Casimir's Curse

[Danika]

The laboratory felt like the inside of a thought—cold, orderly, and humming with potential. White light reflected off rows of precisely aligned equipment: spectrometers, zero-point energy regulators, and a supercooled chamber where quantum stabilizers floated in magnetic suspension. Everything had its place. Everything obeyed the rules. That was why she liked science so much - it was predictable where people were not. Usually it was predictable… Today the problem she was trying to solve was not. 

Danika stood in front of the projection table, hands flexing in her gloves as she stared at the equations glowing in midair. Her equations. A lattice of Kerr-Newman metrics, quantum energy tensors, and nonlinear dynamics that coiled and looped in neon-blue threads, shifting slightly with each twitch of her fingers. 

"Okay, Danika. Where are you?" she murmured to herself, narrowing her focus. She inhaled deeply, counting to three, then exhaled, counting to five. The numbers soothed her, the rhythm cutting through the noise in her head. Her thoughts fell into step, each piece of information locking into place like puzzle pieces. This was her process. Order from chaos. One variable at a time. 

Her voice emerged in a precise, muted tone as she narrated her notes for the system’s records. "Throat instability remains unresolved. Negative energy density partially compensates for collapse, but quantum foam interference destabilizes the Casimir boundary. Casimir boundary fails. Wormhole fails." 

She raised her left hand, and the equations rearranged themselves, isolating the unstable throat region of the simulation. The wormhole—their wormhole—the theory put forth by her, Allan, and Marcus hovered in holographic relief. A gleaming ring of luminous particles, twisting inward toward a dark, swirling center. It was beautiful. Flawed, but beautiful. But it refused to hold. 

The projection pulsed red, collapsing into a cascade of error codes. 

Her fingers twitched in frustration, but she immediately stilled them. "No," she said softly. "Frustration is irrelevant." She repeated the phrase to herself, her tone flat, her posture rigid. Frustration was noise, and noise had no place here. Her job was to listen to the signal. 

Revisit the theory. Her mind pivoted, setting aside the failure and combing through the math again, step by step. 

Danika tapped her fingers in the air, summoning a new set of visualizations. The Kerr-Newman manifold unfolded in three dimensions, its curved spacetime geometry glowing faintly. She zoomed in on the throat region, watching the exotic matter distribution spike erratically before the whole thing collapsed. Again. 

She let out a sharp breath, narrating once more for records. Perhaps AI could help her solve the issue at hand. "Problem: The throat collapses. Cause: Insufficient negative energy density to stabilize quantum fluctuations. Solution...?" She trailed off, her mind racing ahead. 

Her right hand flicked, pulling up a new layer of equations. She scrolled rapidly, her lips moving soundlessly. The Casimir boundary worked, sort of. But the exotic matter injection destabilized the foam. That created a feedback loop. If I... adjust the foam density... No, that breaks symmetry.

Her thoughts spiraled, one idea leading to another, a chain reaction of possibilities unraveling into dead ends. But this was the part she loved. The hunt. The puzzle. The moment when everything else disappeared except for the pure pursuit of understanding. 

The violet glow came quietly, creeping up her fingers in faint, flickering tendrils. She barely noticed it at first, so engrossed was she in the equations. But as her concentration deepened, the glow intensified, tracing faint shadows across her skin, pulsing in time with her thoughts. The magic always came when she worked like this, threading itself through her mind and her hands. 

"Magic is just science we don’t understand.” The reminder was automatic, a mantra she'd repeated to herself since the first time she'd accidentally blown up a lab table. She couldn't let it take over. The math was still the foundation. The magic was just... supplemental. Like a compass, pointing her toward something she couldn't see. 

The equations shifted again, reshaping themselves as her magic whispered through the system. For a moment, her heart leapt. The negative energy density evened out. The throat stabilized. The hologram flickered... 

And then it imploded. Again. 

Danika blinked rapidly, forcing herself to suppress the flicker of disappointment. "It's not enough," she murmured. "Still missing something." 

Her hands dropped to her sides, the glow fading as her magic subsided. The hologram dissolved into a blank field of light, awaiting her next input. She stared at it for a long moment, her mind tracing the edges of what she knew—and what she didn’t. 

"The throat won't stabilize on its own. I know that." She rubbed her temples, the faint pressure grounding her. "Exotic matter density isn’t the problem. It’s... it’s symmetry. It’s alignment. Something isn’t balanced. Remember the two constants.” Of course she was referencing her famous double constants, Zayed’s numbers: ι•Ν and Λ•Γ.

Her mind jumped to a memory of a man’s voice. Calm, steady, annoyingly good at pointing out the flaws she didn’t want to see. "Danika, you can’t brute-force a wormhole,” he’d said during their last argument. ”It’s not just math. It’s geometry. Dynamics. The whole system has to sing together, or it falls apart." 

"Sing together." The phrase stuck in her mind, poetic, but accurate. She could almost hear Marcus chiming in, his tone playful but his insight razor-sharp. "You need the conductor for the orchestra, Danika. I can see the symphonies in my sleep. You’re the engine; I’m the melody." 

Danika turned back to the projection table. Her equations were good—better than good. But there was a piece missing, something she couldn’t see alone. Allan had an intuitive grasp of spacetime dynamics that felt like sorcery. Marcus, meanwhile, had a talent for simplifying the complex and grounding her theories in practical engineering. Together, their strengths complemented her own. 

---

"Casimir" refers to the Casimir effect, a real-world phenomenon from quantum physics. The Casimir effect occurs when two uncharged, parallel plates are placed very close together in a vacuum, and an attractive force arises between them due to fluctuations in the quantum field. This effect is often used in speculative science and sci-fi to theorize about "negative energy density," which is key to many hypothetical physics concepts, such as stabilizing wormholes.

[Allan]

The working theory was beyond Allan. He was a philosophy major. He didn't delve into the science of things, it was feelings and the other things he understood. And when Marcus and Danika began talking he sorta glazed over till they started talking about the things he could think about.

Their models and their equations were utterly useless to him. He needed to feel it to see it to do it. Marcus had models, he could form equations of everything, but Allan he couldn't. He didn't have that skill. His mind was not math.

Allan watched Danika in her latest experiment simulation. Simulations were not much he could contribute to. He needed to see, he couldn't exactly draw what he wanted to say and make it work for them, they needed the math. He chuckled at her last comment "So what does that make me?" he said stepping into the lab where everything felt clean and sterile and absolutely no fun at all.

"I only wish my mind thought like yours. I don't have the words." He stepped closer to her and put his arm around her shoulder. "Walk me through it like I'm five, cause in this instance I am. Be better yet, draw me a picture."

[Danika]

Danika flinched at Allan’s voice, her shoulders jolting upward like a startled bird. She hadn’t heard him come in. She rarely did when she was this deep in her work. She pressed a hand to her chest, willing her heartbeat to slow. “Allan!” she said, her voice tight and slightly higher than usual. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Her hand moved instinctively to her chest, fingers pressing lightly against the fabric of her lab coat as she tried to slow her breathing. She blinked a few more times, her brain struggling to reset itself after the jarring interruption. Slowly, her lips curved into an embarrassed half-smile. “I didn’t know you were here” she said, though her tone sounded more like an accusation than an observation.

As she stepped toward him, her fingers reached out to straighten the lapels of his lab coat, tugging and smoothing as though the neatness of the gesture could somehow restore her own equilibrium. “You have the instinct I don’t have,” she murmured without looking at him, focusing instead on the fabric under her hands.

Her hands lingered for a fraction of a second longer than necessary before she stepped back, her fingers fidgeting at her sides. She avoided his gaze as she turned back to the projection table, the holograms casting pale light onto her face. “I’m not sure I know how to draw such a thing,” she said finally, her voice clipped and uncertain. 

Her hands twitched at her sides before rising to gesture at the spinning holographic wormhole simulation. “It’s all math and energy flows. I don’t even think it exists in a way I can visualize. Not like... not like a tree, or a diagram, or anything normal.” She frowned, her brow furrowing deeply. “But I guess... if I had to explain it, it’s like... imagine spacetime is fabric. And I’m trying to poke a hole in it without ripping the whole thing apart. But it’s not working. It keeps collapsing. No matter what I try, it won’t balance, and the instability makes the simulation collapse.”

She stayed like that for a moment, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her gaze locked on the spinning equations. The projection flickered faintly, its unresolved errors blinking like taunts in the light of the lab.

Her hand hovered over the controls for a moment before she tapped the air, resetting the holograms. The wormhole reassembled itself in three glowing dimensions, the unstable throat region spinning like a jagged vortex of light. Danika gestured to it, her movements brisk and precise.

“This is the problem. The throat keeps collapsing. I’ve tried adjusting the energy density, the Casimir boundary, the foam interactions... everything. It’s still unstable.”

[Allan]

Allan liked that Danika fussed over his lab coat, sometimes he left it crooked, he almost always startled her she was always so absorbed in her work.

He listened to her but none of it made sense. None of it ever made sense. "I don't understand a single word you said other than it's not working." He sat down with a piece of paper and a pencil. It was rudimentary equipment he was sure they didn't keep on hand but he had insisted. He drew what he saw on the hologram and smiled. "You said the throat keeps collapsing. So in mining you have to add supports to keep the tunnels from collapsing. Usually pillars of wood or metal that keep the ceiling from collapsing on your. Maybe you need to figure out some sort of mesh to keep it from collapsing or a some sort of structure for it to cling to." Allan drew supports and structures. "I think you also need to know more about where you are with a general idea of where you are going. Not sure how you can program that into things." Allan just rambled he had no idea if he was making sense.

[Danika]

Danika blinked at Allan’s drawing, her hands still hovering over the controls of the projection table. Her gaze lingered on the pencil sketch, tracing the rough lines of supports and structures with her eyes. It was such a different way of thinking from her own, but that was part of why it struck her. The simplicity of it wasn’t a flaw—it was a new angle, one she hadn’t considered.

Her lips curved into a thoughtful smile. “Supports,” she murmured, her voice quiet as her mind worked through the idea. She adjusted her glasses—a nervous habit—and stepped closer to the paper, tilting her head slightly as though a different angle would make the concept click.

“It’s not... wrong,” she said slowly, her words cautious but open. “I mean, the throat of a wormhole isn’t like a physical tunnel. It’s spacetime itself, so it doesn’t behave the same way. But the idea of a framework—something to stabilize it externally...” She trailed off, her fingers twitching at her sides.

Her gaze flicked back to the hologram, the collapsing wormhole throat spinning in its endless cycle of failure. She reached out to the controls, her movements quick and deliberate, adding layers to the visualization. “I’ve been trying to balance it from the inside—adjusting the energy flows, the boundary conditions—but maybe I’m missing something. Maybe it needs more than just internal stabilization. Maybe it does need... a kind of structure. Not physical, but...” She paused, her voice dropping as though speaking to herself. “An energy lattice, maybe.”

Danika’s hands moved faster now, sketching out a faintly glowing grid around the edges of the holographic wormhole. The new addition shimmered as it interacted with the simulation, though the effect was still rudimentary. “A framework made of electromagnetic fields,” she said, thinking aloud. “It could act like scaffolding—something for the negative energy to anchor to, holding the throat open long enough for it to stabilize. It wouldn’t fix everything, but it might stop the collapse for a few nanoseconds.”

Her pacing began, her hands flexing as her mind surged ahead. “It’s just a theory, but it could work in tandem with the Casimir boundary. A temporary stabilization field. Long enough to start the self-reinforcing process...”

[Allan]

Allan almost glazed over with her explanation. He was glad that his idea had sparked something. He wished there was something in front of him, something he could touch or see or feel. This was too hard on the brain.

He pulled out a chair and sat down resting his back and legs, not that they needed them, he could stand for a few hours if necessary -- sometimes it was when the Nine were meant to do guard duty or some such. He hated it.

He wasn't a scientist either, and the image of the holographic display gave him ideas. Though nothing he could tell Danika.

"I'll be back. I'm going to get a coffee, you want anything?" He needed to walk to think. He had to ask Danika twice before she requested a mocha frappchino.

Allan walked out of the facility. Sure he could get all he wanted inside the building, but there was a really great cart just outside the GUM that he liked, and even though it was freezing outside, they'd still be there. He loved that about this little cart. Rain, shine, sleet or snow, they were always there.

As he walked he thought about the problem. Dug deep in his head to try to understand what Danika had said, but the science eluded him. The numbers and equations were outside of his wheelhouse but he felt a connection to the holographic image. Like he almost saw something in it. Something if only he could figure it out. Which was why he was walking.

He made one lap around the GUM stopping when he saw a kiosk of key rings. Little portals like the video game he'd imagined when he first read about them in the ancient book. Allan bought two cheezey looking keychains with sayings, he didn't care what they said, he unfurled them the ring from the chain and held them in his hand, the cheap plastic part he stuffed into his pocket and grabbed the coffee before he headed back down into their underground playground.

Allan had never really been one to experiment but something pulled him towards the lab, more than just the cold coffee in his now frozen fingers. He could have easily warmed his hand and melted Dankia's coffee but instead he grasped the power and kept it cold. Hopefully it wouldn't be frozen by the time he reached her lap.

He tapped Danika on the shoulder and set down her drink. "Here you go. Caffeinate the brain maybe it'll help."

Allan returned the chair he'd rolled closer to her station and put his cooling coffee on the table next to him and held the two rings side by side looking through the middle like they'd reveal some hidden secret. The hologram image of Danika's science worm hole peaked through the middle and Allan wove what he saw . Up, down, over, air, spirit, a dash of fire and earth, all the elements pooled through the two rings meant to hold your keys. They now held small strands of power. It didn't look like the hologram when he was done.

Feeling a moment of defeat, the inspiration having fled, Allan spread the rings like a fan.The perspective through the whole shifted, not much, but enough to be noticeable. Curously Allan stuck his finger through the center of one ring to find it offset through the center of the other. "Uh, Dankia."

[Danika]

Danika barely noticed when Allan left. Her mind was too consumed by the simulation spinning endlessly in front of her, taunting her with its imperfections. Every failure only fueled her determination to fix it, to find the missing piece. She had tweaked the parameters a dozen different ways—adjusting the energy flows, recalibrating the Casimir boundary, reconfiguring the quantum lattice—but nothing worked. 

The wormhole throat still collapsed, every single time. 

Her hands hovered in midair, hesitating over the projection controls. A flicker of doubt crept into her thoughts, but she shoved it aside. Doubt wasn’t useful. Focus was. Her fingers twitched as she pulled the energy lattice tighter around the throat, narrowing the boundaries of the simulation. The violet glow of her magic pulsed faintly at the edges of her vision, reacting to the intensity of her thoughts. 

The math is sound. It’s the structure that’s wrong. It’s... the framework. 

She stepped back from the table and rubbed at her temple, frowning as the failure report flashed across the hologram. Her pacing began again—small, tight circles that matched the rhythm of her thoughts. “A framework,” she murmured to herself. “Not physical. Not rigid. Something adaptive. Maybe a hybrid energy system? Electromagnetic fields could stabilize the boundary, but that won’t stop the throat from collapsing...” 

Her voice trailed off, and she slowed to a stop, staring at the spinning projection. The equations glowed softly, mocking her with their elegance. She sipped the dregs of her water bottle, barely tasting it, and stared harder. Somewhere in the chaotic dance of quantum foam interactions and exotic energy flux, the answer was waiting. She just needed to see it. 

Danika wasn’t sure how much time had passed—her concept of time always blurred when she was in deep focus. The lab felt like its own universe, sealed off from everything else. The hum of the machines was a constant comfort, grounding her in the familiar order of her space. She ran another simulation, then another, watching each one collapse in seconds. 

Her stomach growled faintly, pulling her from her thoughts for just a moment. I forgot to eat again, she realized, her lips pressing into a thin line. It wasn’t the first time. She pushed the thought away, refocusing on the hologram. Food could wait. 

The laboratory’s door hissed open, breaking her concentration. 

She flinched violently, nearly spilling the half-empty water bottle she’d left balanced on the edge of the table. Her head whipped around, eyes wide. “Allan!” she blurted, her voice sharp with surprise. 

Her chest rose and fell quickly as her heart raced, and she pressed a hand to her collarbone, willing herself to calm down. It was just Allan. She exhaled, her muscles relaxing, though her hands still trembled slightly from the jolt. 

And then she saw it: the drink. 

Her eyes widened, her expression softening almost immediately. “You got me a mocha Frappuccino,” she said, her tone light with genuine delight. She crossed the room quickly, grabbing the cup with both hands. Her fingers curled around the chilled plastic, and she grinned as she took a long, noisy slurp through the straw. 

The familiar rush of sugar and caffeine filled her senses, and her entire body seemed to sigh in relief. “Thank you,” she said, looking up briefly with a small, grateful smile. 

She turned back to her equations, the drink cradled in one hand as she tapped at the projection controls with the other. The combination of the cold drink and the new spark of energy it brought seemed to sharpen her focus. “I’ve been thinking about the framework,” she said aloud, half to herself. “It needs to be adaptable—something that can shift dynamically as the throat fluctuates. A quantum lattice is too rigid. Maybe if we add an oscillating harmonic...” 

She trailed off, her brow furrowing as she adjusted the hologram. The equations rearranged themselves, the simulation pulsing faintly in response. She leaned closer, sipping absently as she tinkered with the boundary conditions. The drink was already halfway gone by the time she paused, her thoughts catching on an idea that felt half-formed but promising. 

Before she could test it, she heard her name. 

The sound startled her so much that she inhaled sharply through the straw, the last bit of whipped cream shooting into her throat. She choked, coughing violently as the cup clattered against the edge of the table. Her eyes watered as she tried to recover, and she waved a hand vaguely behind her. 

“I’m fine!” she rasped, though her voice came out hoarse. She coughed once more for good measure before straightening, her face warm with embarrassment. She turned, still clutching the now-empty drink, and froze. Allan was holding something in his hands—something small, round, and plastic. Danika tilted her head, her curiosity overriding her lingering embarrassment. “What is that?” she asked, stepping closer. 

Her gaze shifted between Allan’s hands and the hologram behind him, and something about the way the light refracted through the objects made her breath hitch. Her fingers twitched, already itching to grab the strange little rings and figure out what he was doing. 

“Wait,” she said quickly, her tone sharper now. She moved closer, her eyes narrowing as she studied the way the light bent and warped. “Do that again. Hold them like that.” 

Despite the request, she didn’t wait for him to respond, plucking the rings out of his hands without hesitation. Turning them over in her fingers, she squinted at the way the projection flickered and shifted through their centers. It was subtle, but the distortion wasn’t random. It was aligned—almost like a resonance pattern. 

Danika’s mind raced, the gears clicking into place as she turned back to the hologram. “This... this could work,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. She pulled up a fresh simulation, her hands moving rapidly as she adjusted the parameters. “If I can map the distortion field around the keyring, and anchor it to the lattice... it should stabilize the throat temporarily. Long enough for the resonance to build. But.. but how did you do it?”