Page 14 - Unlikely Stories 4

The Discontinuator

“I’m serious. As soon as Einstein debunked absolute motion, no
one cared further for the real substratum. It is there, it must be there,
and it cannot be breached. Empiricism hit its limits in the search for
subatomic particles, quantum theory dispensed with that limit by
accepting a virtual level of reality into and out of which mass-energy
mysteriously appear. That, in short, is just another name for the
apeiron, and it is why the more logical among you accept that a finite
vacuum does not and cannot coexist with non-vacuum. They grant
that the real continuum may be, metaphorically speaking, stretched
thin in places like interstellar space, but it is never absent.”
Killeton dabbed his mouth with the ten centimeters of napkin
provided with his barely plural course meal.
“If, as you say, no vacuum occurs in nature, I hardly see that as
preventing one from being created with the right application of
forces against even the smallest constituent of existence. My
apparatus does not discriminate on the basis of size or duration—or,
in fact, if virtuality is more than a semantic trick—on the ontological
status of whatever is within the target hypersphere. And even if I fail,
it does not prove the impossibility of what I tried to achieve: merely
that the equipment available here and now isn’t powerful enough.”
“Then you would not admit that the real continuum and a
vacuum—any vacuum—are incompatible, physically if not logically?”
“Admit it? What is this, an inquisition?” The professor pushed
back his chair and stood up.
“Not at all, sir,” said Gregorian soothingly. “I’m sorry if I offended
you. But now I can answer my first question: yes, there is a hazard, a
danger of inconceivable finality. If your experiment fails because of
its design or physical limitations, that would merely confirm my
opinion that it had to fail. If it fails owing to its inherent
impossibility, I am equally unconcerned; and the difference between
those two cases is irrelevant to me. But there are two other
possibilities: first, that reality is metaphysically dualistic. That is,
nothing can, in fact, coexist with something, via a boundary that
makes no sense—a one-sided edge. That would have profound
implications.”
“And I would be vindicated!”

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