" You're so golden
I'm out of my head "
or
in which Eva Wheeler likes girls.
Harry Styles
season one ✔️
started :: 20/5/19
completed :: 5/6/19
season two✔️
started :: 11/6/19
completed :: 3/8/19
season three ✔️
...
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Chapter Eleven: Mr Clarke's paper plate
"science is neat. But i'm afraid it's not very forgiving."
Mr Clarke agreed and sat down with the group of curious preteens, each of which eager to have a say, but it was Mike who began talking while Eva and Via sat picking at the bits of food they had picked up.
"You know in cosmos, Carl Sagan talks about other dimensions?" Mike began to explain, "like beyond our world?"
"Yeah sure. Theoretically," Mr Clarke nodded, listening to the boys' queries.
"Right, theoretically," Mike agreed, remembering that Mr Clarke didn't actually know what sort of things they had discovered.
"So, theoretically, how do we get there?" Lucas asked him.
"You guys have been thinking about Hugh Everett's Many-Words interpretation, haven't you?" Mr Clarke each gave them a sympathetic glance, his voice soft and mellow. Eva and Via looked up wonderingly about what he meant.
Each of them looked at eachother confused as Mr Clarke began, "well basically, there are parallel universes, just like our world, but infinite variations of it, which means there is a universe where none of this tragic stuff ever happened."
"Thats not what we're talking about," Lucas shook his head after a moment of quiet.
"We were thinking about more of an evil dimension like the veil of shadows," Dustin clarified, "you know the veil of shadows?"
Mr Clarke nodded and started to say a definition which Eva had heard from Mike before, she guessed it was the typical definition, "an echo of the material plane, where necrotic and shadow magic-"
"Yeah, exactly." Mike interrupted
"if a place like that did exist, how would we get there?" Dustin mused.
"Theoretically," Lucas added.
"Well..." Mr Clarke began, pulling out a pen and grabbing a paper plate, "picture, an acrobat... standing on a tightrope. Now, the rope is our dimension, and our dimension has rules, you can move forwards and backwards. But, what if, right next to our acrobat, there is... A flea? Now the flea can also travel back and fourth, just like the acrobat, right?"
"Right." Mike agreed.
"Now here's where things get really interesting. the flea can also travel this way... Along the side of the rope. He can even go... Underneath the rope." Mr Clarke went on, the drawing be had done getting more and more detailed.
"Upside-down," each of them chorused.
"Exactly," Mr Clarke asserted.
"But, we're not the flea, we're the acrobat," Mike lilted.
"In this metaphore yes, we're the acrobat," Mr Clarke admitted.
"So we can't go upside-down?" Via piped up, swallowing a mouthful of food. She had never been the science type but she admittedly found this interesting. Mr Clarke shook his head.
"Well, is there anyway the acrobat to get to the upside-down?" Via continued.
"Well, you'd have to create a massive amount of energy. More than humans are currently capeable of creating, mind you, to open up some kind of tear in time and space, and then..." Mr Clarke then folded the paper plate and he continued to stab his pen through it, "you create a doorway."
"Like a gate?" Dustin asked.
Mr Clarke nodded, "sure, like a gate. but again, this is all--"
"Theoretical," Lucas finished with a sigh.
"But— But what if this gate already existed?" Mike put forward.
"well, if it did, I think we'd know, it would disrupt gravity, the magnetic feild, our environment. Heck, it might even swallow us up whole." Mr Clarke explained, "science is neat. But i'm afraid it's not very forgiving."
☆
When the group got back to Eva and Mike's, Mike remade Mr Clarke's diagram, explaining each of his words to Eleven, "it would take alot of energy to build a gate like this, but thats gotta be what happened right? Or else, how'd Will and Tori get there?"
"Right," Eleven replied softly.
"What we wanna know is, do you know where the gate is?" Lucas questioned, and Eleven shook her head, to which made Lucas groan loudly, "then how'd you know about the upside-down?"
Eleven looked down towards her hands, before looking at Dustin, making the rest of the group copy and look at him.
"Dustin, what are you doing?" Mike asked simply, "Dustin? Dustin!"
"I-I need to see your compasses," Dustin stammered.
"What?" Via narrowed her eyes with confusion.
"Your compasses! All of your compasses, right now!" he declared.
Following suit, the group put forward all of the compasses they had. Via stood with her hands in her pockets and Eva stayed sat, Dustin gave them an odd look and Eva replied sheepishly, "w-w-we don't carry c-compasses around."
"What's exciting about this?" Mike sighed a little, changing the topic.
"Well they're all facing north, right?" Dustin asked them.
"Yeah, so?" Lucas shrugged nonchalantly.
"Well that's not true north," Dustin replied simply.
"What do you mean?" Mike questioned, leaning against the back of a chair.
"I mean exactly what i just said, that's not true north," Dustin looked at them all, each of them having plain expressions on their faces, "are you all seriously this dense?"
Dustin rolled his eyes briefly before continuing this explanation, pointing in each direction, "The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west which means, that's true north!"
"so what you're saying is the compasses are broken?" Mike sighed, as if what Dustin was saying didn't mean anything.
"Do you even know how a compass works?" Dustin interrogated, holding up a compass, "do you see a battery pack on this?" -"no" Mike replied - "no you don't, because they don't need one, the needles are naturally drawn to the earth's magnetic north pole."
"yeah, s-s-so what's w-w-wrong with th-them?" Neave finally hoped Dustin would explain. It was clear none of them knew, she just wanted him to get straight to the point.
"Well, that's what i couldn't figure out, but that's when I remembered. You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet, if there's a presence of a more powerful magnetic feild, the needle deflects to that power," Dustin continued, "and then I remembered what Mr. Clarke said, the gate would have so much power—"
"It would disrupt the electromagnetic field!" Mike realised, a slight gasp in his voice as he finally understood what Dustin was getting at.
"Exactly," Dustin confirmed.
"Which means, if we follow the compasses north..." Via trailed off for Dustin to answer.
"It should lead us to the gate," he finalised, each of them not catching the anxious and petrified look on Eleven's face.
