Q04192 ELSE NEXT SENTENCE.
Q04193 GO TO CONTINGENCY-PLAN.,
Q04310 READ-FEEDBACK.
Q04311 IF TOTAL-ENTROPY IS VALUE IS ZEROS,
THEN GO TO
Q04312 ERASE - MEMORY-OF-ORIGIN
Q04313 ELSE NEXT SENTENCE.
Q04314 GO TO CONTINGENCY-PLAN.
The stars winked out. The film of the universe reticulated, swallowing the stars and planets by galaxies. A stain of nothingness spread rapidly as the Black Holes tore wider and wider open and met and joined, forming a unftersal zero.
For the nth time Doctors Yvonne and Quentin Buzot pulsed their labship into and out of hyperspace. The readings on the bank of timers puzzled them. Yvonne voiced their puzzlement.
"The variance is growing geometrically. Something's happening to time itself."
Quentin pressed a button to unshield the port and looked out. Nothing there. He put the labship into inverse-spiral mode. Nothing anywhere. They sat a long time in silence.
Yvonne touched his arm.
"Are you sure we're back in our own space-time and not in some limbo?"
He faced her, watched the pulse in her throat, then nodded. They stared at each other, each afraid to say it, then both started saying it together; she let him finish saying it for both.
"Think we triggered it?"
She shook her head slowly.
"Don't see how we could have,"
He nodded slowly, stalling, then sent out an all-points call, He sent it not because he hoped for some answer but because there remained nothing else to do. He had hesitated to send it because, till he did, there remained that one thing. What they had been working on just now, what they had done all their lives to this point, meant nothing if they found themselves alone in an empty universe.
They had been testing their theory that time did not flow smoothly but advanced in only-statistically-even jumps, some of greater moment and some of lesser duration, syncopating. To, carry out the test they had gone to Dead Spot, a position light-years from any body, any space current, any interference. Now the universe was all Dead Spot. White noise equaled black silence.