Edge

Prologue

September 25, 2011

Soda Lake Road, California, USA

Just over an hour had passed since Hans Ziemssen had turned off onto Soda Lake Road from Route 166, and he was beginning to feel vaguely unsettled. His rearview mirror reflected an endless expanse of sand, while ahead and towards the right the remains of a dried-up lake shone white with salty residue. It was a typical desert landscape in the Western U.S., but to the German Hans, it was unfamiliar and strange. The sun was beginning to sink over the western horizon, and the bleak, featureless landscape glowed reddish brown. There wasn’t another car in sight.

Is this really the planet Earth?

The strange feeling of unease stemmed from the sensation that he was driving on some heavenly body other than his home planet. Of course, the only photographs Hans had actually ever seen of the surfaces of other astral bodies were of the Moon and Mars. Both were drier than even this desert and much more barren, devoid of even the slightest sign of life. Here, there were still glimmers of coyotes lurking under trees and insects tunneling through the earth. But the further Hans drove, the more those traces of life receded, contributing to his mounting anxiety.

In the seat next to Hans, his wife Claudia sat motionless, her lips pressed firmly together. When the desiccated lake hove into view on the right, she sat up, leaning her face towards the window. “Is that Soda Lake?”

Hans shook his head quickly. “No. It’s further ahead.”

Claudia sighed dramatically and fell silent once more.

Uh-oh. Someone’s in afoul mood.

They had arrived at LAX that afternoon, and Hans had hustled his wife into the rental car and driven off into the desert without so much as a rest. Perhaps they should have checked into a hotel in Los Angeles for the night instead. But since they only had ten days, Hans was anxious to get out into the desert and hadn’t wanted to waste a single night in the city. His wife, however, probably felt differently.

Hans gave a low whistle and pointed at the lake, trying to direct Claudia’s attention to the landscape. “Still, it’s a bizarre-looking lake, isn’t it?”

The various lakes here, large and small, all dried up completely in the spring and summer, baring their bellies to the sun. The rock salt in the water left the empty basins white. Hans gazed intently at this first dry lakebed. The much larger Soda Lake awaited them further up the road.

The land around the lake was a dull yellowish brown, covered with grass of more or less the same hue. The mountains had gently rounded peaks and contours. Geographic strata lined their faces in units of tens of thousands of years like the age rings of a tree.

It occurred to Hans that although the mountains varied slightly in shape, they were all the same height. These peaks had once been the baseline level of the land until the areas between them had eroded away leaving only these promontories behind. He wished he knew more about the local geology.

Still, as he gazed at the white basin set in such desolate surroundings, he couldn’t help but feel that it had been deliberately fashioned by some great creator. From this distance, the salt deposits looked like snow, and the strange juxtaposition against the desert scenery had a mysterious effect.

As Hans gripped the steering wheel of the rental car, for a brief instant, he felt almost like a god, contemplating the earth as the work of a divine artist.

“Hans. We haven’t passed a single car.”

Claudia’s remark jolted Hans back to reality. Far from being enchanted by the North American desert landscape, so exotic compared to their hometown of Frankfurt, the disgruntled Claudia was focused instead on the narrow road that stretched out before them and the lack of oncoming traffic.

“There will be,” Hans assured her, even though he wasn’t so sure. It was true that they hadn’t seen a single car coming this way, nor were there any headlights visible in the rearview mirror.

It was past six o’clock in the evening, and the sun hovered just above the skyline. In half an hour’s time it would be sucked below the horizon, and dusk would fall. From a woman’s point of view, the fact that they had yet to secure lodging for the night was probably extremely aggravating.

In fact, Claudia was the one who had originally proposed that they roll with the punches on their North American road trip, checking into whatever motels they came across without advance reservations. Apparently she had taken a similar trip before they were married and had never come across any difficulty finding lodging each night. She’d come to the conclusion that motel rooms were always easy to come by. But as luck would have it, the neon signs on every motel they passed today read “No Vacancies.”

When they had driven through Maricopa a little ways back, the motel there had been full, so Hans and Claudia had been faced with two choices. One was to head north on Highway 33 towards Taft to look for lodging. The other was to press on towards Soda Lake to find something there.

Claudia had argued that Taft was a larger city, plus it was closer, so their odds of getting a room were better. But Hans had pushed for Soda Lake. It was a landmark he wanted badly to visit on this trip. If he conceded to Claudia’s urging to head for Taft, they would probably wind up driving towards the San Francisco area from there, skipping Soda Lake. For that reason, Hans was determined to try to make Soda Lake tonight, despite their exhaustion.

“How do we know they even have a decent motel there?” Claudia had demanded.

“When we get a chance, I’ll flag down an oncoming car and ask them,” Hans promised. That was roughly twenty minutes ago. It was hard to get a sense of the size of the town just by looking at the map. What if they made it to Soda Lake and there was nowhere to stay? Hans convinced Claudia that their unorthodox method of information gathering would see them through.

But now they had been driving along Soda Lake Road for approximately thirty minutes without seeing a single car in either direction. To make matters worse, sections of the road were unpaved. They couldn’t drive any faster, and it wouldn’t make sense to turn around, either. At this point, they had no choice but to trust their luck and look for a room in Soda Lake. Perhaps everything would work out fine. On the other hand, it was clear that Claudia’s disposition would continue to worsen if they were still driving aimlessly after dark.

The prospect of spending the night outdoors made Hans’ chest tighten. He wanted his wife to have a hot shower, a beer, and a good meal. The year after they had married, on a trip to Italy, a blunder on Hans’ part had caused them to miss dinner one night. The mistake had soured Claudia’s mood, spoiling the entire trip.

As a man who had married a woman far better looking than he, Hans had to be constantly attentive to his wife’s volatile emotions. Though he made a better-than-average living and provided for her every need, Claudia had a tendency to resent even the tiniest transgression, punishing him by falling into a stony silence. In the four years he had been married to Claudia, Hans had learned the hard way that it generally took an effort tens of times more grave than the original error to atone for each slip-up.

For that reason, Hans was determined that his wife have a hot shower, a cold beer, and a comfortable bed that night. With those three requirements met, Claudia’s irritation was likely to subside. Sleeping outdoors was out of the question. For one thing, it was too dangerous. In the guidebook they had read back in Germany, it was the number one thing travelers were warned to avoid.

“Book motels well in advance for road trips,” the book had also advised, but Hans and Claudia hadn’t listened.

As the minutes ticked by, dusk settled slowly over the land. As the darkness deepened, Hans’ sense of urgency intensified as well.

It was past 6:30 in the evening now, and the sun had almost disappeared behind the western horizon. Once they made it to Route 58, they were sure to find a motel there. But they had to pass Soda Lake first, and the elusive landmark had yet to appear. Hans had been looking forward to seeing Soda Lake, but it was now becoming apparent that he would only get to view it in darkness.

When he finally spotted a recession between the mountains gleaming red in the light of the setting sun, he knew it had to be Soda Lake. At that exact moment, he also spotted a lone car stopped in the opposite lane up ahead. It was the first car they’d encountered since turning onto Soda Lake Road. The interior light of the red four-door Pontiac sedan glowed dimly, but its headlights were off.

Given that they were already at Soda Lake, there wasn’t much point plugging the other driver for information. In the time it took them to pull over and ask questions, they could just press onwards to look for a motel themselves.

But before Hans realized what he was doing, he found himself pulling over. It was a relief to finally see another vehicle, but there was also something about the situation that gave him pause.

There’s something strange about this.

Apparently, the impulse to investigate the unusual was stronger in men than in women. As the car pulled to a stop, Claudia let out a soft cry. “What are you doing, Hans?”

“They’re stopped in the road,” Hans explained as he pulled the parking break.

“I can see that,” Claudia retorted.

“I just want to have a quick word,” Hans told her. From the looks of it, the red Pontiac had pulled over to attend to some matter or another.

“About what?”

“Whether there’s a motel up ahead. And if they have any vacancies.”

“In the time it takes you to ask them that we could be there already!” Claudia protested, but Hans couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“I’m just going to take a quick peek. You can wait here.”

Hans got out of the car, leaving Claudia behind in the shotgun seat. He looked right and left, but sure enough, there was no sign of any approaching traffic as he crossed the road and walked north towards the motionless Pontiac, about ten meters away.

With its interior light on, Hans could see into the car even at a distance. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the front or rear seats of the vehicle. Now Hans realized what it was about the car that had seemed odd. There was nobody inside.

The driver probably got out to relieve himself. He’s probably just behind the car, Hans speculated. But even when he circled the vehicle, there was no sign of the driver.

The car was parked on the shoulder of the sloped road, just beyond where the pavement ended. All four of its tires were on the sand. One of the doors on the driver side was ajar — that explained the interior light. Nothing interrupted the red skyline that defined the earth’s edge. No cacti, even — the only plant life in this arid landscape was grass.

Hans walked a few more steps and then called out loudly towards the horizon. “Excuse me!” But there was no response, other than what sounded like the faraway baying of a coyote.

When the baying stopped and silence returned to the desert, Hans suddenly became aware of the sound of guitar music behind him. Guitar music and a woman singing … The strains of an old Country Western song were leaking out of the car’s open door. The car radio was on. In a husky voice, the vocalist sang plaintively about betraying her boyfriend, who was away at war, and marrying another man. I hate to say it, but I have to tell you this tonight. It’s too late now. I’ll be wed to another.

Hans turned towards the woman’s voice. He had the impression that the radio had just been switched on and the music had just begun. But that was impossible.

There’s nobody in the car. I must have been so preoccupied looking for the driver that I didn’t notice the music.

The car radio must have been on the entire time, Hans told himself. When he peered through the open door into the driver’s seat, he noticed that the keys were in the ignition and the car was vibrating slightly. There was nobody inside and yet the radio and the engine had been left running, it seemed.

Hans continued to take stock of the situation. A woman’s cardigan and handbag sat on the passenger seat, and two open cans of Cola stood in the cup-holders in the console box between the front seats. There was no smell of cigarette smoke; in fact, the car smelled more like milk. The smell seemed to emanate from the child’s car seat installed in the back. A fluffy towel and a cup had been abandoned there, and the entire back seat smelled of milk as if a small child had been there just moments earlier. The cup itself was still half full of milk.

From the looks of it, Hans was quite sure there had been either three or four passengers in the car. Accounting for the driver, the woman in the front passenger seat, and the small child in the rear, there was only room for one more.

But where had they gone? All three or four of them seemed to have vanished into thin air, though the evidence suggested that they had been there just moments earlier.

Hans stepped back from the car and once again scanned the horizon, where the last sliver of sun was just disappearing, but there was no sign of the missing people. It seemed as if the red glow of the horizon was stronger than it had been a moment earlier, as if time were moving backwards.

Before setting out on this road trip, Hans had read about a number of urban legends that were currently generating buzz in the U.S. One of them popped into his mind now.

They were short vignettes, passed along by word of mouth among the younger generation who held them to be true. There were lots of variations, but they all conformed to more or less the same basic structure. Hans found himself recalling one such tale now:

This is a true story I heard from a friend at my school. My friend’s dad was driving on Highway 168, between Big Pine and Oasis. It was dusk. There were no houses in between the towns out there, no cars even. My friend’s dad was driving along, bored, when all of a sudden he saw three people walking along on the opposite side of the road. This is in the desert, way out in the middle of nowhere. A guy and a woman carrying a small child were just walking along the highway. The man and woman had this stupefied, blank look on their faces, and for some reason the man was carrying a crushed Coke can.

My friend’s dad slowed down. He figured these people were trying to hitch a ride, right? I mean, what else would they be doing out there? And how did they get out there to begin with?

But none of them even glanced at my friend’s dad’s car. They just kept on walking, staring straight ahead, with no sign of trying to hitch a ride. My friend’s dad found that pretty strange, but he kept going. But after a couple of miles he just couldn’t forget about those people, so he pulled a U-turn and went back. He figured he should at least try to talk to them. He figured he had a duty to at least ask them what they were doing out there and if they needed help. He wasn’t in a hurry or anything, so it wasn’t a big deal if he had to go out of his way a little bit.

But when he got back, the three people were gone. It didn’t make any sense. Just a few minutes ago, they’d been wandering down the side of the highway. The land was totally flat and empty, with just the highway cutting through it, so where could they have gone? My friend’s dad drove another two miles before he gave up and turned around again, this time searching extra, extra carefully. But the three people were nowhere to be seen. They had vanished into thin air. So then, when my friend’s dad had driven onwards about five miles from where he’d seen those people, he came across a car totally flipped over onto its roof. There were black skid marks on the road, and the car was totally smashed up. Steam was rising up from the radiator and black oil was pooling on the road like blood. The smashed-up, upside-down window on the driver’s side was half open, and a man’s arm dangled limply out of the window. The hand was clenching a crushed Coke can, and it swayed gently back and forth, as if beckoning to my friend’s dad.

There were a number of variations, and Hans had read similar stories in a number of books. Families of ghosts wandering the highways …

The sight Hans beheld now was different. Everything about the Pontiac suggested that it had held passengers just moments earlier. But somehow, they had vanished from sight, as if swallowed up by the desert. In fact, it brought to Hans’ mind the image of a ghost ship at sea.

On the one hand you had the vast ocean, on the other, a North American desert. The setting was different, but the common thread was the theme of an empty vessel, its inhabitants absent but the traces of their existence still very much apparent.

Then again …

Perhaps there was a much simpler explanation, Hans reminded himself. Maybe the car had broken down and when the family had pulled over, another car had happened by and given them a lift. Perhaps they had grabbed only the barest of necessities and headed back towards Route 58.

That was probably what had happened. Hans had almost convinced himself when the scent of citrus reached his nostrils. The tangy, lemony scent hit him full force.

Maybe some sort of desert plant gives off this scent, he mused. But the fragrance was so fresh and juicy. He breathed deeply, his nostrils twitching and his eyes widening.

Perhaps it was just his imagination, but he thought he felt the earth vibrate ever so slightly. Not like an earthquake, really, more like something bubbling up from underfoot. Like when you stand above a subway vent and a train goes by below, sending up gusts of warm, humid air.

Hans was dressed casually in a t-shirt and shorts, leaving much of his skin exposed. The breeze ruffled his leg hair and the hem of his t-shirt as it blew up his back to the nape of his neck. He took a step backwards, and then another.

There was no need to look up; Hans knew there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. This was no ordinary wind. It was absolutely localized, gusting suddenly straight up from the ground in just one spot.

He recoiled and raced back to his car. Less than a minute had elapsed since he’d parked his car and gone to investigate the Pontiac, but it felt like much longer. He opened the door, slid into his seat, and released the parking break. “All right, let’s go,” he said to his wife.

There was no reply. Hans didn’t need to glance towards the passenger seat. Even staring straight ahead, he knew.

His wife wasn’t there.

“Claudia!” Hans cried, almost shrieking. His body turned to stone. Where was his wife? Even if she’d gotten out of the car and run as fast as she could, she couldn’t have gone far. Hans looked left and right, but Claudia was nowhere to be seen.

But more than the terror of his wife’s disappearance, Hans was paralyzed by something he sensed behind him, an unidentifiable presence that seemed to grow ever closer. He had never experienced anything like it. The hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end. Hans knew Claudia hadn’t snuck into the back seat to give him a scare. This was nothing so innocent. In the dark stillness, he could feel the air waver ever so slightly, like the warm clamminess of someone breathing slowly in the back seat. The air flowed over the console box. Not from the air vents, but from behind. Slow, rhythmic breathing …

“Clau …”

Hans tried to call his wife’s name again, but his voice stuck in his throat. He knew he could catch a glimpse of the back seat through the rearview mirror, but he lacked the courage to look. Of course, he knew there was nothing there. But what on earth was going on? Hans had no idea what to do. Should he open the door and dive out of the car? Or step on the gas and speed off?

As if trapped in a nightmare, he found himself rooted to the spot. He was finding it harder and harder to breathe. He tried to inhale and began to choke, tears welling in his eyes as he coughed and sputtered. In just a few brief moments, the world had gone mad. But he didn’t even know what it was that was strange. Outside, Soda Lake glowed ever redder in the chasm between the mountains.

As if in response to the reddening surface of the lake, Hans felt a hand reach out from behind him and tickle his earlobe, whispering sweetly in his ear. Indescribable seduction. Hans knew what the thing wanted. It wanted him to turn around. It wanted him to see once and for all what was in the back seat.

Come on. Look back here. Hurry.

Hans struggled desperately, but he knew it was inevitable. In a matter of ten seconds — no, less, probably — he would have to turn and look.

9:34 p.m., December 13, 2012

Summit of Mauna Kea, Island of Hawaii

Even in Hawaii, where summer was said to reign all year long, at 4,200 meters above sea level the temperatures were below freezing. Mark Webber, a member of the Hawaii outpost of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, had just returned from the dome that housed the Subaru Telescope and was taking a seat at the monitors in the adjacent control building. He hadn’t walked far, but the frigid air had chilled him to the bone, and he was still shivering.

All Mark had to do was descend the mountain into the town of Hilo, and he could stand on the beach in the summery sun. When he returned to the summit it would be winter again. Mark had now been living in this summer-winter dichotomy for five years. Of the two, he preferred the warm sunny beaches, but with Christmas approaching, the mountaintop scenery certainly had its charms. His plans to spend Christmas vacation with his fiancée Miki were coming along smoothly, and the very thought made him hum a cheerful melody. They would make a long overdue return to the mainland and stay in Las Vegas for a week, taking in as many shows as they could. The plan had been in the works since last year, and Mark had managed to obtain tickets to everything they wanted to see. It was finally really going to happen. He buzzed with excitement anticipating his last prenuptial Christmas.

Leaned all the way back in his computer chair, he reached for a sandwich on a nearby cart. When he sat back up again, the motion brought into view a section of the distant sky. The monitors he sat before displayed light patterns gathered by Subaru’s 8.2-meter-wide lens, the largest single one on the planet.

Mark had peered into countless telescopes since junior high school, when he’d first taken an interest in astronomy, and each time he was utterly enchanted by the glittering views of space they contained. At an altitude of 4,200 meters, with air pressure two-thirds that of sea level, the sky was usually clear and dry at Mauna Kea’s summit. The conditions here were ideal, and the Subaru was one of the world’s most sophisticated telescopes. Not surprisingly, the view in the monitors was breathtaking. It bore almost no resemblance to the sky he’d viewed through the telescope he’d gotten for Christmas as a boy.

As Mark finished his sandwich and reached for his mug of hot coffee, his hand froze in mid-air. It was an unconscious response, and for a moment he didn’t even know what it was that had made him freeze. Probably some slight disturbance in the monitors before him. The telescope was currently pointed at the Sagittarius constellation, towards the Milky Way bulge. He was investigating the electromagnetic waves surrounding the black hole thought to be at the center. Had he spotted one such wave? No, that wasn’t it. It was something more basic, something even a child could notice.

Mark entered a command to set the images back in time by one minute. The view was automatically recorded by a separate device, so he could rewind the footage without causing any problems. He stared intently at the images, trusting himself to pick up whatever it was that had given him pause.

“What?” Mark said aloud, leaning in towards the monitors. He rewound the footage by two seconds, then played it back again, in slow motion this time.

A tiny dot of light vanished quietly from the screen. As clear as day, the footage showed a magnitude-three star on the opposite side of the Milky Way’s center that was there one moment, and the next, gone. And almost exactly one second later, a nearby star also vanished. Two stars located fairly close to each other had disappeared, one after the other.

Stars gave off light due to the nuclear fusion reaction taking place at their core, and the lifespan of a star depended on its size and the amount of matter it contained. That was not to say that a star with greater mass had a longer lifespan. In fact, in a star with more mass, the greater gravity would accelerate the process of nuclear fusion, causing it to burn out sooner. Stars with less mass underwent fusion more gradually and were therefore longer-lived. Our sun was somewhere in between, with an estimated lifetime of around ten billion years. When we see a star disappear from our vantage point on Earth, it had actually met its demise long, long ago.

The first possibility that popped into Mark’s mind was that the stars had met their end by way of a supernova explosion. He couldn’t say for sure without analyzing their non-infrared electromagnetic profiles. In any case, it was extremely rare to witness a star’s death, and he could barely contain his excitement. On the other hand, deep inside, Mark harbored a flickering doubt. The stars had vanished so suddenly, without any final flare up. They didn’t appear to have been enveloped in some enormous astral phenomenon. Rather, they had simply, spontaneously and irrevocably, ceased to exist.

If he could pinpoint the location of the missing stars and their distance from Earth, he would know how long ago the event had taken place. He had probably just witnessed phenomena that had taken place thousands or tens of thousands of years ago.

Quickly, Mark reported what he had seen to the Hilo Base Facility, making mention of the fact that the electromagnetic waves required analysis. The Hilo Base Facility in turn fiber-optically transmitted the report of two successive star disappearances to NAOJ headquarters in Mitaka, Tokyo.

Fifteen minutes after Mark had reported his observations, the footage came to the attention of Dr. Jun Urushihara at headquarters. Urushihara went through very much the exact same thought process Mark had, only to wind up equally perplexed.

It isn’t normal for stars to just blink out like this.

Urushihara felt a tickling sensation deep in his nose and sneezed loudly as was his habit when he smelled something odd.

December 19, 2012

The day after the Stanford University Linear Accelerator Center obtained its new computer, the IBM Green Flash, the first thing Gary Reynolds did was to run a program designed to calculate the value of Pi. The program made use of the newest algorithms and was expected to be able to calculate Pi to several trillion decimal places.

Calculating the value of Pi — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — produced an arcane string of numbers. It was fair to say that the history of the pursuit of Pi was the history of mathematics itself. Four thousand years ago, the Babylonians calculated Pi as 3 1/8, and in the third century B.C. Archimedes had already arrived at the value 3.14163. Pi enchanted mathematicians over the ages and was proven to be an irrational number in the eighteenth century and a transcendental number in the late nineteenth century — a value whose decimal representation never ends or repeats, with no patterns arising no matter how many decimal places are calculated. Nonetheless, humankind never tired of pursuing more accurate values of Pi. The attempt to calculate it to ever-longer decimal representations was more than a mere game and correlated deeply with the mathematical achievements of each era.

For Gary Reynolds, a research assistant in the Mathematics Department, calculating Pi was a simple task. Basically, once he launched the program, his work was done. All he had to do was sit back and let the computer do its job. It wouldn’t take the program long to arrive at a value of 500 billion digits — that could be accomplished by this evening. The current world record was approximately one trillion digits, but surpassing it wasn’t Gary’s goal today. Before he could adopt this new computer as his sidekick, Gary wanted it to prove itself worthy of his trust. One thing was sure: achieving the feat would require a tremendous volume of operations. Once the computer calculated Pi to a few hundred billion digits, it would be easy enough to check the values. Any operational failures would show up as wrong values, making them easy to spot. If the numbers matched up, there was no issue. If they deviated past a certain decimal point, the system was set up to trigger an alarm indicating some sort of software or hardware glitch.

Gary had initiated the program that morning and checked on it again at lunchtime. Everything was functioning smoothly. But two hours later, when he checked in with the IBM Green Flash once more, Gary swore softly to himself. The computer had halted its calculations.

The reason was immediately obvious. The computer had started coming up with digits never before produced in any calculation of Pi.

Just great.

Gary’s greatest concern was that there might be a flaw in the program. Christmas vacation was right around the corner. If this wound up being a time-consuming problem, it might ruin everything. Gary had plans to travel to Geneva during winter break. He was supposed to meet with the director of an international think tank who was almost guaranteed to offer Gary a job.

Gary was known for being uncharacteristically shrewd for a pure mathematician. He had not the slightest interest in staying on at Stanford as a researcher. He made no bones about his ambitions: he intended to accomplish as much as he could while still enrolled as a student and then market his skills to a major corporation. As a teenaged math prodigy, Gary had gotten all the mileage he could out of his talents, and his main interest now was acquiring the income and social status to live a life of ease.

He shot a glance at the spot where the error had occurred. Somewhere beyond the five hundred billionth decimal place, the computer had begun to churn out a long string of zeros. But Pi was a proven irrational and transcendental number. The appearance of a string of zeros meant that a pattern had been reached — a prospect that simply wasn’t possible.

Gary clucked his tongue as he considered where the problem might lie. He sincerely hoped it was a hardware issue. If it was, it was beyond the scope of his responsibilities and he would be off the hook.

After executing a standard check and confirming that the hardware was running properly, Gary gamely threw up his hands and consulted his fellow programmers. If they needed to track down a calculation mistake, the odds of finding it were better with more people working on it. Another mathematician might have been too proud to seek help, but Gary’s top priority was not missing his meeting during Christmas break.

“Hey. What do you guys make of this?” Breezy and outgoing by nature, Gary approached his three nearest colleagues and casually solicited their unpaid input.

The three young programmers scrutinized the program from various angles but were unable to pinpoint the error. Then one of them suggested running an older program on the IBM Green Flash that could calculate Pi to six hundred billion decimal points, while simultaneously running the new program on a different computer. The researchers set the programs in motion and sat back to wait; the results would be evident the next day.

The following morning, just after 10 a.m., the four researchers found themselves staring at not one but two computers that had stopped computing after 500 billion digits. Their problem had doubled. The results were exactly the same as last time, with a seemingly endless string of zeros emerging somewhere after 500 billion digits. At first, the four researchers were struck dumb by their discovery. Not even the lamest of explanations came to mind, and all they could do in response was sigh.

The computers were functioning normally. There was no error in the programs. And yet two trials had simultaneously yielded the same result. And that result conflicted with the mathematical theorem that Pi was both irrational and transcendental. This couldn’t be happening. There was simply no logical explanation.

When the four programmers ran the calculations again on yet another computer and came up with the same findings once more the next day, they decided to inform Dr. Jack Thorne, a professor of physics at the university and a global authority on quantum gravity theory.

Jack Thorne sank into the sofa in his office and closed his eyes. A Christmas carol filled his ears. The music wasn’t real. The atmosphere of the holiday season always prompted Jack’s ears to conjure up Christmas music. He rather enjoyed it, actually. In his reverie, he imagined he was in Stockholm at Yuletide.

It was fair to say that Jack was inclined to be absentminded. He had a habit of considering a matter while his thoughts wandered here and there; when the two topics converged, he sank into a still deeper state of contemplation.

His eyes opened to the sight of the door that separated his office from the hallway — the one the four young researchers had exited through just moments ago after bringing him their report. Briefly, Jack imagined the door as a wormhole connecting his office to another universe. He had dedicated his life to researching wormholes and had been awarded a Nobel Prize for his achievements.

He understood what Gary and the others were telling him. If today had been the first of April, he would have laughed them off and complimented them on the joke.

But what to make of this?

Jack’s gaze left the door and wandered off to the right, following the wall and settling on a familiar artwork. It was a Japanese ink painting he’d purchased at an old gallery in Stockholm. The landscape was rendered in shades of black, contrasting strangely with the old cityscape of Stockholm, but it was that juxtaposition that had convinced Jack to purchase it.

The painting was primarily composed of three elements: mountains, a river, and a bridge. It was a fairly mundane composition, really, with the mountain range in the background, the meandering stream in the foreground, and the bridge in between. The bridge occupied the middle of the painting, a chain of three semicircles connecting to the opposite shore. One never saw bridges like this in the modern-day U.S. It was probably built of pieces of wood skillfully stacked to form its arches, yielding a structure sufficiently solid to walk across.

Yes. The value of Pi.

The report on Jack’s desk once again claimed his attention.

A pattern emerged in the value of Pi? Endlessly repeating zeros, no less?

Jack scrutinized the facts once more. Four extremely talented mathematicians had run calculations on different computers and come up with the same results. Somewhere past the five hundred billionth digit, the programs began to spin out endless zeros. The four programmers were at a loss as to how to interpret the findings and had brought the matter to a specialist in quantum gravity theory.

Perhaps this was where the tides were taking them.

The Riemann hypothesis governed the regularity of the behavior of prime numbers. Even though it was a component of number theory and pure mathematics, it was often said to have a deep connection to quantum mechanics as well. Here at the university, Jack Thorne had discovered a number of other instances in which quantum mechanics methodology had illuminated a path to solving difficult problems in number theory. From that standpoint, Jack understood why Gary and the others had felt inclined to bring their bizarre report to a professor of quantum gravity theory.

They must have concluded that it surpassed the bounds of mathematics. As such, they probably have no inkling of the phenomena this implies.

Jack popped a green-tea teabag into his cup and added water from his pot. He took several sips, but the tea didn’t scald him. In fact, he felt frozen to the core. He imagined he could feel icy tendrils creeping up from the base of his spine.

Other than the one on his wall, Jack had seen a number of ink paintings in his time. He was drawn to their delicate, monochromatic simplicity and the shadowiness they harbored, so unlike oil paintings. But whenever he saw one, the same question always plagued him.

In all of the ink paintings I’ve ever seen, there’s never a single person depicted, even off in the background. Why don’t people ever appear in ink paintings?

When Jack realized that his cup was empty, he refilled it with hot water from the pot. Even though the heat was controlled by a thermostat, he couldn’t shake the sensation that the room was getting colder by the minute.

In the microscopic realm of elemental particles, objects ceased to be objects. When you became deeply immersed in that world, you saw that the visible one constituted only the merest slice of the ever-repeating phenomena of life and death, and concepts of permanent existence quickly became a long-lost dream. The real number line seemed one-dimensional, but between the integers three and four, for example, there existed infinite irrational numbers, transcendental numbers and so forth, writhing and wriggling like microscopic organisms. As a physicist, Jack didn’t see the number line as one-dimensional. Nor did he perceive it as two-dimensional or three-dimensional. Beyond the strings of randomly repeating numbers, he sensed a bottomless abyss that almost seemed to imply a pathway to another dimension.

A hypothesis had pushed its way into Jack’s mind, but it was an idea he preferred not to speak aloud.

If we look at the number line in terms of the quantum world, fluctuations in the value of Pi might be possible.

What could the odds have been of a world like ours emerging through the Big Bang and the birth of the universe? Jack’s friend Lee Smolin estimated them to be one in 10ˆ299, while the arithmetic-loving Roger Penrose had come up with the figure of one in 10ˆ(10ˆ123). Numerically the values were vastly different, but the implications were the same. The odds for the string of coincidences necessary to create our universe were basically nil.

The universe was comprised of just two types of constructs: astronomical entities and life forms. Mountains and rivers were part of astronomical entities, while tools were the creation of humans and other life forms. Constructs of life and astronomical entities were supported by infinite physical constants. These could be compared to adjustable dials whose fine-tuned calibrations served to maintain the world as we know it. Moreover, the majority of physical constants were related to Pi through basic equations.

Jack felt as if an icy lump in his stomach was melting, sending rivulets of cold throughout his body. He had begun shivering intermittently, and soon the trembling became constant and his teeth chattered violently.

It was only a hypothesis. But just contemplating the implications, Jack was so deeply disturbed that he couldn’t stop shaking.

There had been a change in the value of Pi. And it involved a string of the heretical number that had struck terror in men’s hearts since ancient times: zero.

This is just a new bridge humankind must now cross, Jack told himself. In his mind, the semi-circular bridge in the ink painting quietly crumbled.