Chapter No.24.

He was sitting in his usual spot in the pool chamber using his laptop to explore the theories that the brilliant women had come up with. However, he still had some questions as to how it all worked.

Felicity, Janet and Alice came up to him wearing robes and sat down near him.

"Good morning, ladies," he said with a very subtle smile.

"We think we've finally figured out what's going on with the exotic cosmic ray theories," Felicity said.

"Oh?"

"We realized that there had to be some sort of difference between humans and animal life that would account for why only humans vanished. The answer involves something that we don't like but it's the only possible answer. It turns out that the cosmic rays affect our brains, causing us to realize that we're in a different timeline. The Chandra Prophecy tells us that reality is not real. What that actually means is that reality is what we perceive it to be, and this perception can change. In other words, we don't change, our brains make us think we change."

"That sounds more like a spiritual explanation," he said.

"Yes, and we don't like it, but it's the only way out of this dilemma because animals don't have brains that can appreciate spiritual concepts. What it does explain is why you thought that all humans vanished. They didn't, but you experienced it because your brain was fooled."

Carl sighed. "So, it comes down to a paranormal idea after all. I was afraid of that. I'm not sure that I want to fully accept it. It sure blows the crap out of the idea of superdeterminism, especially considering that we're only looking at a limited set of data."

"We're with you on that," Janet said. "I don't think it fully explains everything, However, the one thing we can agree on is the fact that we are still together here in this amazing house of yours."

Felicity gestured to the pool. "Do you mind if we enjoy a dip in your fabulous pool?"

His expression went from concern to amusement to a more stoic look. "Enjoy!"

They removed their robes and jumped into the pool, swimming away towards the diving board end of the pool.

He continued reviewing the math they had produced to explain the cosmic ray effect. Much of it involved probability signs and system state symbols mostly using Hilbert space densely defined self-adjoint operators, which is the Hamiltonian, and an imaginary unit. What he was looking at is a modified Schrodinger equation. He assumed they were trying to get away from having the Hamiltonian not be dependent on time. In other words, they were trying to get away from Heisenberg and Drac's pictures. He wasn't sure that they did, but it did look impressive.

After some time, they returned and climbed out the pool near him. Without any evidence of embarrassment, they simply put their robes on and came over to him and sat down on chairs near his.

"So, what do you think?" Felicity asked.

"Your work is impressive, but I don't think I'm qualified to argue about it."

She laughed. "Not about that! We wanted to know what you think of us."

He pretended to be shocked. "Ah, I don't think I'm qualified to give an objective opinion, other than to say that you're all incredibly beautiful. . . in my opinion."

She smiled. "Right answer."

They laughed while they walked away.

He assumed that this was another way that they could tease him. He realized that they were an enigma, a dichotomy of brains and beauty.

He also realized that a full scientific explanation for the timeline phenomenon was probably impossible, at least for mere humans. It was better for him and the women to relax and enjoy the fruits of their work as top astronauts.

He really couldn't complain. He had managed to get he and the women into a reasonable timeline where they were comfortable and didn't have to risk their lives anymore. They were considered legends now. They had gone where no man, or women, had gone before. In a way it was inevitable for them to do this right from the start. He had a nice home that contained everything he needed to create a think tank with the very best brains in the universe.

Besides, they were eye candy, and they had no qualms about exhibiting their assets to him. He didn't really understand women, as his two divorces proved, but it didn't matter now. He was done with that. He was more interested in applying their amazing minds to solve some of the most complicated problems ever. It was the better of two worlds or timelines.

Author's Notes.

Bell's theorem assumes that the measurements performed at each detector can be chosen independently of each other and of the hidden variables that determine the measurement outcome.

In quantum mechanics, superdeterminism is a loophole in Bell's theorem. By postulating that all systems being measured are correlated with the choices of which measurements to make on them, the assumptions of the theorem are no longer fulfilled.

In quantum mechanics, the Hamiltonian of a system is an operator corresponding to the total energy of that system, including both kinetic energy and potential energy. Its spectrum, the system's energy spectrum or its set of energy eigenvalues, is the set of possible outcomes obtainable from a measurement of the system's total energy. Due to its close relation to the energy spectrum and time-evolution of a system, it is of fundamental importance in most formulations of quantum theory.

The End.

There's a lot of science in this story, but it was important to the plot. As you might know about quantum physics, quantum particles are little devils. They can change their outcome depending upon who is looking at them.