Applied Quantum Tunnelling

A hole in one wall that comes out of a different wall. Six years since the first one, eleven thousand two hundred and four recorded transits, and not one satisfactory explanation of why it works that both the President and the department will sign.

Section one dictated by Cave Johnson. Section two written by Applied Sciences and printed without editorial interference, under protest, twice.

There are two explanations of quantum tunnelling in this company and they do not agree. I am printing both, in full, in the same type, and I am putting mine first because I own the building.

I.One. The President’s Explanation

Space is a fabric. Everybody says that and everybody says it as though it were a figure of speech, and it is not a figure of speech, it is a purchasing decision. We buy fabric. We have bought more fabric than any firm in the Upper Peninsula and we have been buying it since 1943.

Now. What is a shower curtain? A shower curtain is a wall you can walk through. That is the whole of the product. On one side of it there is a shower and on the other side of it there is a bathroom, and the curtain is the arrangement by which a man is on one side and then, without any fuss, on the other.

In 1953 one of my men spilled an emulsion on a curtain on the third floor and for about four seconds that curtain was hanging in two rooms at once. Not two curtains. One curtain, in two rooms, and I have the affidavits.

So: if a curtain can be in two rooms, a doorway can be in two rooms, and if a doorway can be in two rooms then a man can go in one and come out the other. That is the science. The department will tell you it is not the science. The department has been telling me that for six years and in that time I have built eleven of them and the department has built none.

Fig. 4. The President’s diagram, reproduced from the back of an envelope. The two circles are the apertures. The line between them is described in his hand as ‘the curtain’. Applied Sciences has asked that the caption record that there is no curtain.

First event: 1953, third floor, by accident
First deliberate event: 1953, eleven days later
First manned transit: 1954
Recorded transits: 11,204
Momentum: Conserved. Every time. Without exception.
Mass: Conserved. Every time. So far.
Elapsed time: Not always.

“Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between apertures. Speedy-thing goes in, Speedy-thing comes out.”

— Applied Sciences, on being asked to shorten the departmental section

II.Two. The Department’s Explanation

Applied Sciences wishes to record, before anything else, that the third-floor curtain of 1953 was not in two rooms at once. It was in one room, twice, and the distinction is the entire subject of this section.

An aperture is not a hole. A hole is an absence of material. An aperture is an agreement between two regions of space that they will, for the duration, be treated as the same region. Nothing is removed. Nothing is transported. The two doorways do not connect; they are, while the field holds, one doorway that happens to have two sets of hinges.

The consequence a layman feels first is momentum. A man entering the first aperture at thirty feet per second leaves the second at thirty feet per second, in the direction the second aperture is facing, because from the field’s point of view he has not changed direction; he has not gone anywhere. The department has explained this to volunteers four thousand times and the phrasing that finally worked was the President’s.

The consequence the department feels first is that the effect requires a conductive substrate. Ordinary matter will not hold the agreement. Ground lunar substrate will hold it indefinitely, for reasons the department has published nothing about and will publish nothing about until it has something to publish.

Conditions Under Which The Field Will Not Hold

Where either aperture is obstructed by more than sixty per cent of its area.
Where the substrate preparation is thinner than one-eighth of an inch.
Where the two apertures are separated by less than eleven inches.
Where the two apertures are separated by more than no established maximum.
Where the field is asked to hold across running water. The department declines to expand.

The eleven-inch minimum is not a limitation of the apparatus. Below eleven inches the two apertures are close enough that the field, in the department’s phrasing, “is unable to establish that there are two of them”. What happens then is the subject of Appendix D, which is not printed.

Measured Results, 1954 – Spring 1959

Selected transits, Applied Sciences bench record

Selected transits, Applied Sciences bench record
Trial	Separation	Entry	Exit	Note
54-001	6 ft.	0 ft/s	0 ft/s	First manned transit. A step.
55-140	41 ft.	18 ft/s	18 ft/s	Nominal
56-092	220 ft.	31 ft/s	31 ft/s	Nominal at range
57-311	1.4 mi.	12 ft/s	12 ft/s	Second aperture in a rented barn. Farmer compensated.
58-006	11 in.	4 ft/s	—	See the minimum separation clause
59-018	Not yet found	9 ft/s	9 ft/s	Volunteer reported the second chamber smelled of salt water

This facility is four thousand feet under a salt mine in the Upper Peninsula and contains no salt water. Applied Sciences has recorded the remark and taken no position on it.

Trial 59-018 is the trial Applied Sciences cites when it asks, twice a year, for long-separation work to be suspended. It has asked twice a year since 1957.

Verifying personnel file…

He tells everyone the curtain was in two rooms. Applied Sciences says it was in one room twice. I have read both affidavits and they describe different afternoons. — C.

Applied Sciences — Sub-Level 2Minimum Separation 11 In.

Form ASI-401. The apparatus is described in Form ASI-202; the conductive substrate in Form ASI-205 and Form ASI-404. Legal reminds all departments that the effect is not to be described in correspondence as a door, a gate, a portal, a passage, or the thing.

salt water. four thousand feet under michigan and the man smelled salt water