Time Travel Omnibus, page 590
(2) Have weight in order to remain stationary in Space, yet remain sufficiently independent of the diurnal movement of the Earth to maintain an invariable orientation in absolute Space; and as a corollary, although it has weight, the Machine must be incapable of falling if the ground gives way beneath it in the course of the voyage.
(3) It must be nonmagnetic so as not to be affected (we shall see why later on) by the rotation of the plane of polarization of light.
An ideal body exists which fulfils the first of these conditions: the Luminiferous Ether. It constitutes a perfect elastic solid, for wave motion is propagated by it at the well-known speed; it is penetrable by any body or penetrates any body without measurable effect, since the Earth gravitates within it as in empty space.
But—and here lies its only similarity to the circular body or Aristotelian ether—it is not by nature heavy; and, as it turns as a whole, it determines the magnetic rotation discovered by Faraday.
*
Now one common machine known to us all provides a perfect model for the luminiferous ether and satisfies the three postulates.
Let us briefly recall the constitution of the luminiferous ether. It is an ideal system of material particles acting on one another by means of springs without mass. Each molecule is mechanically the envelope of a coil spring whose ends are attached to those of neighbouring molecules. A push or a pull on the last molecule will produce a vibration through the entire system, exactly as does the advancing front of a luminous wave.
The structure of this system of springs is analogous to the circulation without rotation of infinitely extensive liquids through infinitely small openings, or to a system consisting of rigid rods and rapidly rotating flywheels mounted on all or some of those rods.[*]
The system of springs differs from the luminiferous ether only because it has weight and does not turn as a whole, any more than would the ether in a field without magnetic force.
If one keeps increasing the angular velocity of the flywheels, or if one keeps tightening the springs, the periods of elementary vibrations will become shorter and shorter and the amplitude weaker and weaker. The movements will increasingly resemble those of a perfectly rigid system formed of material points mobile in Space and turning according to the well known law of rotation of a rigid body having equal moments of inertia around its three principal axes.
In sum, the element of perfect rigidity is the gyrostat or gyroscope.
*
Everyone is familiar with those square or round copper frames containing a flywheel spinning rapidly around an interior axis. By virtue of its rotation, the gyrostat maintains its equilibrium in any position. If we displace the centre of gravity a little out of the vertical of the point of support, it will turn in azimuth without falling. The azimuth is the angle subtended between the meridian and a plane determined by the vertical and a given fixed point—a star for example.
When a body rotates around an axis one of whose points is carried along with the diurnal motion of the earth, the direction of its axis remains fixed in absolute Space; so that for an observer carried along without his awareness in this diurnal motion, that axis appears to turn uniformly around the axis of the earth, exactly as would a parallactic telescope constantly pointed at a particular star low down on the horizon.
Three rapidly rotating gyrostats with shafts parallel to the three dimensions of space would produce a condition of cubic rigidity. The Explorer seated in the machine would be mechanically sealed in a cube of absolute rigidity, capable of penetrating any body without modification just like the luminiferous ether.
We have just seen that the Machine maintains an invariable orientation in absolute Space, but related to the diurnal movement of the Earth so as to have a reference point to determine time travelled.
Finally, the Machine has no magnetized parts as its description will show.
3. Description of the Machine
The Machine consists of an ebony frame, similar to the steel frame of a bicycle. The ebony members are assembled with soldered copper mountings.
The gyrostats’ three tori (or flywheels), in the three perpendicular planes of Euclidean space, are made of ebony cased in copper, mounted on rods of tightly rolled quartz ribbons (quartz ribbons are made in the same way as quartz wire), and set in quartz sockets.
The circular frames or the semicircular forks of the gyrostats are made of nickel. Under the seat and a little forward are located the batteries for the electric motor. There is no iron in the Machine other than the soft iron of the electromagnets.
Motion is transmitted to the three flywheels by ratchet-boxes and chain-drives of quartz wire, engaged in three cog-wheels, each of which lies on the same plane as its corresponding flywheel. The chain-drives are connected to the motor and to each other through bevel gears and drive-shafts. A triple brake controls all three shafts simultaneously.
Each turn of the front wheel triggers a lever attached to a pulley system, and four ivory dials, either separate or concentric, register the days in units, thousands, millions, and hundreds of millions. A separate dial remains in contact with the diurnal movement of the Earth through the lower extremity of the axis of the horizontal gyrostat.
A lever, controlled by an ivory handle and moving in a longitudinal or parallel direction to the Machine, governs the motor speed. A second handle slows the advance of the Machine by means of an articulated rod. It will be seen that a return from future to present is accomplished by slowing down the Machine, and that travel into the past is obtained by a speed even greater than that used for movement into the future (so as to produce a more perfect immobility of duration). In order to stop at any determined point in Time, there is a lever to lock the triple brake.
When the Machine is at rest, two of the circular frames of the gyrostats are tangential to the ground. In operation, since the gyrostatic cube cannot be drawn into rotation or at least is held to the angular motion determined by a constant couple, the Machine swings freely in azimuth on the extremity of the horizontal gyrostatic axis.
4. Functioning of the Machine
By gyrostatic action, the Machine is transparent to successive intervals of time. It does not endure or ‘continue to be’, but rather conserves its contents outside of Time, sheltered from all phenomena. If the Machine oscillates in Space, or even if the Explorer is upside down, he still sees distant objects normally and constantly in the same position, for since everything nearby is transparent, he has no point of reference.
Since he experiences no duration, no time elapses during a voyage no matter how long it is, even if he has made a stop outside the Machine. We have said that he does not undergo the passage of time except in the sense of friction or viscosity, an interval practically equivalent to that he would have passed through without ever entering the Machine.
Once set in motion, the Machine always moves towards the future. The Future is the normal succession of events: an apple is on the tree; it will fall. The Past is the inverse order: the apple falls—from the tree. The Present is non-existent, a tiny fraction of a phenomenon, smaller than an atom. The physical size of an atom is known to be 1.5 X 10-8 centimetres in diameter. No one has yet measured the fraction of a solar second that is equal to the Present.
Just as in Space a moving body must be smaller than its containing medium, the Machine, in order to move in duration, must be shorter in duration than Time, its containing medium—that is, it must be more immobile in the succession of events.
Now the Machine’s immobility in Time is directly proportional to the rate of rotation of its gyrostats in Space.
If t stands for the future, the speed in space or the slowness of duration necessary to explore the future will have to be a temporal quantity, V, such that
V< t.
Whenever V approaches o, the Machine veers back to the Present.
Movement into the Past consists in the perception of the reversibility of phenomena. One sees the apple bounce back up on to the tree, the dead man come to life, and the shot reenter the cannon. This visual aspect of succession is well known to be theoretically obtainable by outdistancing light waves and then continuing to travel at a constant speed equal to that of light. The Machine, by contrast, transports the explorer through actual duration and not in search of images preserved in Space. He has only to accelerate to a point where the speed indicator (recall that the speed of the gyrostats and the slowness in duration of the Machine, that is the speed of events in the opposite direction, are synonymous) shows
V < -t.
And he will continue with a rate of uniform acceleration that can be controlled almost according to Newton’s formula for gravitation. For a past anterior to—t may be indicated by <—t, and to reach it he must obtain on the dial a reading equivalent to
v < (<—t).
5. Time as Seen from the Machine
It is worth noting that the Machine has two Pasts: the past anterior to our own present, what we might call the real past; and the past created by the Machine when it returns to our Present and which is in effect the reversibility of the Future.
Likewise, since the Machine can reach the real Past only after having passed through the Future, it must go through a point symmetrical to our Present, a dead centre between future and past, and which can be designated precisely as the Imaginary Present.
Thus the Explorer in his Machine beholds Time as a curve, or better as a closed curved surface analogous to Aristotles’ Ether. For much these same reasons in another text (Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Book VIII) we make use of the term Ethernity. Without the Machine an observer sees less than half of the true extent of Time, much as men used to regard the Earth as flat.
From the operation of the Machine there can easily be deduced a definition of Duration. Since it consists in the reduction of t to o and of o to -t, we shall say:
Duration is the transformation of
a succession into a reversion.
In other words:
THE BECOMING OF A MEMORY.
[*] Cf. William Thomson [Lord Kelvin], On a Gyrostatic Adynamic Constitution for Ether (C.R. 1899; Proc. R. Soc. Ed., 1890). [Author’s note.]
THE PRIMAL SOLUTION
Eric Norden
There were few Jews in Linz. In fact, I even took them for Germans. The absurdity of this idea did not dawn on me because I saw no distinguishing feature but the strange religion. The fact that they had, as I believed, been persecuted on this account sometimes almost turned my distaste at unfavorable remarks about them into horror . . . . for the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others . . . . But then a flame flared up within me [and] to my deep and joyful satisfaction, I had at last come to the conclusion that the Jew was no German . . . For me this was the time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and become an anti-Semite . . . Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
—Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
Tel Aviv, Wednesday, October 13, 1959.
The project is in trouble. On my desk this morning two memos, one from the Technion Bursar, old Kravitz, the other from Zirin, in Jerusalem. At least the two of them haven’t compared notes yet. Kravitz I can stall, but Zirin instructs me to appear before the university grants board on Friday. Instructs, not asks. It’s a matter of weeks now, perhaps even days, but they are closing on me, a pack of spavined bureaucratic hounds snuffling on my trail. My mistake was ever trying to explain any of it to them—if I had played their game, strangled the reports in jargon, “anticipated results,” and soothed their shopkeepers’ souls with syllogisms, I would have won the time I need. I was a fool to ever try and win them over; “it is impossible to argue with unresisting inbecility.” Dear Dr. Johnson, how well I know it now!
Jerusalem, Friday, October 15, 1959.
It was bad, but not fatal. Zirin no longer even makes a pretense of sympathy. The others, thank God, are so dense they can’t follow either of us! Except Lochner, sitting in for the Weizmann Institute at Rehovot; he’s always been a strange fish, he just sits there looking at me appraisingly, as if I’m one of his damned bugs on a slide. But when Zirin demands an immediate suspension, Lochner moves that I be given two more weeks to present a final progress report. The others follow his lead, the Gadarene swine; it fits their sterile lust for compromise, and Zirin glares at all of us. But I have two weeks. I can feel the texture of each day under my fingertips like a woman’s flesh. I cannot fail, but the words echo mockingly. Tomorrow, back to the laboratory . . . .
Tel Aviv, Saturday, October 16, 1959.
I return to find that Zvi has authorized use of the computer to Rappaport and his stooges. He thought I would be away for the weekend, he tells me. It’s an effort not to strike his dull suety face. Later, I am ashamed. He is a good boy. Loyal. I can’t expect him to understand. I must pull myself together, one day lost will not tip the scales. Tonight I will review the project records, and search out any miscalculation. This enforced leisure may be a blessing in disguise.
1 P.M., Sunday, October 17, 1959.
Impossible to sleep. Another attack earlier, bad this time. The nitro tablets worked, remarkably quickly, but for how long? I need time so desperately now, every minute counts. Fate cannot be so capricious as to rob me of this chance, not now, when I am so close. I will myself to live, as I will myself to succeed . . . . Later, back to the records. I’ve gone over everything and find no margin for error. But the whole thing still seems so damnably unreal. Only three months! I find it almost impossible to look back to a time when the project was not a part of me. Each day of work has been a tiny encapsulated universe. Zirin could be right—perhaps the thing has unhinged me. Have I become the stereotype of a thousand Hollywood films, the Mad Scientist, helpless in the grip of an idee fixe? And yet my mind was never clearer. Every perception strikes into my brain with a cold knifelike thrust. Could that be the meaning of insanity—to see everything in total clarity? Then I am mad—and God help me if I ever become sane!
And, yet, the one impossible thing about the project remains the fact it has only taken three months—three months since I interviewed Miriam Ben Akai. . . .
I think it was the sweetness of her face that first held my interest. For the past year it had been increasingly difficult for me to identify with any of the patients. My theoretical research hadn’t suffered—according to Zirin, it was never better—but it was a struggle to deal in human terms with any of the subjects. At first, after the initial wave of aliya, I found it easy to submerge myself in the human tide, to service the faceless survivors like so many units on an assembly line. There was a relief in immersing myself in their problems, in trying to reach the most seriously disassociated. And yet, I realize now, I grew more and more to resent my successes—there was something obscene about bringing my zombies back to life. It reminded me of my own bitterness, the acid guilt of survival. The only ones that mattered I could never reach.
After the “normalization” in the midfifties I retreated more than ever into pure research. The healthy faces of this new generation, born away from barbed wire and the stench of Cyklon-B, were a constant reproach to me. In the streets of Haifa or Tel Aviv I was almost physically ill. Everywhere around me surged this stagnant sea of bustling, empty faces, rushing to the market, shopping, flirting, engrossed in the multitudinous trivialities of a normal life. With what loathing must the drowned-eyed ghosts spat into Europe’s skies from a thousand chimneys view this blasphemous affirmation! What was acclaimed a “miracle” was to me a betrayal. We had, all of us, broken our covenant with death.
For some reason I reacted differently to Miriam Ben Akai. There was something in her face that reminded me of Rachel, what Rachel might have been. Rachel. Is there any greater pain than memory? She had always loved me to toss her in the air and catch her, cradling her small body in my arms. When Kastner told us afterwards how it happened, I could picture her burbling with laughter, arms extended to clutch at the golden hair of the applecheeked soldier as she landed on the gleaming point of his bayonet. Miriam was seventeen years old and her Yemenite face was swarthy, but there was a glint of Rachel in her eyes. That was why I took her case away from Yonah and took a gamble on sleep therapy.
She was in schizoid withdrawal, almost catatonic, as were most of those we now processed. The easy ones had long since been sent forth to some dreary kibbutz or white collar job, and those who remained were the hopeless cases, the last souvenirs of the camps. They were the only ones with whom I identified, the last links with my own past. I cherished those human vegetables, for they froze time and linked me to Ruth and Rachel and David. They had survived, but I forgave them, for they never had the indecency to really live.
Miriam was the first patient in years for whom I had any genuine enthusiasm about bringing back. At times I reviled myself for it. Was this not just another betrayal, a vulgar effort to fashion an ersatz Rachel from catatonic clay? Do not enough golems stalk my dreams? But I persevered.
Yonah and his team had tried everything from electric shock to chemotherapy without evoking even a flicker of awareness. She would just sit, small and brown, hunched over like a little timid rabbit, her hands clasped tight and her eyes empty. She could feed herself, at least, but that was about all.
I studied her case carefully. In one respect it was atypical, since her condition had nothing to do with the camps and Miriam had never set foot in Europe. According to Histradrut files, she arrived in 1950 in one of the early waves of aliya from Yemen. Miriam’s father was dead, and she and her three younger sisters were cared for by their uncle, an illiterate cobbler, and his wife. In language, culture and customs—in everything but religion—they were Arabs. At the age of nine, still in a resettlement camp, Miriam was raped by her uncle. He’d been particularly brutal about it, and the case came to the attention of the authorities after the girl was admitted to a camp hospital with a broken arm and facial lacerations. She had been in schizoid withdrawal ever since, but the case was only forwarded to us when they closed down the last of the resettlement hospitals and farmed out the remaining patients to government institutions. By that time she was too far gone for conventional treatment.
