How to Travel Through Time & Space

By Allen Quintana

“The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.” —The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

“SO ARE YOU TELLING ME you did it?” Reginald asked.

“Yes.”

It was too much to believe in that one, little, three letter word—sentence. It spoke volumes; it was absolute, and it was truer than the many theorems out there that dared, begged, or demanded the greatest minds to prove their formulae.

Yet this upstart, this young, self-assured tow-headed geek, admittedly so, a child prodigy in his own right, was saying he found a way to break the time barrier, claiming that it came to him when he deliberately, in a fit of boredom, totally disrupted the wedding feast of the older daughter of the university Chair of the Physics Department with the latter doing a face-plant in the wedding cake.

“You almost got suspended for that,” said Reginald Donaldson. “I would have canned you big, Hobby.” Reginald was wrapping up his doctoral dissertation on disproving Fermat’s Last Theorem, and was ignoring his classmate’s advice that he should switch to quantum mechanics before he embarrassed himself.

“How did you do that, anyway?” Reginald asked.

“What, the time thing?”

“No. We’ll get to that in second,” waved off Reginald. “How did you, from across the banquet hall and a long table, orchestrate a bunch of ignorant, low-brained high brows—innocent bystanders to boot—and make Professor Sims suck Angel Food?”

“Oh, that,” laughed Worldster Hobbs. He never liked that hokey name his parents had given him. That moniker derived from all the traveling they did before and after having their brilliant son. They were off again, somewhere. Hobby, as he was accustomed to being called, would put far more mileage than his parents ever could, he estimated. “You really want to know, Reggie?”

“No, I’m really here for the stimulating conversation,” Reginald postured. “Really, Hobby, maybe you don’t have to tell me; I’m starting to doze in my fruit cup.”

“Okay, okay,” Hobbs relented. “It was pretty simple, actually.”

“What? Did you pay the maître d’s to do the dirty work?”

“Really, Reg!” Hobbs feigned a hurt look. “Nothing so Neanderthal. And there would be no guarantee that they would have done it right.”

“Tell me,” Reginald warned, “or I might slip a tip on those missing lab rats.”

Hobbs tried to stifle a smile at that. Those investigating that mystery were totally out of their league. They never did question the sudden appearance of the white, round wafers that would turn up spread about the grounds on and off campus, which seem to sate the appetites of the feline population, with cats and campus authorities both ignoring the strange and sudden sightings of hairless rodents.

“Hobby!”

Suddenly thrust back to the present like a pheasant flushed from the bush, Hobbs, along with Reginald, gave the student commissary a quick survey to see if they had disturbed other patrons at the latter’s outburst.

“It was the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.”

“The what?” Reginald asked.

“You know,” reminded Hobbs, “the principle that states the more precisely the position is—”

“I know what it is! What does that have to do with what happened at the wedding?” pressed Reginald.

“I tested it, and it worked,” Hobbs said matter-of-factly.

“You totally screwed up a momentous occasion on testing an uncertainty principle?”

“‘Uncertainty being plus or minus—“

“That’s all it took?” Reginald said wide-eyed.

“Well, I did need a spoon and some butter.”

Reginald looked as if Hobbs had just upchucked in his tablemate’s corned beef on rye, hold the mustard. “A what?”

“Consider, mon frère,” said Hobbs, “the dynamics of a simple spoon and spread.” Reginald knew he was not in Worldster’s league. A prodigy was a step above his genius rating. Still, the fraternity that Hobbs considered Reginald his brother made the latter exceptional in many ways. Hobbs would probably never know how much Reginald valued that friendship.

“I’m listening,” Reginald said.

“The spoon coated with butter makes a wonderful near perfect form of transportation on any surface, from glass to grass,” announced Worldster.

“Including a water-resistant deep shag carpet,” Reginald interjected. “The kind on the floor of the banquet hall of the wedding reception.”

“By coincidence,” Worldster smiled. “It made no difference. It was like your proverbial Domino Effect. It was just a matter of timing.”

“How did you manage that?” Reginald pressed.

“Excuse me? You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened there,” Hobbs’ eyes flicked side to side to make certain others nearby couldn’t hear.

“Still, I happened to notice that all the maître d’s were assigned a specific formation. They moved about from one place in the hall to another as if it was choreographed; like clockwork and so predictable for the most part. It got me to thinking, what would liven up such a dull event? Sims had ticked me off, as you know.”

“You deserved it, you know,” admonished Reginald. “Sims had every right to slap you down in his own class.”

“He was wrong,” countered Hobbs, “He made the variable positive when it should have been negative. That would have screwed up the whole equation and made the whole class stupider.”

“I was in that class, too.”

“My point.”

“Hey!”

“Anyway,” Hobbs said, “not that I had anything to do with it, mind you.”

“Not without a little help from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,” Reginald observed.

“And Goldie.”

Reginald looked puzzled at that. “Wait. How were you in contact with Goldie? I saw no terminal.”

“I ran the numbers via my cell phone.”

“You were talking to Goldie? On the phone?”

Hobbs exaggerated shock. “What! Reggie! That would be rude, having a conversation over the phone during a wedding reception; with a computer, no doubt.”

Goldie was short for Goldberg, which was short for Rube Goldberg which, as many knew, was someone who decidedly had too much time on his hands. He was famous for building incredible mechanical contraptions that each would ultimately do a simple, singular task. People marveled at a Goldberg machine that barely fit into a room. When activated would take minutes to run through dozens of operations that utilized things such as ping-pong balls, marbles, eggs, windmills, even toasters, and then finally turn a doorknob to open a door, which was what the apparatus was made for. Goldberg built many of these just to see if they would actually work. Goldie was programmed with this function in mind, not to mention with the HUP factored in, because nothing was absolute, but for what Hobbs needed, was close enough. “I text-messaged the info,” he said. “No one saw. Decorum, you know,” he smiled.

“So you managed to cause—”

“Ahem!” Hobbs wagged his finger in denial.

“Theorize an incident—” Reginald corrected himself resulting with a happy nod from his friend, “by putting a slippery utensil under the heel of a waiter at one end of a long table, which ultimately gave Sims his just desserts at the other end?”

“Well put, Reggie,” Hobbs chuckled. “That’s it exactly.”

Donaldson remembered it clearly.

He recalled the maître d’ briskly move past him, and then heard a “Whoop!” One of his legs kicked high in the air as a spoon skittered across the carpet and out of sight. Next, out of the corner of Reginald’s eye, he saw the maître d’ sail into the back of the chair of Dr. Barnes’ wife.

Mrs. Barnes let out a shout as she was unceremoniously jammed against the table, which caused Dr. Barnes to stand up reflexively right at the time when another waiter was rushing to help.

That waiter collided head-on with Dr. Barnes. The latter then fell headlong into his table setting, of which his plate, containing the main course of medium-rare Porterhouse, then flew across and upset a carafe of iced tea directly in front of him. That impact spilled the entire carafe’s complement across the table right into the ample and mostly-revealed bosom of Professor Chiles. Her reaction to the sudden temperature change to her person steered any remaining attention away from the newly betrothed couple.

Wailing like a banshee, Professor Chiles shoved away from the table and into another maître d’ who was dashing up from behind to assist where he could. The combination of the retreating Chiles and the approaching waiter caused the maître d’ to catch his foot on the leg of the chair in motion and send the man into a new trajectory, this time into Dr. Bennett, who had during the commotion stood up and made himself a target in his own right.

He and the waiter tumbled into an adjacent service tray which now received that transferred energy—enough to zoom across a clear space of the banquet hall and on a collision course with the wedding cake.

At least two bystanders, Dr. Pasqual and a fellow named Roy, saw what was about to happen, but not each other, as they tore after the errant service tray from opposite sides. Just then Professor Sims got to his feet thinking he could take control of the tumult. He later wished to have taken the situation sitting down.

Dr. Pasqual suddenly discovered his path was blocked by Professor Sims, and trying to steer clear, made off with a glancing blow. That knocked Sims into the path of the service tray. He successfully halted its course and was trying to regain his balance just inches away from the cake.

However, the service tray’s sudden stop by Sims was too sudden for Roy, a 225-pound six-foot-four friend of the family, and crashed into it, thus spinning the Chair of the Physics Department right into the $1,000 dollar cake up to his ears.

“All that from a slippery utensil?” Reginald asked.

“Roy was the surprise in the equation,” Hobbs answered. “But it did work out well. Actually, Pasqual was favoring a sprained ankle and should have been the one to knock Sims into the cake. He must have been faking it. But darned if I know what caused the whole mess; a waiter must have been careless.” Hobbs shook his head. “Tsk, tsk. The help these days ...”

“I think I’ll elope,” Reginald said.

***

“Wanna see something?” Hobbs asked.

“Not if it gets people talking, and I have to deny false accusations for the rest of my life,” Reginald said, brows furrowed.

“Not that!” Hobbs hissed and smacked the top of Reginald’s head for emphasis.

“Ow!”

“Here,” handing Reginald a napkin.

“Am I bleeding?” Reginald asked, checking the top of his head and nose.

“No, you dope,” Hobbs rolled his eyes. “Read what’s on it.”

“Well, he’s on the right track ...” Reginald said distantly.

“Funny, Reg. The only way this would work would be to employ—”

“Exotic matter—I know,” concluded Reginald, handing the napkin back. “Until then, it’s not worth discussing.” He was talking about the Alcubierre Principle, a theory about traveling faster than light, a sort of warp drive similar to the propulsion idea used on an old science fiction television show they both loved but wouldn’t admit.

“Take a look at this.” Hobbs gave Reginald a second napkin with another equation.

“You got a problem with iPads?”

“Just read it.”

“What do you think?”

“Hang on a second,” said Reginald, eyes still on the napkin. “Hey, this hurts.”

Hobbs smiled at the contemplating Reginald. He took it as a compliment when he stumped his friend. “Recognize some of it?”

“The first part, yeah,” Reginald said, not taking his eyes off the formula. “It takes on Euclidean and Galilean thinking, plus fourth dimensional physics—quantum theory—and the like. This second part—how can you say that? How can you subtract one from infinity?”

“Remember the warp ten idea?”

“Sure. That’s when you hit warp ten, you exist at every point of infinity.”

“And?” Worldster pressed.

“But that’s only a theory” Reginald surmised. “Albeit a good one—but only a theory.”

“You can’t help being at every infinite point; you have no control over it,” Hobbs explained. “If you subtract one point from infinity, then you are in control of your actions, and can travel to any other point since you control that single one.”

“And if you control one infinite point,” Reginald mused, “it is then a finite point.”

“Go on.”

“Therefore the rest is finite as well.” Reginald eyes widened, “Then it’s no longer infinity!”

“You go to the head of the class, my boy” Worldster sat back, nodding approval.

“But, Hobby, how can you take that point away from—“

“I already did, remember?”

“Well, there’s always Hobbs’ Theorem, too.”

“Right,” Reginald rolled his eyes. “How many blackboards have you covered so far?”

“About two lecture hall’s worth,” his friend confirmed.

“So you’re saying that tachyons exist in another universe because—”

“They only exist at the speed of light,” Hobbs finished. “I’m saying they go beyond that, and if they do, it introduces three things.” Hobbs counted them off with his fingers.

“A: That tachyons must be a stable element in another universe that only exists in a faster than light medium, so that would confirm at least one more universe.

“B: Considering that anything that can go FTL can touch every point of infinity—theoretically—one tachyon may touch every infinite point, and since we know there are countless tachyons, that would reconfirm other universes. In this case, there are as many universes as there are tachyons.”

“Are you saying,” Reginald jumped in, eyes wide, “that every single tachyon that exists may be its own Big Bang and able start its own universe!”

“Precisely.”

“Why the energy of just one of those suckers must be near infinite,” Reginald said, awestruck.

“We are talking on an infinity scale here, Reggie,” Hobbs noted.

“You said there was a third thing.”

“Yes!” Hobbs said. “And, C: Because of its supposed near-infinite energy, tachyons can convert any subject, say an object or person into a tachyon state as well, and transport the latter to another time and another place instantaneously.”

“This is really theoretical stuff, you know.”

“I’m still working out the computations; I’m gonna need another lecture hall.”

“I should think so,” Reginald agreed. “You know they’re going to have to come up with a new type prize if you can prove this. A Nobel might not be enough.”

“Meet me in the lab in twenty minutes and then tell me again.”

***

“Temporal Posit Interaction.”

“Huh?”

“What that translates into,” Hobbs said, “is instead of sending a time machine to the past, you aim it at something already there.”

“Isn’t setting a date enough?” Reginald asked.

“Remember what Einstein said? In order for something to go back in time, it has to have existed back then,” Hobbs noted. “Therefore ...”

“A time machine doesn’t work because of that slight technicality,” Reginald finished. “Some time machine.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Worldster smiled and shrugged. “A time machine that doesn’t time travel.”

“Yeah, what a riot,” Reginald said dully. Hobbs made a face.

“Hello, Reggie.”

Both turned in the direction of the voice. It was the younger daughter of Professor Sims. The guys could only stare.

Jenna had all the looks her dad didn’t. Talk buzzed about the campus that this brunette Merle Oberon look-alike was adopted. Had to be.

“Uh, hello, Jenna” Reginald stammered.

“Hi,” Jenna returned a perfectly disarming smile that all but melted Reginald into a puddle.

“Hello, Hobby.” Jenna leaned nose to nose with Hobbs and he soaked up her incomparable grin like a sponge.

“Hi,” was all he could say.

“That was a mean thing you did at Tammy’s reception,” she said in a teasing tone.

“What makes you think I had anything to do with that?” Hobbs said defensively.

“Don’t try to lie to a psych major,” Jenna warned, wagging her finger. “We know when someone is pulling our leg. And you’re bad at it.”

“Uh.”

“And nobody could have pulled that off but Worldster Hobbs, physics student extraordinaire.”

“Hey,” Reginald interrupted, finding his voice, “I could’ve done it.”

“You know what?” Jenna asked.

“Uh ... what?” the prodigy flushed.

“That was scrumptious! Daddy and Tammy deserved it,” she grinned. “Wish I had it on tape.”

“Well, uh,” Hobbs said sheepishly, “it just so happens, it was on video.”

“Really?” That gorgeous smile again.

“From—ahem—four different angles.”

“Sounds premeditated.”

“Well, it was a special day, you know. The wedding and all ...”

“Wasn’t it, though?” Jenna said coquettishly.

***

Traveling through time and space is a simple method of controlling the velocity and action of light-fast tachyons, which are subatomic particles that only exist, obviously, at light speed; possibly, beyond.

The key is resonance. Vibration needs to match the tachyon frequency and retained in a magnetic field/void of outside influence.

The envelope must be purged of atmosphere and detached from solid matter so that the field is removed from all outside tangible elements. Once the field is clear the captive tachyons can be controlled to attach and merge with the subject.

The magnetic field which controls the captive tachyons can be slowed down via their resonance frequency and applied to the surface of the subject as would dust on furniture. Once the sensors confirmed the application, the field would increase the vibration of the tachyons back to their normal resonance, thus radiating their frequency to adjoining atomic structures that are a part of the traveler. The traveler would undergo a molecular change and be converted to pure tachyons, thus free to move at the speed of light. The magnetic field could increase the tachyon resonance to a higher speed, thus vibrating the tachyons beyond the speed of light, hence, breaking the time barrier and traveling beyond the bonds of chronological dimensions.

A computer/magnetic field generator would control the traveler’s actions and would be programmed to the destination through the dynamics of the controlling field. The traveler is inert during the transmission since it is no more than a swarm of tachyons surrounded by the controlling field in transit.

The field is pre-programmed and maintains the necessary frequency for the entire duration of the trip. Obviously, tests would be made to be certain what speed and vibration/resonance would be necessary for length of distance and/or time for transit. Traveling at light speed to a distant star would take years to millennia. So speeding the tachyons to a faster vibration would be necessary. Time and space would be one, and neither, due to this process.

The traveler would experience no passage of time since he or she would be in an inert state during transit, thus he or she could travel for years or millennia and not age a second.

Reality, however, would continue to move along the time stream, concluding that the traveler would be beyond time and space during transit.

This, however, is primarily traveling through space since the destination is significantly in another location. The only in time here is probably the time it took the traveler to get from point A to point B, which is no time at all.

To travel from one time point to the other is to control the field with the tachyons enveloping it rather than the traveler itself. The tachyons would increase the vibrations of the field itself and fling it and traveler within time to a desired location preprogrammed through the computer/magnetic field generator. Because time is not a constant action, it behaves in a sort of wave effect, also verifying Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The challenge is to calculate the right “wave” or “period vibration” and get the desired temporal destination. As with ocean currents, one wave affects another so this is not beyond a computer’s capacity to link up with the correct wave and connect with the desired temporal destination. Of course, tests are necessary to be precise. Once the common denominators are plotted, it would be a simple matter of transit—as simple as going to the store.

You could go anywhere, or anywhen, if you could harness the magic of the tachyon.

[SELECT ALL]
[DELETE]

Worldster Hobbs pushed back from his laptop’s now-blank screen and thought for a moment.

“Boy! Am I stupid!”

The prodigy then smiled. He scooted forward and typed: Because it is impossible to go back in time before the time machine is invented, some contemporary technology that is already there will be necessary to make it happen. Worldster Hobbs pondered for a moment. Perfect. “Needed for time machine: A chamber pot.
Preferably used.”

He nodded.

“The fuller, the better,” he said, and banged away on the keyboard for another eleven hours. 

Allen Quintana is a wordsmith by trade, loves history, gumshoe pulp, and likes to make science fiction sound scientific. He lives in the Golden State with his lovely wife of more than two decades and five daughters.