Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roadmaps
A story about the perception of time
Ryan Tomlinson was working on a spreadsheet for his time variability study when Andrew Crawford came into his workstation to talk to him.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but we just received the package with the new device from headquarters. I need some help with the package.”
“What is it this time? Another time device?” Ryan asked him. “What is this device supposed to do that the others haven’t?”
“Don’t make light of what we are doing here,” Andrew chastised him.
“I’m not making light of anything.”
“You make light of everything, Ryan. Please come and help me with the box.”
Ryan reluctantly stir up from his terminal and followed him outside to a landing on the west side of the building. He was blinded momentarily by the afternoon sun and it took a few minutes for his eyes to focus again.
“What exactly is this thing?” Ryan asked him as he stared at the 2.5 x 2.5 x 3-foot brown box. Written on the side of the box was the manufacturer Arbour House Industries with the serial number written in two-inch numbers, 123571113.
“Prime numbers,” Ryan commented. “I wonder if the numbers mean anything.”
“This thing is an electro-computation chronometric device,” Andrew told him.
“Designed by whom?”
“One of the designers was Thomas Georgakakis from the Material Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I have grown quite fond of Dr Georgakakis’ work, even if I disagree with his philosophy.” He paused. “Help me open the box so we can take a look at it.”
Ryan went to his workstation and found a box cutter and brought it back to the landing.
“What can you tell me about Arbour House Industries?” Ryan asked.
“It’s above my paygrade,” Andrew answered him. “Don’t have the clearances.”
“I wonder if our boss has the clearances,” Ryan explained.
“I wouldn’t bother Mr Isaacson on this device. He gave me a lot of trouble about bringing it here. He thinks it is a distraction.”
“Everything transformational is initially a distraction,” Ryan observed.
Ryan continued to cut open the box. “Is this some kind of time modification device?” He asked.
“It’s just a tool, another sabre in our arsenal,” Andrew responded.
“I don’t think the ware terminology is helpful.”
Ryan carefully began to remove the device from the box and with some difficulty lifted it out of the box and set it on top of the countertop. It looked more like a commercial automatic drip coffee machine than anything else. Ryan plugged it in, turned on the machine and waited for it to do something. He had no idea what to expect this machine to actually do. This had been an ongoing problem with all the research that Ryan had engaged in over the last three years. He often did not know what the goals of the projects were or when he had accomplished them. He wanted to tell his supervisors that he could not in clear conscience continue with these projects, but he could not bring himself to challenge his supervisors.
After nearly 10 minutes, the machine began to make a few weird noises sounding like whining at various pitches and a couple of lights flashed on and off. But Ryan could not visibly see the machine doing anything.
“Is this some kind of a hoax?” Ryan asked.
“It is not a hoax,” Andrew answered. “None of the machines I have brought into this laboratory are hoaxes.”
“It feels like a hoax.”
“It’s not a hoax.”
They both stood watching the machine for another ten minutes.
“Help me get this to another outlet,” Andrew told him. “Perhaps it's the outlet.”
Ryan helped him lift the metal box and the two of them struggled to move the device to another location in the laboratory.
“It feels heavier now than when we brought it through the doors,” Ryan commented.
He set it down next to Ryan’s workstation. Then Andrew began to walk around the room. After another five minutes, then Dr Isaacson came out of his office.
“Why didn’t you tell me that your device finally came?” Dr Isaacson asked.
“And spoil the surprise,” Andrew responded sardonically.
Andrew seemed to be able to get away with more shenanigans than Ryan ever could.
“Be careful with your thingamajig,” Dr Isaacson told them and went back into his office.
“That’s a good name for that,” Ryan told him. “Another expensive device to clutter up this laboratory that we don’t know exactly what it does.” He paused. “It doesn’t find girlfriends, does it?” Ryan spoke sarcastically and then he chuckled.
“Not hardly.” They slid the device on the floor to bring it closer to an outlet and Andrew plugged it in.
“It’s a Time dilation device,” Andrew acknowledged.
“I still think it’s a hoax,” Ryan objected.
“You think everything is a hoax,” Andrew noted. “I don’t waste my time on hoaxes.”
Andrew again turned on the device and they could see nothing visibly happening.
“How much did this device cost the government this time?” Ryan asked him. “You know I am keeping a tally of the cost of your devices. The two doors in Philipsburg.”
“Three doors,” Andrew interrupted him.
“The three doors. About half a dozen other devices. This is becoming one expensive project.”
“We are not paying for it,” Andrew answered.
“Someone is paying for it. Don’t you have any pangs of conscience about any of these devices?”
“Why should I have pangs of conscience? We’re not doing anything wrong.” He paused. “Just because you can’t see something immediately doesn’t mean something isn’t going on.”
“I don’t have time for this nonsense,” Ryan continued. “I don’t think this machine does a thing.”
“You have always been sceptical about the work we are doing here.”
Ryan was beginning to get a headache.
“My head is starting to hurt. I hope you’re not irradiating us all. That would be a disappointment.”
Dr Isaacson walked past them.
“Dr Isaacson, Ryan doesn’t take my work seriously.”
“What exactly is this machine supposed to do, Dr Crawford?” Dr Issacson asked him. “You still haven’t given me a status report about the doors we sent to Pennsylvania.”
“This machine does quite a few things.”
Andrew pulled the machine toward him.
“Among other things it slows down or speeds up time.”
“How does it do that?” Ryan responded sceptically.
“Just watch.”
Andrew pulled out a keyboard from the bottom of the device and entered a command. Then the machine began to hum and vibrate. With the keyboard, it now began to look more like a computing device.
“This machine now looks like a computer,” Ryan noted.
“It’s much more than that. It’s electromagnetic and nuclear.”
“Nuclear?” Ryan asked sceptically. “Should we be wearing hazmat suits?”
“It’s perfectly safe. I assure you.”
“Is it a weapon?” Ryan asked him.
“No, but it can be an unusual experience.”
Ryan would characterise his entire tenure in the laboratory as an unusual experience.
The hum became more intense. Ryan began to feel tingling in his fingers.
“This is a localised effect. Just watch.”
Andrew took two identical clocks, both reading 11:35 and placed them on opposite sides of the room.
“Watch what happens.” He paused. “I can control the amplitude of the electromagnetic field generated around the machine. Just watch a moment.”
Andrew pulled a small gauss meter out of his pocket and measured the ambient electromagnetic radiation in the room. The clock near the machine was moving visibly slower than the clock on the other side of the room.
“The question is, is it the machine causing this clock to move slower? (He pointed at this clock.) or the other to move faster (He pointed to the other clock.) Or is this a mechanical effect or is our perception of time itself changing? What is the effect on our biological systems, our circadian rhythms?”
“How safe is this machine?” Dr Isaacson asked Andrew.
“Are you asking me if this is dangerous? Not that we have been able to see so far. But it is dangerous to our current paradigms of time propagation. I could explain it in neurophysiological terms. How time is calibrated by the firing of neural synapses. But I think we should just watch till the full effect is manifest.”
Ryan was beginning to feel a little lightheaded and his stomach was beginning to irritate him.
“I don’t know that this is such a great idea, Andrew.”
The light in the room was beginning to flutter.
“How many amps is this device pulling?” Ryan asked.
“This laboratory has a backup generator more than sufficient to deal with this machine, and this machine has its own power supply, if necessary. We are building an even larger machine than this one.”
“I don’t know how prudent any of this is,” Ryan responded. “I am really beginning to get very lightheaded. That can’t be good.”
“So you want me to turn it off?” Andrew asked. “Just a couple of more minutes and you will begin to see the effect. The clock near the machine showed one minute less than the clock near the front door of the room. A moment later it was a second minute. Ryan was clearly becoming incapacitated, he believed from the machine. Andrew reluctantly turned it off.
“We’ve been able to slow down and speed up the clocks.”
“How much?” Ryan asked. “At what cost?”
“A question we are all asking is whether we can make one clock move backwards to the other.”
“How would you produce that effect?” Ryan asked him. “And what would that mean?”
“Are you asking if it is a mechanical effect alone or could time be literally moving backwards, flowing in a different direction? I think the question is more complex than this demonstration. We already know that the human brain creates our consciousness of linear time. But is this a physical effect or merely a recalibration of our brains?”
“These are questions I’m just beginning to get my head around,” Ryan told him.
“You think you can get the clock to run backwards?” Dr Isaacson asked him.
“Yes, I think we can. But I can’t tell you what that means. Except I think that time is a mental construct, Like everything else in our three-dimensional world. Why three physical dimensions, not four or five? We can imagine and conceive in our minds of a more intricate complexity than our physical senses can perceive.” He paused. “I can’t yet show you the other effects.”
He turned on the machine again and they stood quietly and watched it a second time. He made an adjustment and the clock near the machine began to run faster than the clock on the other side of the room. They stood and watched the clock near the machine gain minute by minute until it was 11 minutes ahead of the other. Then something was happening that none of them expected. All of the electronics in the building suddenly shut off. They could see the lights outside their laboratory also turn off. There was a rippling effect and within five minutes a rolling blackout began with its epicentre at the main power plant 3 miles away. Within 11 minutes of that failure, the electrical grid had gone down in 11 states, one of the largest blackouts in US history. Ryan found an emergency generator for the laboratory and unplugged the new machine from the power grid.
“I don’t want you turning that machine on again. I don’t want this incident to become an embarrassment for this laboratory,” Dr Isaacson scolded Andrew.
“I don’t think we are the cause of this blackout,” Andrew rebutted. “This is just a coincidence.”
“Please don’t go running your mouth off should anyone contact us at this laboratory,” Dr Isaacson told him.
After a few minutes the emergency generator came on and the lights were back on in the laboratory. It took seven hours for the grid to be rebooted and restore electricity to the 11 states. Dr Isaacson returned to his office and did not return for two hours until after he had spoken to all of his superiors about what had happened.
Finally, Dr Isaacson came outside his office and into the laboratory.
“I just had a very uncomfortable conversation with my superiors about your machine, Mr Crawford. They wanted to know if any device we have in our laboratory could have triggered this blackout. What do you expect me to tell them?”
“My device didn’t cause this blackout,” Andrew responded. “You are still thinking as though we live in a Cartesian world. The machine alters our ability to perceive the parameters of our experience. It doesn’t have any physical effect on the universe, whatever it appears. Today we were supposed to experience a blackout. This blackout was in the making a long time before this laboratory even existed. It is inherent within the limitations of the electrical grid. I think this is more about acclimating us to a control grid than about an actual caused event. I’m trying to get us to think about time in a completely different way, about how we experience duration in a completely different way. The speed at which time seems to travel is contingent upon neurotransmitters pulsing in the millions of ganglions in our neural net. our brains are counting out pings, sending regular signals and releasing neurotransmitters. The sensations these bodies feel produce the experience of consciousness and this sets the parameters of how we collectively experience time. If we learn to surf time, it will not be in physical objects such as DeLorean cars. I’m trying to find a way to jumpstart our brains. This is an attempt to use a physical object to do what a brain should one day have the ability to do without our machines.” He paused a moment. “If I want to go to 2169, I don’t need a physical machine to take me there. I just need a machine to stimulate my neural net to take me there. Until we can find people who can do this naturally because their brains are wired differently from ours. I’m trying to create devices that can act both as receivers and transmitters simultaneously. Somewhere at some time, there is a machine like this one. We first begin with communicating to that machine.”
“Great speech, Andrew,” Ryan told them. “I don’t think anyone knows what the hell you are talking about.”
“I understand that. Some things are just beyond our normal experience.” Andrew acknowledged. “I feel like Tesla with his alternating current generator.”
“That machine is going to stay turned off for the time being,” Dr Isaacson told him. “I don’t care what you have to say about it. Understood?”
“Understood, Doctor.” Andrew acknowledged.
“No secret dillydallying while I am away. We don’t need the feds swarming all over here again. Do you understand me? The next time I won’t cover for either of you.”
“The feds are not coming back here again,” Andrew told them. “I just took us off the grid.”
“How did you do that?” Dr Isaacson asked him. He hesitated a moment. “Don’t tell me. Less is more in this instance. I have work to do. I can get your assurances, Dr Crawford, that nothing is going to be blowing up here today.”
“Nothing is blowing up, Dr Isaacson.”
“Good.” He paused. “Continue on with your assigned duties, Gentlemen.”
Then Dr Isaacson left them to return to his office.
“You and your crazy machines. You are going to get us both kicked out of here. This is the best job I’ve ever had and I am likely to ever have. How close are we to a real breakthrough?”
“It’s a lot closer than you think. I can see the scepticism in your face.”
“I am sceptical about everything.”
