Quantum Questions

Obeck had a thought about the disappearance of Proteus McCoy which tied into the whole odd situation – why warp/slipstream wouldn't work, nor any technology dependent on subspace technology.  Following his hunch, he went back to his bridge station and had the computer pull up recordings made from the constant barrage of tele-transmissions which this Earth sent into local space.  The computer wasn't inoperative; it had just experienced a few glitches.  (Obviously.  Without the computer the ship would have been dead in the water.)  Obeck entered a few key words to narrow the search for relevant material and moments later was perusing shows from Nova to the Discovery Science Channel and everything in-between.  Before long he had confirmed it: on this world, they didn't believe subspace existed or that it was possible to travel faster than light.  Perhaps it didn't, in this universe.  Different physical laws applied.  That had immediate resulting ramifications.  Proteus, for instance: he was derived partly from Borg technology, and the Borg's existence had depended on subspace.  No subspace > no Borg > no Proteus.  But why did only he disappear in this theory; why not the others in the Arc's alien complement?  (Well, Miren Leto was an alien, but Carton wasn't.)  It made sense to an extent, but not complete sense.  Maybe, for Proteus at least, it also depended on other factors in his nature – his changeling DNA, or the engrams he was programmed with (those of a man named Leonard McCoy – who, in the universe Arc came from, was an admiral in Starfleet Medical, but in Proteus' universe had been a refugee from the Borg).  Wait a minute... in Proteus' universe?  Maybe that was it!  Proteus hailed from another universe altogether.  Maybe that was why he vanished without known cause.  But did that mean Carton and Leto were from different universes as well?  It still didn't make sense.  Obeck wished Proteus was here to help him with this; he was the investigator after all.

The longer Obeck sat and thought about it, the more his mind kept telling him to concentrate on the role of quantum physics in the equation.  Proteus claimed that Carton had somehow been the key to all of this, the first domino in a chain.  Obeck investigated the disappearance of Proteus per Captain Skye's orders, and found one thing Proteus claimed to be true: after Carton's coma and brush with death, odd things started to happen.  And, those Carton came into direct contact with; those exhibiting bizarre unexplainable phenomena – Ringo's burns, Skye's amnesia, Ziske's incompetence followed by Za'a's... If one considered the connection between time, space, thought and energy in quantum mechanics, then ventured the theory that Carton somehow tapped into that so that his thoughts were affecting the quantum basis of reality... it began to make sense.  Carton wanted to be left alone after the beginning of his ordeal; he claimed there was a 'true reality' which he wanted to go back to.  This reality they were in seemed to be Carton's 'true reality', which also made sense – here, everyone & everything in Arc's reality were fictitious creations.  Carton might have intentionally or unintentionally blocked those capable of stopping him from succeeding.  Why didn't it affect everyone? – Answer: If it depended on the chaotic jumble & henpecking order of human thoughts, then it might only have affected some, whereas in theory it could have affected all.  Perhaps a pure Vulcan, for example, with ordered, logical thought patterns, would have altered Arc's reality on a wider, thorough scale.