Dr. Vostok climbed the stairs of the great machine and turned about on the top landing to address the expectant crowd: “My dear colleagues and members of the media,” he began, grinning and hoping dearly that he was striking an impressive figure before his machine for the cameras. As the assembled bumbled to face him, 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 distinguished crowd gradually acknowledged the doctor’s strained jaw as an effort to set the mood and obliged its role by modulating the din to a hush. Dr. Vostok continued as enigmatically as he could:
“We are about to witness an event that our forebears 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 the natural environment that we wish. This is a journey into the future!” He beamed at the resulting applause. He did deserve it, he thought. The crowd settled back to attentive gazes and 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 keep you in suspense no further, my distinguished guests and assembled media, about what precisely my machine does by way of how it works.
“You see, we are all familiar with Einstein’s theories of relativity from two hundred 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!” Dr. Vostok mugged for laughter. The crowd forced a chuckle and he lapped it up.
“But seriously folks, 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 both 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 relativistic space travel, time dilates. In relativistic time travel, space dilates!”
In the shadow of Dr. Vostok’s revelation, a number of gasps and exclamations emitted from the crowd. The hush gradually swelled to a clamor as the audience struggled to wrap its head around the good doctor’s incredible declaration. As the implications started to dawn, and the various untenured professors in the crowd shuffled for the exits (surely a coincidence), Dr. Vostok resumed from his planned pregnant pause:
“Just as the twin who is launched in a near light speed rocket will find a much older twin on their return to the Earth, the twin who is launched forward 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’ I can manipulate space such as to make the gigantic minute and the tiny gargantuan. This, my dear observers, is truly a leap into the future.”
The crowd erupted in applause, perhaps more pleased to hear confirmation of their own intelligence as to hear the news of world-shaking technology.
Framed by the great machine’s chamber, Dr. Vostok began his performance in earnest. Atop a velvet-covered table at his side, he lifted a metallic lid off a tray, and held up for the gawking faces of the crowd an extremely small charcuterie board. With tweezers, he placed it on his forefinger and turned about to step into the mouth of the great machine and place the tiny selection of meat and cheese on the floor of the machine’s chamber. He stepped back out and sealed the door to the machine. As turned to face to face the flashing of the cameras, finger poised over a winking red button, he smiled and said, “Hors d’oeuvres anyone?” He pushed the button. A great flash enveloped the room. Then utter darkness.
Some eons later:
Morphar, the sublime consciousness, finally arrived at the Sol system, beckoned by a suddenly curtailed radio transmission sent three million years previous. It seemed strange to Morphar to find such a peculiarly shaped planet in the third orbit from the star. The stoic being landed upon the planet, was overcome by the smell of Brie far past its prime, and so departed without delay to the next system.
© 2021 by Philip Glaser is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0