Finding A Way To Understand Time

Exploring time and the nature of consciousness

30 miles northwest of San Antonio stands the small German enclave of Boerne, with its population of 10,000, mostly the descendants of German immigrants who came to Texas in the 1850s. In this most unlikely of locations, not far from the Kendall County Courthouse, in a group of non-descript warehouses near an old railway station, stood the laboratory of Parthian Electronics Company, an independent subsidiary of the monolith Jamison Electronics Corporation. No one would have suspected that within the worn walls of the nearly 100-year-old structures, were hidden state-of-the-art scientific laboratories engaged in one of the most sophisticated scientific research projects in the country, financed by both government and non-government sources.

Among the many special facilities was a laboratory run by Jacob Isaacson devoted exclusively to the study of space/time. Employed among the five scientists working on this special project was the former classmate of Richard Timberlane, Ryan Tomlinson, who was working on a project along with Andrew Crawford, to determine the variability of time. Each of them worked at the southeast corner of the building in two six by six cubicles. They were as different in temperament and approach as any two people could be, but they had accomplished many breakthroughs in the two years they had been working together.

“I’ve finished my calculations,” Ryan spoke.

He was sitting at his desk staring at the monitor of UNIX band server, which he would use for running his algorithms.

“I am becoming even more convinced every day that time itself is a circle coming back in on itself,” Ryan explained. “Now it is a matter of finding the midpoint and permanence of the various circles of experience we call time.”

“I still fall back on my neurophysiological training,” his colleague Andrew responded. “All human perception, including time is merely a creation of our brains.” He hesitated. “And our brains work on the principle of cycles, frequencies, rhythms, whatever you want to describe it.” He paused. “I wanted to tell you about a very interesting anomaly I discovered in the last series of tests we ran last Friday. You know how the aperture of a camera controls the amount of light that strikes the film. I believe there is a regulator which controls the rate at which we perceive time, and it’s theoretically possible for the brain to organise this experience both forwards and backwards.”

Andrew began to scribble on a notepad on his desk. “I have been doing some calculations and I think I discovered one such aperture, a cycle of 168 years approximately.”

“Why 168 years?” Ryan asked him.

“We all recognise that time flows in cycles, in rhythms. Everything from our calendars, the movement of planets, the seasons, sunrise and sunset tells us, educates us that the entire universe is based on cycles, but the way our present time appears to us is that it is linear beginning to end without interruption, but we don’t experience our lives in that way. Every one of us sleeps. Our days begin and end and then the cycle starts the next day. Why wouldn’t time flow in a similar way?”

“That’s a very interesting idea,” Ryan responded. “But that still hasn’t answered my question. Why 168 years?”

“The measurements I made last week show fluctuations in time, the telltale signs of cycles, beginning in 1833 and ending in 2169. That’s a cycle of many cycles. So what happened in 1833 that could have significance on everything after, creating a new timeline, so to speak for everything that came after?”

“I have no idea,” Ryan answered.

“On August 28, 1833, The British Slavery Abolition Act ended slavery in all British territories,” Andrew noted. “It sent ripples like a stone in a pond in all directions, setting into motion new movements that would cause the end of slavery in many other parts of the world, including here, with our civil war. There was resistance, of course, but it had its effect.” He paused. “We are approaching now in 2001 the middle of that cycle. Something else may happen and have a similar effect. It’s what I would call a time wave, a tsunami effect on the space-time continuum.”

“A time wave,” Ryan almost chided him. “That has to be the craziest of all the crazy ideas that have come out of your mouth over the past few months. What do you propose to do with that?”

“I propose to send a time wave into the future to discover if anyone is listening.”

“I even wonder if there will be human beings in 2169. Given man’s penchant for violence, I’m not convinced we would not have destroyed ourselves long before then.” Ryan paused. “What type of device will be able to catch a time wave?”

“I’ve been working on that too.”

Andrew pulled out a stack of drawings, which he laid on the table in front of Ryan.

“You and your drawings. It’s not enough you have these pictures hung up all over this lab.”

Ryan looked around the laboratory at over a dozen of Andrew’s drawings of various devices that Andrew had haphazardly hung on the walls.

“You have assaulted my mind with these impossible devices.”

“Nothing is impossible if a human mind can imagine it,” Andrew affirmed.

“I can imagine a lot of things that cannot exist,” Ryan responded. “Like real girlfriends for you and me for example.” Ryan halted a moment. “Most of the women I’ve met aren’t interested in what I do.”

“I know one,” Andrew responded. “I met her at a seminar, Susan Chan from Berkeley. She works under Simon Kluger. We had a nice long conversation about the multiverse when we were in Pittsburgh last December.”

“Again, what other women would be talking about the multiverse.”

“I think you are being sexist,” Andrew countered. “In many countries, women are the majority in science and engineering schools. In Iran for example the majority of science majors are women.”

“So why don’t you go after Susan Chan, Andrew?”

“She has a boyfriend and I don’t think her father will approve. He is one of the top neurochemists at a large pharmaceutical company. I met him at a seminar. He’s not someone to be reckoned with.”

Andrew remembered the force of his personality.

“So what’s on your agenda for today, Mr Crawford?” Ryan asked.

“Today I am testing a new device. I call it a timeline amplitude detector. I want to determine if time flows at the same rate for everyone. Do you experience duration in the same way I do?”

“It sounds like another one of your crazy machines. This is not about time travel again, is it? That this laboratory is about time travel?”

“It’s about finding ways to communicate and to perceive across time. We don’t know if we are near the capability to send objects back in time or to the future.” Andrew paused. “I don’t think you understand what I am suggesting. You are thinking about time travel in the completely wrong way. Like the old HG Wells story, you build a machine that takes you physically into the future or into the past. I propose that this whole idea is trapped in a paragon of materiality, which is not an accurate picture of how the universe really works. When I speak about time travel, I think about the projection of consciousness into the so-called past and an allegedly unknown future. Even if I didn’t have the mathematics to back me up, I sensed a long time ago that these pedestrian notions of space and time were a learned behaviour, as much as all human perception can be argued is a learned behaviour.”

Andrew lifted up a copy of a graduate school textbook on neurophysiology.

“You should read this textbook that I gave you, to get a basic understanding of human perception, instead of playing that damn video game for a respite.”

“I am not reading your textbook, Andrew. You seem a little OCD to me.”

Ryan set the textbook aside and again began to play with his device. He set it in the centre of a table near the servers and turned on his game device. It began to howl and whistle and then pulsate. It sounded vaguely like a cat’s meow, almost inaudible. Then Ryan approached Andrew and set a digital clock beside him and another beside himself.

“What are you doing now?” Andrew asked him.

“I want you to watch the clock, it’s an experiment. You know I have my own devices.”

“I am not watching clocks,” Andrew responded.

“Imagine it’s Professor Rimlinger’s class. You did a lot of clock-watching in his class.”

“You were not in class with me with Dr Rimlinger.”

“I had my spies.” Ryan chuckled.

“What is this supposed to accomplish?” Andrew asked him.

“You’ll see. Put this on.”

Ryan handed him a pair of glasses with what looked like mirrors instead of lenses with some electronic equipment attached to the upper rims of the glasses.

“What in the hell are these?”

“These are for monitoring the ocular response. My own designs.”

“You’re either a genius or a complete lunatic.”

“Just put on the glasses, you’ll like this. Now, look at the clock. I need at least 30 minutes.”

“I’ve got work to do.”

“It can wait.” Ryan paused. “I don’t think we all experience time at the same rates and I don’t think I’m close consistently at the same rate, no matter what our clocks tell us. This is a function of how our brains work.”

“I don’t think I have the patience to sit here for half an hour staring at this clock. What am I supposed to do?”

“Here is a notepad.”

Ryan handed him a pen and pad.

“Write down any significant thoughts or memories that come up in the process. Leave space for measurement info. I would like to know the derivation of any memories. How long it took to remember them, how long the period the memory was in duration. You see I think our brains play thoughts and memories as though a television.”

“Are you going to do this?” Andrew asked.

“Of course. You know this is what my dissertation was about.”

“Yes, as you constantly remind me.”

“That is why I am here in this laboratory, doing this work, and that’s why I asked for you to be with me. I believe together we are going to make this breakthrough and you will send a message to someone listening in 2169. I hope to find a way to travel there holographically myself,” Ryan explained.

“I’m ready,” Andrew acknowledged.

“Then let’s begin.”

Ryan also put on the special pair of glasses and the two of them began to sit for half an hour, staring at the clocks and scribbling their random thoughts and memories on paper. They both in fact went beyond 30 minutes to 45 minutes, and their mentor and boss, Jacob Isaacson returned to the lab to find them both staring inexplicably at the clocks. 56 years old with long curly greying hair and a grey goatee, Jacob appeared more stereotypically scientific, than they did. He did not seem annoyed or even surprised by this exercise. He simply stood and watched them quietly for another 15 minutes. Finally, he spoke to both of them, “I’m sure you both can provide an explanation to me of what you are doing. But I really need to speak to you about an important project. Could you stop what you’re doing now?”

“Of course,” Ryan answered as he remove his glasses and set his pen down on the pad. “What can I do for you, Dr Isaacson?”

“For the first thing, stop calling me Dr Isaacson. Jake, Jacob or anything else. I hate being called a doctor. Should I call you both doctors because you have your PhDs?”

“I wouldn’t mind being called doctor, “Andrew told him.

“You actually think the credentials mean something?” Jacob scolded him. “They teach you one way and I had to re-teach you another. I hope, Ryan, this experiment had something to do with what we’re supposed to be doing here, finding innovative methodologies to understand the nature of time.”

“This laboratory is about time travel,” Ryan proposed. “We all know what we’re here for. Where are the other two colleagues? We haven’t seen them in two days now.”

Jacob didn’t respond to Ryan’s time travel remark.

“They’re on a special project for me,” Jacob answered. “They’ll be back Friday. In the meantime, I have a project for you to complete.”

Jacob went into his office and returned with two manila envelopes which he handed to them. At the top of each envelope were their names and it was stamped with a triangle in a circle logo and the words “Jamison Foundation,” after James Jamison one of the founders of the laboratory.

Ryan removed the papers from the envelope to look at them.

“It’s a project proposal from the old man himself,” Jacob explained. “He wants us to find a way to perceive beyond our five senses. I’m open to any proposals as to what this new technology might look like. Read it and consider.”

Ryan set the papers down a moment and went over to his machine to turn it off. It was at this moment that both clocks stopped momentarily and then shifted back 11 minutes.

“It must be some electromagnetic response,” he told himself as he switched off the machines. Even for someone as self-disciplined as Ryan Tomlinson, it was still difficult for him to pay attention to every moment and to remain in focus, especially with all the distractions surrounding him. He had come to understand that this was the way the human brain works and he would double down his efforts to stay awake and alert. He looked across the laboratory and he could see that Andrew was reading the project proposal at his desk and Jacob had returned to his office. He wrote down on his notepad in all caps, “MUST PAY ATTENTION.”

What he did not know, nor could he have any way of knowing, was that this 11-minute shift backwards on the clocks meant everything, that time itself was in flux, and everything he had come to believe about time would soon be transformed. He couldn’t even begin to contemplate what type of technology would make extrasensory perception possible. This had always been Andrew’s unique purview.

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Ty.Red