They traveled a few more miles and were nearing the city. The friend finally answered. “I am still wrestling with this. I keep going inside and outside the movement thing. It is very disturbing.”
Having returned to his office, the older man plopped himself into his swivel chair opposite his desktop computer on one table and a laptop on the other. Sitting to his right, with monitors in clear view, was his friend.
“Let me show you my latest,” said the older man. He had been attempting to learn 3-D modeling with the idea of recreating an old grist mill that had been torn down 100 years ago. He was basing his model on some old photographs.
He maneuvered his three-button computer mouse. “Here are some of the periphery buildings, to be displayed in the background.”
The friend said, “Looks pretty good.”
The man then closed that layer and opened another. “And here is the mill. I am working on the rock walls right now. It’s quite difficult, but I am making progress.”
Another nod of approval.
“You know,” said the old man after a long pause while he was zooming in and out on elements of the 3-D model for his friend to absorb, “I haven’t spoken about this in pubic or even private for years, but you seem to have an open mind and I feel compelled to tell someone about it even if it goes nowhere. I guess I am on a truth kick today.”
The friend scratched his head thoughtfully. “My mind is so open, people sometimes call me brainless.”
“Perfect,” said the older man as he took a sip of his tea and sloshed the remaining ice around some. “This is going to sound outlandish, impossible, like sci-fi; however, it is true. What I am going to tell you is considered classified information by our government because it’s never to be tried again.”
The friend sat back in chair, prepared to listen.
“When I tell you these two words, you are going to roll your eyes back and think I am joking with you, telling a tall tale, but I am not.”
“I’m listening,” said the friend.
“Time travel.”
“You’re saying it is possible.”
“Yes,” said the older man, “because I have done it, but it is different than you might imagine.” He pointed toward the 3-D model on his computer screen. “What got me to thinking of it again is trying to recapture this grain mill in action 130 years ago. In many ways, people in the late 1800s were smarter than people are today. Their brains were computers. They processed in their minds and on paper all calculations of mathematics and architecture – step by step, not with the aid of computers, which is like chewing every bite of a meal instead of swallowing it whole.”
“Okay. Makes sense,” said the friend. “However, in the old days they did not have modern technology to build upon, so I am not sure your theory stands up. People back then could not fathom what we have today, much less understand it.”
“Maybe,” said the older man. “I just wish I could physically go back there and see for myself how they lived in the 1880s. On the other hand, I would dread the prospect because I know what’s involved and its limitations.”
The friend was listening.
“Way back in the early 1960s airplanes often broke the sound barrier, which on the ground sounded like a big boom. Windowpanes rattled and it startled people, but it was considered progress. However, under cover of secrecy was an agency called the ATT, and no, it’s not a telephone company. It stood for Agency for Time Travel. There were several departments, most headed by scientists and mechanics who knew their way around a slide-rule and beyond.”
“What’s a slide rule?”
“An old way of doing calculations, mainly ballpark numbers, but very close ballpark numbers. Anyway, one of the agency’s goals was to ‘break the time barrier,’ so to speak. Without going into too great a detail, a speed of mach 8.41 had to be reached, which is 6,401.7513 miles per hour. We called it Code 13 for short, eight plus four plus one on the mach side equals 13 and the last two digits of the MPH equals 13, so Code 13. The basis of this was the theory that in a very broad sense if you look up at a star twinkling above you, you are seeing what occurred there many years ago because of the time it takes for light to travel to earth; therefore, you are seeing history.”
The friend took a drink of his water and cocked his head to listen more.
“Now, I’m sure you’ve seen the old TV show The Time Tunnel and probably a movie called Back To The Future.”
“Michael Fox, yes, The Time Tunnel, no.”
“These shows have people going back in time, but they walk and talk on the ground, interfacing with historical figures and, it is hoped, not changing history in the process. The method in which I participated is not like that. You simply hover and record various kinds of light and sound, mainly ambient light from the rear.”
“Does light have a rear?”
The older man did not know how to answer this without going into way too much detail.
“Yes and no, mainly yes, but its collection depends upon perspective. Imagine if you will you are put into a machine, something like a capsule. It is highly pressurized and your movement is extremely limited. You take off from a location and travel very fast. When your speed passes Code 13 you are in a reflective zone where time reverses itself very quickly, in a way. It’s like a delta, where you can record light and sound fairly accurately from behind its point of emission. You pick the general slot in history where you plan to pause and sort of do a Michael Jackson, a breakdance, to hover there at a slower speed and record light and sound, then when you are finished you push the button to hit Code 13 again and return to the present. That’s it in a nutshell. You do not get out and walk around. You simply record.”
The friend was not convinced. “Sounds like sci-fi to me.”
The older man continued, “Remember when we talked about peripheral acceleration? With time recording you have acceleration on the periphery at mach 8.41, but the center point that is stable when driving a car, for instance, does not exist at this speed. You are moving too fast. I went through a lot of training to be accepted to participate in the ATT program and at first thought this was impossible. I was leery, too. Part of the prep work involved being pressurized and depressurized almost daily, which was painful. As the time neared for my expedition, I was worried and considered dropping out. Then, unexpectedly, I did it. The flight was horrible. Even when I slotted out and began recording, I was in immense pain, but not as much pain as I experienced on my return trip. It took me months to get over it. It was like my entire body had been jolted and my nerves were responding weirdly to my every movement. Doing the recording was not enjoyable. I felt disoriented and dizzy the whole time, which made the expedition one I did not want to repeat.”
“What’s the purpose of the recording? How did you do it?”
“All I had to do was throw some switches to record. The purpose was to bring back the recordings, which took about an hour to collect since that exhausted the memory on the device back in those days. After the return, the recordings would be reinterpreted here, fed through a computer. What I saw while hovering was like looking through gauze or onion skin. The reinterpretation was pretty sharp, for the most part, a fairly accurate look at history.”
“Were you the only one to do this?”
“No,” said the older man. “In all, 26 so-called pilots tried, but only five came back, which included me. Nobody knows that happened to the other 21. Maybe they blacked out. Who knows? Personally, I was reluctant to push the switch to return, mainly because of the intense pain involved. I expect that the others simply died up there, which was one of the reasons that future Code 13 expeditions were eventually canceled and the agency and its records were blacklisted and classified. I did slip away with a few of the schematics that I had gathered during training. They are in a box somewhere, in storage. I will make you a copy if you like, provided I can find them.”
“Naw, that’s all right.”
“Part of the problem with Code 13 w
as that some of the scientists were not forthcoming with the pilots. I thought I was simply preparing to do another test. I didn’t know it was the real thing until it was too late. They told me that the pressurization might feel a little different than usual, but not to worry about it, as it would be very temporary. When I realized that this was not just another training exercise, I became very angry, feeling somewhat betrayed, since I had already been launched. I often wish that Code 13 had not been abandoned, what with modern technology. It could be done unmanned nowadays and probably a lot more efficiently. But I expect that the program will remain banned forever.”
“Why?”
“For hundreds of reasons, mainly political, everlasting gridlock, then you have religious aspects and probably topping it off a general attitude by the public that history does not matter. Why reach for the heavens when it is too far away?”
“Huh?”
The old man rubbed an itch on his nose and waited a few seconds while he contemplated an answer.
“Okay,” he finally said, “It’s like this. Have you ever seen the sky?”
“Of course,” said the friend.
“Where is it?”
“Outside,” said the friend. “Just look up and there it is.”
“The elements of the sky are like peripheral acceleration,” said the older man, “in that people ignore the obvious.”
The friend was in deep thought.
The old man continued, “When most people think of heaven, they consider it somewhere way off, lofted in the sky, in this universe while at the same time elsewhere.”
“Right.”
“Actually, the sky is singular and is everywhere. If you step outside and look up and point toward the heavens and say, ‘There’s the sky,’ you are ignoring the fact that it reaches all the way to earth whereby you are already in the sky. It’s part of the air you breathe. When you look at things, you are seeing them through a prism of the sky. The sky – which includes its heavenly component – is all around you. Our spinning globe puts you in constant movement. Remember our drive? The center point that is relatively still could be likened to heaven. The rest of the sky resides in peripheral acceleration because the earth, our celestial car, is in constant, fast movement.”
The older man continued, “Look at that table lamp over there.” He was pointing toward it. The lamp had a tall green base and a dark barrel shade, with light being projected out the bottom and the top, the circular top light figuring prominently on the ceiling.
“Most people just glance at it and are glad it is providing some illumination, but if you study it in detail there are about a thousand questions that could be pondered, like is more light coming out the top or the bottom? If you put a projectile slightly over the top portion to provide a small shadow on the ceiling, what is that doing to the movement of the light itself? Is there an element of acceleration in its rays that curve around the projectile? The light waves are in constant motion. Are there mathematical formulas that dissect the wattage and split the rays of light into microbial spears? Thousands of questions. About 99 percent of the population prefer ignorance of these things while the other one percent are constantly perplexed by them and are grasping for ways to analyze them.”
“I guess,” said the friend, who had attained a high degree of mental overload. He was becoming weary of the older man’s examples and was in need of escape. He glanced at the clock on his cell phone and winced.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said. “I just dread getting into my car, for obvious reasons.”
The older man turned off his deeper thoughts. “Yeah, it’s getting late,” he said. “I could suggest your traveling home in reverse, but you would still have to look behind you to see where you are going, which is the same as going forward.”
The friend nodded in agreement and then lightly tapped the side of his head with the palm of his hand. “Uh-oh,” he said, smiling, “During the past hour I must have developed an inner ear disturbance by being bounced around. I anticipate car sickness, so now I need to see my doctor and get a prescription.”
They both laughed.
The friend said good-bye and ventured outside, got into his car, and drove very slowly all the way home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
W. LEON SMITH is the author of several books. A native of Central Texas, he has edited and published many newspapers over a 30-year period and is an accomplished reporter, photographer, investigator, landscaper, and keyhole gardener. He is former owner/operator of a movie theatre, has been a state-licensed irrigator, and was elected to several terms as a mayor of a small city. One of his companies, Keyhole Farm, LLC, manufactures keyhole garden kits. www.keyholefarm.com
He is publisher of the highly acclaimed newspaper The Lone Star Iconoclast.
Smith’s works have been published in newspapers and magazines worldwide, including appearances in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and the British Journalism Review, to just name a few. He appeared in the documentary film, Crawford, Texas.
His other books include Epitaph, Plant Your Garden In A Keyhole, and The Vigil - 26 Days In Crawford, Texas.
Learn more about him at Smith Media, Inc. at www.smithmediainc.com.
OTHER BOOKS BY
W. LEON SMITH
EPITAPH
PLANT YOUR GARDEN IN A KEYHOLE
THE VIGIL – 26 DAYS IN CRAWFORD, TEXAS
ONE LAST THING
If you enjoyed The Switch Pitcher or found it useful I’d be very grateful if you’d post a short review on Amazon. Your support really does make a difference and I read all the reviews personally so I can get your feedback and learn from your input.
Thanks again for your support!
Here is a review posted from the first edition:
A perfect screenplay in the
charming disguise of a children's book
The writer of this comment is an 84-year-old collaborator of one of cinema's greatest directors: Federico Fellini. I am sure that "The Switch Pitcher" will become a classic in its field the day a smart film producer discovers it because it is a perfect screenplay in the charming disguise of a children's book. "The Switch Pitcher" is full of fun, suspense, and heart-warming memories of America. It tells of a time when every child felt secure in his rights and demanded justice, even on the baseball field. When our nation was strong but capable of goodwill toward all and had a true love of fair play and honesty. Children, parents, and grandparents would flock to see such a movie, whose message would restore a sense of a sane society and kindle joy in wholesome American sports for our children with spirit and faith in the future.
Aldo Vidali, May 8, 2014
The Switch Pitcher Page 8