Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2, page 358
part #2 of Time Travel Series
“You have them, you know that!”
“Don’t patronize me. Hear me out. Whatzisname, the physicist, says we’re not actually in Paleozoic time, but some alternate dimension, universe, whatever. I never thought much about it before today. Now it’s what I have to believe.”
The doctor returns, practically dragging along the senior tech by her hand. The liaison heaves a sigh of relief and says, “Here’s someone who should be able to tell you what you want to know,” and he separates her from the doctor and draws her into the man’s line of sight.
Clearly unhappy with this treatment, the chief tech swats the liaison’s hands away. “Okay,” she says, “I’m here.”
“Please refresh my memory,” says the man. “I’ve been trying to remember the experiment with Whatzisname’s cat. The one inside the box.”
“Schrödinger's cat.”
“That’s the one. Schrödinger locked a cat in a box with a radioactive substance and a Geiger counter.”
“Actually, it was a thought experiment. He didn’t really—”
“Whatever. The point is, the cat’s in the box, and—and what?”
“There’s one chance in two that within a certain length of time the radioactive substance will emit an electron that’ll make the Geiger counter click. If the Geiger counter clicks, it activates some device that kills the cat.”
“Yeah. And there’s no way to tell if the cat’s alive or dead unless and until you look inside the box.”
“Yeah.”
“Until you do look inside, the cat is neither alive nor dead.”
“Um, well, it actually has to be one or the other, of course.”
“Dead or alive.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s no way it can be neither of those things or a little of each?”
“Uh, well,” the chief tech says uneasily, “of course it can’t.”
“But in principle the cat is neither alive nor dead so far as it matters in the world outside the box.”
“Uh, yeah, sort of. In principle.”
“And there’s something called the, uh, wave—wave fraction?”
“Wave-function.”
“The wave-function, yes. So tell me about this wave-function.”
“The whole experiment, the box and the cat and the rest, they’re a system, and the so-called wave-function gives probabilities, nothing more, on how the system will work. It’s equally probable that the cat is dead or alive. When you open the box and observe which state the cat is actually in, dead or alive, the wave-function is said to collapse.”
“The wave-function ceases to be a wave-function only as soon as you try to observe it?”
“Yeah.”
The man grins triumphantly. “Thank you,” he tells the tech, “thank you, thank you, thank you,” and to the liaison he says, “My course is clear.”
“It is?”
“You can’t send me through just yet. Not for a while, in fact. Maybe not for a long while.”
“Why not?”
“It’s her only chance.”
“Whose?” During this brief exchange, the liaison’s color has undergone dramatic variations.
“My wife’s. The only way to keep her alive until I figure out my next move. Listen. Until I actually go through, what you say has happened hasn’t happened. There’s a chance it hasn’t, anyway. She’s like the cat in the box. Not alive, maybe, but not dead, either.”
“You’re pinning too much on an abstraction,” says the liaison, turning to the chief tech halfway through uttering the sentence, “on a mathematical fiction, right?”
She nods. “The wave-function’s just an expression. You can say a particle has both position and velocity, but if you try to fix the exact position, the particle doesn’t have any velocity, and if you try to measure the velocity, the particle is in motion and isn’t anywhere in particular. The wave-function’s an expression of the probabilities of a particle assuming each possible state at the instant you measure it. Until that instant, all possible states exist in a potential sense.”
“I understand enough. The wave-function goes from an indefinite state to a definite one only when you measure it. And whenever a collapse occurs, reality splits into as many parallel realities as are needed to accommodate each possible outcome of measurement. I mean to find the right reality. The one where my wife hasn’t died. I mean to interfere with this wave-function and put off the collapse.”
The liaison steps toward him, then away as he gestures with the wrench. “I realize that this must be very painful for you, but you have to face up to reality, you know.”
“I reject the reality I’m being offered. I want—I mean to find a different reality. Get these techs to twiddle some knobs, cross some wires, so I get sent to a slightly different universe.”
“ ‘Twiddle some knobs, cross some wires!’ ” The chief tech looks as though she has heard blasphemous or perhaps only imbecile utterances. “What you’re asking is impossible.”
“No. This terrible thing that’s happened, that everybody tells me has happened, that’s what’s impossible. I’m talking about a possibility. A possible universe.”
“Okay, let me put it this way. Even if it was possible for us to do what you want us to do—and it isn’t—the result you’re hoping for’s so improbable—”
“But not impossible.”
“But so very improbable. Look, suppose we did twiddle some knobs and cross some wires for you—not that we’re going to, but just suppose we did, and you got, ah, there—and nothing was different?”
“Then I’d talk your twin into shooting me through again, and if necessary, her twin, and then hers. Until I got where I wanted to go. Maybe if you gave me a note I could show to your twin—”
The liaison interrupts to ask, “Will you excuse me for a moment while I discuss something with the Navy?”
“Go ahead.”
The liaison motions the Navy officer into a corridor, out of sight and out of earshot, and asks, “Can’t you get him out of there?”
“He’s a big strong guy, and he’s found himself a big heavy wrench, and at the moment he’s not in his right mind. I understand he’s torn up about his wife. But I don’t want any of my people getting hurt. They have wives and husbands, too.”
“Isn’t there another way into that compartment?”
“Yes, but he’s got the door dogged good and tight.”
“Well, how about pumping in sleep gas or something?”
The officer does not have to answer this question, so eloquent is his expression just at the moment.
“Well,” says the liaison, “we can’t just let him stay in there.”
“Why not? Let him stay in there for a while. He can’t hurt anything, just bang on the bulkhead a bit. He’ll come out peacefully once he calms down.”
The liaison glances at his wristwatch. “If we don’t get him to the jump station in the next eleven minutes, it’ll be tomorrow or next Tuesday before we can get him home. The family needs him there to help with, you know, arrangements.”
“Then promise him whatever he wants, and he’ll come out right now,” and the officer motions to the doctor and the chief tech to join them.
“But,” the liaison sputters, and gets no farther, because there is a glint of steel in the officer’s eye.
“Promise him whatever he wants.”
“Ah,” says the liaison.
“Of course,” says the doctor.
“Whatever,” says the chief tech.
On receipt of the promise, the man drops the wrench with a clang and emerges from his cubby-hole, at which point several carefully selected bluejackets, each much stronger of grip and longer of reach than a jump-station tech, move in and restrain him until the doctor has stuck a hypodermic needle into him with the comment, “Just a mild sedative.” The next thing he knows is the sinus-burning tang of ozone. The next thing he knows after that is where he is. The jump-station techs are at their places, he is strapped to a gurney. The liaison and the doctor move into his field of vision, and he strains against the straps and manages to croak, “You’re killing her! You’re taking away the only chance she has.”
“Ah, my friend,” and the liaison’s voice, like his face, is full of solicitude, “I’m sorry, but she’s already dead.”
“Provisionally,” he gasps, “she’s only dead provisionally!”
The mild sedative, however, is having the effect of a strong one, and sleep comes before it can be recognized for what it is. Bulkheads become permeable membranes through which Dreamland oozes and ebbs like an impatient sea wooed by a jealous moon. Then he feels himself hurtling away from the world, toward some other.
“Poor bastard,” says the liaison.
“Yeah,” says the Navy doctor. “It’d be nice if he actually could slip into the universe he wants.”
The chief jump-station tech shakes her head. “Nobody gets to pick the universe they’re in. If they could, nobody’d hang around in the universes where there’s death and sickness—”
“His wife,” the liaison tells her severely, “died in a car crash. He just heard the news this morning.”
She looks scornfully at the two men. “Well, it’s a shame, but it only goes to show. I still say he must’ve seen too many sci-fi shows. Those goddamn things give people such unrealistic expectations.”
“Nevertheless,” the doctor begins, “I hope he,” but the chief tech suddenly pushes past him and the liaison to glare and bawl at her people, “Let’s scramble, boys and girls, we’re on a goddamn schedule here!” and her people do scramble.
“Nevertheless,” the liaison tells the doctor as they turn to go, “I hope so, too.”
THE WEED OF TIME
Norman Spinrad
I, me, the spark of mind that is my consciousness, dwells in a locus that is neither place nor time. The objective duration of my life-span is one hundred and ten years, but from my own locus of consciousness, I am immortal—my awareness of my own awareness can never cease to be. I am an infant am a child am a youth am an old, old man dying on clean white sheets. I am all these have always been all these mes will always be all mes in the place where my mind dwells in an eternal moment divorced from time.
A century and a tenth is my eternity. My life is like a biography in a book; immutable, invariant, fixed in length, in duration. On April 3, 2040, I am born. On December 2, 2150, I die. The events in between take place in a single instant. Say that I range up and down them at will, experiencing each of them again and again and again eternally. Even this is not really true; I experience all in my century and a tenth simultaneously, once forever . . . How can I tell my story? How can you understand? The language we have in common is based on concepts of time which we do not share.
For me, time as you think of it does not exist. I do not move from moment to moment sequentially like a blind man groping his way down a tunnel. I am at all points in the tunnel simultaneously, and my eyes are open wide. Time is to me, in a sense, what space is to you, a field over which I move in more directions than one. How can I tell you? How can I make you understand? We are, all of us, men born of women, but in a way you have less in common with me than you do with an ape or an amoeba. Yet I must tell you, somehow. It is too late for me, will be too late, has been too late. I am trapped in this eternal hell and I can never escape, not even into death. My life is immutable, invariant, for I have eaten of Temp, the Weed of Time. But you must not! You must listen! You must understand! Shun the Weed of Time! I must try to tell you in my own way. It is pointless to try to start at the beginning. There is no beginning. There is no end. Only significant time-loci. Let me describe these loci. Perhaps I can make you understand . . .
September 8, 2050. I am ten years old. I am in office of Dr. Phipps, who is the director of the mental hospital in which I have been for the past eight years. June 12, 2053, they will finally understand that I am not insane. It is all they will understand, but it will be enough for them to release me. But on September 8, 2050, I am in a mental hospital.
September 8, 2050 is the day the first expedition returns from Tau Ceti. The arrival is to be televised, and why I am in Dr. Phipps’s office watching television with the director. The Tau Ceti expedition is the reason I am in the hospital. I have been babbling about it for the previous ten years. I have been demanding that the ship be quarantined, that the plant samples it will bring back be destroyed, not allowed to grow in the soil of Earth. For most of my life this has been regarded as an obvious symptom of schizophrenia—after all, before July 12, 2048, the ship has not left for Tau Ceti, and until today it has not returned.
But on September 8, 2050, they wonder. This is the day I have been babbling about since I emerged from my mother’s womb and now it is happening. So now I am alone with Dr. Phipps as the image of the ship on the television set lands on the image of a wide concrete apron . . .
“Make them understand!” I shout, knowing that it is futile. “Stop them, Dr. Phipps, stop them!”
Dr. Phipps stares at me uneasily. His small blue eyes show a mixture of pity, confusion, and fright. He is all too familiar with my case. Sharing his desktop with the portable television set is a heavy oaktag folder filled with my case history, filled with hundreds of therapy session records. In each of these records, this day is mentioned: September 8, 2050. I have repeated the same story over and over and over again. The ship will leave for Tau Ceti on July 12, 2048. It will return on September 8, 2050. The expedition will report that Tau Ceti has twelve planets . . . The fifth alone is Earth-like and bears plant and animal life . . . The expedition will bring back samples and seeds of a small Cetan plant with broad green leaves and small purple flowers . . . The plant will be named tempis ceti . . . It will become known as Temp . . . Before the properties of the plant are fully understood, seeds will somehow become scattered and Temp will flourish in the soil of Earth . . . Somewhere, somehow, people will begin to eat the leaves of the Temp plant. They will become changed. They will babble of the future, and they will be considered mad—until the future events of which they speak begin to come to pass . . .
Then the plant will be outlawed as a dangerous narcotic. Eating Temp will become a crime . . . But, as with all forbidden fruit, Temp will continue to be eaten . . . And finally, Temp addicts will become the most sought-after criminals in the world. The governments of the Earth will attempt to milk the secrets of the future from their tortured minds . . .
All this is in my case history, with which Dr. Phipps is familiar. For eight years, this has been considered only a remarkably consistent psychotic delusion.
But now it is September 8, 2050. As I have predicted, the ship has returned from Tau Ceti. Dr. Phipps stares at me woodenly as the gangplank is erected and the crew begins to debark. I can see his jaw tense as the reporters gather around the captain, a tall, lean man carrying a small sack.
The captain shakes his head in confusion as the reporters besiege him. “Let me make a short statement first,” he says crisply. “Save wear and tear on all of us.” The captain’s thin, hard, pale face fills the television screen. “The expedition is a success,” he says. “The Tau Ceti system was found to have twelve planets, the fifth is Earth-like and bears plant and simple animal life. Very peculiar animal life . . .”
“What do you mean, peculiar?” a reporter shouts. The captain frowns and shrugs his wide shoulders. “Well, for one thing, they all seem to be herbivores and they seem to live off one species of plant which dominates the planetary flora. No predators. And it’s not hard to see why. I don’t quite know how to explain this, but all the critters seem to know what the other animals will do before they do it. And what we were going to do, too. We had one hell of a time taking specimens. We think it has something to do with the plant. Does something strange to their time sense.”
“What makes you say that?” a reporter asks.
“Well, we fed some of the stuff to our lab animals. Same thing seemed to happen. It became virtually impossible to lay a hand on ’em. They seemed to be living a moment in the future, or something. That’s why Dr. Lominov has called the plant tempis ceti.”
“What’s this tempis look like?” a reporter says.
“Well, it’s sort of . . .” the captain begins. “Wait a minute,” he says, “I’ve got a sample right here.”
He reaches into the small sack and pulls something out. The camera zooms in on the captain’s hand.
He is holding a small plant. The plant has broad leaves and small purple blossoms.
Dr. Phipps’s hands begin to tremble uncontrollably. He stares at me. He stares and stares and stares . . .
May 12, 2062. I am in a small room. Think of it as a hospital room. Think of it as a laboratory, think of it as a cell: it is all three. I have been here for three months.
I am seated on a comfortable lounge-chair. Across a table from me sits a man from an unnamed government intelligence bureau. On the table is a tape recorder. It is running. The man seated opposite is frowning in exasperation.
“The subject is December, 2081,” he says. “You will tell me all you know of the events of December, 2081.”
I stare at him silently, sullenly. I am tired of all the men from intelligence sections, economic councils, scientific bureaus, with their endless, futile demands.
“Look,” the man snaps, “we know better than to appeal to your nonexistent sense of patriotism. We are all too well aware that you don’t give a damn about what the knowledge you have can mean to your country. But just remember this: you’re a convicted criminal. Your sentence is indeterminate. Cooperate, and you’ll be released in two years. Clam up, and we’ll hold you here till you rot or until you get it through your head that the only way for you to get out is to talk. The subject is the month of December in the year 2081. Now, give!”
I sigh. I know that it is no use trying to tell any of them that knowledge of the future is useless, that the future cannot be changed because it was not changed because it will not be changed. They will not accept the fact that choice is an illusion caused by the fact that future time-loci are hidden from those who advance sequentially along the time-stream one moment after the other in blissful ignorance. They refuse to understand that moments of future time are no different from moments of past or present time; fixed, immutable, invariant. They live in the illusion of sequential time.
