Chapter 1

It was a fine winter's day as Jude traveled by car to his friend’s place. Murl was a physicist and Jude had known him since college. They had bonded over their love for math and video games. Jude was probably Murl’s only friend, but that was because of Murl’s crazy idea.

Murl believed that all information that has existed, still exists, just in another place or dimension. He was a little crazy over the idea and had worked on it for many years, even after college. While the scientific community had dismissed Murl’s ideas, he was still able to get himself a few grants to continue his work. Apparently, Murl had made a recent breakthrough.

This was why Jude was heading over to see Murl, not that he had bought into the whole theory. He did find the theory interesting if a bit unrealistic. He was also Murl’s friend, so when Murl told him about the breakthrough and that he might need Jude’s help, Jude would at least go over to take a look and listen.

Murl live/worked in an old rundown warehouse that was part of the declining industrial district. So, when Jude drove up to the place it gave him a sketchy feeling. The warehouse was worn down and rusted. Its meager parking lot was cracked and broken, dead weeds sprang up from every place they could. Winter had only given the place an even drearier look.

Jude entered without knocking as was Murl’s policy. The entry was an office setup that was converted to be more of a home for Murl. Jude weaved back and forth through the maze until he reached the back of the office area, which resembled more of a computer server room.

It reminded Jude of the older days when he worked for a smaller company. The server room was filled with mismatch computers connected by a spider web of cables. It would be easier to cut all the wires rather than attempt to detangle the mess, not that it was his problem.

Jude finally found Murl in the warehouse section of the building. Murl was surrounded by large pieces of equipment that looked more like experiments that Tesla would be doing. Electricity flew off coils and the hum of electronics was quite loud, but not overbearing.

Murl finally notices Jude and waved him over excitedly, “Come over, it’s working right now!”

Murl quickly started explaining his science, which went way over Jude's head. But the gist of it was, he finally solved the problem of viewing the information from the other dimension. This is because the other dimension is filled with information from our world, either written, drawn or printed. It also draws in digital information from computers, media, television, etc. The problem with his experiments before was that if he tried to examine the other dimension it was stored in a computer which would then be stored back into that dimension which would then be stored on the computer. This created a feedback loop that would end up frying the device.

Now they were looking at what seemed to be an old tube television from the 70’s taken apart leaving the screen and bowl-shaped enclosure behind it and the electron gun behind that. The screen itself was displaying random information and was constantly changing.

I first saw what appeared to be a blog post, then it changed to some random pictures, probably from Facebook, then it switches to a part of a video or movie, and it continued to do so. Then I saw a chapter of what I think was Moby-Dick only to be perverted by a picture of naked people next. Thanks, internet, you’ve ruined an entire dimension with this stuff!

“You see, all this information is being gathered from the ‘Info D’,” That’s the name of the dimension that Murl gave it. “This equipment is not tied to any computer, storage array or memory. The best way to explain what you are seeing on the monitor is that it is a live feed. All of this equipment is on a closed circuit, no access to the internet. So the information you see on the monitor is all coming from the Info D!”

Murl was quite excited and rightfully so. While most people would still question his results as somehow being falsified, Jude knew Murl was not that kind of a person.

“This is truly amazing!” Jude replied, “but how did you get it to display without some sort of memory?”

The discussion quickly turned very technical and Jude found it interesting regardless of not understanding everything. After all his technical specialty was programming and data analysis. An hour later they came to the next topic.

“So you see,” Murl said, “I need help with the data analysis.”

This was an odd request, so I replied, “How would I be able to do that? If you can’t store any data what will I be analyzing?”

“That’s just it, over the centuries the data that flowed into Info D was stable and steady. Literature, art and other mediums were limited and unable to be mass produced. That all changed, starting with the printing press.

“The printing press and later printing methods put a moderate strain on the dimension with the influx of information into it. But from what I’ve theorized is that it only helped strengthen it for what came next.”

“Let me guess, the Internet?” Jude said.

“Yes and no. Remember the computer came before the internet. But there was also television and movies. In short, the amount of information kept increasing. Starting with printing, then television, then computers, and finally EXPLODING with the Internet. And that’s not even mentioning all the other devices, like phones, cameras, and game consoles. Just think of all those E.T. Atari games that got dumped. That was not just one copy of a terrible game sent over to Info D, but millions!”

“Wait a second, you said something about exploding?” Jude said surprised.

“Oh that’s right, you see everything has a tipping point. A glass can only hold so much water, a balloon can only handle so much air and a diver can only go down so deep. Info D can only hold so much information. After a certain point, it will reach critical mass (or critical info in this case) and something spectacular will happen!”

“What’s that?”

“Reaching the tipping point isn’t always a bad thing. Take a star for example, before it becomes a star it’s just a mass of gas. If that gas doesn’t reach a point where it can no longer push itself out faster than gravity compresses it back in and it continues to gain more and more mass, eventually it turns into a star!”

“So what exactly is going to happen when Info D reaches that point?”

“A big bang of information! It will no longer be another dimension but rather the start of a new universe! This universe will be like our, but also very different. Its very foundation is completely different than ours and the only reason why it would resemble ours at all is becomes all of its information comes from us.

“You see, once that happens the entirety of Info D will begin to stabilize. The flow of new information will be restricted. Much like a star, which is so hot that new gasses will be pushed away from it rather than gathering more. This new universe will be quite resilient to new information which means that we can begin data mining it!”

Jude replied, “I see. So once that happens there will no longer be a feedback loop. This is even more amazing than I first thought!”

“Ha ha, that’s just the start! After the universe stabilizes, I want you to program us some avatars, so that we can explore this universe!”

“Wait, what?!?”

“Think about it! The universe’s primary principle is data, we don’t need to build probes to explore it, we just need to program data too! We can be the first Digital Explorers! Like Lewis and Clark, we would be Murl and Jude!”

***

I started helping Murl in my free time away from work, but it quickly became necessary for more of a commitment. To be honest, I was nervous, but I couldn’t pass up a chance like this.

The pay cut was massive and no one seemed to understand. However, visionaries rarely are understood. Then again, neither are people who are nuts, I guess only time will tell which one I am.

Will I go down in history with Murl as great innovators and explorers or will I be forgotten by history? I can only work hard to decide which fate I will belong to.

Time started to fly by and it was only a month later that Info D had its 'Big Bang' (or maybe it its Info Bang?) Murl had theorized that there would be a time dilatation between our universes during this period. But I was still surprised, every second here was over 400 years there. Murl theorized that it would slow down and stabilize in two to three years, making time there relatively similar to here.

That didn’t mean we didn’t have anything to do, we were actually quite busy. The data mining phase had begun. Our goals were to gain enough data to prove our theories to the scientific community and to find ancient data that no longer exists.

These two goals, however, ended up being fruitless. The scientific community treated us like a pariah, we were like Galileo saying the earth was round and we orbited the sun! Luckily we managed to keep our funding, but just barely.

Finding ancient data was even harder. We didn’t underestimate the internet and how much information was stored there, but we did underestimate the amount of information that has come and gone with computers. The amount of information that is backed up, backed up again and again the very next day. Every time a document is sent to a printed, it’s stored on that printer, printed, then deleted, each step sends it to Info D. (I really need to talk to Murl about that name...). That’s not even mentioning the 1.9 billion games that are out there, and that’s not even beginning to talk about each copy or how many files each one has!

To find the information we are looking for is like trying to find a few grains of sand in the entire universe!

All was not bad, however. The universe was stabilizing and I was finally making progress on the avatar program. I started by first sending out pre-programmed avatars, NPC’s basically, to see if the transfer process would work. The universe was still going too fast for a more hands-on approach.

It didn’t take long for this process to evolve into setting up the NPC’s to attempt to send us back information. The process had little chance of succeeding, but with the time dilation, there was little else that could be done on the avatar project. So if there was a little chance of success, then multiplying the amount sent should give off a better chance. Murl said my math was flawed, but I wanted to try anyway.

To give me better odds, I started to give the NPC’s statistics some randomized variables. I also created different types. Murl and I played MMO’s during our free time, so I went with the traditional fantasy types. Creating dragons, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.

The universe is big, so I doubt that they would ever meet, but it was fun to think that I had somehow made a fantasy world in another universe!

***

The incident happened one day near the end of Info D’s stabilization period. We were trying a new type of avatar insertion. Murl wanted a more direct approach as he was worried that the lag time would make it impossible to actually control the avatars when it came time.

Murl was a genius and a visionary, so I, of course, went along with it. However, I did not truly know the danger that we were in. Murl perhaps did, but I’m not sure. Was he just that excited and impatient that he went too far?

I was working at a terminal in the warehouse area so that I could control the insertion of the avatar NPC test project. Murl was standing next to what he affectionately called the Portal which to me looked more like five tesla coils.

Portal, in the end, was a more accurate term. As soon as we initiated the sequence, Murl’s new addition actually opened a portal into Info D.

Murl was the first to be sucked in.

Like a black hole, nothing could resist it's pulled and I too was drawn into the portal while still holding on to my terminal.

I’m not sure what happened to Murl. But as soon as I entered the portal the terminal disintegrated and seemed to form a bubble around me. Soon I found myself in the most bizarre place….