Tim Godle sighed, walking around the house to the back. He went to the back door, and ran his hand across the wall to the right, about a foot above the concrete floor. When he found the crack in the wall, he took a key out. He unlocked the back door and went inside, sighing once again.
Tim was a 14 year-old kid coming home from school. His younger brother, Matthew, had forgotten to leave the garage door unlocked again. The emergency key had been placed there after his third day of school, when he was stuck outside for almost an hour.
That was months ago. Now it was almost Winter Break, though he had no plans. His father had died when he was 7 years old. His mother was a teacher, and she often stayed after school for tutorials. He always got home at 5:00, while his mother would usually get home at 6:00. His brother got home at 5:10 or so.
But today, he came home at 5:30. “What kept you, Mat?”
“Look at this!” Matthew replied. Tim was making a tower of cards. He carefully put another one on, and went over to see, knowing that each step he took was crucial to the tower. When one of the cards shifted, he paused a moment and resumed on tiptoe.
It was a red rock, the size of a basketball, its shape half of that. On the flat side of the hemi-sphere was a tiny circle. It seemed that red wasn’t its natural color, but that it had been covered in lava, since its surface was somewhat rough.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Mat. “I just found this mound in the ground, and then discovered that it was entirely separate from the soil below.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I just found it on the ground when walking home.” He looked up at Tim. “It’s probably nothing, anyway.”
“Ok, just put it next to the door in the back; we’ll show it to mom afterward.” Tim went back to his tower, but he forgot to tiptoe. “Dang! Now I have to do it all over again!”
After another half hour, their mother came home. Her name was Sarah. She always came home with her big smile, almost screeching the words, “mom’s home!” Today, she didn’t say anything, but just went to bed.
Ten minutes later, Matthew pointed out that mom hadn’t appeared. “Isn’t she supposed to be home by now?”
Tim looked around. “Mom? Are you home?”
“What?”
“We have something to tell you!”
“What is it?”
“Come here!” She came in, yawning.
“I had a long day. What do you want?”
Tim looked at Mat. “Can you get the rock?”
“Sure, your majesty,” he muttered, and left. A moment later, he had the hemi-sphere in his hand. “Look at it.”
“It looks like some kind of weird rock. Wait, what’s that?” She pointed at the tiny circle etched on the flat side.
“We have no idea what the rock as a whole is, so how would we know what one of its features is?” Tim replied.
“It’s a miniscule circle,” said Mat.
“Don’t you think we can tell that?”
“She asked what it was; that’s what we know of it as of now.”
Tim looked at it. “Wait, what does it feel like?”
“Like the rest of the rock, I’m sure,” replied Mat.
“You mean you haven’t touched it already?”
“Correct.”
Tim looked at it very carefully, and then assumed it was safe.
He touched the circle.
Immediately, it opened up like a hatch, and boiling gas leaked out of it at such high speed that the rock bounded forward into Mat’s stomach, since he was holding it. He fell over, and the rock shot past him, but slowed down almost immediately, because the circle had closed up again. Miraculously, the house was still in one piece. In fact, it seemed as though the gas had literally disappeared.
“What was that?” Tim said, looking up at Sarah. Mat was out, and it was now up to the two of them either to get rid of the rock, or figure out what it was. “Ok, I’m not touching the hatch again. Now what?”
“Apparently, the circle is filled with magma. That would explain the red color as a result of previous encounters, in which the magma somehow landed back on the rock as lava.”
“We have to get Mat to a hospital, don’t we?”
“He isn’t injured.” She bent down and put her hand over his mouth. “His air path is fine.”
“I’ve got to show this to my friends,” Tim muttered under his breath.
“What’s that?” Sarah said harshly.
“Nothing,” he answered quickly, hoping he wouldn’t sweat. “How fast was it going, anyway?”
“I don’t know; I’ll have to investigate.”
Tim continued to look at the rock in awe. “It was definitely going fast. I only saw the beginning and end; I didn’t see what happened in between. How could Mat be ok?”
“I know it’s a miracle; you don’t have to tell me that,” said his mother.
“Can I have the rock tomorrow?” Tim pleaded.
“You aren’t looking for trouble, are you?”
“No,” he lied immediately.
“Then you may, but don’t tell your friends what happened!”
“Fine, whatever you say.”
The next day, Tim took it to school, and he carried it around classes. When everyone asked him about the rock, he replied, “My brother’s too curious for my family’s good.” It was quite true; his brother had brought home all kinds of weird shaped rocks and sticks and seeds and plants, and just about everything that existed. But he had never brought something quite as weird or dangerous as this rock. At lunch, Tim sat next to his friends.
“See you got yourself a rock,” said one of them.
“Yep.”
“Does it do anything magical?” They snickered.
“Yes, it-” Suddenly, somebody grabbed hold of his mouth, and dragged his head out of the cafeteria. He looked up, and had a long enough glance to know that this was a fairly old woman. She took his hands, and continued to lug him out of the building. Then she released her grip, and he saw that she was none other than his own mother.
“What were you doing? I asked you not to tell them what happened!” She was looking furious. But Tim hardly noticed her face; he had noticed that her purse seemed to have a bulging rectangular shape, as if she had stuffed a book in there… “Tell me, what were you doing?”
“I was,” he said, realizing her anger for the first time, “um, I was going to lie?” She grabbed him on the wrist and took him in her car. Her face still stern as ever, she removed her purse from her shoulder. Tim, curious as he was about what was in the purse, chose this moment to say, “Mom, I do have school, you know.”
“Oh, please, that doesn’t matter anymore.”
What? How could she say something like that, being the person she was? “I don’t-”
“You’ll understand momentarily,” Sarah interrupted, reaching into her purse. She took out a book titled:
Special Relativity:
The Time Contraction
“We’re going to have to measure the speed of that rock,” she said, gesturing the rock that he had miraculously managed to keep within his clutch.
“I have a friend who can help us,” said Sarah. They were now on the road, exceeding the speed limit.
“Um, Mom? Do you know how fast you’re going?”
“Enjoy it; there are some speed limits that are impossible to exceed, forget ticket.”
“What? I don’t understand; have you lost your mind?”
“Nope, I just found a way to get a better life.” She looked at Tim. “If that rock can go fast enough, we can take a one-way trip to the best place in the universe known to man.”
He was still confused. Apparently, it showed on his face, because his mother said:
“The future.”
All of the sudden, his stomach plummeted. He could think of two problems off the top of his head: How is it possible with modern technology to travel through time? And how can she be so sure that the future is a better place?
It was obvious her friend was a scientist at first sight. After they all shook hands, the scientist asked Sarah, “Has he seen the book?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Excuse me, I meant has he read the conclusion chapter?”
“No, he hasn’t,” she said, throwing Tim the book. He looked in the table of contents, and found that the conclusion chapter was the last. He flipped to it. It said that when one approaches the speed of light, time slows down, that is, an observer that is ‘stationary’ (motion is relative) would observe the person who is in motion’s watch and everything he does to be happening in slow motion. It also said that the scales are so low that even 50% of the speed of light isn’t very effective, but if you were going fast enough, you’d be able to take a one-way trip to the future. Also, an object is shortened in the direction of its motion, and the speed of light is a speed nothing in the universe can exceed.
“Do you actually mean-?”
“Yes,” said Sarah. “We will measure the speed and do the math, and then choose whether it’s worth it based on the amount of time that we would experience in the trip.”
“But this is crazy; surely it won’t be going fast enough! Do you realize how fast light travels? It would be a miracle if it went 1% the speed of light!”
“I know, but we have to try it out if we want at least some chance; I know you aren’t any happier with the way things have been going the last 7 years than I am.”
“All right,” said the scientist. “I shall measure the speed with this,” he said, taking out a rather fancy tool. “This is able to measure the high speeds of distant galaxies, and other things that travel fast enough for relativity to be of importance.”
They were standing in a clear field. Tim Godle touched the hatch again. The rock blew off several feet, and then landed.
“It hit a top speed of .7% the speed of light!” Strangely, he was excited.
“Do you realize that that speed is too slow for relativity?” Tim said, in surprise of the scientist’s ecstasy.
“You’re going to be hitching a ride on the machine. Your hands won’t leave the hatch, so the hatch will stay open, and the rock will continue to accelerate. Within a couple minutes, you’ll be going significantly fast!”
“A couple minutes?” Tim had never heard of such a long time travel trip. “No science fiction story has machines that take quite that long to travel.”
“Writers need best-sellers; scientists need facts, and the facts are that best sellers don’t use time machines that take forever, while facts do. Nobody wants to read about a time machine that takes some time to travel through time.”
“Ok, I just got one question,” Tim said. “What?”
“I invoked the word ‘time,’ didn’t I?” Tim nodded, hoping the scientist had said what he thought he had said. “There are two measures of time – personal time, and external time. External time always flows; everyone may not agree on how it flows, but they all agree that it flows. Personal time is one’s own specific perception of time; while they all agree that external time flows, they disagree on how it flows. How it flows is a personal experience. The differences are very minute in our everyday world, because we never travel fast, but in a world where people always travel near the speed of light, it would be obvious that personal time and external time are two different things.”
He nodded, still not getting it, but taking for granted that it all made sense. His mother said, “So could we leave right now?”
“Certainly. Just point the hatch down, so you’ll go up instead of into any trees in the distance, and hold on to the rock, and then all you got to do is touch the hatch!”
“It’s so simple,” Tim muttered in sarcasm. “Momma can stay right here in this cold world, and I’ll leave.”
“NO!”
“Why not?” Tim said in surprise.
“I want to go too!”
“I don’t see how.” They couldn’t have both of them holding onto the rock and the hatch for a significant amount of time. “I’ll have to go alone,” was Tim’s last words in the year of 2011. He would try a century.
He took the rock, pointed the hatch downward so it was like a dome, and held on. When he was certain that his arms were wrapped securely around this dome, his hands crept toward the center. Soon, he felt a blowing gash of magma, and was pressed onto the rock with incredible force as the rock shot upward. Someday, he told himself, I will understand why the rock goes up when magma goes down. That was the beginning of his scientific life.
Tim Godle waited what seemed like a long time before he decided to move his fingers away from the hatch. He fell down, and as he did so, he began to wonder if the fast speed that came from his falling down would cause time to slow. The book had said nothing about gravitational effects on the time contraction. But now he realized he was going fast, and his face would splat on the ground if he didn’t put his fingers back on the hatch.
He decided to wait until he was near the ground. Then he touched it very briefly, and safely landed. He suddenly realized he wasn’t alone. There were many other people doing exactly the same thing he was, with the same rocks. They were all laughing for joy.
“Don’t you care about the effects of special relativity on time?” Tim asked.
“What, are you crazy? Our technology is at its peak; nobody grows old or dies, it’s impossible to commit a crime, and nothing too significant could possibly happen within the next couple centuries. I thought everyone knew that!” The person who had answered was a man wearing a black suit. That’s funny, he thought. It’s never near this simple to learn some information about where you are in the science fiction books. “I saw you going peak speed. What year are you from?”
He had seen me coming from the present! “2011.”
“Whoa, man, that’s centuries ago! It’s been against the law for anyone to bring any modern technology back that far for a long time. Then again, when the law came out, modern radar hadn’t been built, so it was easier to break the law.”
“What year is it?”
“It is 2468.”
“It seems a little too soon for technology to be at its peak.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that it would take millennia after the discovery of such useful power for it to be put to full use.”
“Not really, they just had to figure out what was possible mathematically; they managed to complete the calculations of general relativity in 2046, and after that, computers got tons better. Calculations became a cinch. They were able to figure out the cheapest way of making crime impossible. Relativity and quantum mechanics were finally unified in 2286 into a theory of everything. All that was left was figuring out how to apply this TOE to our everyday lives, and the perfect medication was created. With today’s technology, it’s impossible to die.”
“Ok, I just got one question.”
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“You must be familiar with physics; you understood that special relativity states that time slows down when you approach the speed of light.”
“No, actually, I’m not familiar with physics, I just learned about special relativity.”
“So, 2011. You lived in Einstein’s time, huh?”
“No, a century after.”
“Close enough. Guess how old I am.”
“A century?”
“Two.”
“Two hundred years?”
“That is correct. I was born 2267, so it’s almost two centuries.”
“But then how-”
“In 2286, the theory of everything was found. I was nineteen. I wasn’t too sick to preserve; in fact, I was quite healthy.”
“So what’s it like to learn about Einstein’s effect on science?” Tim asked.
“What he did compared to what we have today is probably the equivalent of what Newton is to you.”
“Newton did nothing; all he did was claimed that apples fall to the earth and planets orbit the sun.”
“He also had the three laws of motion. He created the basis of your modern science. Well, Einstein began to show how weird our universe was, so technically, he did create some form of a basis of our modern science. After him came quantum mechanics, and while that theory was extremely bizarre, it was still merely a beginning. After that, people realized that relativity and quantum mechanics were in conflict. Relativity describes massive objects, and quantum mechanics describes tiny spaces. You put the two together and a black hole forms. Since the two theories were in conflict, the mathematics of what happens in a black hole basically falls apart.
“So several theories of everything, which is a theory that predicts everything that happens in the universe, were suggested. All that were created before 2154 failed, because none of them encompassed another theory discovered that year. This new theory showed how bizarre our very own world was. Special relativity describes the bizarre facts of speed and time, and quantum mechanics described the tiny world of atoms. Neither world belonged to us. This new theory described how bizarre our very own world is. The predictions it makes are easily proved with household objects, and the results are too weird to describe.
“The first theory that encompassed all three theories in a TOE was almost immediately discarded as (beep). In the year 2280, an owner of a 745 computer, which was having problems, returned it to life. He had eventually realized that nothing that had ever been known of in the past had any way of predicting this problem, except for that one TOE that had long since been discarded.
“Further calculations showed that the theory did, in fact, predict not only the computer problem, but also every other mystery that had ever been discovered in the past. All that was left was to make a prediction, then verify it. It’s never enough for a theory to predict previous mysteries, because it might have been created based on the mysteries. It finally made one of the most bizarre predictions ever in the year 2286, and was almost immediately proved.”
“Wow, rough time the last few centuries,” Tim said. “What was the name of the TOE?”
“It’s called ‘quantum periole,’ like ‘quantum gravity,’ only the gravity part is replaced with the name of the perioles theory, which is the theory that describes how our world is bizarre.”
“And periole means…”
“It’s a 200 year-old language that’s pretty much dead. Perioles means frictional.”
“Can you – no, I don’t want…”
“Describe the theory? Sure.”
Special relativity is based on two fundamental assumptions – motion is relative and light goes at the same speed relative to everything. With these two assumptions, special relativity concludes that time slows down when one approaches the speed of light, and that one is shortened in the direction of his/her motion. It also concludes that the speed of light is a cosmic speed limit.
General relativity says that gravity is the warping of space, based on the equivalence principle, which says that gravity and acceleration create an indistinguishable force (falling makes one feel weightless, for example). High enough gravitational fields will show a significant slowing of time, so both space and time are warped. Black holes make time stop past the event horizon. Nothing can escape a black hole, not even light.
Quantum mechanics is based on the uncertainty principle, which says that you can’t know the precise location and velocity of a particle. The more you know about one, the less you know about the other. Also, there’s a wave-particle duality in the small atoms and subatomic particles. The wave function disappears when a particle hits a barrier, which would explain why nobody knew that there was a wave function in particles until then. Quantum mechanics says that it’s a game of chance at the fundamental level; when the wave hits the wall, it chooses a place on its wave that it wants to be on. Quantum mechanics affects our world in much the same way as special and general relativity do – on minute scales. It is possible for large objects to do some of the weird things that the tiny particles can do, but the probabilities are minute (probabilities of one going through a wall are tiny in the everyday world for quantum mechanics, but for the perioles theory, it’s perfectly normal).
The Perioles theory says that friction doesn’t always affect the motion of an object. Under specific circumstances, inertia retains its effect 100%. It also describes exactly how friction operates, based on a newly discovered force called nucalayer force, which is the cause of friction’s failure, as well as the force itself. Even though previous explanations were also able to understand friction, this one predicted failure on extreme scales, as well in specific circumstances. It also predicted more a more accurate form of friction. The Perioles theory also has a touch of chance, though this chance is much less obvious than that of quantum mechanics. Even so, experiments have successfully shown that it’s there. When you see the ‘frictional failure,’ you can see and hear the scraping effects, but you can also see that the object continuing to go in motion. Few realize when they think about what it would look like and where the barrier is. The barrier is nowhere to be found; it will go right through walls and all kinds of other things. While many consider this the most significant proof of Newton’s first law of motion ever, others would think of it more as proof that we are nowhere near the end of scientific exploration.
Quantum periole says that there is no fundamental particle, so quarks and electrons are made up of smaller particles, which are made up of smaller particles, and so on. While it is impossible to prove this, it is possible to see what effects this idea has on the universe. Extremely complex calculations have shown that if you drive the fundamental particle down smaller and smaller, there is a point at which gravity becomes a naturally occurring force. This theory actually began as quantum theories of particles, since it’s been discovered that one rarely gets anywhere with a TOE based on classical particles with quantum properties added. Calculations showed that quantum mechanics gets much simpler when there is an infinite line of smaller and smaller particles. In fact, it seems to transform quantum mechanics into a classical theory, and that is definitely saying something, since quantum mechanics had never before been thought of as classical. The way that quantum periole predicts the frictional failure is by showing that under these specific circumstances, the particles are still there, but since there is no fundamental particle, they appear to disappear. The reason for the appearance of friction is because it’s still rubbing away the significant existence of the particles.
It has been well known long before now that a TOE would not end scientific exploration; it would merely place a stable floor that cannot change; and with that we shall continue to build the pyramid, which has only just started.
Tim listened to all of this intently, hoping he would at least understand the basics, but it was very complex. At least he understood the basic conclusion of each theory. Now he had a new question. “What do you mean, the pyramid has only just begun being built?”
“Before, they were looking for the right bricks, the correct dimensions. Now that the bottom layer has been built, there is only one way to go—up. There may be more than one way to do it, which probably represents the randomness of quantum mechanics and the perioles theory, but there’s one basic way.”
“Why was quantum periole discarded at first?”
“It’s an infinite line of particles, that is, you can never fully understand it. Because there’s no fundamental particle, there has to be an infinite number of types of particles, and there’s no fully understanding that unless there’s a pattern, and quantum periole assumes that there isn’t any.”
“So it isn’t necessarily a TOE,” said Tim slowly.
“It’s as close to a TOE as one can get. Here’s a 450 or so year old writing.”
It was Stephen Hawking, who had written that there are three possibilities: there is a theory of everything, the universe can’t be predicted to a certain extent, or there is an infinite number of more and more accurate theories, but no perfect theory.
“The first one is what we’ve found—the theory of everything. The second one describes the unpredictability of it, in quantum mechanics and the perioles theory. The third one is what we need to do – start finding all those particles, because each individual particle is, in a sense, another more accurate theory,” said the man. “I’m sorry, have I introduced myself? My name is Rocintal. I was named after the one who discovered the nucalayer force.
Suddenly, Tim Godle saw something in the sky that looked like a comet. “That’s someone else coming from the past,” said Rocintal.
The thing seemed to approach ever so slowly. Perhaps the person was being much more careful about falling. Tim watched as the rock slowly came closer and closer, until he could see the hand repeatedly touching the hatch, and suddenly realized how familiar those hands looked. He looked up toward the face.
“Mom!”
“Yes,” she said, now landing. She looked exhausted. She fell over.
They decided to explore a bit when Sarah had awaken. Tim explained to her that the future was much too physical.
“What do you mean, physical?”
“They have a theory of everything that’s impossible to fully understand.”
“What’s a theory of everything?”
“It’s a theory that predicts everything,” answered Tim, hoping his mother wouldn’t begin asking questions to which he didn’t know the answer.
“But if you can’t fully understand it—“
“Yes, if it’s impossible to fully understand, it’s also impossible to fully predict,” interrupted Tim.
Rocintal was still with them, but he was no longer acting so physical. But now he butted in. “Quantum Periole isn’t fully mathematical. In fact, it’s mostly logic. Logically, chance will occur in the motion of particles when you cut down the fundamental particle further and further to infinity. Logically, there should be circumstances under which the particles lose their ‘existence’ since the total space they take up equals zero, and therefore friction fails. Logically, there should be a fairly simple way of preserving a body, like a human, for an eternity, since they don’t really exist; they don’t take up any space. The mathematics is merely a completion of the logic.”
Sarah goggled. “What?” Rocintal said. She continued to goggle.
“Since when is physics so complex?” Sarah muttered.
“Even Newtonian physics is pretty complex,” replied Rocintal. “Do you understand how one can conclude, using force = mass x acceleration, that acceleration results in a force that is equivalent to gravity, only in the opposite direction?” Now physics sounded really difficult. The most likely reason was that Rocintal had now introduced math to the scene.
“Nope,” said Sarah. “So you’re saying that physics has always been complex?”
“No, I’m saying that ever since Newton introduced a more accurate picture of physics, it’s been complex. Here,” he said, grabbing a book from a store. “Have a look at this.” Tim and Sarah both looked at it. It was titled ‘The Principia, by Isaac Newton.’ The book was a novel. “It’s mostly about gravity and other ideas; the three laws of motion are only briefly described, but then again, they’re only partially described. It would probably take a hundred pages to describe all of the phenomena that result directly from the laws of motion.”
Tim heard this distantly. Now that he knew what Rocintal’s point was about the laws of motion, he was curious about something far more important, as far as he was concerned. “Did you just steal that book from the store?”
“No, it’s just gotten tons easier to pay,” he replied. “All I had to do was make sure my finger was behind me so the camera from above could verify my fingerprint. I told you it’s impossible to commit a crime.”
“It is?” Sarah said, curious.
“All kinds of new technology have been introduced,” said Rocintal. “There are hundreds of satellites up there that see everything. The pixels have been shrunken to sizes small enough to see our toes.”
“And where is that camera from above?” Sarah said, looking behind her.
“It’s the satellite way above.”
“It can see our fingerprints too? Oh, my god.”
“It’s always watching us.”
Tim blinked. “Where’s Mat?”
“He,” she choked, “he, he, he, he, died.”
“Oh,” said Tim. “Yyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiippp-”
Sarah bawled before Tim could finish his moment of happiness.
“Oh, I’m sorry you’re sad about the death of an annoying 9 year-old,” said Tim. “I didn’t mean to make you upset,” he continued sarcastically.
“Hey, that’s not nice,” said Rocintal angrily. “Of course, I don’t really know what it’s like for a loved one to die.”
“He,” Sarah choked, “is my son! MY SON DIED BECAUSE A ROCK HIT HIM AT .7% THE SPEED OF LIGHT!”
“How could that be the reason?” Tim asked. “You yourself said he was ok.”
“Hundreds of other things that weren’t possible for me to check could have been wrong, and it turned out they were!” Sarah continued screeching.
“Are you talking about the RelaRock?” Rocintal asked. “That’s the high speed rock.”
“Yes,” said Tim. “My annoying little brother died because that whatchamacallit hit him in the stomach.”
“What’s a whatchama-”
“What’s that rock called again?”
“RelaRock. It’s been on TV for the last century.”
“It means I couldn’t pronounce or remember the name.”
“O… K…”
“Whatever,” said Timothy.
“This is my home,” said Rocintal. Tim noticed something familiar about the house. Then he saw something across the street that made his heart turn to vapor. The street sign was the very name on it that his street sign in 2011 had. He looked back at the house. The number was the same one that was on his 2011 house. Horror! Rocintal lived in his 2011 home 400 years later!
“And this is my bedroom,” concluded Rocintal ten minutes later. None of the inside was familiar at all, except for the shape of the rooms. But they had all been transformed into rooms of the future. The bed was certainly odd; it was more of a coffin.
“You sleep in that?” Tim said in disgust.
“Yeah, it was horrifying to me when I first learned of this new idea, but it’s actually pretty comfortable. Ever since I started using this at age 24, I’ve only been getting more and more refreshed each day, and each day I think I’m too refreshed for it to get any better.”
“Do you close it?”
“No, of course not! I thought they knew about how the human body needs air back then.”
“Yes, we do. In fact, I was thinking precisely that when I said that. How could you spend the night in that thing without air?”
“You don’t close it.”
All of the sudden, the coffin closed, and several other things happened, for example, the ground shook.
Suddenly, we heard sirens, and then:
“Attention, we’ve got you surrounded. Please come out and prepare for your doom.”
Outside, it was dark. In fact, it was dark enough to be night. The sun was gone. “We were talking about the doom of mankind just now,” said the police. “It was a bit of a joke in the scariest of times. Now, WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ALL OF THE STUFF THAT’S ORBITING THE EARTH?”
“Well,” said someone else who was in the car, “according to my calculations, that stuff should continue orbiting the earth.”
“That’s TOE calculations, right?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not necessary, sir.”
“Why not?” The police was now boiling with anger despite the fact that it had only been two seconds.
“Ok, I’ll make TOE calculations,” he muttered.
Ten seconds later, “The satellites will continue orbiting the earth.”
“What exactly will happen to us?”
“What exactly has happened?” Tim asked.
“The sun! It has disappeared!” The police shouted in agony. “At least our TOE has a good enough explanation for how that’s possible,” he muttered real fast.
“What?”
“Are you that new kid we saw coming in this house on radar earlier?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, you’re under arrest. You come from 2011, according to our files, and it’s against the law to-”
“Arrest anyone who has no way of knowing the law,” interrupted another officer, with a toothy grin.
“Oh,” the officer grumbled. “I really wanted to make an arrest right before doom.”
“You sound a bit too happy to be serious about this doom,” said Tim.
“Oh, do I? You have no idea what it’s like to live forever like this. I’m happy I’m about to die because I’m sick of life.”
“How are we going to die?” Tim wondered aloud.
“That’s what he’s figuring out,” said the police, pointing.
“We will be starved and darkened to death, sir.”
“Great,” grumbled the officer. “More suffering to go with death.”
“The alternative is suicide.”
“Right behind you, pal.”
“Same here!” Rocintal shouted.
“What? NOOO!” Tim screamed.
Before they knew it, Sarah and Tim were alone in the middle of the street.
“Are we going to-” Tim began, but his mother said,
“No, we won’t be stupid and commit suicide. Besides, we haven’t suffered the long life that they have.”
The two stayed out for a while, until finally, they decided to go inside. Rocintal had shown them briefly how the TV worked.
The turned it on to the news channel. It was a black screen that said newscast committed suicide. Most have done so as well. You should do it as well, because no one likes to suffer. That was all.
“Well, I guess we’re on our own,” said Sarah, when suddenly the black screen and all the words were erased, and a person sitting at a table took its place.
“I made calculations before committing suicide, and found that relative to the nearest star, we are approaching it at hundreds of times the speed of light, which is not a speed limit because under these particular circumstances, light is not reaching us enough for it to be calculated as going at the speed of light relative to us. Special Relativity doesn’t-”
The ground shook, and the camera in the studio moved. “Oh, sorry, I had to set it up because I’m the only one here,” said the man. He got up, repositioned the camera, and sat back down. “Anyway, we will be at the star in a few minutes, and it will be virtually the same brightness as seen from here as our former sun was.”
“It’s a miracle,” said Sarah, turning off the TV. “Wait, how is it possible that we can exceed the cosmic speed limit?”
“Whatever, as long as we’re saved, I’m fine,” said Tim
Ten minutes later, they decided to go out and see if the new sun had come. It had. They went around town. Nobody was there. It was a complete disaster. Everywhere they went nobody accompanied them. They were alone in a world that they barely understood.
Eventually they found a non-vacant store. The occupier was at the register, ears suddenly perked up at the sight of customers. “Well, hello, may we—I serve you?”
“Yes, you can explain to me why we were able to exceed the speed of light,” said Sarah.
“I believe we have a few books on special relativity,” said the apparently new storekeeper. “Ah, here they are.”
“No, I want you to explain how it’s possible that we are exceeding the speed of light.”
“I have no idea. All I know is that new sun is going to be sufficient for life to continue. It’s a miracle that we’re at the right distance, right speed-”
“Wait, Newton’s law of inertia says that we should still be going at hundreds of times the speed of light!”
“I’m just telling you what I know, and what I know isn’t that,” said the storekeeper.
“I thought you said this world is too physical,” Sarah said to Tim.
“Maybe not everyone knows about physics. In fact, it’s quite possible that we happened to run into someone who knew about physics, and not everyone’s required to know about-”
“Knows about physics, knows about physics, stop repeating knows about physics.”
“Shut up!” Shouted the storekeeper. “I do know something. It’s something to do with the fact that we aren’t being showered with electromagnetic waves.”
“What are-”
“No idea, but it must have something to do with Maxwell’s electromagnetism. He created the theory of electromagnetism.”
“Wait,” said Tim. Now he was remembering stuff from school that he had never remembered before. “Maxwell didn’t create electromagnetism. He unified it.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“He unified electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism, and his theory had something to do with-”
“Light!” Sarah cried. “It’s because we aren’t being showered with light that we can exceed the cosmic speed limit!”
“Really?” Tim asked. “How could—wait, I remember Rocintal told me that one of the fundamental assumptions of special relativity is that light goes at the same speed relative to everything!”
“But I was told about quantum periole’s time being the 4-dimensional space-time diagram that’s over 500 years old,” said the storekeeper. “It’s proved very effective. And if that’s the case, then time would slow down even when we aren’t showered with electromagnetic waves, because we are still going through 4-dimensional space-time in the same way as always.”
“Maybe that 4-dimensional space-time isn’t entirely correct. Maybe the perception of time before Einstein was actually much closer to the truth than we tend to believe,” thought Tim
The storekeeper called someone. “Hello? We’re wondering how it’s possible to exceed the speed of light when we’re still going through 4-dimensional space-time… Ah, I understand.” He hung up. “It just happened that our perception of space changed briefly. Because we take up zero space, we could see our spatial fabric in different ways; space-time is just one of those different ways.”
“Wait a second. Something tells me this world ain’t too good,” said Tim. “I wants to go back,” he cried.
“You can if you use good grammar,” said the storekeeper.
“Wait a second. Something tells me this world isn’t too good,” said Tim. “I want to go back,” he cried.
“I was just joking,” muttered the storekeeper. “You from the past?”
“Yes,” said Sarah.
“According to quantum periole,” continued the storykeeper, leaving his desk and removing a book from the shelf, “it is quite possible for a rip in space to occur in much the same way that it’s possible for friction to fail.”
“So?” Tim asked.
“You can create a wormhole to the past. A wormhole is a way of going from one place in space to another without traveling a lot. It’s a shortcut. But because time is the fourth dimension, it’s possible to travel through time as well.”
“Ok, so what do I got to do?”
“First of all, you have to create circumstances in which the particles hardly exist. You know how to do that?”
“Nope,” replied Tim.
“Oh.”
Now the atmosphere and the floor and the people were nonexistence by the rules of quantum perioles. The storekeeper took out a match, shook it, and it lit up. They had moved into a closet. Tim looked around. “This room is too small for the oxygen to last long under that match.”
“When that happens, the particles will still exist to us, by the rules of quantum perioles. The match will observe no oxygen, but this is a special match; it burns the spatial fabric as a last resort. That means it’s impossible to blow this out. When you see a black unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, you say the date you want to return to, and press against the black, and a wormhole to that date will automatically be created, by our perception. I’m going to leave. You hold on to this match.” The storekeeper gave him the match. “Bye.”
They waited a long time before Tim noticed the area around the match growing to a black that a black hole couldn’t describe. “Of course a black hole can’t describe it,” he heard the storekeeper’s voice saying. “When you put general relativity and quantum mechanics together, you get that a black hole actually glows a bit. I can here your thoughts going through the nothingness of torn space.”
Tim instinctively took a deep breath, said, “winter break, 2011,” and held his breath as he went through. Nothing happened. He was still in the closet.
But his mother was gone. Two seconds later, she appeared at his side. “We are in the present.”
“Who said that?” It was a loud and angry voice. “Damn, did someone break into my shop?” The closet door opened, and a dark face looked at them, accompanied with a toothy grin. “I decided to go back too, from a different place, after I heard about you.”
It was Rocintal. “But that means you came here just now as well.”
“I came a year early.”
“Did you steal this shop?”
“Naw, I told you it’s impossible to do that.”
“It’s the present. Here it is possible.”
“Here’s the year-old newspaper.” The article he was pointing to said many customers claim that Santa Clause stole their favorite bookstore, and claimed to be disguised as him. “That’s me. I disguised myself as a Santa Clause, and then took off the disguise after a week. Nobody knew the original person by blood or personally, so nobody noticed much difference.”
“You think it’s better here?”
“I think it’s better to be mortal, that’s all I’m saying,” said Rocintal.