The Spinning

Chapter 5: The Time Machine Invention

A Month Before Jakande's Arrest,

North Carolina, U.S.A.

The Time inventors, a tall man in a night, black suit, and black leather loafer, were expounding a recondite matter to a table of scientists. Before them stood a projector in the room, which he illustrated his explanations with. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated.

The evening sun peeped through the window where he stood, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the bulbs of silvery gold caught the bubbles that flashed and passed through their transparent glasses. Their chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed the seven of them rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought ran gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to the other scientists in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as they sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox and his fecundity.

“You must understand me to make the most of this. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school, is founded on a misconception.” Nickolas Falkor-the time traveler started.

The room was closed and dim and Dr. Nick, as most people preferred to call him, hovered before a transparent glass table like a lord. Others cried, looking up to him with the eyes of understanding. Dr. Nick had to convince his colleagues of his time machine for them to believe him. To travel with him. To recognize him.

“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” raised, Sandra Malcolm, an argumentative lady with red hair. She was the only female scientist at the table.

“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know, of course, that a mathematical line, a line of thickness has no actual existence. Did they teach you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.”

“That is all right,” said Dr Nick.

“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.”

“There I object,” said Sandra. "Of course, a solid body may exist. All real things—"

“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?”

“I don’t get you,” said Sandra.

“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all have an actual existence?”

She became pensive.

“Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any actual body must have extension in four directions: it must have length, breadth, thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we are inclined to overlook this. There are four dimensions, three of which we call the three planes of space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to distinguish the former three dimensions and the latter, because our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.”

“Interesting.” said another scientist, Christopher Emmett, nodded in agreement. He was very young with black raven hair sleeked to the back. The young scientist made spasmodic efforts to light his cigar over a lighter held in his mouth; “this is. . . very clear indeed.”

“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,” continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.

“This is what they meant by the Fourth Dimension. Though, some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. For decades, time travel lay beyond the fringe of respectable science. In recent years, however, the topic has become something of a cottage industry among theoretical physicists. The motivation has been partly recreational-time travel is fun to think about. But this research has a serious side, too. Understanding the relation between cause and effect is a key part of attempts to construct a unified theory of physics. If unrestricted time travel were possible, even in principle, the nature of such a unified theory could be drastically affected.”