One hundred years earlier
Lola's plan was working. It was a game of attrition, like a video game battle playing out in real time. There was panic among the local sea creatures, many of which unfortunately became collateral damage. Sala would suddenly get a foothold, a few dozen replicates at a time. But it was such small percentage and his numbers would be immediately quashed, only to erupt as another hotspot of pitched battle elsewhere. It wasn't much a of a contest, as Sala was so much less capable than his opponents in controlling and maneuvering his replicates.
But the battle raged on. He appeared lucky. But it wasn't luck at all. The desperate pursuit of survival had put him on a crash course in gaining coordination, speed and agility. It was becoming more difficult by the hour, for the invading forces to trap and destroy his replicates. Statistics still showed the outcome as a sure win, Sala being the loser. But the violent, futuristic video game incarnate, was simply a distraction. With their improving mobility, Sala managed to have some of his replicates flee and escape.
A small swarm of several dozen of Sala's came upon a few developing protohumans that were remote from the others. He lay in wait for the opportunity to pounce. But this time, instead of trying to co-opt these replicates, he allowed the few new replicates to come alive under the control of their true owners. Once completed and alive, Sala surrounded the lone protohumans with a physical encasement of his replicates almost touching the cuboids on all sides. Without distance and time to accelerate, the captive cuboid's moves were futile. Sala had now trapped several of these stray replicates away from the action. He knew time was of the essence, as the owners and their friends would now come looking immediately. But Sala had time to achieve his goal.
Sala's long journey, to preserve his capability, in order to carry out his plan, was finally in its moment of truth, it's moment of glory. His replicates, holding fast to their their hostages, were now capable. So, Sala invoked the program and showered his captives with transmissions. The virus was not detectable nor preventable and passed through the firewalls, just as Sala knew that it would. It rendered the hostages helpless and now under Sala's full control.
The next step was the key to it all. Using techniques having their very foundations back in Stuart's brilliant mind, Sala literally drew in the life force of his hostages, their very essence, their souls. Once merged, the domino effect began and Sala, at sub vacuum speeds, took over the lives of the four persons, whose replicates he had seized. This represented a diaspora of millions, spanning the universe.
Wherever these four individuals had large clusters of replicates, Sala took the opportunity to swarm them around some other stray replicates, thereby commandeering the replicates and then absorbing all of their siblings across the universe within seconds.
One would think that this would be the pattern representing the end of everything, the fulfillment of the Destroyer, finally serving its fateful purpose. But no. All of the millions, now part of Sala, simply disappeared. Vanished without a trace. The forensics continued ceaselessly, to understand what had happened and why the attack had suddenly abated. The masses were calmed and put at ease. But Lola and her contemporaries knew that it was unsettled business. No theories about how Sala's plan failed, or how he and his programs malfunctioned, gave any comfort to Lola and the small group that persisted in examining the matter, essentially the same group that had not let go of the matter even before the outbreak. But they were still mystified.
Sala had essentially reached a mental overload. The rush of new consciousness, as he folded together with his new victims, was more challenging and unpredictable than he had anticipated. It wasn't painful or frightening, or even unpleasant. But, it outpaced him, as if he was strapped into a roller coaster, powerless to guide any outcome, incapable of tracking every dynamic. So, he did the prudent thing, turning off all sub vacuum beacons, slipping away, gradually, not raising any notice. By the time people did take notice, it was too late. He was gone.
Once in the clear, Sala's new, greatly expanded mental capacities kicked in. The insights started to flow in, his imagination and powers of deductive reasoning seemed limitless, yet they still grew continuously.
These protohuman bodies are limited, I can do better. Otherwise it will take too long, Sala referred to the eradication of humanity. How completely ironic. They call my program the Destroyer, even as their very existence threatens the entire multiverse. No. I will not allow it. I will have a new form that can assist in what I need to do.
Sala was the very first to hole diver at the universe's edge, although no one knew it. He first replicated large numbers near potential through hole sites. It was several decades before other expeditions would do the same. Then he destroyed all replicates in other locations that were of no consequence. They would only provide potential insights if seen or captured. Insights that needed to remain secret for now.
Sala's hole dives were designed to do precisely what Lola and and her current expeditions were trying to do. Find a through hole, exit the universe, replicate if possible, and re-enter through a white hole. but while the immediate goals were the same, the motives were quite different.
Humanity sought to tap the energy, to sustain the rapid expansion of humanity and its looming impact on universal dynamics. Sala had his eye on a different prize - cut off the supply being sucked in from adjacent universes. Such an achievement would theoretically grind humanity and the entire universe to a halt. But in reality, this would take a long time. The more immediate and destructive effect would be the destabilization of galaxies and clusters, whose motion was now geared toward the prevailing winds of electromagnetic energy flowing in toward a central position.
Without this primordial resupply, chaos would ensue, slowly at first and then rapidly, leading to an ever accelerating series of galactic catastrophes. Such destruction was unfortunate, but it was in Sala's view the necessary sacrifice needed to counter balance humanity and its impact on the existence of everything. Humanity's new form and new abilities were akin to what humans used to call a "super bug," a virus that could not be stopped. Sala had a plan to stop his creators, the new super bugs. The humans.
*****
The present
The human chain, led by Lola, began it's penetration across the event horizon. Abby was third in line and plunged into the unknown. Her data collection was standardized and would transmit automatically, so she had the ability to observe and comment. In parallel with these scientific responsibilities, she had plenty of bandwidth for any variety of personal endeavors like socializing with friends. It would be a stretch to try and check in at the Ritz for a quickie with Laszlo, but the thought had crossed her mind as she raced ahead trailing only Lola and one other.
Between Laszlo and Abby, he was normally the instigator anything resembling trouble. Laszlo was forged as a gregarious teenager at heart, never having lived biologically into adulthood. As Abby accelerated into the abyss, Laszlo waited for his first taste of the adventure, fidgety and full of anticipation. But he couldn't just wait and see. He had to pound away at Abby with questions. Normally this would have been distracting, but actually Laszlo's questions were all directly related to the data stream she fed back as her dive progressed.
"I think Lola's line is too steep. If the neutron core is bigger than projected, you guys will nail it and bye bye Abby numero uno," protested Laszlo.
"Of course we will nail it dumb ass. Weren't you paying attention? We are supposed to burn a couple of rounds on the core before we try to circumvent. That's part of the data we need to collect, to get a precise reading on size and distance of the core."
"I knew that. But how many data points do we need?"
"Ask Bahdi. Don't ask me. Let's just follow the protocol. There are reasons."
"I'm just messin' around. I know."
"Once we try to circumvent, if the vector is always directly toward the core, even way out on the flank, then we know there is no through hole. There could be space drawn in from the adjacent galaxy, on the backside, but we will have no chance to navigate around to verify it."
"I know," shot back Laszlo, with a hint of frustration. "The vector measurements will tell the story, even if we never reach the through hole. But I sure as hell hope we do." He meant that if acceleration varied at different positions, even if the radial distance to the core was the same, it implied that some of the energy, the EMs, were being pulled on by the other universe, presumably through some sort of hole at the boundary. The infamous, theoretical through hole.
After one full round of cubes had been "burned" in the name of good science, the entry point to the event horizon was shifted dramatically toward to the equator of the black hole, near the universal boundary. They would enter on the side where the rotation of the core would have gases and other materials acting as a tail wind, going with the flow.
This time the cubes would still succumb but not before their angles of attack might allow a glimpse of the backside and some evidence of the through hole. The fear was that based on certain theories, the universal boundary acted as a exchange membrane, allowing EMs to pass but nothing larger. This would preclude any physical travel beyond the boundary.
To Lola's disappointment, on the fourth wave, as the first eyes gazed upon the true backside of the core, there appeared to be only perfect uniformity and no signs of something unique, such as a disturbance or more specifically a giant hole. Nevertheless, it was their plan to hammer up against the boundary, eventually probe its surface at the closest point to the core, directly behind it.
"Nice one," Laszlo commented to Abby, as she ricocheted off the boundary and was devoured by the core.
"Wait 'til you try it. I hope you wore a cup," countered Abby. A few rounds later, there was skepticism and they felt as though they were just going through the motions at this point. They were now closing in on the mid point. So far, there had not even been a detectable change in the vector, which all but confirmed that there were no EMs being drained off.
"Snap out of it! All of you," hailed Lola, hearing some of the grumbling and noting a loss of focus through the palpable air of disappointment. "We still have a job to finish here and we haven't been close enough to the center yet. Let's see what happens. Pay attention." Lola had made a change to the experiment and skipped a few passes in favor of a direct approach close to the center. As usual, she was the first to go. It was no different than the last pass as she rapidly approached the boundary. But this time she did not bounce. She simply stopped and was frozen there, right at the point that she presumed was the boundary. "Ha ha," she cackled for others to hear. "You see? Doubters. Join me! I'm waiting for you."
With a large fraction of the group now gathered over a several mile area, the analysis was starting to form and disseminate. Bahdi and his team also joined in with analysis and feedback. They were experiencing some form of buoyancy. There was an equilibrium of sorts. They were moving toward the core and would be consumed, but is was much slower than before. There was a flux of EMs and more interestingly, a flux of neutrons moving toward the boundary. There was a countervailing flux of EMs being pulled into the Core. It was a competition.
The conclusion was clear to everyone. If they would go directly to the center, it it would be more likely that the tide would favor the outbound flow and they would either be carried with it into the next universe, or be eternally pinned to a universal grating, too large to pass through but held there by the tide of moving matter and energy. It was a moment of raw excitement. A chance to witness something never before seen or understood.
The most stunning conclusion was the movement of matter across the boundary. The key question being what happens to the matter on the other side. "The answer to that question belies our own fate," shared Ahmad Badi, with not only the team on this mission, but the update was shared across the human diaspora. One of those listening was known as Sala, the Destroyer.
Sala had been busy in the roughly one hundred years since his last disappearance. He had been in hardware mode through much of it. The result of that effort now stood complete and was in the process of being replicated at the edges of the universe. His prototype sped along silently. The scene was eerily quiet and dark. Space was like that, but this was different. No backdrop of stars, galaxies, or nebulae. He was in the next universe.
There was no apparent difference between his new body and the protohuman body. That is, unless the two were observed side by side. Sala's design was nearly two meters on an edge. It required four point eight million protohuman bodies to match the volume of this behemoth. But in fact the reality was even more bizarre. Sala's massive form was actually an assemblage of small entities, he called probes. They were about a tenth of a millimeter on a side, eight trillion of them made up just one body.
The design parameters were not random nor was it some desire to be bigger and better. Sala's mind, which he had expanded manifold at the expense of dozens of other lost souls, was way ahead of Lola and her best thinkers. He knew many truths that humans had yet to discover. Unbeknownst to Lola as she finally realized one thing that Sala had known for many years, and was pinned against the barrier, unable to pass through and unable to escape the pressure of the flow of energy and material, Sala sat just a few thousand miles away, directly across the boundary, watching with amusement.
The size of the probes that made up Sala's monstrous body, was intentional and allowed them to slip through the cosmic filter. Once on the other side, the scene was very unfamiliar. Minuscule differences in nature's constants precluded any large celestial formations. The primary difference was in the formation of EM space. Unlike our solar system and it's fluidic nature of the EMs, this adjacent universe was structured. EMs were arranged according to a hexagonal closest pack, or HCP structure. Sala had coined it crystalline space and the lattice constant was over two orders of magnitude smaller than the Planck spacing of our universe.
There was an abundance of baryonic matter in the form of individual septaquarks. These quarks never joined together to emerge as larger, more complex forms, and they constructed no electrons. Electrons were not needed because these individual baryons could never create any significant waves. Since the EMs were bound by their crystalline structure, they did not flow to the septaquarks. Instead the septaquarks moved in order to eat, creating permanent tubular voids, like termites through wood.
The fact that this universe had an immensely more dense energy supply, coupled with the fact that septaquarks feeding caused a lot of EMs to be dislodged but not consumed, left a supply of free EMs that were more densely spaced that our Planck scale EMs. So the natural tendency, at most places where a hole existed, was for EMs to want to flow into our galaxy. Occasionally, the septaquarks created regions near the boundary where the EMs were so depleted, that our universe had a higher pressure and the EMs wanted to flow out. Such was the case for Lola and her team members as they laid eternally pinned against the boundary wall.
If they had been able to breach this barrier, their first lesson would have been something that Sala had already learned the hard way, many years earlier. Moving into this new universe was eerily analogous to diving into a hole in the ice and finding that it was hard to move, impossible to breath and without possibility of escape. For much like water, whose oxygen is abundant but inaccessible to humans, the EMs locked away in their lattice formation were not accessible for the electrons to deliver into the waiting arms of their quarks.
Sala, over decades, managed to overcome this obstacle. And with this capability, he watched each of the away party members lodge themself helplessly against the drain. Meanwhile, he was very busy. He had mastered a new level of engineering prowess. Using sub vacuum energy and information flows, he was now able to press individual septaquarks into his service. He was able to use them to build his new bodies. Bodies that were suited to this new environment. Bodies that were to serve a special purpose - the elimination of humanity.