An even shorter continuance.
So that we can move on.

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Now, as we all know, there are several ways too look at time. From a quantum mechanical perspective 'time' could be seen as a purely thermodynamical process, or maybe as a result of the laws of entropy? Down there 'time' also could be described as reversible, as some processes made just as much sense if turned around time-wise? But then we come to HUP? That uncertainty HUP spoke about? Wasn’t that a 'motion' of sorts too? Well, maybe not. It was something making it impossible to define all properties simultaneously, inside our arrow of time, perfectly described by our ideas of vacuum fluctuations, or virtual particles. They 'existed' but, immeasurably so.

But if they then could change, didn’t that imply a motion of sorts? Here we had a problem, from a purely scientific point of view time was just a variable, as shown by general relativity, it could and would change with motion and mass, and as expected, with ‘energy’. From relativity’s point of view you might say that time was just as insubstantial as your ‘frame of reference’. It surely existed, but just as with time it was impossible to pinpoint a ‘frame of reference’ to an exact position inside SpaceTime, but yet, perfectly possible to calculate on it. As all Lorentz transformations could show us.

You might think of Earth as our common ‘frame of reference’ and in several ways it is. But take two synchronized atomic clocks, placed on a table. Then move one to the floor and watch its duration’s start to differ from the clock left on the table. That’s your ‘frames of reference’ differing, each clock presenting you with one unique one, each clock based on that same Earth you stand on, but now with different ‘times’.

So even though your own ‘clock’ always was there, giving you the exact same duration’s, no matter what you did, or how fast you went. And no matter that every experiment you made, only could point in one timely direction, 'time' still was something of a mystery.

What was this arrow of time?

And then there was one more thing, change? Wasn’t that an ultimate sign of time?
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Jeff was still there, probing the shell. How the hell he did it he didn’t know, neither did he care. It was all intuitive, something intrinsic to him here, by birth maybe? At least it felt so to him as he looked inside his mind, somehow, he just knew what to do. All atoms are, from a quantum mechanical point of view, more a 'matter' of probability than really ‘there’. Every change in them an emergence of sorts, although materializing as real inside our macroscopic stream of time. And there was always that possibility of interacting, introducing that hard core that would make it impossible to exist inside our stream. But, doing so would also destroy whatever planet this was, Jeff knew that he was threading dangerous ground as he carefully probed it.

To understand what, and how, Jeff manipulated this weird state of a ‘atomic crust’, you might think of it as him doing it on that same plane as wherefrom that ‘crust’ came to be. Yep, that’s right, quantum mechanics. Those places where the arrow of time, as we know it, ‘broke down’, and where probability took over, becoming the sole definition of 'change'. With only probabilities governing an action you might say that energy no longer needed to be a consideration. Down there our definitions lost their meaning, only probability existing, and consciousness of course, that what observed.

But he had to find a way of interfering with it, opening a way, which still would keep it intact. He started to wonder what would happen if one introduced another ‘atom’, another chilled BEC, could that be a possibility? As he strove to see it happen he slowly could see the two BECs overlap, interfering like two sets of waves. Like thin, parallel layers of matter separated by thin layers of empty space. The pattern he fought to form in his mind would come to be from the two waves adding up at certain points. At some points their wave-crests coinciding reinforcing each other. But at other, as those crests met a trough canceling themselves, leaving a empty space. Most of all reminding him of wave patterns you would see if you were to throw a couple of stones into a pond. That 'space' created was the portal he searched.

As he strove to keep the image still in his head he searched for the suits. Finding them, now more reminding him of globes of light than anything else, he moved them, again without knowing just how he did it, inside the opening. And as he followed them inside, almost forgetting to take his own form with him as he didn’t really find it to be himself any more. And as he started to wake up, finding that this was what scared him most of all.

Still, they were finally inside.
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