In the long and storied history of the Alternate Reality News Service, there had only been two instances of a Pops Summit. The first happened a year after the service had been founded. Pops Kahunga, Pops Moobly and Pops Shirley met in a storage closet because, in those days, the closet was bigger than the company's offices. Pops Shirley, the grand old man of the Alternate Reality News Service (who had been compared to Yoda, without the charm), was chief engineer. The Pops Summit was necessary because, in a burst of enthusiasm for his new technology, Mikhail Lo-Fi had started sending reporters into alternate universes without a clear method of getting them back.
The first Pops Summit lasted 13 days. None of the Pops left the room, and no food or water was brought in. Some believe that they survived on sunshine, although the fact that the room had no windows tends to undermine this theory. Others say they spent most of their time in a dimension of pure thought, where ideas flow like cheap wine and fancy really does have to be caught in flight. Other others suggest that they were simply crusty old bastards who refused to allow a little thing like lack of sustenance to get in the way of getting the job done (although Pops Shirley was never the same once the ordeal was over, and it is believed that it contributed to his death 12 years later).
The first Pops Summit was where the idea to offer ARNS reporters a free meal to get them to return to Universe Prime was first proposed. Although there was much skepticism within the organization, all of the ARNS reporters reported back within two minutes of the announcement. After that, tracking software was developed to make returning to Universe Prime easier, although from time to time the free meal offer is still used in an emergency when there is no time to get reporters back through technological means.
The second Pops Summit, which happened a few months before Brenda Bruntland-Govanni joined the organization, was convened to find the keys to the Dimensional PortalTM. That one lasted 15 days, although, to be fair, it was only Pops Kahunga and Pops Moobly doing the heavy thinking.
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni looked at the people she worked with. Their attention was still intently fixed on the door of the janitor's closet. She had been there for over three hours, and the Pops Summit had apparently started at least two hours before that. She wondered if that was long enough to get bored. Yeah, sure, awe and wonder and all that crap. Still, she had a news service to run, and if the problem of the Bob Smiths wasn't resolved soon, that wouldn't be the case, awe and wonder and all that crap notwithstanding.
The door to the janitor's closet opened. It would be satisfying to say that it took a long time and creaked ominously, but Pops Kahunga kept it well oiled, so it didn't. Pops Kahunga and Pops Moobly strode out, relaxed and confident.
"Did you figure out why we have 127 Bob Smiths?" Brenda Bruntland-Govanni, choosing not to savour the moment, asked. She ignored the dirty looks from her underlings - there would be time enough to make them pay later.
"Oh, sure," Pops Moobly drawled. "Had that figured out in the first two minutes."
The crowd gasped. "What have you been doing for the last five hours?" Brenda Bruntland-Govanni asked incredulously. More dirty looks. More delayed payback.
"Figuring out how to explain it to you," Pops Kahunga told her.
"What's the problem?"
"If we just tell you what happened, you'll take it in and forget it," Pops Kahunga explained.
"We both tried to tell you," Pops Moobly added. "It didn't take."
"We figure we have to tell it to you in a way that you will actually listen," Pops Kahunga added in addition.
"Okay!" Brenda Bruntland-Govanni blurted. "So, what's going on?"
Pops Moobly and Pops Kahunga looked at each other. Pops Moobly gestured with his hand and the other man spoke: "I'm sure you're all familiar with Zeno's Paradox, so I won't go into detail about...how..." Pops Kahunga trailed off. "Zeno's Paradox - surely some of you have heard of it?"
The people gathered around Pops looked, if such a thing is possible, both awestruck and confused. Pops Kahunga grunted quietly to himself and continued, "Okay. Look. There was this turtle who challenged Achilles to a race, and -"
"Uhh, Mister Pops, sir?" Indira Charunder-Macharrundeira interjected. "Wh...wh...wh...who was Ach...Ach...Ach...Ach...Achilles?"
"Yeah, and who was the turtle?" some nob from accounting (actually, Adrian Nob), in all seriousness, asked.
Pops Kahunga nodded to himself. "You know what?" he continued. "Forget about Achilles and the turtle. Do any of you know what an asymptotic curve is?"
This question received the same adoring but blankly uncomprehending response from the gathered crowd. Pops Kahunga sighed. "Alright," he said. "What is the next number in this sequence: five, four, three, two, one..."
"Liftoff?" somebody offered.
"Good, good," Pops Kahunga valiantly responded. "But, liftoff is not a number."
"Zero," Brenda Bruntland-Govanni shouted.
"Right!" Pops Kahunga enthused paternally. "Now, what is the next number in this sequence: 49, 36, 25, 16, nine, four, one...?"
"Not liftoff?" somebody tried again.
Before Pops could disagree, Brenda Bruntland-Govanni shouted, "Zero!"
"Very good!" Pops Kahunga replied. Brenda Bruntland-Govanni felt like she was back in grade three. But, in a good way.
"So," Pops Kahunga wound up, "if we opened the Dimensional PortalTM again, how many Bob Smiths would come through?"
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni put her hand on her hips in defiance and disbelief. "Are you telling me," she said, "that we shut down the Dimensional PortalTM at the exact moment when the Bob Smiths would have stopped coming through?"
"I didn't have to tell you," Pops Kahunga told her with a big old grin on his face. "You figured it out for yourself. You'll remember it better now."
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni, not sparing a moment to slap herself in the forehead, ran towards the elevators.
"Don't you want to know why?" Pops Kahunga loudly asked her. But, Brenda Bruntland-Govanni was so excited she hadn't waited for the elevator, and had disappeared into the stairwell.
"We...we'd like to know," somebody said. Pops Kahunga turned towards Pops Moobly and, under his breath, said, "Good luck."
Pops Moobly stepped up to the front of the crowd and asked, "I don't suppose y'all know why Stephen Hawking had to reconsider his theory about how black holes work, do ya?"
The people in the hallway shook their heads. They didn't have to be afraid of confessing ignorance because they knew they were about to be taught an important lesson in physics.
"I'm not about to teach y'all a lesson in physics," Pops Moobly corrected them, "as important as it may be. Let's look at things a different way. You know what your body is made up of?"
"Snips and snails and puppy dog tails?" Melanie Brunchcoattes asked. She worked in sales.
"Aah..." Pops Moobly said.
"Bl...bl...bl...blood and bone and o...o...o...o...organs and tissue and s...s...s...s...stuff?" Charunder-Macharrundeira answered.
"Good," Pops Moobly enthused. "Not what I was looking for, but good. Go deeper. On a deeper level, what are our bodies made up of?"
The people in the group looked at each other, not sure where this was going. Charunder-Macharrundeira, though, was emboldened by having gotten a positive response from a Pops, so she suggested: "Atoms?"
"Atoms. Exactly. Very good," Pops Moobly told her. She beamed. Others in the group were jealously unimpressed, but Charunder-Macharrundeira didn't notice. "Now, there's a rule that says that matter cannot be created or destroyed. The amount of matter in the universe is a constant. This rule is so important, it is considered a law. But, what happens when we use the Dimensional PortalTM to send somebody to another universe?"
"They die?" somebody suggested.
"No."
"They turn into puppy dog's tails?" Brunchcoattes tried again.
"Child, you gotta learn to let go of an idea that doesn't work."
"Our u...u...u...u...universe l...l...l...l...loses the a...a...a...a...atoms and the other u...u...u....u...universe gains them?" Charunder-Macharrundeira asked. She was on fire for knowledge that day!
"Right again," Pops Moobly agreed. "Now, we can't have that. Strange...disturbances in the space-time continuum start happening when matter disappears in one universe and appears in another. We learned that the hard way back in the early days of the Alternate Reality News Service. Now, when we send a reporter into another universe, we bring back a more or less equal amount of material from the other universe."
"That's why we have so many sacks of potatoes in the back of the lab!" a young man at the back of the crowd had a eureka moment.
"That's exactly right," Pops Moobly informed him. The young man beamed at Charunder-Macharrundeira, who was unimpressed. "Now, to understand what has been happening, I need you to look at your hands."
The 23 people in the hallway who weren't Pops Moobly looked at their hands. Even Pops Kahunga looked at his hands, and he knew what was coming.
"Think about all of the different layers of skin in one finger," Pops Moobly bade them. "Then, imagine the muscles, the veins, the bones, the nerves. All of the intricate work in a single finger. Would you say that a potato is as complicated as a human finger?"
"No!" most of the people standing in the hallway answered.
"Well, there you go," Pops Moobly advised them. "We call that complexity information. And, it seems that there is a law of conservation of information, just as there is a law of conservation of mass/energy. If you put something as complex as a human being into another universe, you have to take something as complex out to keep the balance in both universes. Sending us all them Bob Smiths was the multiverse's way of righting the balance."
"What can we do?" somebody cried.
"Aww, now that we know what the problem is, the answer is simple," Pops Moobly assured him. "We just calculate how much information (as well as weight) a reporter contains, then bring something back to this universe that approximates that when we send them to another universe. I bet Pops Kahunga and I can do some rough calculations on our break to get the eggheads started." Looking at the group, he added: "Uhh, y'all can stop looking at your hands now."
Everybody sheepishly dropped their hands to their sides. They didn't all quite understand everything that the Pops had told them, but they were heartened by Pops Moobly's assurance that all would be well. A few questions were asked, autographs requested and, soon enough, the crowd dispersed.
Pops Moobly rolled his shoulders, working out a kink or two, and Pops Kahunga cracked his knuckles. "I should get back to my desk," Pops Moobly amiably said. "I reckon in no time there'll be some editing to do."
"And, where there's editing, janitorial services are required," Pops Kahunga agreed.
The two Pops nodded respectfully towards each other and parted.