“Everything!” said Vlad. “I think time is also quantized.”
“You’ve lost me again. How can time be quantized?” asked McCowan. “And if it is, what difference does it make?”
“Well, think about it in relation to the quantization of energy that you learned about in first year chemistry. We think of time flowing past us like a stream moving at a constant rate. That may appear true in our macroscopic world, but what happens if, at very short time intervals, one reaches a minimum time (I call it a mintival for minimum time interval)? What if our existence at the time interval of a mintival consists of little jumps, like a jump second hand rather than a sweep second hand? Or putting it another way, what if instead of a flowing stream, time consisted of a series of pools,” and here he paused to let his words sink in, “and our existence is a discontinuous series of jumps from one pool to the next?”
“Your theory is fascinating, Vlad, but what has that got to do with the Hoffstetter field generators?”
“I just told you that the Hoffstetter field generators cause the matter inside the field to lag normal time by a very small amount, say ten to the minus thirty-second of a second—that’s a decimal point with thirty-one zeros after and then a one. Now let’s suppose...” Sowetsky turned and kneeled on the sofa and drew three contiguous rectangles on a white board behind his seat “...that these three rectangles represent three sequential mintivals in our world, or universe, if you like. Another world can coexist with ours, as long as the mintivals of that world are offset from those of our time.” He drew three more rectangles adjacent but offset to the first three, like bricks on the side of a building. “It would be like a single reel of film containing two movies, with the odd numbered frames representing our world and the even numbered frames representing another world. If two protectors played this interlaced film with one displaying the odd numbered frames and the other the even numbered frames, one film could give rise to two motion pictures. Similarly, although two solid objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, they can occupy that space at different times, so to speak.”
“Keep going,” ventured McCowan doubtfully. “I hope our viewers are following you through all this.”
“Well, normally, when the Hoffstetter field generators shut down, they collapse back to the nearest quantized mintival. When the field generators overloaded, I believe we kicked over into the trailing mintival—hence the new world!”
“Well, I’ll be!” said McCowan, genuinely shocked. “Can we get back?”
“I don’t know,” said Sowetsky, frowning. “We only know how to make the Hoffstetter field lag time, not precede time. If we tried it again, we might jump into yet another world that lags this one!”
“You can’t be serious!” said McCowan.
“I’m deadly serious,” said Sowetsky evenly.
“We’re never going to get back, are we?” asked McCowan, her voice fading to a whisper as tears began to fill her eyes. She turned away from the camera for a moment. “I have one final question, Vlad,” she said, regaining her composure with obvious effort. “Did you tell Professor Hoffstetter about this possibility?”
“Of course! I told him not once but several times!” said Sowetsky. “That’s what burns me up so much.”
“What did he say when you told him?”
“At first he told me ‘science requires us to take risks,’ and finally he told me to stop raising the matter.”
Back in the dorm room there was brooding silence as the interview on the television drew to a close. Glenn suddenly got up and threw a magazine as hard as he could against the wall, cursed, and stomped out of the room. Within minutes, Dave heard the sound of an ominous rumble, like the growl of a giant beast being roused from a troubled slumber. He went out into the hall to investigate. Students were everywhere. Approaching the common room, he felt the air electric with tension. The fear and anger that had been building over the last two days was growing, and students were gathered in groups. Most had seen the television show, and they were loudly blaming Hoffstetter for their predicament.
The discussion grew increasingly heated. Some of the students began yelling and cursing Hoffstetter. Finally their anger reached a crescendo when someone shouted that they ought to storm the experimental area control building and make Hoffstetter pay for what he had done to them; the crowd surged downstairs.
Dave thought about saying something, but he knew he wouldn’t be heard. He went back to his room. Whatever these angry students did would add to Uncle Charlie’s heavy load of care. The loneliness of Dave’s position washed over him like the tide coming in. What if they couldn’t get back? He would never see his parents or siblings again. He began to think of his home and of times they had shared together. He tried to tear his thoughts away, but they kept going back to the home he might never see again. He remembered reading Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. How he’d loved the thrill of imagining himself one of the Americans learning how to survive with only his wits. Now he lived that dream. That cheered him up a little bit, but the dark thoughts that he might never see his parents and siblings again kept assailing him. Convincing himself that Sowetsky could be wrong provided the only relief.
What does Sowetsky know? He’s only a graduate student. Uncle Charlie would tell us if this were really true, he thought. With that, he dozed off for a couple of hours.
__________
It was almost midnight when Dave was awakened by his roommate’s return. Glenn lurched against the doorway. His unruly black hair was matted, and there was an ugly purple bruise on his forehead. He was drunk. Torn and muddy as he was, Glenn flung himself into his chair by his desk.
“Ohh, my head!” he groaned as he gingerly felt the bruise. “I’m going to be sick.”
Dave helped him across the hall to the bathroom where Glenn vomited, then removed his soiled clothes and staggered into the shower. Dave returned to their room. When Glenn came in, looking somewhat revived, he appeared to want to talk.
“So what happened?” Dave asked.
“Those bloody physicists,” slurred Glenn. “Always trying things without thinking about anybody else. Look what they’ve done now. Stranded here and no way to get home.”
“So what did you do?” repeated Dave.
Glenn looked at him from under the bruise, which had now grown to cover a good part of his face. “We tried to get at Hoffstetter. Everyone was saying he was over at the experimental control center, so we went over there. The campus police and the navy guys were waiting for us. We tried to break through, but we couldn’t. They had stunners, and several of us got hit. They’ve converted the new zoology building into a temporary jail and dragged several of us back there. We regrouped and tried again. Reinforcements kept arriving. Finally, old O’Reilly, the chancellor, arrived and tried to talk to us. Somebody clipped him with a bottle and knocked him down. I’ll say this for him; he has a lot of guts. He got back up and told us we had to pull together and we ought to go home. After we saw him knocked down and get back up, we quieted down and decided to listen to him and give up our assault.
“I happened to be with a bunch of guys from Locke. They all went back to a keg party over in their residence. Apparently they had planned it before the dislocation and had quite a lot of beer. I had a good time!”
“Yeah, I can see that,” said Dave. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Chapter 6 Training for Sea
Just after sunrise the next morning, Dave sat shivering in the cold—on the heights overlooking West Harbor—along with 180 recruits from Socrates. West Harbor Bay reminded Dave of the two-dimensional diagrams he had seen of the human eye. The bay was approximately three quarters of a mile in diameter, and the shoreline was nearly circular. The mouth of the bay, located at the west side of the harbor where the pupil would have been in Dave’s diagram, was bounded on the north by Causeway Point and on the south by Lighthouse Point. The stubby remains of Causeway Bridge could barely be seen from the heights behind the harbor.
When the naval personnel finally arrived, they announced that the recruits would be assigned to boats in groups of three. Names were called out, and the newly minted mariners made their way to their designated dinghy. When Dave’s and Glenn’s names were called, they joined a third fellow, a slender youth just under six feet tall, with light brown hair and glasses.
“Hello. My name is Al Gleeson,” he said by way of introduction as he extended his hand first to Dave and then to Glenn.
“I’m Dave.”
“And I’m Glenn.”
“Have you fellows sailed before?” asked Al.
“No, we haven’t,” said Dave. “Have you?”
“Yes. I can’t say that I’m experienced, but I’ve done some dinghy sailing with my brother.” A shadow passed over Al’s face, as if a painful memory had sprung up to trouble him. He appeared to shake it off. “Anyway, we’re in dinghy number forty-one, so why don’t we go and check it out to see if it’s in good shape and ready to sail.”
He led the way down the hill and along the quay to a dinghy. Al helped them check out the rigging and showed them how to raise and lower the centerboard. When it came time for them to cast off, he gave Dave the tiller and helped Glenn raise the sail. They left the quay and followed the boat ahead of them without incident. All day they practiced tacking, wearing, and learning to capture the wind efficiently. Al was a patient instructor. They didn’t seem to encounter anything he hadn’t seen before, and he seemed to know how to accomplish each maneuver. The sun was shining, and when the breeze picked up, the singing of the rigging and the whoosh of the bow wave made it exhilarating. Dave found it much more fun than watching endless video clips describing the various parts of the rigging and specific sailing terminology.
While the three companions felt good about their sailing accomplishments, the instructors, racing back and forth in Boston Whalers, worked overtime to cut them down to size. Many were from the naval station at the south end of the island and, exercising the prerogative of experienced sailors, they shouted rude remarks about the landlubbers’ lack of sailing prowess. The novice sailors took all this banter good-naturedly, occasionally throwing them a deliberately contorted salute. Toward the afternoon, the wind veered to the east and clouds rolled in and it began to rain. The instructors had gathered the boats together and were showing them how to dump their dinghies, and how to use the centerboard to right them again before the dinghies “turtled,” with mast pointing straight down. Wet from a combination of their time in the water and the cold rain settling in, Dave lost his morning cheerfulness and grew increasingly weary. When it was time to quit, the three headed home, too tired even to talk.
The next morning began very much as the day before, but after a short time of sailing in the bay, the instructors headed the lead boats out through the lens. Today, they would practice sailing in the rougher water of the channel as preparation for the six-mile trip to the mainland. When Dave’s boat began to pitch more vigorously in the rollers of the strait, they put her on a course that gave them an unimpeded view of the mainland.
“I wonder what we’re going to find when we get over there,” said Dave.
“Have you ever read Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island?” asked Al.
“I love that book!” said Dave.
“Maybe we’ll get to live that story,” said Al.
“I’m looking forward to paradise,” offered Glenn. “With our technology, we won’t have any trouble being ‘king of the hill.’”
“Why paradise?” asked Al.
“Oh no!” groaned Dave. “Don’t get him started!”
“You may have noticed,” said Glenn, “that there are many good-looking, nubile females in our company.”
“Go on,” said Al, glancing sideways at Glenn.
“Well, on the mainland, as the terror of the unknown settles on them, they will increasingly seek out the protection of the alpha male.”
“So why does an omega male like you think he has a chance?” fired back Dave.
“You’ll see!” said Glenn unmoved. “I’m going to be in my glory!”
“I’m sorry I asked,” muttered Al.
“What do you think we’ll find over there, Al?” asked Dave.
“The naval guys have scouted the shoreline using one of the Boston Whalers, and they reported nothing unusual—just virgin forest coming right down to the shoreline. Yet even Mysterious Island had its mystery and its secret. To tell you the truth, I’m filled with misgivings, and the foreboding that the secret this place holds isn’t going to be nearly as pleasant as finding a guardian captain Nemo.”
__________
Halcyon had begun to settle into a routine that blunted the edge of the crisis. Everyone was busy with their survival assignments, and there were no more university classes. Every night, there were keg parties that ended with a portion of the student population drunk. Some of the lecture halls had been turned into impromptu theaters that showed canned movies. Halcyon Television began broadcasting regularly from 7:00 p.m. to midnight. At Darwin Blackmore’s insistence, he was given a one-hour slot on Friday nights to keep Halcyon up to date on Hoffstetter’s efforts to return Halcyon home. That show was avidly watched by anyone who could get to a TV set.
Dave went to a keg party one night to help stave off the gloom and loneliness he felt when he had time to brood. But the next night he decided to go to a lecture by Frederick Aberhardt on the family of the twenty-first century. The lecture hall, which had more than a thousand seats, had at most 200 students clustered near the raised platform. Professor Aberhardt, an austere speaker, fixed his piercing eyes on the audience and spoke in a nasal tone while information was displayed on a screen behind him. In rapid succession, he reviewed selected segments of human history from the dawn of civilization to the beginning of the twenty-first century.
After forty minutes he came to his point. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he droned, “I have recounted our history filled with war, injustice, slavery, prejudice, and intolerance to impress upon you the incontrovertible conclusion that religion, far from being a unifying and enlightening element in our existence, has been responsible for many, if not all, of the sordid events that make up our past. Behind the power of religion lies the nuclear family, in which the hierarchical authority structure that is the true power of religion is propagated to defenseless infants. Thankfully, we see significant evidence from sociology that this state of affairs is changing, albeit very slowly. Here in Halcyon, we have a unique opportunity to make a break with our past and develop a truly scientific society where our technology and understanding of human behavior can be harnessed to help us evolve to a new modality of social interaction, where we can realize the potential of our human spirit.”
Dave would have found this boring except that the reminder of his lost family made it distressing. He was sorry that he’d come. All this talk about the family reminded him of his former life and awoke his loneliness. He missed his parents and siblings acutely. The thought that they might never really know what happened to him, and that he might never see them again, formed an impenetrable fog around him.
Aberhardt was finishing up. “As I have said, here at Halcyon, we have a glorious opportunity to make a break with our past. You students are choosing your futures. You can choose to build a new society that has forever thrown off the shackles of religion. Overturn the family. Embrace new relational structures that do not bind you to one another for life. Choose freedom!”
There was polite applause and then time for questions.
One student raised his hand. “Professor Aberhardt, how are we to bring about these transformations in Halcyon society? Shouldn’t we outlaw the nuclear family and religions?”
Professor Aberhardt cleared his throat. “Although I think you would acknowledge that the terrible legacy religion has left our species would be justification enough to outlaw Christianity in particular, or even religion in general, I don’t think that approach is the best one. Outlawing r
eligion provokes public debate of these actions, and since ‘any advertising is good advertising,’ any attempt to ban religion overtly, even in a forward thinking place like Halcyon, may actually increase its influence. There are many fundamentalists in our midst who will seize any opportunity to proselytize, and they would use this kind of legal opposition as a call for greater activity. There is much sociological and statistical evidence to support that observation, especially in Marxist countries where religious suppression was tried for many decades with little success. To my mind, a much better approach is to make religion disappear from view. We live in a secular society, and we should avail ourselves of every opportunity to use the doctrine of separation of Church and state to make religion a private matter, and then make sure that the privacy that’s left can’t be used to propagate religion to others. By slowly eradicating religion from every aspect of public life, and then making all social interactions ‘public life,’ one can accomplish this ban quietly but effectively without ever triggering a public debate on the ramifications of a legal ban on religion.
“However, to make the elimination of religion complete, one also needs to eliminate the nuclear family. Even if we fully remove religion from public life and prevent the acquisition of new adherents from the public at large, the creeds will still propagate through the nuclear family. As a rule, birthrates are usually quite high among fundamentalists of all stripes, and so, over time, they take over a population.
“I’m sorry my answer is so long, but this is a very important point. The elimination of religion really comes down to the elimination of the nuclear family. When parents stay together for a long time in a marriage, and are able to teach their children—from an early age—their own prejudices, they are able to build a cocoon or scab around their children’s minds so that it’s very hard for educators and sociologists to circumvent the parents’ dogmatic religious teaching. However we’ve found that if we can encourage couples to explore their desire for new, fresh relationships. That is to say if we encourage them to change their partners every couple of years, or even better, every few months, then the children arising from these liaisons are much more open to our guidance. Thus, encouraging promiscuity will effectively destroy the nuclear family and the ability of the family to inculcate religion in their young. We’ve moved a long way down this path, extolling the virtues of a free and liberated lifestyle. Continuing to do so, I believe we can be rid of the twin evils of religion and the nuclear family in our lifetime.”
The Halcyon Dislocation Page 5