A while ago I wondered how this could be used in a story, and started thinking about what could be achieved if someone were somehow able to communicate with their alternate selves, and how that would manifest.
I've started a bit of a narrative, mostly to get a feel for the protagonist(s), but also to see what possibilities and hindrances present themselves. This is, at this stage, just an experiment, but I welcome your thoughts. Also, I am not a scientist, so all of the pseudo-science is guesswork. Feel free to point out any glaring flaws that need to be edited.
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It started with the dreams. Lives he'd never led. Memories that belonged to another Louis. Sometimes he was married. Sometimes widowed. Some iterations of the dream had him a proud father, others a broken man, unable to move past the death of his wife and first born. Each seemed as real as the next, and on waking there was always a period of confusion as Louis tried to remember which one of the many was his actual life.
The one that kept coming back was the dream of the twins. As ever, Louis plays himself in the reverie, but unlike in all the others, he is a twin. His identical twin, Michael, and he, have been aware of the crossover for some time, and are researching ways to make the connection consciously. Ironically while they focus on making connections, they are unaware of Louis' presence in his counterpart.
All the presences that Louis nightly inhabits, seem dimly familiar, as though each of them experiences the same connection, yet only one has ever spoken of it, one whose public ridicule and eventual committal, serve as a subconscious warning to the others to keep the secret just that.
Not so the twins, who each confided in the other, after methodically waiting through a year of the connections. Each individually running their own tests in solitude, trying to establish whether the dreams stemmed from science affecting them, or science manifesting as delusions in their own heads.
Once each was certain he wasn't mad, and that these dreams actually were happening, he instinctively knew that the other had reached the same conclusion.
"So what now?" Michael wondered aloud
"Now we try sleeping in separate faraday cages" Louis offered - secretly delighted to be able to tease his brother once again about his namesake. Though the experiment was a logical step, in spite of the jibe.
Solitary Louis did not see his brothers for some days after this, and he got the sense from each of his counterparts that he wasn't alone in having noticed their absence. Each night without their appearing, swelled the growing sense of unease Louis felt. It felt like two of their number were missing, and the ersatz-hive mind was quiet without their chatter.
After six days, Michael declared that there was nearly enough data, though both twins were drawn, and irritable, and eager to return to shared dreaming, now that they knew the cost of avoiding it. They had slept, but it had been a slumber without the rejuvenation they needed to properly think and function. After the third night they had changed the parameters so that they both slept within the same faraday cage, and though that had allowed them to dreamshare at least with each other, the three days of absence from the hive mind to which they were accustomed, brought about a panic and a desperation that each felt even more acutely while sharing the other's consciousness. They elected to get by with what little data they had acquired on that night, and returned to separate cells the following night.
It was after nine days of absence that Louis once again dreamed of the twins. His counterpart felt tired and sluggish, but there was an overwhelming sense of excitement and optimism that pervaded every thought. Progress had been made, though since Michael was not to be seen, Louis would have to wait to find out what the progress was. While inhabiting his counterpart, Louis found that he could not access his host's memories, only feelings, so he had to draw conclusions based on those feelings and what memories he had of his previous visits.
After the dream when the twins first admitted their discoveries to each other, each of the iterations Louis visited gradually started researching faraday cages. Louis had considered trying to fashion one himself, to see if it helped the experiment, until he saw the enormous amount of work involved in constructing one. He convinced himself that he was better waiting to see what his brothers found, though only to avoid admitting that he was just lazy. He was pleased to see that one of his others had apparently paid attention during physics lessons at school, and was slowly acquiring random pieces of metal, and various discarded bits of tech that might eventually serve as a cage.
During the nine day absence of the twins, the most noteworthy turn was when for the first time, Louis awoke as Louise. The self was familiar, though less self-assured, and the perception keener. Louis was troubled by the almost unbearable ache in his abdomen, but was slightly reassured by the sense of familiar resentment that came with it. He wondered if the twins knew of their apparently sole female other.
The cages had been daily tweaked and reconfigured to give more useful results. The twins had established that as they seldom occupied the same space as their others, there had to be some kind of neural link joining them to the collective consciousness, and the faraday cages, as Louis had hypothesised, severed their link from it. On one occasion, Michael had been surprised to link with a new other on day four - a welcome, though disorientating merge. The other must have been occupying space in the geographical location of Michael's faraday cage.
The link between Michael and Louis was unique among the many worlds connection. The fact that they had started as one embryo which split, and the fact that they seemed to be the only iteration who had, meant that Michael had no other, yet as he was genetically identical to Louis, he had always had the same links. They always happened at the same time as Louis, and it was always one or other Louis that he woke up as.
The readings that night had been wildly different to the other nights, and the fact that the crossover happened at all demonstrated that the faraday cage blocked whatever was causing the link, but that it was only effective geographically, not universally. Two brothers in the same physical space could still join within the cage.
The chance finding led to the brothers forging out a plan to get several Louis iterations in one place at one time, to see if joint communication were possible. Each should be able to remember their own self, and follow instructions to answer specific questions on a sheet. They spent the next few days working on a list of questions, to ask of each of their visitors, then they each memorised the GPS location of their shared lab, where the faraday cages stood, and started sleeping whenever they felt tired. Any hour of the day or night was fine, as each presented an opportunity to meet with an other, and note down the coordinates on whatever paper they could find. for the other to find and puzzle over once they regained their own consciousness. The hope was that either they'd be intrigued enough to investigate the location, or that they would each in turn visit the lab in their own sleep, where they would see Louis and Michael's message:
You are not alone. You are one of many. You exist in the same space and time as do each and every one of us, but one degree away on the dimensional plane. We are all one, and many. We alone, Louis and Michael, are identical twins. Our unique vantage point has allowed us to study what you have all long believed was madness. We believe that by occupying the same space and time, within a faraday cage, we can communicate safely. Please answer the following questions and begin looking for these coordinates in your own dimension.
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