about spacetime was correct, then this was now a real possibility. They could both be in the same time, as long as they did not occupy the same space, and he knew that could never happen.
For this to be so, it would mean that the ships were different, not the same at all—that they had originated in different worlds. Is this the way it worked? He knew the ship slated to arrive from the future could not be coming as a result of the history extending forward from this moment. It had to be coming from some other time line—some other meridian in the continuum. In fact, it had to be coming from the same exact world they left when they first raised anchor at Severomorsk. No other time line, assuming multiple lines were possible, could result in the unique set of circumstances that sent the ship back through time. And here is the riveting truth—I’m standing on that ship. This is the Kirov that came from that meridian in time. So if another ship does arrive here from the future, then it must be coming from some other meridian, not the world we left at Severomorsk.
That thought shook him, for it depended on there being many alternate universes, which was something he could never prove or know for certain. Could such an alternate world produce the same exact event that first sent the ship back in time—the live fire exercises, the accident aboard Orel, Rod-25, all of it? The odds on that seemed impossibly small, but assuming it did so, would the ship come here, to this alternate time line? Why? Is there really a world for every possible circumstance and replaying of these events?
He shook his head. Trapped in the loop of his own thinking. Yet he realized that one of those three outcomes must happen. Kirov will either be prevented from arriving here because of the changes we have made to the history, or, if it does arrive here, then it comes from some other world, and not the world in which we now sail. Assuming that, it will either replace us and rule unchallenged in these waters, or else both ships will survive.
Kamenski had tried to tell him something else about this… Kirov was not a thing, not an object, but a process, an activity, a verb. “Yes, my friend, everything in the universe is like that. Everything is a verb. There are no nouns, if you really think about it. That is just a pleasant and useful convention. Everything is a process.”
We are just an activity—we are just something the universe is doing, thought Fedorov, and now he remembered Kamenski’s incredible discourse on that topic.
“Time is not what you think it is… There are no ‘moments,’ only a constant expression of motion…. Old Zeno tried to prove motion was an illusion, that life was like a series of frames in a movie—or a series of positions in a chess game, but he actually had it backwards. This notion of fixed moments in time—that is the illusion, a mere convention of thought… 1941? 2021? These are not places, Fedorov, they are activities, movement in a dance. To go to one or the other you simply have to change your behavior—step lively, and learn the dance of infinity. You see, anything can be expressed in that dance…”
Anything… If Kamenski is correct, then I am just a maelstrom of particles, in this very peculiar shape called Fedorov. I’m just something the universe is doing, just as a whirlpool is something the river is doing, an activity, a temporary arrangement of particles that seem to persist, though we know it is impermanent. And none of those particles can ever be said to be in any particular place. This was what quantum theory asserted, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The particles were always in motion, never in any one “place” and always retaining the possibility of being somewhere else. It was just as Kamenski had argued… “To put it simply, things don’t stay put… there is only constant change and motion—constant uncertainty. And if they are never here, then they are never anywhere else either.”
If another ship does arrive, it will be another arrangement of particles, will it not? The two ships will not be the same. In fact, it would be impossible for them to ever be the same, to have every unique particle of their being doing the exact same thing on both ships, acting out the exact same steps