links between the multiple bodies simultaneously occupied by some characters. Other devices Similar devices are present in the works of numerous others, such as Frank Herbert and Philip Pullman, who called his a lodestone resonator. Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer series posited an instantaneous communication device powered by rare "Black Crystal" from the planet Ballybran. Black Crystals cut from the same mineral deposit could be "tuned" to sympathetically vibrate with each other instantly, even when separated by interstellar distances, allowing instantaneous telephone-like voice and data communication. Similarly, in Gregory Keyes' series The Age of Unreason, "aetherschreibers" use two-halves of a single "chime" to communicate, aided by scientific alchemy. While the speed of communication is important, so is the fact that the messages cannot be overheard except by listeners with a piece of the same original crystal. Stephen R. Donaldson, in his Gap cycle, proposed a similar system, Symbiotic Crystalline Resonance Transmission, clearly ansible-type technology but very difficult to produce and limited to text messages. In the story "With Folded Hands" (1947), by Jack Williamson, instant communication and power transfer through interstellar space is possible with something referred to as rhodomagnetic waves. In Ivan Yefremov's 1957 novel Andromeda Nebula, a device for instant transfer of information and matter is made real by using "bipolar mathematics" to explore use of anti-gravitational shadow vectors through a zero field and the antispace, which enables them to make contact with the planet of Epsilon Tucanae. In Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality novels and stories, interplanetary and interstellar communication is normally relayed from planet to planet, presumably at superluminal speed for each stage (at least between solar systems) but with a cumulative delay. For urgent communication there is the "instant message", which is effectively instantaneous but very expensive. In Howard Taylor's web comic series Schlock Mercenary, superluminal communication is performed via the hypernet, a galaxy-spanning analogue to the internet. Through the hypernet, communications and data are routed through nanoscopic wormholes, using conventional electromagnetic signals. See also Bell test experiments Delayed-choice quantum eraser Light Near and far field Quantum teleportation SETI Institute Synchronicity Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory References Physics in fiction