The Laws of Time Travel
Sometimes, when my mind finds a quiet moment it begins to wander around. And when it wanders it sometimes conjures Gobbledygook.
Gobbledygook is the best kind of intrusive thought exercise because it's not imagining terrible or self-abusive things. More often than not it sparks an internal conversations where I try to give the Gobbledygook shape and meaning. I was putting my son to bed one night when the phrase "Chronoal Drift" just kind of appeared in my head. To which I responded, "Kronol Drift? The hell does that mean?"
To which the other guy in my head responded:
"No, not Kronol -- Chronoal. Derived from the Greek god Chronos -- the personification of time. Chronoal Drift is the phenomenon that prevents time travel to precise dates and times. Dr. Weber once said, 'If time is a river then to travel through time is to fight the pull of time's current'."
"Who?" I asked.
"Dr. Leonie Weber," the other guy said. He paused. When I didn't respond he offered, "The Weber Solution?"
"Who?" I asked again.
"Okay," he sighed, turning to give me his full attention. "Dr. Leonie Weber is a theoretical physicist. The Weber Solution is her mathematical equation that compensates for Chronoal Drift, allowing us to chart a reasonably accurate course through the time stream."
"Reasonably accurate?" I asked.
"Yeah, once we started to observe and map exotic particles we learned that these particles occasionally become entangled; and when they do, they create small gravitational anomalies. These are brief, and largely inconsequential on a cosmic scale, but observation of the particles revealed that when that entanglement "broke" it created a significant amount of energy that propelled the particles in opposite directions. That's where Dr. Weber got the idea for Cosmic Superstrings."
I stared blankly at him. He sighed again looking to the sky, beseeching the universe for patience.
"Okay. Understand that what I'm about to say is an analogy -- and a piss-poor one that that. When you manage to weave enough particles together, you create a gravity well that is essentially a river through time. That's a Cosmic Superstring. We can't make them for very long, and they are highly unstable. Energy moves along the Superstring in one direction and it moves very fast. The instability created by the particles trying to break apart creates...exit points."
"So it's like a highway," I said.
"No," he responded emphatically. "A highway is static. It doesn't move you; you move along it. The exits are predictable and measurable. This is why even the river analogy is a bad one, because ports on a river are static just like exits on a highway. Because of the current and instability of a Superstring, nothing is static. It's elastic -- expanding and contracting the whole time as the particles try to break apart, so the exits aren't measurable that way. This creates Chronoal Drift, and why we need the Weber Solution to travel through time."
"Earlier, you said the Weber Solution allowed for a reasonably accurate course through time," I said. "Define 'reasonably accurate'."
"The Weber solution can land a traveler within 72 hours of their chronological destination," he said. "Usually."
"Usually?" I asked.
"We have found that the magnetic field created by solar winds can help stabilize the Cosmic Superstring for safer, more predictable travel," he said. "However, there have been cases where the shifting in the magnetic field can bend or warp the string unpredictably. We call these Solar Riptides, and they can drag a traveler way off their intended course."
"Time travel sounds really scary," I said. "Why would anyone ever do it?"
"It's fucking terrifying," he said. "And no one has done it. That's why you still haven't written this story."
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