Dr. Vostok mounted the stairs to the machine like a dais and addressed the assembled crowd: “My dear colleagues and members of the media,” he began, grinning as the crowd turned to face him before the chamber of the great machine. As they bumbled to their places, the physicist did his best to conjure a faraway facial expression, so as to appear the keeper of some great mystery, hidden for all time. The crowd gradually acknowledged the ritual and a hush came over the room. Dr. Vostok continued as enigmatically as he could:
“We are about to witness an event that our forebearers a mere twenty years ago could hardly have imagined. We stand on the verge of ending world hunger, of solving our global climate crisis, and of making any and all imaginable changes to our natural environment that we wish. This is a journey into the future!” He beamed at the resulting fanfare and took in what he assumed was admiration. He did deserve it, he thought. The crowd settled back to attentive gazes and the polite sipping of champagne.
“The future proper will have to wait because though my invention has been dubbed a ‘time machine’, its manipulation of time is merely a means to an end, an end which so happens to usher in a leap into the future so profound that it might as well be taken literally. I shall tell you, my distinguished guests and assembled media, what precisely my machine does by way of how it works. You see, we may all be familiar with Einstein’s theories of relativity from 100 years ago. One crucial aspect to Einstein’s insights was that there are consequences to the universe having a speed limit – the speed of light. What I have discovered is that there is a corollary limit – the speed of time – and consequences that follow. ‘What is the speed of time?’, you may ask. Well, you are doing it right now, you speed demons! What we experience as the normal passage of time has borne out to be the absolute limit beyond which no matter may proceed. This may seem paradoxical given what we know about time dilation, but the situation is indeed ordered, if a bit difficult to comprehend. Take the two observers of the famous twin time dilation thought experiment. If the twins travel at light speed in opposite directions, then we find that they still each observe the other to be traveling at light speed. There can be no double light speed. You can launch a light speed craft from another light speed craft and all observers will still observe all of them as traveling at light speed. So too with time travel; two observers launched in different directions in time will perceive each other as proceeding through time at the normal rate. Difficult to grasp, perhaps. What does change in both instances, however, – and this is my crucial insight – is the component of spacetime which we are not acting upon. In light speed travel, time dilates. In time travel, space dilates.” The hush of the crowd swelled to a murmur of tear-inducing awe and even a few pockets of shock at the realization of the implications. Dr. Vostok continued from his planned pregnant pause:
“Just as the twin who is launched in a near light speed rocket will find a much older twin when they return to the Earth, the twin who is launched through time will find a much larger twin when they return to the present. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I hope to show with this demonstration! With this ‘time machine’ we can manipulate space such that we can make the gigantic minute and the tiny gargantuan. This, my dear observers, is truly a leap into the future.”
The crowd erupted in applause, as pleased to hear shared confirmation of their own adulation as to hear the news of apparently world-changing technology. To a chorus of “oohs”, “aaahs”, and other positively brilliant utterances of praise (I assure you), Dr. Vostok lifted for the gawking faces of the audience an extremely small charcuterie board on his forefinger and proceeded to place it on the floor of the machine’s chamber before closing the door. As he smiled to face the flashing of the cameras, finger poised over the button, he waved and said, “Hors d’oeuvres anyone?” He pushed the button.
Some time later:
It did seem strange to Morphar when its sublime consciousness arrived at the Sol system, beckoned by suddenly curtailed radio transmissions sent three million years previous, to find such a strangely oblong and smelly planetary object in the third orbit from the star. The stoic being took samples, which it regretted, added a line to its tally marks, and left for the next system.
© 2021, Philip Glaser
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