Hacking spacetime for fun and profit

Dad Printed a Wormhole and All I Got Was a Cheeseburger From the Renaissance

4D printing the fabric of the Universe

Imagine the tide of adrenaline swelling my veins when I spied a spanking new Einstein Laboratories SpaceTime 4D Quantum Printer parachuting into my rhododendrons, dropped from a whining Amazon delivery drone desperate to hit quota.

4D’s a thing? Yes, and I should know. Back in the late 90s, I was a rabid 3D printer hobbyist, financing grad school by selling 3D-printed Trojans to horny undergrads who couldn’t face down the cashiers at Walgreens. I mastered ribbing — not as in kidding people, the kind with texture.

Tech ages in dog years. Still have the old Crackberry Z10, but only for swatting mosquitoes.

3D’s a commodity, on the shelf next to Ritz crackers. You want to print a Glock G17 9mm Luger? Maybe a Hawaiian pizza, or an adult diaper? You go to thingiverse or Pinterest, download a recipe, blam! Half a sitcom later you’re wolfing down a slice of Meat Lover’s in your DIY Real Fit® Underwear for Men, waving a Luger like any garden variety psychopath.

But 4D? Einstein Labs makes the world’s only 4D printer, and I have one! They only sold ten. Partly because they retail for $449,000, but let’s think of my 401K as mad money. Or at least that’s what I told my wife when she handed over the divorce settlement agreement, fresh off her attorney’s crappy Epson inkjet printer that he bought at Costco.com with his cheap-ass Rakuten Chrome extension.

Luddite.

Your Ds in your 3D printer aren’t lifting kilts anymore. For the tech illiterati who think 3D is that Minnesota company with the scotch tape — no. 3D is length, width, and height. Money is not a dimension. Even if it increases your length.

But throw in time? 4D! Not to get all Carl Sagan on you, but now you’re printing the very fabric of the Universe!

After setting up my SpaceTime 4D, which took a week because the instruction manual rivals War and Peace in bulk, I was desperate to watch that bad boy hum. But I couldn’t get it up. So to speak. After repeatedly triggering a circuit breaker, I realized I wasn’t going to crack The Bigs with 30 amp breakers and 240 volts of power coming into the main.

Desperate times? Desperate measures! I improvised some “creative” rewiring. No worries, the town building inspector’s in my Fantasy Cribbage League. And since my neighbor lives alone and mostly gets takeout, he’s not going to care. But just in case, I’m bringing him a set of beer mugs from 2862.

If they still drink beer then.

Once I hack the recipe.

Shwing! After I gave my SpaceTime 4D the requisite juice, it threw up a braindead-easy user interface. A four-year old could drive this puppy.

I mean this literally. When I neglected to sign the divorce settlement because I was flat out with the SpaceTime 4D, my wife reminded me that I was a) braindead, and b) behaving like a four-year old. Which I thought was really unfair, so naturally I signed the papers in invisible ink.

First up? With new tech, I always kick the tires with something easy. In this case, a cheeseburger. But not your ordinary burger, Sparky. How about a cheeseburger from the Renaissance?

Serendipitous timing. The kids were hungry. Joey gets the burger, but little Ellie is fussy so I printed her a bowl of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese PAW Patrol from the Pleistocene.

Baby stuff, but good for getting my feet wet. Next up, I’m going to tinker with the fabric of spacetime. Starting with a wormhole. I’ll 4D print one. The wife says she’s moving to Pittsburgh and I’ll be damned if I’m hopping on Jet Blue every time I want to see the kids.

How do I make a wormhole? There’s a qubit for that! Yes, qubit. Not cubit. Not as in Carnian pluvial episode. Oddly, climbing Mount Ararat’s not on my bucket list. I’m building a wormhole, dammit, not a nautical wildlife sanctuary!

Remember, the SpaceTime 4D is a quantum printer. Which means it’s got qubits ’n stuff. A qubit is the quantum mechanical analogue of a classical bit. Raise your hand if you know what that means.

Bueller?

Bueller?

Anyone?

Anyone?

OK, let’s start simple. Bit. Binary digit. Not a tiny speck of stuff, not the tip of a drill, definitely not some redmeat ’n dogwhistle marginally comedic routine by Joe Rogan yukking it up for the yahoos at a MAGA rally.

A qubit is a quantum binary digit.

What’s the saying? One picture, right?

That should clear things up. The old Bloch sphere’s settled many a barroom brawl, am I right? If you run into Bloch — he’s usually the wallflower at the end of the bar reading Nils Bohr in the original Danish — spot him a Guinness.

OK then. I’m gonna make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here. If you live in Pittsburgh, either a) I’ll see you in four seconds in which case front me some Penguins tickets and I’ll Venmo you, or b) look me up on the distal edge of Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy in which case I’ll settle for ESPN.

Gotcha noob! That stream would take a billion years to reach me! Ish.

Besides, wormholes are bidirectional.

Right?

Right?