freeze was one thing, watching her change ran chills up his spine. In just seconds, she became incredibly sexy, with perfect hair, and perky tits, and not only that. She became fit, and strong, and tall. By the time she was done, she wasn't just gorgeous, she was intimidating. He was equally impressed and afraid. "Ohh my god, Leeza, what have we done?"
As she looked down on the two of them, she didn't feel like Leeza anymore. The new body she'd sculpted seemed like a puppet to have fun with. Though Sean was no puppet, he had made the tesseract. She might need him to keep it working, and she needed to make sure he didn't build another one.
Sean was awestruck as Leeza's new form walked up to him, gently grasping his shoulder. "Aww, Sean, there is nothing to fear. What you have given me is amazing. I'm going to take excellent care of you. You were attracted to Leeza before, how about now? Do you want her?" He was too intimidated and aroused to think about why she was referring to herself in the third person.
Her consciousness watched the field pulse around the two humans, but Sean's silent awe was too boring. She wanted to see what he saw, feel what he felt. She felt herself staring at Leeza's gorgeous new form through his eyes, and could feel his every thought and memory. He'd wanted her since before she even noticed him. How he'd dreamed she would come onto him. How he'd masturbated thinking about her. And how right now he was so aroused by her sexy new form, he desperately wanted to touch her but dare not. "Go ahead," her consciousness projected into his mind, then encouraged him to put his hand into motion.
Sean's adrenalin and endorphins spiked. Was this reality, or was he going insane? Leeza had transformed into the most gorgeous woman he'd ever seen; he could swear he heard a voice in his head; and he felt his hand moving towards her. When his fingers touched her chiseled tummy, Leeza smirked encouragingly. He wondered again if this was real, and Leeza nodded, as if answering his silent thought. The voice in his head spoke again, "tell me, Sean. What do you dream of?"
A rush of Sean's thoughts flooded through her expanded consciousness. His desire further fueled her vanity, and the urged her to fulfill them. She was still looking through Sean's eyes, as her puppet body responded, "I know what you want, Sean. What you really want. Stand up." This time he obeyed without any quantum prodding, and she watched through his eyes as he came face to face with the new Leeza. Feeling a male body from the inside, his arousal and his budding erection, was a novel sensation. She reveled in it for a moment, then Leeza's hand reached for his and brought it up to her face. "Are you ready to worship me?" Leeza offered, rhetorically.
Sean felt his spine and skin crawling with energy. Much of it was arousal, but it was also submission, and anticipation. He knew what he wanted most, what he dreamed of, but he didn't really expect it to happen. Then it started. He felt it moments before he could see it, Leeza's body growing taller, pressing up into his arm and pulling his hand upward. Just a little at first, making them eye to eye, then more, as her face rose above his, just an inch, then a couple, then more...
Her conciseness felt arousal and wetness, but she couldn't be sure which body the feelings came from, or whether they came from a body at all. She was still looking through his eyes when Leeza's lips past his eyeline, and the awe and desire he held, not only for Leeza, but for the dream was was authoring, stroked her ego and desire for power. Though she'd had enough of his submission, so she let her conciousness drift again.
Back in Leeza's body, she looked down and watched him recede away as she grew. It was a feeling she'd never experienced before, looking down at a man's wanton eyes like this. As her chin rose inches above his head, she wondered if any woman ever had. "I like this dream of yours," she taunted, then noticed his eyes distracted downward.
Sean was delirious, his dreams and reality having bled together into a surreal experience. It was both impossible to believe, and the most real thing he'd ever seen, as Leeza's new body rose inches in front of him. And she wasn't just growing taller, she was proportionally larger, her shoulders wider, her facial features bigger. When her collarbone reached his chin, he couldn't help look down at the enticing puff of cleavage rising up from below. "Go ahead," he heard again. He had lost the ability to tell where it came from. He only knew what it meant, as he leaned in and let his lips gently land against the top of her left breast.
"That's a good boy," Leeza teased, as she held his head, encouraging him to suckle more firmly into her tit. Her conciousness moved outside the puppet body, reveling in the sexyness the nearly seven foot goddess towering over her genius Sean, the one who turned her into a God. "If only Freud could see us now." She chuckled as she realized she could actually bend the blue probability field and make that happen if she wanted. She cringed at the thought, then had the puppet reach for her sports bra.
Sean's hands were around her body, clutching her with desire, and making it even more obvious how much more substantial she'd become. When he noticed her hands moving and backed away to watch her grasp the neckline of her sports bra and pull, stretching it at first, then tearing the fabric. The fibers and neoprene loudly popped and snapped as it tore, but it seemed to present no more difficulty to her than tearing tissue paper.
"I knew it would be fun to have tits," Leeza teased, tearing off the top and exposing her bare skin as she swelled even bigger. For her expanded consciousness, it was like the sexiest porn she'd ever seen, imagined by her mind, and shot from every camera angle at once. She stopped growing as her nipple passed just above his lips and leaned in, flicking it across his nose before dipping it down to his lips. He took it in, and she felt the firm suction immediately. "I think while I have your attention, we should talk about some new terms to our arrangement. How about I'll keep making your dreams come true, and you promise to keep the tesseract working for me and only me."
Sean's hands had found their way up to the sides of her oversize breast, as he suckled away. He imagined if there was any way this dream could get any better, when she mentioned the tesseract. He looked at her wrist, and saw the distinct blue glow. The memories of how this happened flooded his mind. He'd created the tesseract, and she was using it to manipulate reality. We'll, not really manipulate, more like navigate. Was there any limit to what she could do? What if she turned on him? or the world? He felt a pit in his stomach, stopped suckling her, and pleaded, "Leeza, this is too dangerous, we have to s--t--o--," even as he said the word, time slowed and elongated.
She realized she'd made a mistake bringing it up, and dove back into the possibility field. For a moment she started to backtrack, finding a universe where she'd never said it at all, but she realized complete control would ruin all the fun. So she let the field collapse and immediately changed back into normal Leeza - pretty, but mortal sized and flat chested. "Do you really want me to stop? I can you know. I can take you right back to the moment before we made the tesseract work, make sure you won't know how, and go find another Sean who is more willing. I can even leave you with your memories, so you'll remember just how close you came to nirvana. Go ahead, tell me to stop again. I dare you."
"N-No," he backtracked. "I just want you to be careful. We don't even know what the tesseract is or how it works yet."
"Aww, you're concerned for my safety." The Leeza puppet laughed at the sentiment, while her conciousness slipped over into Sean's mind. She accessed the probability field, and injected a hallucinated experience of him kneeling in the palm of her hand, looking up at her giant face. "You have no idea what I'm capable of," her giant voice boomed, "beg for forgiveness from your Goddess."
Sean looked around, disoriented, saw flesh, the shape of a giant hand and fingers, and felt blood rush from his veins. "Holy shit." He leaned to the left, and felt like he was looking a hundred feet down to the hardwood floor of their apartment. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Forgive me"
In an instant, he was back to normal sized, and the oversized, sexy, bare-chested version of Leeza was standing on front of him. "That's better, now kiss my tits, and
--
stuff....
"No, it actually fell off my finger, and I somehow 'caught' it and brought it back up.
?? what event does she "change" instead of just influence ??
"so you're saying I'm not controlling these things, but merely navigating possibilities?"
"yes, that's exactly right. many worlds says all things happen in some universe, but we only observe one outcome because we only exist in one of those worlds. There is even a radical branch of many-worlds where they believe your consciousness can't die, because you only experience the branches where you live." / "but wouldn't that mean nobody would die?" / "yes, and no. It would mean no consciousness would experience death, but in your
"
???
she can feel its power, but needs his brain to figure out how to use it.
?? maybe the power always comes from the tesseract, so she needs a smaller, portable version, she asks sean how he would do it, and a blue field appears and changes the device before her eyes.... though sean is unaware of the changes (because only she is moving between many-worlds)
?? she is fascinated that Sean doesn't notice the changes, and asks why that would be... after some confusing discussion, he brings up the "many-worlds" interpretation, and suggests perhaps the tesseract is allowing her to navigate between the many worlds. she's confused, and asks questions, and while he explains,
Take 1
intro
she wants to 'meet privately' to discuss physics theories.. he's awestruck
she asks about his thesis... expresses some mild curiosity... then interrupts "let me cut to the chase"
turns out she only gets access to her trust-fund if she gets a science Ph.D.
she's willing to offer him $15k in cash, $5k now, and $10k after, for helping her make that happen.
you want me to write your thesis? that's cheating, I could get expelled.
No. no. i'm not trying to cheat. I'm asking you to be my personal tutor and thesis partner.
I've heard the school allows partners to share a thesis. And you'll need to tutor me alot, because we have to defend individually, so I'll need to be prepared. That means we'll need to spend lots of time together.
I'm willing to go all in on it. We would move into a shared apartment. No dating, no distractions, no drinking. Well, maybe some drinking, but only on the weekends."
"Wait, we would be living together?"
"Yes. I *have* to make this happen. My future depends on it. I'll do whatever it takes."
"Whoa. Exactly how much money is in your trust fund?"
"THAT is something we're not going to talk about, ever. But even you asking makes me feel a little guilty. So how about $5k now, and when I get my Ph.D I'll give you $20k in cash and pay off all your school debt. But that's my final offer."
"Holy what?! You didn't even ask how much school debt I have.... which means, it doesn't really matter.... Which means, we're talking a crap ton of money. You really do need this, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. Do we have a deal?"
"I don't think I can say no. Yes, we have a deal."
"Great, I'll arrange to have some movers come and move your stuff this week. Here is your key to our new digs. It's a top floor unit at 707 5th St, #1212."
"That's not student housing! That place costs a fortune!"
"I wouldn't call it a fortune, though it's certainly an upgrade from this place," she said while looking around. "How about you start by telling me more about this tesseract theory of yours...."
?? maybe change this around so he meets her at the apartment ??
uphill battle
weeks later, while performing an experiment, he asks her to hold things and do things, and she gets frustrated that he's not explaining anything... so he tries to explain the basis for his tesseract theory and what he's trying to achieve with this experiment
she asks bad questions, and he gets frustrated, because she really 'doesn't get it'.... she apologizes, and says she's trying, but she just doesn't understand.
he goes on a bit of a rant... about how of course she doesn't understand. she blows off calculus, the blows off physics, then she thinks she can understand the basis of four dimensional metaphysics. "do you even know how to compute a two dimensional integral?" ... she looks sheepishly down. "I can explain things all day, but if you don't take the time to *learn* it, you are never going to understand."
"I'm sorry. you're right. I don't know calculus. I dated a cute boy in my calculus class and he did all my homework, then I faked having mono and sweet talked the professor into taking the exam home so my boyfriend could take that for me too. I don't even know what an integral is. But you can teach me. You're really good at explaining stuff."
"Teach you all of calculus? This is crazy. This is never going to work. I'll give you your $5k back. At this point I just need to get my thesis done so I can graduate before I run out of money." He headed for the door, but by the time he had his keys and jacket she standing in front of him blocking it."
"Please. Don't go. You can't go. My trust fund is four million dollars, but if I get a Ph.D before I'm 27, I get another forty million."
His jaw dropped. "Forty million... dollars? For getting a Ph.D? What the hell?"
"Yes. It's was my grandfather trying to motivate us to become more than 'vapid kids who do nothing but spend money', which I have to admit, he's been spot on about so far. That's exactly what my brothers became. So you see, I can't fail at this. I have to do it. And you're the horse I bet on to make this happen. In my defense, I have always planned to give you much more than $20k in cash for helping me, I just didn't want to freak you out. I was thinking of more like a million, or maybe a million five?"
"A million and a half dollars? You are planning to give me a million and a half dollars? That's just.... You can't just say that. Who would trust an offer like that. It's preposterous."
"You're right, that's odd of me to expect someone to trust something so outlandish. I'll have lawyers draw up the paperwork tomorrow. $5k a month for tutoring me, and a $1.5 million dollar bonus when that tutoring successfully gets me my Ph.D by age 27. Sound fair?"
He coughed, and his jaw dropped. He set his keys down on the counter and leaned against it, having no idea what to say or to do. "You're serious?" he puzzled.
"Dead serious. Just please don't leave. Don't give up on me. I need this. I need you." She moved intimately close, putting her hand on his face. She was slightly nervous about him leaving, but more than that she was high on the endorphins of convincing him to stay, of getting what she wanted. "Will you do it? Teach me about Integrals? Teach me everything I cheated through? Help me become more than a vapid granddaughter? I'll throw in a kiss if it'll help seal the deal."
He was stunned, but she seemed so genuine. She was also an incredibly pretty girl, and her flirtatious proximity was having an effect on him. He wasn't even finished nodding when she leaned in, and gently pressed her lips to his. He felt a little jolt, though he wasn't sure if it was static or just his mind startling at the sensation of her lips. They were soft and plush, and her tongue was wet as she gently gave him the most sexual and sensuous kiss he'd ever had. It ended sooner than he would have liked, though if it had lasted forever it still wouldn't have been enough.
"Excellent," she declared as their lips parted. She still held her body close to his. "I believe in you. I know you can help me thorough this. And I promise you I'll put everything I have into it. I was pretty decent at algebra, but maybe you can start by explaining what calculus *is*. I mean, what's it for, anyway?"
"This is going to be a long night." He sighed as he peeled of his jacket. She moved to help, taking it from him like a familiar wife might and neatly putting it away in the closet. By the time he was sitting on the couch, she had caught up and knelt very close. "Calculus is a set of tools we used to solve precise questions to multi-variable equations, normally time-varying equations." Her gaze was intense but blank, and he knew the words meant nothing to her. This was going to be hard.
"Think of a ball when you throw it. Can you imagine the curve it makes through the air?" She nodded. "We intuitively know the shape of that arc, and we know how to catch a ball, but what if I asked you for precise details, like how many seconds will the ball be in the air? how far away will it land? or what speed is it traveling at any time? Calculus is a set of methods that allow us to precisely answer these types of questions, about pretty much any smooth function."
"Really? That's actually pretty cool," she reached her hand out and brushed his leg. She wasn't sexually attracted to him. She just had a habit of flirting with boys to encourage them. He became suddenly silent and wide eyed, which made her feel even more power over him. "I'm a very physical person, and it easier for me to pay attention when we have some kind of connection, some kind of contact. Maybe that's why I don't pay attention much in class. You don't mind, do you?" She gently rubbed his leg to punctuate the point.
"N..no. That's fine, I've just never been around someone quite like you. You're very....unpredictable."
"Ooh!" She blurted out with excitement, "what a delightful compliment!" She rubbed his leg a couple more times, enjoying his palpable discomfort. "So how does it work? Calculus."
"Ohhh. Right. I need some paper," He reached over for a notebook and pencil, "The arc of the ball is governed by Newton's equations of motion, a set of functions explaining how an object's movement is affected by gravity and momentum." He sketched out the trajectory of the ball, and the equations that govern. "Given inputs like the angle and speed of the ball when it's thrown, these functions allow us to know where it will be at any given point in time. Calculus, is a set of techniques that allow us to look at that curve in different ways. By taking a derivative of the function, we can know the rate-of-change of the ball's position at any time, or how much change in position happens for each change in time -- meters per second for example, or in the case of a car speedometer, miles-per-hour. This rate-of-change-of-position, is also known as velocity." He finished scribbling out the derivative, then plugged in a value of time, and showed the miles-per-hour speed of the ball in the middle of the arc.
She looked at the arc, and the equations, and the derivative, and for once what he was saying kind of made sense. In fact, it seemed kind of obvious. The equations were small, and the numbers were simple. "Wow. Nobody has ever explained it that way to me before. That actually seems really easy. But I don't understand how you did this, here," she pointed to the derivative.
"Well, that's the calculus derivative. It's really easy, more of a mechanical transformation you can do to a function." He made a simple second order function to demonstrate the mechanics. "See, for each variable term, each x-term of the function, you bring down the exponent, multiplying it by the term, then you subtract one from the exponent. If it's a constant term, you just throw it out, because it has no x, so it has no time-varying component." Then he wrote another example function with different exponents. "Here, you try, just do the same thing I did." He handed her the notebook.
She puzzled at it a moment, then just did exactly what he said, bringing down the exponent, making it a coefficient, then subtracting one from the exponent. "You mean like this?" She showed him the paper, as she finished doing it for the third term of the equation, inadvertently writing "+ 0" for the constant term and then just scratching it out.
"Yes," he nodded, as she scratched out the unnecessary term. "That's exactly right. See. It's really not that hard. It's just a set of tools to solve problems." He turned to another sheet of paper, and wrote out another equation. "Now we can use Calculus to answer questions. For example, if we want to know where the peak of the arc of our ball through is, we want to know when the y-velocity is zero. We find the y-velocity by solving for y and then taking the determinant. See if you can find out where the y-velocity becomes zero. First take the derivative." He handed over the paper.
At first what he asked sounded so complicated, but instead of thinking about it, she just did it. She calculated the derivative using the simple rules he showed her. Then she had a simple equation, and she remembered enough algebra to plug in a y-value of zero, and solve for x, which in this case was when "x=5". She handed the paper back over with a tentative look.
"See, that's wasn't hard, was it?"
"Wait, that's the right answer? No way." He nodded, and she smiled from ear to ear. "You're insane. I didn't understand a single lecture that entire semester of my Calculus class, and you just taught me to do derivatives and understand velocity in thirty minutes!" She was super excited, perhaps she'd earn her Ph.D after all. "More, teach me more." She bounced a little next to him, playfully shaking his shoulder like an impatient child.
"Okay, okay," he chuckled, "but lets practice a few more simple derivatives first. Each piece of Calculus is simple, but to understand each piece, you need to really understand the pieces before." He wrote down another three example equations, and handed her the paper, "take the derivatives of each of these."
She wrinkled her face. "It looks like some of that homework I never did. Though I guess that seems easy enough." She took the paper, and easily followed the rules, computing the derivative for each function. By the time she was done, she was quite satisfied with herself, Calculus suddenly didn't seem that hard afterall.
tesseract experiment #5
They both sat looking at the computer screen, as he hit the enter key and the software executed the new version of tesseract experiment #5. There was a faint sound, but otherwise the metal apparatus next to the computer didn't appear to do anything at all. When the software finished, it spit out a graph that represented the energy level resonated back out of the tesseract coil.
"Dratz," he declared, looking at the graph, which obviously showed a massively decayed amount of return energy. "I don't get it, even without any tesseract effects, the energy coming back should be *close* to what we're putting in, but we're seeing a loss factor of.... 0.56%?"
"Hmm," smiling in satisfaction she even knew what he was talking about. He'd spent almost five weeks catching her up on all the Calculus, differential equations, and physics she'd ignored during the last two years of her undergraduate studies. "If there was a problem with the calibration of the energy measurement, it could..."
"No, no, it can't be that. Remember, with the null wire test the readings are accurate." He moved on from her thought, and started to inspect the tesseract wire apparatus, wondering if there was some kind of parasitic effect between the wires he hadn't accounted for.
"Wait, what if?" Her mind lit up with so much excitement she couldn't even finish the thought. She reached for a paper and started to scribble an equation, then another, then another, then calculated their derivatives, then solved them together. Her mind was such an explosion of thought it was like she was possessed. The mathematics she was doing was now rather simple for her, mechanical even. When she finished scribbling on the paper, the result was almost haunting, the number "0.56", exactly the loss factor. She felt so alarmed and exciting her hand was literally shaking as she turned the paper towards him.
"What's this?" He asked absently, as he followed her scribbling. "Wait what?" He said with alarm, as he reached her final conclusion. "It can't be this simple. This says there is a parasitic harmonic exactly aligning with the power loss. It's just shifted by the power phase transfer around the tesseract. But how would that happen? Unless, ohh my. There *IS* a parasitic effect, it's just not bounded by the physical configuration of the coil, it's produced in tesseract space."
Now it was his turn to be possessed. He scribbed a half page of calculations below hers, then opened up the source code that ran the experiment, and started making changes. Leeza didn't understand the software coding part of this project at all, there had only been so much time to catch her up on everything she systematically avoided learning, but she was impressed watching him work. She got up to toss her diet coke and grab another one, and by the time she returned he was almost finished.
"Here goes nothing," he pushed the initiation key, and the faint hum started. It sounded *different* somehow, like it was singing. Was that real, or just his imagination? When the software finished, the energy graph displayed, this time showing exactly the same power coming out as went in. "Ohh Leeza, you found it. The missing element of Maxwell's equations!"
"We'll, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Did it work? Do we have enough experimental results for our thesis? I don't mean to seem greedy, but millions of dollars are on the line for both of us."
"No Leeza, you don't understand. You didn't just solve our thesis, you solved the universal theorem of physics, the universal theorem of everything. We'll, you pointed out the missing element. Einstein, Maxwell, Lorenz, they all suspected there was some way to unify time, space, macro, and micro, into a single unifying theory, but nobody could do it. We've done it. We've solved the mystery of general relativity."
Leeza had a scrunchy puzzled look on her face. "I skipped too many classes to understand any of what you are saying. Can you make that a little simpler?"
"Okay, okay. We have different physics equations for things that occur at different scales. Newton's equations about apples falling from trees seem correct for things right in front of us, but they don't hold when things go very very fast, or get very very small. For the very fast things we have equations for general relativity, and for very small things we have equations for quantum mechanics. I think we just discovered the term that unifies them into a single set of equations."
Leeza's face scrunched into a sour look, "that really didn't help. What does this mean? Did we finish our Ph.D?"
"Ohh my god, it's so much bigger than that. If these figures are right, we can harvest limitless energy from quantum phonemena. Here, watch," he opened up the code for the test experient, and tweaked a few lines, then quickly re-ran it. The familiar hum started. This time it immediately displayed the power graph. Then he hit the up-arrow key a few times, and the power return graph increased. "See, by adjusting the quantum wave phase, we are getting back more energy than we are putting in!"
Leeza saw the graph go up, but she was more interested in the faint blue glow in the center of the tesseract. "Sean, what's that?" she asked, pointing to it.
Sean looked over, not sure what to make of it. He thought the extra energy was being harvested from quantum fluctuations, but it looked like a plasma. Was this cold fusion? He watched it for several seconds, and while the boundary shape seemed to shimmer a little, it was otherwise very stable. It mirrored the shape of their tesseract wires. He picked up a pen, and inserted the tip into the blue glow. Nothing seemed to happen. "Well, it's certainly not a plasma." If it was, it would have melted the pen instantly. He hit the up-arrow key a few more times. The energy return went up, and the blue region got bigger. He tapped the down arrow keys a few times. The energy return curve went down, but the blue region didn't shrink, in fact, he could swear it got a little bigger still. "Well that's curious." He stuck the pen into it again, further this time. The view of the pen inside the field was hazy. It made the pen look like it was vibrating, but it was more probable that the field was somehow distorting lightwaves moving in and out of the field. He sat back just to stare at it for a moment, bewildered.
Leeza didn't know what the blue translucent field was, but it was one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen, and even though she didn't understand it, she had a hand in creating it. She took the pen from Sean, and took her turn probing into the field. Only the pen was a ruse, she wanted to touch it, to feel it. By the time the tip of her finger touched it, it was too late for Sean to stop her. It tingled a little, but otherwise nothing happened.
"Leeza! Stop! What are you doing?" Before Sean could react, Leeza had dipped her entire finger into the blue field, and had turned to him, smiling.
"What? It's fine. Whatever it is, it's not harmful." She wiggled her finger around inside the field. It felt weird in a way she couldn't quite explain. It was blue, so she expected it to feel like water, and it did, gently resisting her motion. "It's weird, it feels like a fluid when I move, but when I stop, it just feels like nothing, just a little tingle."
"Leeza, we really don't know what that is. It could be dangerous. It could be radioactive. You should stop touching it." He moved to his software, pressing the down arrow repeatedly, causing the energy return graph to go down, but nothing happened to the field, the a few seconds later, the field size started to increase! "Ohh, craap." He shut down his software entirely, but the field remained, so he pulled the power plug from the wall. The computer screen quickly went black, but the blue field remained, in fact, is surged bigger.
Leeza hadn't registered Sean's frantic attempt to shut it down. She never wanted it to end. In fact, she was dipping her finger further into it when the field surged bigger. She opened her fingers, marveling at the feeling of it as it surrounded her hand. Suddenly, this didn't seem so much to her like science as magic. She opened her fingers and turned her hand, and it's shape responded, she wasn't reaching into it, it was surrounding her. She pulled her hand out of the wire-cage of the tesseract and the blue glow stayed attached to her. "This is so fucking cool!" She exclaimed, holding up her hand and watching the blue glow dance around it. Though when she looked at Sean, he appeared terrified. "Sean? Why do you have that look on your face? It's harmless." She held it towards him, and he immediately backed away.
"Leeza, I pulled the plug on the tesseract, and it's still there. I have no idea what it is, or how to make it stop. Just sit still, let me think." He started mumbling to himself, "the field started when I shifted the quantum polarity to increase the energy output, but even when I turned it down, the field remained."
Leeza was not interested in his ramblings, she was too busy experiencing it. She reached her glowing blue hand out to touch the table, and other than a little tingling, it felt like a table. It seemed really magical, so she pushed harder into the table, wondering if it would give her super strength, and something really strange happened. The surface of the table easily moved as she pushed, and she heard a very loud crack that surprised them both as the table strained and cracked around her hand. When she retreated there was a strange looking fracture around where her hand had been. "Wow, that was interesting."
Sean inspected the table, then her hand, then the field, "What did you do? It looks like the table material inside the field moved, and fractured at the field boundary.
"I just thought maybe it would give me super powers or something, so I pushed into the table." She wiggled her fingers, and noticed the feeling of fluid was no longer there, but then as soon as she noticed it was missing, it suddenly reappeared. "Sean, this is really going to sound weird, but I think it's anticipating my intentions."
"Leeza, you do not have super powers, and *it* is not alive. It's an energy field. Please just stay put, and let me think about how to collapse it before you get hurt..." Suddenly his face lit up with excitement, "ohh wait, of course! It's a non-local quantum decoherence."
"You're going to have to dumb that down a little for us mere mortals," she said, wrinkling a sour face, as she wiggled her fingers in the field. She noticed it seemed to be reaching further up her wrist than she remembered, but didn't think much of it at the time.
"Our current understanding of very small things like photons is based on quantum mechanics, where photons are not things at all, but merely probability distribution functions. In a sense, they can be in many places and many states at once, and only when we measure them to does that quantum decoherence collapse. We've only ever seen this happen on the small scale, but there is nothing about the theory that prevents it from happening on a larger scale. In fact, there is a quantum interpretation where this decoherence is happening all around us all the time, in an infinite number of parallel universes, and our experience is consciousness navigating the branches." Leeza's face was blank with non-recognition. "It's possible that field is a large quantum decoherence. In a sense, inside it anything is possible, because all possibilities are happening simultaneously."
"Oooh, I saw this series once called `Devs`, you're talking about the many-worlds interpretation. Are you saying this thing is giving me access to parallel universes?!?" She waved her hand back and forth in wonder, noticing the field had crept even further up her forearm, though now it made her more excited than concerned. She reached out to the table, where she had shoved it, and tried to will it back into place. The table creaked again, as the section she was touching was lifted upwards as if by some unseen force. However, the strain cracks outside the field remained. She was curious, so she ran her hand across the table, imagining it back in it's original state, and wherever the field moved, the stress and splinters faded into a smooth surface. When she took her hand away, the table was mostly back to normal, except for the spots she'd failed to touch. "That is so fucking cool!"
Sean's jaw dropped open in disbelief, "how did you?" he ran his hand across the table which had previously been cracked, as if feeling it would somehow help him understand how the impossible had occurred. He looked at Leeza, and realized the blue field was more tightly surround her hand, but had invaded nearly to her elbow. "Leeza, I know this is exciting, but I really think we should focus on stopping it, before you get hurt. Look at your arm."
"Stop it? Why would I want to stop it?" She had just watched the will of her mind change matter in the universe. She didn't want to stop it. She wanted more of it. She put her hands together, so they were both bathed in the blue glow, then pulled them apart, and now both of her hands were in blue quantum decoherence, just as she expected.
"Leeza stop! What are you doing?" But she wasn't listening, she was just watching new branch of the field creep up her arm, as the other one crept up her shoulder. Sean wanted to shake her to get her attention, but he was worried about entering the decoherence... a decoherence he didn't know how to stop. "Leeza, this is dangerous, really dangerous. I'm all for experimenting with this new discovery, but we need to make sure we can control it first."
"Ohh, I'm getting a pretty good idea how to control it." She reached her hand towards the part of the table that was still damaged and the field extended away from her to encompass the wood, restoring the surface to it's original unbroken state. "Like I said, it's sort of anticipating my intentions." She wanted the field to encompass her completely, but she could feel the more it did, the weaker it got. It needed more energy. She stepped around Sean, plugging the computer back in.
"No, just no!" he said forcefully, but she wasn't listening, and when she gestured him away with one of her glowing hands, he didn't want to find out if he'd crack as easily as the table, so he quickly backed away. "Leeza, please, I'm begging you, stop before this thing we made hurts you, hurts me, or worse, hurts others."
"Ohh Sean. You need to think bigger. Instead of fearing for your life, you should be joining me, experiencing this new thing we've created." She slowly moved the mouse, then plushed keys on the keyboard, retracing the steps to restart the tesseract as best she could remember. But she couldn't remember, it was too many steps. She stood up, "Sean, I need you to restart it for me."
"I won't. I won't do it. We should be trying to stop this first. We can experiment more after we learn to stop it." He backed away, giving him more distance from the danger of both Leeza and this quantum decoherence.
"Sean, you don't know what it feels like. I'm not going back. I'm going forward." She had felt the power of being able to change matter with her mind, and so if she couldn't get Sean to help her, she'd have to just learn to help herself. She brought both of her hands to her head, and wished and willed to understand the field, to understand the software sean had written, to understand the tesseract.
She felt her consciousness lift up out of her body. She could see it all, and not just the events as they are, but also as they were, and as they could be. Suddenly she understood what having a soul really meant, and she knew her soul was finally free. For a moment, she considered discarding her physical self, and exploring this new plurality of existance to see just what it was. However, she heard something calling her back, and decided she wasn't ready to part with her human existence, yet.
"Leeza, no!" He cried out, as he watched the blue field smother her head. Her eyes went wide, then folded back, and her body shook, as if she was having a seizure. Then her whole body fell to the ground. "Leeza," he cried again, running to her. There was no sign of blue glow as he sat over her, trying to wake her. "Are you okay?" He bent over her, and could hear the rushing sound of exhale, could feel her heart still beating in her chest. A wave of relief washed over him, she wasn't dead.
A moment later she opened her eyes. "Phew, I must have blacked out there for a moment. Help me up?" She reached a hand out, and Sean helped her to her feet. She looked at him in a different way now, she looked at everything in a different way. She understood so much more. She knew exactly what the field was, and what she could do with it.
Sean made sure she was stable before letting go. "I was really worried. You shouldn't have spread that stuff all over you. It could have killed you. I'm as excited about what we discovered as you are, but we need to take things slow."
"Ohh, I certainly got a little carried away, but you really do worry too much." She sat at the computer, and deftly executed the keystrokes to open up the code to the software, making a couple subtle but important changes like she'd done it thousands of times before.
"Leeza, what are you doing?" He'd never seen her modify any code, or type at a computer so fast. It was like she was possessed. Before he could even understand what changes she was making, she had saved the files and restarted the experiment. A faint hum filled the room, and the wires all began to glow blue.
"I've freed my mind from this deterministic prison you call reality, and now I'm going to free my body as well. Join me, Sean. This is as much your journey as mine." She reached a hand out for him, but he took a step back.
"Leeza, I don't understand. What is happening to you?" She didn't answer, she just reached towards the tesseract, and an arc of blue energy connected with her fingers. Once again the blue field wrapped around her, only this time much much faster. In just seconds, her entire body was covered in it.
"It's hard to explain, but I think it's fair to say I'm becoming something more than human, Sean." She closed her eyes, letting the quantum field surround her, then imagined the human body she'd always wanted. Physical shape shouldn't have held much meaning for anymore, but for some reason it did.
Sean watched in awe as bits of reality shifted right in front of his eyes. Leeza's face became more adult, her breasts more full, her shape more toned, and most noticeable of all, she became much much taller. When her flesh stopped changing, she'd turned from a five foot nothing pretty girl to a six foot tall intimidatingly strong and sexy woman. He felt his stomach churning at what he'd just witnessed. "Ohh my god. How the hell did that just happen?"
Leeza let the field recede just below her skin and opened her eyes, smirking at the way she now looked down at Sean. She'd never really considered being taller before, but she was glad to have thrown that in at the last minute. "It's curious to me that you created the machine, you derived the mathematics, and yet you have so little understanding of what it's *for*."
She reached a hand out to the computer, but instead of typing, this time she reached right into the bits, writing their determinism, changing their software and their thesis to remove some revealing parts, and leaving it as a blueprint on the path to cold fusion. When she was done, the perfectly PDF formatted paper popped up on the screen. She listed Sean's name first. It only seemed fair. "Here's our new thesis, it should get you wild acclaim."
"Leeza, you are not explaining anything. What happened to you? Or did something happen to me? Am I going crazy?" He looked down at his own hands, trying to convince himself something in the universe was stable. Then he looked up at Leeza, her new body arousing behind any ability to resist.
"You are very sane, Sean. Perhaps too sane. Maybe that's why this is easier for me than for you. I've taken the secrets from our paper and our software, but they are still in your mind, and when you're ready to see them, I encourage you to come find me. Until then, I'm going to leave you with two parting gifts, this beautiful and adoring version of myself, and a version of reality you'll find quite a bit more entertaining."
---- ?????
"But wait, where are you going?" Before she could answer, Sean watched the blue field swirl out of her head. It pulsed, a passing sentiment seemed to throb deep inside his head, 'see you in another life Sean'. Then Leeza looked like she was getting dizzy, like she was going to lose her balance, and reached out. He reached back, and caught her as best he could, finding himself intertwined with the most gorgeous woman he'd ever laid eyes on.
"Thanks sweetie, I got a little lightheaded there for a minute," she said, casually kissing him on the corner of his lips. "Do I still need to let you work, or did you get enough done for the day?" She brushed her hand through his hair, and curved her back up and down, suggestively dragging her breast against him.
"Uhh, I, uhh, are we dating?" Sean was very aroused and very confused by her sudden flirtation.