deal of mass to duplicate, even for a Dual Heisenberg Wave. I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but just not likely. It would mean Time would have hundreds of personal time meridians unresolved, one for each crew member on the two ships. That’s a lot of work, very untidy, so time resists that with Paradox, and the power of annihilation that can accompany such an event. You see, I believe that ship you were last sailing with has vanished for good, Admiral, as much as that may pain you to hear it. I believe it was completely removed from the meridians of possibility, as long as the first arrival occurred, and it seems it has. The presence of this man Karpov aboard argues strongly to that. Yet this other Karpov, the Siberian, well he should have also been annihilated. Paradox should have removed him from the continuum here. If Mister Morgan’s report is correct, and he is at that meeting in Moscow with Sergei Kirov, then something happened to prevent that, and it is a very rare and unusual event.”
“What could have done that?” asked Elena.
“I can’t say at this moment, assuming this is all true. There were, however, several factors that could have contributed to this outcome. The man was obviously a significant player in this history—at both ends of this twisted time loop. He becomes a Free Radical soon after arriving in the past, and in time, he becomes a Prime Mover on key events, as we all are here. That gives him some clout, in a manner of speaking, and some measure of protection from Paradox, though a Prime is not entirely immune. Most of that protection might derive from the fact that Primes tend to move in a Nexus Bubble, and Primes that travel in time have an even greater layer of protection that way. Yet if there was something else, perhaps some physical anomaly involved, then that nexus field around a Prime might have been strongly reinforced.”
“You mean he might survive, just like this bloody radio set?”
“There you have it, Admiral. Something protected this radio set from annihilation, possibly the same energy in the Nexus Point that surrounds and protects you. It could have been something as simple as your personal proximity to the equipment at the time of the event. We’ve learned these things have a given range relating to the intensity of the nexus. Who knows, perhaps this man’s personal nexus was so strong that he was spared the ravages of Paradox, but I tend to think there must have been something else involved, though I can’t say what that might be at the moment.”
“Yet how could there be two instances of the same man?” asked Elena, not understanding how this could be possible.
“Time has that same question on her lips,” said Dorland. “She undoubtedly worked very hard to prevent such a thing from ever happening, but like the marvel of DNA, she makes mistakes, and that makes all the difference. There’s been an error here, a blip in time, a mistake, yet those same errors when made by DNA give rise to all life. So something has been born from this little blunder, and it is very dangerous—a Doppelganger. I never thought I would see that possibility proved true in my theory, but we may be looking at exactly that.”
“Yet how? Are you saying the man mutated and split in two, like a cell dividing?”
“Not at all,” said Paul. “This is difficult to explain, but nothing really moves in time, only information moves. Once it is sent here, that information reassembles the moving person or thing from particles present in the local environment. At least this is how the device I use to travel in time works. We take a pattern signature, right down to the quantum level, and have just enough computing power to store that information. Then we open the continuum with a spinning singularity and send it on through. Once it gets here, it does what nature does effortlessly enough when it spins out trees and birds and all the rest. Everything around you is just information, just particles assembled in a unique order for a given interval, always changing, always a dance—order from chaos, if you will. You vanish into Elsewhere, and then reassemble at another point on the continuum. It’s just a transfer of information from one time to another. When there is a dual Heisenberg Wave like this, that information can be… copied.”