“They would have to, wouldn’t they?”
A couple of minutes later we were all seated at a wooden picnic table inside the commissary, because even a few minutes out in Jungle Greenland was a wilting experience. The plan, Tom told us, was to have lunch, and then we and every other member of Gold Team would be on our way to Tanaka Base.
But first, some explanations.
“I’m not a scientist,” Tom said to us as we ate. None of us braved the poopfruit. “And I know you are—well, most of you”—he nodded at me—“and the one of you who isn’t is an expert in science fiction. So I’m going to leave the scientific details to other people. I’m just going to tell you what they told me when I was in your shoes.”
“Like how this place exists at all,” I said.
“Right. So to start, and, well, clearly.” Tom waved around, taking in the whole planet. “Alternate Earths exist. I’m told in theory that there are an infinite number of them, but this is the only one we can get to. So far anyway.”
“And it’s the same as ours?” I asked.
“Well, I think you’ve noticed there are differences.”
“You said ‘North American bases’ earlier. This implies a North America.”
“Oh, okay, I see where you’re going. Yes, in a very broad sense. This Earth has the same basic continents as ours, but there are some significant differences because this version is much warmer. There are no ice caps here, so there’s also no Florida here, or a lot of what we think of as the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Everything from Boston to Savannah is under water. Or would be, if they existed here, which they don’t. Also, we know that this Earth exists roughly in the same time-space moment as ours.”
“How do you know that?” Kahurangi asked.
Tom pointed to Niamh. “I bet you would know,” he said.
“The stars are the same, I’ll bet,” Niamh said to him, and then looked at the rest of us. “If we look up in the sky and see the same constellations that we see at home, and they’re not distorted, we’re in the same place in the universe. In this universe anyway.” They turned back to Tom. “And you say they look like what you expect them to.”
“I mean, I know the Big Dipper and Orion and that’s it,” Tom said. “But they’re up there, where I expect to find them. Other astronomers we’ve had here confirm the rest of it.”
“So, what explains the difference in climate, then?” Aparna asked Tom.
“Lots of different theories, with part of the leading being that we don’t think there was a Chicxulub impactor on this Earth. You know, the meteor that took out the dinosaurs.”
We all looked at him impatiently.
“Aaaand of course all of you know what the Chicxulub impactor was, and I’m the one who looks like an uneducated dork for not knowing what it was called by name when I first got here,” Tom said, only a little bitterly.
“But you just said that we’re in the same place in space-time,” Aparna said to Niamh. “Why wouldn’t the asteroid have hit here?”
“Just because the stars are in the right place doesn’t mean every single interaction in space has been exactly the same,” Niamh said. “Our solar system has eight major planets, dozens of minor planets and moons, and about a hundred thousand objects larger than a kilometer. All of them interact with each other. And that’s not even factoring in the Oort cloud.”
“Never forget to factor in the Oort cloud,” I said, with mock seriousness.
“There’s too much chaos in the system for things to act perfectly predictably at the scale of asteroids or planets,” Niamh said, ignoring me. “So it’s entirely possible that the asteroid that hit our Earth sixty-five million years ago missed this Earth completely—or possibly never even existed.”
“And also that things that missed us in our universe hit this Earth here,” Kahurangi said. He turned to Tom. “What do the rocks say? Where are the dividing lines?”
“You’ll have to check with the actual scientists,” Tom said. “But yeah, that’s the thinking. We missed some extinction events here and may have gotten other ones.”
“So you think these monsters evolved from dinosaurs?” Aparna asked. She had a frown on her face that I suspected was what happened when she as a biologist was told something she was going to disagree with on a visceral level.
Tom pointed. “No,” he said. “That I know. The kaiju have a whole other biology entirely. Technically they’re not even animals.”