Calan - The Immortality Paradox

Chapter Nineteen: The Godkiller Architects, Part One

Date: 419, OA19,655

Location: Starrise Academy, Othello, Hanner Cylch

Twenty-six eager faces looked in unison towards their Professor. Four-Dimensional Mechanics was always a popular subject amongst his students, and every space in the learning sandbox was routinely filled. Including the elusive, red-haired Scorpion at the back who often excused himself from in-person study sessions in favour of meta-surfing with his binary-coded friends. Professor Vanhi couldn't blame them for their inherent curosity. Even at the ripened age of ninety-two, he couldn't help summoning his child-like excitement when describing the time discontinuity of spaceships passing within a hundred Schwarzchild radii of supermassive black holes. Or passionately arguing with dogmatic students on the accuracy of resolving a three-body problem in Carrie Macron's latest comercially-successful fiction, The Scientist and the Love Triangle. A colleague once described the topic as the physicist's playground; where rigorously-tested laws are mercilesly challenged in every scenario.

The Professor also found blame in the Incubus for the upsurge in interest. A mysterious, unfathomable object had even the most prayerful of individuals flocking for answers in his syllabus. Attendance increased ten-fold, not to mention enrollment. He regularly suffered bombardments of far-fetched hypotheticals and theories from undergraduates and faculty alike. 'A gateway to a parallel Universe' and 'the product of mass hallucination' were opposite sides of the spectrum of opinion. Truth be told, Professor Vanhi had very little explanation for an object materialising in empty space, but he would sooner forefeit his intellectual credentials than offer credence to any outrageous postulation. In fact he would prefer to await the Calan's time-honoured judgement.

The learning sandbox was a suspended platform in a pseudo-reality chamber; the illusion currently broken by the beautiful swathe of sunlight dazzling through the long, convex window on one side. Students sat patiently in their kinetic bubbles, simultaneously watching the Professor ramble on about geodesics in Minkowski space and expecting their 3D visualisers to switch on at any moment. It was always their favourite part of learning; as their companion workstations created a geometrical environment of shapes and vectors. A menagerie of environments emerged for them; as far-fetched as primitive paintings etched in the walls of a long forgotten Earth cavern. But today, they anticipated something even more immersive. A venture through time.

The computational mathematics department had been kind enough - after a considerable week of persuasion - to build a virtual storyline for the students, taking them through a depiction of Roman Egypt, long before the Great Human Migration. There, they'd be accompanied and guided by a dramatised reconstruction of Claudius Ptolemy to unlock the secrets of a Planisphaerium and understand its uses in celestial navigation. After journeying through the adventure himself, the Professor was impressed by the realistic graphics, but was less enthusiastic to realise that almost all the background characters had been modelled on his own likeness. The experience resembled the disastrous culmination of a cloning experiment, in which all the doppelgangers roamed free.

'The basis of your final group model needs to incorporate the ideas behind a sterographic projection,' the Professor was saying. 'Spherical polar coordinates are the preferred mathematical language, however, you have free reign when it comes to coding the final product. You may wish to experiment with the different mathematical portrayals, and see which best represents our perspective of Minkowski space. That's the beauty of experimentation, there's no pressure to find answers - simply uncover more questions.' Most of the class laughed, and the others quickly joined in when they realised they'd missed the joke. 'In the spirit of free reign, I'll now give you the opportunity to activate your kinetic bubbles and start the pseudo-reality narratives.' There was a clamour of seat adjustements and excited chatter. 'I know you've been waiting a long time to do another deep-dive interactive, but I guarantee this was worth the wait. Side note: if anybody comes across a fella looking like me in there, tell him reality's too stressful anyway, he's better off not being the real thing.' A second rumble of laughter permeated the room.