by Anthology
Strone Industries was located near Tampa in St. Petersburg Florida. Twice each day Ben traveled across the Howard Franklin Bridge that connected the two cities. The bridge was often jammed with traffic that only crawled across the miles of water. This gave him a long opportunity to think about the day’s work. He didn’t know where his research was going to lead. Surely in the early days of collecting data he had no idea it would apply to time travel. It was on a traffic filled, fifty minute crossing of the five mile bridge that the implications came to him of what ultra-high power magnetism applied in a particular way could do. Like a light bulb popping on above his head, a whole theory formed that integrated magnetism, gravity, String-Theory and Time/Space relations.
Four Years Ago
“No, gravity and magnetism are different,” he explained his theory to Caroline as they prepared their dinner salads that evening, “but a magnetic field is very similar to a gravitational field.” She was listening, but not completely understanding the techno-babble. Still, she listened, just as he pretended to listen to the poetry verses she often read to him. “The sources are different but the fields are very much alike.” She grabbed a cucumber and started slicing while he cranked the salad spinner. He spun it faster than necessary to dry the lettuce. “To make a gravitational field you need a spinning object of great mass, but to make a magnetic field all you need is power.” The lettuce was portioned out into two large bowls as he continued. “In nature the gravity of a collapsing star warps space, but I believe with enough power I can create a magnetic field that would do the same thing. All I need are the right components,” he said while he topped the salad with tomato, cucumbers, croutons and bacon bits. They sat at the bar that separated their large kitchen from a casual dining area. A wall of sliding glass doors displayed a purple and crimson sunset over Tampa Bay.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Said Caroline as she took a small fork of salad. “What would that accomplish? What could you do with a giant magnetic field that warped space?”
“It wouldn’t have to be giant, just powerful,” he clarified. “If theorists are correct, and string theory has any truth behind it, the field could be used to create a transport to a parallel universe or even time travel.”
Caroline stopped, her fork lifted half way to her mouth. “You mean like Well’s Time Machine,” she asked. “Are you serious?”
“Theoretically, but who knows if it’s actually possible. No one knows what’s in a black hole.” Ben munched his salad, contemplating the question. “All I know is that with what I’ve seen in Magnetic Field Variance, a super field is possible, but I’m not exactly sure what you’ll get once you have one in the lab.”
“Are you making a black hole in your lab at Strone,” she asked, not believing she mouthed the words.
“No, it’s not in the budget,” Ben quipped back.
Three Months Ago
It would have frightened the neighbors had they been aware of the experimental lab that was built in the garage behind the couple’s two story, modern home that looked out over Tampa Bay. In front of the house, Bay Shore Boulevard ran south to Ballast Point Park where a monument commemorated that Jules Gabriel Verne made Tampa Town the launch point for the fictional space adventure “From the Earth to the Moon”, written in 1865. Now over a hundred and fifty years later, the neighborhood was the site of another experiment.
Ben had put the lab together when his theories and experiments expanded beyond the work place. At first he would only spend an occasional hour in the garage tinkering on the computer. But as the months turned into years it became more than a hobby to him. The experiment consumed his thoughts. At work, he performed his duties with half his mind someplace else. Strone Industries became just a job, a means to accomplish his goal. His real passion was the project behind the house where he spent more and more of his time.
Caroline occasionally commented on the time and money that went into the garage project, but she knew it meant a lot to him. She never felt neglected, though sometimes she did notice his mind wandered. Always kept informed of the progress, Caroline often questioned what it would lead to.
“It would all be worth it in the end,” he assured her, even though he no idea what they would gain.
The couple did feel a financial strain. Their Bermuda vacation was canceled, and they had to settle on visiting relatives in Michigan. It was a nice trip, but it wasn’t Bermuda. They were surviving on Caroline’s paycheck alone, which wasn’t enough for the upscale lifestyle they enjoyed. All of Ben’s wages from Strone went to cover the credit cards that had been allocated to the project. The cards had been maxed out for a while, and collectors were calling regularly. All they could pay was a fraction of the monthly payments. Ben had been forced to look to creative ways to acquire the last few components that he needed. An old friend from Coil Corp supplied two pole transformers on a “no questions asked” basis. They cost him only one hundred dollars each. The transformers were old and one of them slowly leaked PCB’s into a tray, but they worked. They were hung inside the corner of the garage with wires salvaged from a demolished building connected them to a control panel that supplied power to the project. The machine was beginning to take shape. Ben assured her their troubles would be over soon.
He wasn’t exactly working blind. He knew that space and time were related, and when one was warped, so would the other be affected. His machine would warp space, but he wasn’t sure what this would accomplish or how it would affect time. He did know the experiment wouldn’t dilate time, or slow its’ passing. Nor would it challenge the law of relativity which states that time moves slower for objects moving faster. This machine would do something completely different. There were theories regarding warped space that guided him, but blending together Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity was new territory to everyone except a few physicists. His machine would create more than an electromagnetic field, or “London Moment”, as other researchers in Europe had named a similar event they had created. Ben developed a design that allowed the fields to be manipulated and magnified a thousand times with independently controlled spinning superconductors. The “Gravito-metric London Moment”, as Ben named his high power event, would open a wormhole in space or a passage through time, Ben hypothesized.
One Month Ago
“I think I’m ready to go to full power,” Ben announced as he plopped down in front of the television. The soft pillowy chair almost consumed him. His knees and his head were all that Caroline could see of him from her usual comfy spot in the TV room.
Concerned with the possibility of danger, she pulled her attention away from the television. It was only reruns, she thought, the satellite service had been disconnected months ago. Caroline always had worries about the project, though she never voiced them. They were mostly financial worries. It was like an expensive hobby for Ben, and she tolerated it. She knew of other wives that watched their husbands waste thousands of dollars on motorbikes, gambling, or countless other things. The husband of one friend at work spent thousands of dollars on hunting trips. The project in the garage was not so bad, she rationalized, and at least Ben was at home with her.
Now, at the moment of truth, she wondered if her husband was as brilliant as he seemed. Could he really be an Einstein? She had the sinking feeling deep inside her that he was not the genius inventor he wanted to be. Could she rescue him from that despair if he failed? Could there even be greater dangers? What ever the case, she loved him and would support him in any way she could. “Do you think it will be safe,” she asked as she switched off the set, knowing Ben wanted to talk.
“The machine is not dangerous,” he said. “Compare it to a door. If everything goes smoothly it will just swing open.”
“What if there is a storm on the other side,” Caroline asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben confessed. “Who knows what will happen when I warp space so far it ruptures. I really have no idea.” He was sinking farther into the feathery down cushions of the chair as
he relaxed. “Only theories,” he said.
“Like what? I know you’ve told me your thoughts before, but what is your latest guess on what’s going to happen.”
“Hypothesis, not guess,” Ben corrected.
They both laughed.”Okay, hypothesis then, what do you think will happen.” She asked again, loving to hear his voice get excited about his work.
Ben sat quiet for a moment. “I believe there are multiple time and space dimensions. String theory predicts a finite amount, but I think time could have limitless possible dimensions. Call them realities.”
Ben had sat up and was pulling himself from the chair so he could be seen. “If the machine opens a worm hole it will be a passage to another space/time reality.” He said.
Caroline was on the edge of her seat too, listening, and trying to understand. “Will it go to the past, or to the future?” She asked.
“It can’t go to the future. We are at the furthest point of our time line, the present. There is no future to our reality but the one we make. But, there is a past.”
Caroline was thrilled with the new theory. She had not heard this before now. “How far back will it go? Could we travel through it?” She asked. She had always loved history.
“Traveling through a worm hole is questionable,” Ben answered. “How far back it will go is another issue.”
“What do you mean?” Caroline asked.
“The worm hole can’t reach further back in time than the moment that the machine is activated.”
“What?” Caroline looked confused.
Ben explained. “The machine is not a vehicle that you ride on through time. It’s a machine bolted in place, inside our garage. You can’t go someplace that it does not exist. Once I turn it on tomorrow, that is the only place it will take you.”
“Where?” She asked, still confused.
“The garage,” Ben answered, “tomorrow morning, August 25th 2009.” He stood up. “I know it’s not as exciting as going back to the signing of the declaration of independence. But you can’t travel back earlier in time then when the machine first existed.”
”So, it will only take us to our garage.” Caroline’s confusion did not ease. “But, that’s where it’s at.”
“Exactly,” Ben agreed. “And three years from now, if the machine is left operating that long, the garage is exactly where the worm hole will lead, except to the past date of August 25th 2009.”
A flash of understanding rushed over Caroline’s face.”Oh, I get it now.” She said.
“It’s only a theory.” Ben explained as he settled back into the overstuffed chair.
“Sure,” Caroline sighed, trying to grasp the abstract concepts.
“There is more to it than that,” Ben continued.”When I say the worm hole would lead to our garage on that date, I really mean our garage on that date, in another dimension; another ‘reality’ ” he corrected.
“Of course,” Caroline chimed, getting lost in theoretical physics again.
“It’s not too complicated really,” Ben continued. “When the machine gets turned on for the first time nothing should happen. We are the alpha reality, the lead timeline. At least, I think we are.” He smiled.
“I hope we are anyway.” Caroline nodded, not really sure why, as he continued his explanation. “Our reality is the only reality there is, until we make another one.”
“We make a reality,” she asked.
“Yes! Let’s say after the machine is on for two hours I toss a rubber ball into the worm hole. I would be creating a second reality. The second reality would be exactly like our own up until the point that the machine is functional. At that point, two hours in our past, but in another reality, a ball bounces out of the machine as soon as it is turned on.” Ben tried to explain it another way. “The worm hole connects two different points in time, in two different realities.” Caroline smiled, now understanding. “It has to be a different reality because a ball didn’t come out of our machine when you started it.”
“Exactly,” Ben said, happy she seemed to really understand.
“Wow,” she said as they both sat quietly grasping the complications of it all. “How many realities can there be?” She asked.
“As many as we make.”
“Are we like Gods?” Her question was left unanswered as the evening slowly turned to night and they sat contemplating the answer.
Tuesday, August 25
Caroline was usually at work on a Tuesday morning, but she took a personal day to be with Ben in the garage lab. She hadn’t spent a lot of time working with him on his project, just an occasional hour or two when he needed an extra hand, and she was amazed at the size and complexity that the machine had become. Ben had rearranged his work schedule at Strone Industries to work three days of twelve hours. Thirty six hours was still considered fulltime, and it allowed him two additional days each week to put into his home project.
For the first time Caroline realized the immensity of it. She sat at the control desk where a computer displayed several status reports, and key readings. Next to it, where Ben sat, a panel of dials and switches controlled the machine. Ben called it a Mass Simulator, because that is what it did. If all went as planned, an area of defined space would react as if it contained great mass. At one end of the large garage Ben had built a smaller room, about 10 feet wide and the length of the building. The left side of the room had a door that allowed access, and through a wall of Plexiglas, the machine inside could be seen. The left end of the machine Ben called the ring, for obvious reasons. Built of wood and shiny aluminum, a circular frame evenly spaced about twenty large coils. They reminded Caroline of giant rolls of thread. Side by side the coils circled the frame creating a five foot ring. Caroline thought it looked similar to a giant rotary engine of a propeller driven airplane. From her seat she viewed the ring of coils from the side. Each coil was wrapped with copper tubing that snaked into a pump unit and tank on the floor. Ben explained it was the cooling unit.
Heavy rails on the floor allowed a second section of the machine to be rolled to the right, away from the ring. This unit was called the generator. Where the ring was a fixed 5 foot diameter, the ring of coils on the generator could be adjusted to a smaller diameter, and this ring was designed to spin. It all looked pretty impressive. All the wires and coils and hardware dizzied her. Where had it all come from? She wondered. This really seemed more than she thought it ever would be, and what scared her most was that it looked like it really could do something.
8:00 A.M.
The floor vibrated and Caroline felt the quiet hum of the transformers when the large master power switch was flipped. Nothing moved inside the room, but several small yellow indicator lights lit up on the machine. With a flip of a small switch on the control panel a pin light of red blinked on. Ben seemed satisfied. “I’m, going the cycle up the Ring Coils now.” He said, as he turned a dial on the control panel.
“Is it working?” Caroline asked.
“So far so good,” Ben answered. He pointed out that the cooling coils were frosting up. A fine mist rose from them as the heat from the unit evaporated the frozen condensation. Then he pointed to the red pin light. “That is a laser that passes in front of the ring to a receptor on the other side.” As the mist passed over the laser’s path it could be seen as a tiny horizontal beam of light. “We’ll need to keep an eye on that light beam.” He said.
Caroline watched as Ben flipped a few switches and turned a knob that brought the machine to action. The Generator started spinning and the coils slid into a tight, angled formation making a cone-like arrangement. All the coils were aimed at the center of the stationary ring on the left, then the generator moved along the floor rails, closer to it.
“I’m taking it to full power.” He said. The floor vibration grew slightly as the motors on the generator revved up to high speed. The machine was not silent, but it was not loud. The hum that emanated from the room was more the sound from the air being disturbed by the spin
ning coils, than anything else.
Caroline felt excited to be part of the experiment, curious of what would happened next and happy to be working close with her husband on his dream. She watched the tiny beam of red light as the machine came up to speed. At first no change was visible. Then, it slowly appeared to be pulled toward the ring, bending it into a smooth shallow arch. “The light beam is bending.” She said. At that point Ben activated another switch and the generator started moving down the rail to the right, away from the ring. The generator coils separated, doubling the diameter of the spinning coils. The laser beam arched deeper into the ring, and as it passed into the circle of coils a flash of light filled the void, then it turned to black.
“Look!” Ben shouted, pointing at the ring. “Something is happening inside the ring.”
It looked like ripples of color within a field of black. You could no longer see through the ring and to the other side. Your vision was blocked by a shimmering black veil inside the ring. The machine wasn’t straining or shaking. It showed no effort in the task it was performing. The machine and the little room seemed perfectly at ease bending the laser beam into the center of the ring. The beam of light never reached the other side. It seemed unnatural to both of them, but it was happening.