How to Build a Time Machine - 12 Midnight #2

Everything we know about time is wrong.”

"Smug bastard."

Masie choked back a laugh. The guy in front of her might have a point, but a crowded lecture hall wasn't the best place to air it.

Not that the lecturer had heard. Dr. Huw was happily basking in the attention his statement had made. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, smiling a little at his enraged audience. They were the best and the brightest, and he was insisting that they were idiots.

And they might be idiots. The university ranked third place, so no one here was quite the very best or very brightest. Which might be why the murmurings held notes of genuine outrage. It wasn't simply an amusement to be told of your ignorance while you smugly reflected that you had already moved far ahead of most of the population. Being ranked third in international rankings held a certain consequence. students who were desperate to prove they were worthy. A good degree was not enough. They had to excel if they wanted a career in time. Even in this introductory lecture, there was a sense of real pressure and a need to compete.

The man waited until the protest had died down before he continued. “Consider how we live, travelling in one direction through time. Human sharks, facing only forwards. The new flat-earthers, we believe only in what we can see, what we experience. Human ants, crawling through our limited dimensions, doomed to see only what our limited perceptions allow."

Masie yawned. No one thought that. No one. If this was Huw's big reveal, he was in need of retirement. She doodled a little on her desk while the words washed over her. This was the first lesson. Maybe the course picked up after half the students dropped out. Or maybe the whole thing was a huge waste of effort. A waste of time. The irony.

The man droned on. “Tradition requires us to believe in time as measured by the distance travelled at the speed of light. That this is the basis of the relationship between space and time. We know time to be an illusion. A dimensional trompe-l’oeil. Einstein himself admitted that there are times his famous equation breaks down."

She dropped her pen. It rolled and hit the foot of the boy in front of her. No biggie. Digging in her bag for another, she missed the quick glance he gave to her.

"Time as a measurement made by the passage of events, not just by the speed of light in a void, but time defined by what happens within its passing. Time as the space in which change is possible, building up from the smallest time from which something can happen, and base our measurement on that."

"Now" theory. Not really original either. She'd considered it at age twelve. Anyone could define the smallest now. No one really knew how to expand to an endless now. Or, in fairness, if they did, they were not writing papers about it.

"Event chains can be echoed, either geographically or sequentially. These form the basis of time spirals, well-documented repeating sequences of events. Or the event line possibilities, and how, even knowing that disaster is coming, we are powerless to change it."

Like this lecture. This. Talk about disaster.

Finishing some minutes later, Dr. Huw lowered his gaze from glories he alone could see. He blinked in astonishment at the field of waving hands. Masie’s hand was amongst them, her arm too short for the great man to see.

“No time for questions. That’s it for today. Papers due on Tuesday. In my box by midday.”

Dr. Huw packed up his notes and looked around the room. All the hands were still raised. “If you are truly stuck, find an easier class. This isn’t Home Ec. This is unpacking the wonders of the universe.”

Indeed.

At the sight of Masie’s neighbour rising from his seat, as though drawn up by his hand, Dr. Huw turned on his heel and exited the room through the door at the back of the stage. For a portly man, he moved with surprising haste.

“I’ve never heard such a travesty of teaching in my life.”

Masie turned to see her neighbour back in his seat once more. He was shoving his notebooks into a bag. And her pen. He must have picked it up from the floor. “He's talking like he never watched Star Trek, let alone read Hawking. Or anyone for that matter. I hear he only got the job because Dr. Hommage left for the US. I hear that he can't get his papers published because they suck. And now I believe it."

Masie blinked. Damn. She should have researched the man, as well as the course. “There are a lot of religions, dating back to pre-Wicca, that work with a subjective concept of time, and the Mayans, when time is circular and goes through the same event cycle, year after year?"

“Time is space from the other side. That’s all. And no piss-taking professor will tell me we hold one hostage to the other. How you measure something doesn’t define it.”

“But it does. Lots of things are changed by measurement. The personal and the infinite have a relationship at the quantum level. Personal experience leads to endless possibilities. We're constantly making choices. Time changes us. We change time."

The man shrugged himself into a black coat, still fuming. “If I could get to a universe where I had a better teacher, I would already be there." He snorted again and kicked the chair with mild outrage. "A light year is a unit of distance, not time. Time flexes, it overlays itself and it thins out.

"Good lord. I could give better lectures. My baby sister could give better lectures. Time, space, they’re handy metaphors. That’s all. We live here, and in this moment. We aren’t constrained to it. Nothing revolves around our own consciousness but our own damn egos. We think we're so special. But you can’t do five dimensions when you haven’t mastered three.”

He nodded towards a frustrated student, who was attempting to open the door through which the controversial lecturer had left.

Masie turned to watch. After trying the door once more, the hapless student kicked the wall next to it and then hopped on the spot, holding his foot. When she looked back to her neighbour, the man in the black coat was leaving, and he had taken more than a pen."

“Hey! You stole my lunch!”

The odious man waved a hand, a gesture that both acknowledged and dismissed her accusation. When Masie started after him, he sped up, stalking through the press of students, a crow in a field of soft-muttering pigeons. Resigned, she shouted after him, “You owe me, mister!”

“It’s the price of my help!”

“Help, my ass,” she muttered, circling the block in case she caught sight of her thief. “More like Help Yourself to Someone Else’s Stuff. Like I ever asked for advice. Or would take it from some jumped-up, egg-and-mayo-stealing half-wit. Who does that tosser think he is?”

***

“‘How to Build a Time Machine’,” Masie read the essay title aloud and stared thoughtfully at the rows of books in front of her. After failing to track down her lunch, she got to the library. She was too late: almost all the recommended research books were missing. Masie spent hours rifling through more obscure texts, trying to come up with something to please the esteemed Dr. Huw.

“Time is space from the other side,” she muttered, while she searched. “Five dimensions. Black holes and collapsing lines of possibilities. What on earth does any of it mean?” She piled up the best of the books into a heap and carried them to a quiet corner.

By mid-afternoon, she had compiled a slew of new material that held a smattering of ideas. Masie sighed, flicking through her notebook, grimacing at her weak suggestions. “Put two black holes side by side,” or, “We are moving through time, every damn day,” or, “Steal one off H. G. Wells.”

Her stomach rumbled, reminding Masie of her missing lunch. She pushed the books away with a groan. “No food until supper. But the third floor has free coffee.”

When she returned from her break, there was a brown bag on her chair. She picked it up, and underneath the bag, there was a blue leaflet, entitled: ‘Time, A Recipe Book’. Masie turned it over in wonder. Someone had scribbled over the cover, and there were what looked like a cat’s teeth marks denting one corner. She tucked the leaflet under her arm before opening the bag. There was a sandwich in it, with an egg salad filling, as well as a bag of crisps, a diet coke, and a small chocolate egg covered in gold foil. Someone had been kind enough to leave her a replacement lunch, along with the most intriguing reading material she had seen in years.

Masie smiled as she flicked through the worn pages, noting the ingredients for brewing and baking different aspects of time. Everything from: “Grow Seconds into Minutes – The Natural Way” to “Curing Cats of Two-Time Flu”. Sadly, there was no recipe for making a time-machine.

Still, thought Masie, peeling the gold foil off the egg, if I combined three recipes, and made a couple of substitutions, it might just work …

She finished her meal before clearing everything off her desk. If she was going to build a time-machine in the library, she needed more space. Her workload was insane. Perhaps she could power through the night and get this written at speed. In the end, she pushed her essay into Dr. Huw’s box with scant minutes to spare.

Her paper got an ‘F’.

“My essay wasn’t ‘insufficient’,” she protested the next time she met the doctor. It was at a seminar on time and genetics. Five other students were desperately pretending not to hear.

“You included none of the current theories of time travel. It isn’t even an essay, it’s far too short and reads as a ludicrous joke.” Dr. Huw didn’t even bother to raise his voice. “It was a terrible paper, and it failed to answer the question. Nor are we exploring the answer to time travel here, in this seminar group.” He looked around his office, where he and his students were grouped.

“I answered the question!” Masie flushed with indignation. “You can make a time machine following this basic recipe. It includes event-based measurement. It includes entropy off-set. There's even a bit on spooky action!”

"Spooky is the word that comes to mind." Dr Huw pounced. "Spooky that you think you've anything to contribute."

"More like spooky they haven't fired your butt already." Masie muttered. "Spooky action at a distance is a good look for you."

One of the students sniggered. "Einstein. Nice."

"Out!"

Masie grabbed her things.

"I will be talking about your attitude to the Dean of Studies! Your work ignores almost everything that you have learned to date. The gravitational pull of time, music and motion, the individual will, events and their management, and how we are falling forever forwards. Sharks, remember? Free will and the multiple universe? Were you even at my last lecture? Were you listening? Haven’t you read my book?” He picked up a copy of ‘Time: Bending the Illusion’ and waved it at Masie.

"You self-published! And why? Because not a single theory is new. Nor is it well presented. You may as well print these awards" She waved her hand at the wall, where various awards were prominently placed. Huw winced. Masie zoned in on the expression that passed his face. "Wait. You did? You faked all this? You're that insecure?"

A student coughed in the sudden silence.

"No wonder you scuttle out after every lecture like the rat you are. Every time. Better to run than answer questions and risk exposure. And you want to talk to the Dean of Studies? Me, too. I want my money back. I want that damn Time Machine so I can get a re-do. Make better choices."

“I do not run away from my students, young lady. You gave me nothing, and that is what I gave back to you. Zero. I tell you again: get out. You’ve failed the course.” Huw regrouped. "And by all means talk to the Dean. He's a personal friend."

"You can't fail me! I answered the question! I answered it more than anyone else here! It isn’t my fault you’re worthless idiot. I even showed you how to build a time machine!”

“Prove it. Until then, last time, get out or I will have security escort you out.”

Masie tossed back her long, brown hair, snatched up her failed paper, and got out.

***

The following morning, Dr. Huw walked to his study to find a student waiting for him outside his office door. It was the annoying brown-haired girl, the one who’d insulted him with that ridiculous paper. He had already talked to the Dean. She should be leaving by the end of the month.

Her presence here showed that, despite yesterday’s seminar, she still had not learned the errors of arrogance. At least he had spotted this troublemaker early and dealt with her swiftly. This girl was not university material. She was far too... uppity. That was the word. Confident. Contradictory. Not here to learn.

“Good morning, Dr. Huw!” Masie said, ignoring her professor’s darkening face. She picked up a cardboard box that sat next to her feet. “I don’t suppose you will reinstate me and give me my new grade before turning this on?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the doctor scoffed. He put his briefcase on the floor, keeping hold of his coffee while he unlocked the door. Gaining entry, he tried shutting the door on this most annoying ex-student, only to have her wedge her foot into the gap, forcing his retreat.

“Is this one more of your jokes?” Dr. Huw asked, striding to the side of the tiny office and turning to face her. “Do I need to call security again?” Not that he had called the first time, but no need for her to know that.

Masie gave him a look, then placed the box onto his desk. She knocked a pile of papers sideways while doing so. “Call away. But I’m doing what you asked. I used my recipe. The one you didn't even read. And I built you a time machine, and stayed up all night finishing it, too.” She gave him a sharp look. "Maybe we could both go back. I chose a better major. You chose to, well, either educate yourself or find a different job. Spooky action across decades, am I right?"

The audacity. She was so far from right there were no words for it.

All the same, Dr. Huw craned his head to peer inside the box. It appeared to be a crow’s nest of miscellaneous madness. “Are those… eggs?”

“From the library cafeteria. Borrowed only. It turns out that scholarship students don’t possess enough funds for time-machine parts. Or eggs. Crazy, right? This is improvised. I haven’t even tested it yet, because there wasn’t enough foil, or, well, the eggs. Oh, wait. I see you aren’t wearing a watch. Damn. We need two watches, and I don’t have a spare. We can borrow one, right? Back in a mo. Don’t touch anything.” She left quickly, ignoring his incoherent protests and renewed threats.

Time machine, what rubbish. The doctor reached out to poke the nest. It beeped at him. Perhaps he could move the thing to the corridor and lock his door? Then he might enjoy his morning coffee in peace. He was testing the weight of the box when another student knocked at the door. This time, it was a pupil that the teacher was delighted to see.

“Ah, Mr. Jenks, a true student of time. I saw your hand raised at the end of my lecture. Every lecture in fact. Hard to miss that disgusting jacket of yours. Couldn’t wait to tell me all the ways I was wrong, again? Why don’t you come in and find a chair? If you could hold the door open first though, I’d be most grateful. I’ll just pop this box outside.” At least this student had the grace to challenge him in private. And he usually came with both coffee and pastries, which softened the blows considerably.

“Here, let me help you,” said the student with the black coat, moving quickly towards him. “I expect the timer needs to be set up properly. Eggs can be temperamental little beasts when entropy is involved.”

***

“I got one!” Masie came running into the room, ponytail bouncing. Alas, there was no sign of her professor. Or her time machine. A warm cup of coffee sat in the middle of the table. All the cafeteria’s eggs were grouped around it, as though stealing the warmth. Some of them were rocking back and forth, and one gave a loud crack. An actual chick seemed to be pecking at the crumbs of what might have been a croissant.

“And he never even changed my grade,” Masie groaned. “I stayed up all night working on that machine and what do I get? Chickens!”