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A time traveler's tale |
| Call me Nathan. I'm lost in time. |
| I’m still sitting around in the Pleistocene waiting for Haakon to show up. All this wating has at least one advantage. It gives me time to think. Did I mention I found a library hidden here in the refuge? It’s not got books and journals in the normal sense. They’re all here in electronic form, in readable files on the refuge mainframe. Apparently, these e-books are common in the future timeline that built this place. They give me a chance to study the physics of the future that built this. Back in my Iowa, I was a physics graduate student. I’d even built a time machine of sorts. I was able to send a stream of electrons so that they arrived at a receiver before they were sent. The effect preceded the cause. That’s a big deal, since all the physics I knew depended on local realism. That’s what the books from the alternative future that built this refuge calls it. They even have something called Bell’s Inequality that proves that local realism is wrong, or at least lets them construct experiments to prove that it can’t be true. Personally, I agree with Einstein. The moon is still there even when no one is looking at it. Anyway, the math for this Bell theorem/inequality is beyond what I learned in my timeline. But I don’t need to do the math or devise fancy experiments. I’ve got my personal experience with time travel. And that experience alone tells me what I learned was wrong. Here’s the thing. Everything moves. The solar system is moving in an orbit about the galactic core. In fact, it's moving pretty fast: about 515,000 miles per hour. This means that from 1066 to 1963, the solar system moved 0.73 light years. Thus, when Charlotte Corbet kidnapped me and we jumped from 1963 to 1066, we not only "instantly" traveled in time, in order to stay "on earth," we must have also "instantly" traveled that same distance in space, 0.73 light years. Of course, what "instantly" means in a universe of time travel is a question in and of itself. On the other hand, relativity pretty much erases the notion of simultaneity, so time travel or not, we know time doesn't follow intuitive rules. But it gets worse. I mean, I’ve been jumping back and forth between here, 1.4 million years in the past, and my friend Max’s place in 2022. Every time I make that trip, I’m not just traveling in time. I’m travelling over 1000 light years from where Earth is now, in the Pleistocene, to where it will be in 2022. It follows that a time machine is also a faster-than-light drive. That started me thinking about the energy required to make those jumps. In addition to the movement around the galactic core, Earth rotates. That imparts angular momentum on me, the traveler. So, when I jumped from London to New Mexico, I should have flown off into the atmosphere and burned up. Somehow the timepiece adjusted for the angular momentum, too. Then there’s the whole issue of multiple timelines. I mean, those are implicit in quantum mechanics, at least in my timeline. We called it the “multiple worlds” explanation of quantum mechanics. But the timepieces seem to keep track of that, too, and take you forward along the timestream where they originated. So, either these little gizmos bank a lot more power in them than seems possible, or something else is going on. Maybe they dig a furrow through spacetime when we jump to the past, and that opens a least-energy path when we jump back to the future. I know that Corbet also told me that her future and mine both existed, but we could only see each other in the past that we shared, before they split apart. Apparently, that split happened sometime in 1933, in the Bloomsbury district of London. I don’t recall anything critical in my world from that time and place, so it must have been something that happened in hers. Thing is, something happened, maybe the same something, in Haakon’s timeline then, too. That means that we can meet in the past, before 1933, but afterwards, our worlds are split apart. The only reason I met Haakon in the first place, in my 2018, was that his timepiece had been damaged when a Viking lance struck it back in 1066. But that’s another story. Before this all started, I thought I’d figured out time travel by measuring nanosecond differences in electron transmission and reception times. Turns out, I was wrong. I didn’t understand time travel at all. I’ve been waiting for Haakon for about six months now. I hope Charlotte didn’t sent me on a wild chicken chase. I’ll have to think about that. Sometimes, time to think is better than other times. |
| I’m still sitting around in the Pleistocene waiting for Haakon to show up. All this wating has at least one advantage. It gives me time to think. Did I mention I found a library hidden here in the refuge? It’s not got books and journals in the normal sense. They’re all here in electronic form, in readable files on the refuge mainframe. Apparently, these e-books are common in the future timeline that built this place. They give me a chance to study the physics of the future that built this. Back in my Iowa, I was a physics graduate student. I’d even built a time machine of sorts. I was able to send a stream of electrons so that they arrived at a receiver before they were sent. The effect preceded the cause. That’s a big deal, since all the physics I knew depended on local realism. That’s what the books from the alternative future that built this refuge calls it. They even have something called Bell’s Inequality that proves that local realism is wrong, or at least lets them construct experiments to prove that it can’t be true. Personally, I agree with Einstein. The moon is still there even when no one is looking at it. Anyway, the math for this Bell theorem/inequality is beyond what I learned in my timeline. But I don’t need to do the math or devise fancy experiments. I’ve got my personal experience with time travel. And that experience alone tells me what I learned was wrong. Here’s the thing. Everything moves. The solar system is moving in an orbit about the galactic core. In fact, it's moving pretty fast: about 515,000 miles per hour. This means that from 1066 to 1963, the solar system moved 0.73 light years. Thus, when Charlotte Corbet kidnapped me and we jumped from 1963 to 1066, we not only "instantly" traveled in time, in order to stay "on earth," we must have also "instantly" traveled that same distance in space, 0.73 light years. Of course, what "instantly" means in a universe of time travel is a question in and of itself. On the other hand, relativity pretty much erases the notion of simultaneity, so time travel or not, we know time doesn't follow intuitive rules. But it gets worse. I mean, I’ve been jumping back and forth between here, 1.4 million years in the past, and my friend Max’s place in 2022. Every time I make that trip, I’m not just traveling in time. I’m travelling over 1000 light years from where Earth is now, in the Pleistocene, to where it will be in 2022. It follows that a time machine is also a faster-than-light drive. That started me thinking about the energy required to make those jumps. In addition to the movement around the galactic core, Earth rotates. That imparts angular momentum on me, the traveler. So, when I jumped from London to New Mexico, I should have flown off into the atmosphere and burned up. Somehow the timepiece adjusted for the angular momentum, too. Then there’s the whole issue of multiple timelines. I mean, those are implicit in quantum mechanics, at least in my timeline. We called it the “multiple worlds” explanation of quantum mechanics. But the timepieces seem to keep track of that, too, and take you forward along the timestream where they originated. So, either these little gizmos bank a lot more power in them than seems possible, or something else is going on. Maybe they dig a furrow through spacetime when we jump to the past, and that opens a least-energy path when we jump back to the future. I know that Corbet also told me that her future and mine both existed, but we could only see each other in the past that we shared, before they split apart. Apparently, that split happened sometime in 1933, in the Bloomsbury district of London. I don’t recall anything critical in my world from that time and place, so it must have been something that happened in hers. Thing is, something happened, maybe the same something, in Haakon’s timeline then, too. That means that we can meet in the past, before 1933, but afterwards, our worlds are split apart. The only reason I met Haakon in the first place, in my 2018, was that his timepiece had been damaged when a Viking lance struck it back in 1066. But that’s another story. Before this all started, I thought I’d figured out time travel by measuring nanosecond differences in electron transmission and reception times. Turns out, I was wrong. I didn’t understand time travel at all. I’ve been waiting for Haakon for about six months now. I hope Charlotte didn’t sent me on a wild chicken chase. I’ll have to think about that. Sometimes, time to think is better than other times. |
| I’m back. It’s been eighteen days for me back in the Pleistocene, still waiting for Haakon. Meantime, I’ve been learning more about this place. For example, it has a basement. Who knew? I also found access to the second floor which has all the guards. Oh, I didn’t tell you about those yet, did I? Charlotte Corbett was the one who called them “guards,” but they are really an automated defense system to keep predators away from the shelter. Who is Charlotte, you ask? Well, she’s a Timekeeper, but I haven’t really figured her out beyond that. On the one hand, she’s so cold she could freeze nitrogen with a glance. She has raven-black hair, skin whiter than Ivory soap, and lithe, panther-like muscles. She told me she was born in 1058 but went to culinary school in 2312. I’ve already told my 21st century friend Max most of what I know about her, so you could ask him. She’s the reason I’ve got that saber-tooth scar I mentioned. Anyway, back to the guards. Some of them are versions of what Charlotte called “needle guns.” I swear, they look like Buck Rogers ray guns. At first, I thought they must be high-energy lasers, but now I think they must be some form of plasma weapon. How that that to fit into a hand-held device, I have no idea. But here in the refuge, they are mounted in roof-top turrets and are a first-line defense against animal incursions into area around the refuge. Just yesterday, for example, some herbivores lumbered out of the grassland on the other side of the stream that runs near the patio. Besides drinking water, a couple of cubs started splashing each other midstream. They must have crossed some invisible line, because a beam of light flashed and nipped them on the nose, one after the other. They bleated, and fled back to their mother. I know from experience that if they hadn’t retreated, the beams would have turned lethal and turned them into instant, smoking barbecue. I’m told a second line of defense involves hummingbird-sized flying bots with razor-sharp blades. A dozen of those can shred even something as large as a saber tooth in seconds. Good thing, too. Charlotte told me they were what saved me from becoming tiger snack. There were other weapons on the second floor, too, along with manual controls. No instructions, though. I decided to trust the programming. It saved me once. It would do it again if needed. Oh, here’s another thing. There were consumables in the kitchen. Things like milk and eggs, but also energy drinks, flour, sugar, and other supplies. The containers all had countdown tags on them that told you the number of days to their expiration date. The coffee was due to expire in less than a week, and I’d resolved to take some of Max’s when I went back uptime to load to my blog. Turns out, the refuge is on some kind of automated resupply program. When I woke yesterday morning, there was a palette of supplies in the entry hall. There were pre-printed instructions addressed to the “current occupant of Refuge 172.12.16.03” giving instructions on disposing of expired supplies and loading current delivery. The palette itself had a countdown tag that said a logistics officer would arrive to check on the status of the refuge if the seal on the palette remained unbroken. By the time I saw it, I had eight hours and change before I needed to break the seal and keep my unauthorized presence private. I wonder what would have happened if I’d not broken the seal, if the countdown timer expired and I never touched the thing? Presumably, the palette would have then sent some kind of signal uptime to the people who sent it here, and they would then follow up by sending someone to check it out. So, I wondered, are they sitting around for eight more hours, waiting to see if the signal gets sent? If it were me, that’s not how I’d design it. Suppose I’d fallen and broken a leg or something else had gone wrong and I needed help. They have time machines, so they can decide when the signal arrives. If I were the logistics officer and the seal was unbroken, I want to check on the shelter as soon as possible. So the sensible thing would be to have an unbroken seal send a message back to the instant uptime when the palette was sent. When the “unbroken seal” message arrives, they can appear right away and check things out, with no delay at the refuge end. Time travel is full of these reverse-lef-twist logic things. When the effect can precede the cause, logic gets snarled. Oh, I found a schematic of the refuge in the basement. I’ll add that to the blog, along with a pic of the veldt taken from the deck of the refuge. See https://tempusviator.me/photos/ Well, that’s all for now. Still no Haakon, and I’ve now been waiting over three weeks my time. |
| Waiting for Haakon. That’s what I should call this blog. Like the Becket play, but, you know, interesting. Anyway, a week has gone by here in the Pleistocene. Still no Haakon. I’m going back to 2022 soon to post this to my blog. Then I’ll come back here. I don’t want to miss Haakon if he comes here looking for me. When he comes. Writing things down does help. It’s kind of like I’m talking to you. It’s better than sitting here, alone, twiddling my thumbs while waiting. You might wonder where I’m at. You already know I’m over a million years before the common era. I said earlier that I was in Abiquiu, New Mexico because that’s what the plaque on the wall says. It’s even got a replica of a painting by Georgia O’Keefe of the Abiquiu Mountains. However, when I checked the coordinates, it turns out I’m not precisely where the town of Abiquiu will be built in your—and my—timeline. Instead, I’m a bit south, smack on top of a what will be a volcanic eruption about fifty thousand years before Abiquiu will be founded. I’m guessing that the Timekeepers built this shelter on top of a future volcano so that the eruption would obliterate any trace of its existence. They’re always thinking ahead, worrying about what they call Deviations. What a load of crap. But that’s another story, and more complicated. It took me a long time to figure that one out. Back to this place. Haakon called it a refuge, and he implied he’d visited here before as a tourist. He promised to show me cute little baby saber-tooth tiger cubs. I think I’ll pass. The last time I saw a saber-tooth, it gave me the scar that now circles my torso, spine to belly button. Thank chaos or whatever for the nanodocs Haakon had injected in my bloodstream the week before. Back to this place. It’s set up like an ultra-modern hideaway. It’s got big glass windows looking out on a meandering stream and a grassy veldt, polished black marble floors, and plain white walls. It’s shaped like a cross, with an entry hall for time travelers in the middle. One wing is a lounge with windows on three sides, a patio, and a big stone fireplace. That’s where I’m at right now, watching the sun set. Another wing is a modern kitchen, including a walk-in freezer with enough food to last four people at least a year. The third wing is a bedroom with four king-sized beds and a luxurious bathroom. It’s also got a closet stocked with casual, one-size-fits-all unisex clothes for men or women. I’ll pass on the geeky sweat-suit attired look, thank you very much. The final leg is a control room for the heavy-duty time machine housed in the refuge. I have no idea how to use it. I don’t even have the required password. Thanks to Nel, what I do have is a mini-timepiece pre-set to bring me here. Given a password, time, and an instruction manual, I’m sure I could figure out the controls on the bigger time machine in the refuge. Meantime, I keep the timepiece Nel gave me hanging on a chain around my neck. It looks like a Celtic cross until I swipe it to bring up the holographic controls. It’s also easier to figure out than the big one. That’s’ how I met my friend Max, and how I came to write this blog in your timeline. But that, too, is another story, for another blog entry. For now, I’m going uptime to load this to my blog. Then I’ll jump back here, to the second after I left, and continue waiting. I’ll write more next week. |
| Abiquiu, New Mexico 22 September 1,148,611 BCE Call me Nathan. I grew up in the USA, but not the one you know. You've never heard of President Le May or the Portugal Missile crisis. You think timekeepers are officials at basketball games. If only you knew the truth. I've seen saber-tooth tigers in the Pleistocene. I was there when the Vikings sacked York in 1066. I met Haakon, the love of my life, on a college campus in an Iowa that doesn't exist here, in your timeline. I lost him on a London street in 1933. I'm here tell you my story, even though I'm sure you won't believe me. No sane person would. Time bifurcates. Quantum mechanics is all the evidence you need. Time travel exists. I'm all the evidence you need. We are entangled, you, and I. Sometime not so long ago, spacetime split. Your world went one way, and mine another. It was my good luck that a freak accident sent Haakon across the gap to my world, where we met. Bad luck sent me to the Pleistocene, where I am now. Why am I here? That's a longer story. I'll post more later this week. Nathan Hilbert |
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