Watson, Ian - SSC (3 page)

 
          
He
must be approaching his take-off point. He’s having a mild fit of tenth-year
blues, first decade anxiety, self-doubt; which we clear up for him. . . .

 
          
Why
doesn’t he know what shape he arrived in? Surely that must be a matter of
record before he sets off. . . . No! Time can not be invariable, determined.
Not even the Past. Time is probabilistic. He has refrained from comment for
all these years so as not to unpluck the strands of time past and reweave them
in another, undesirable way. A tower of strength he has been. Em’
feste
Burg
ist
unser
Zeitganger
! Well, back to the
drawing board, and to probabilistic equations for (a) tachyon-scatter out in
normal space (b) time-reversal.

 
          
A
few weeks later he holds up another sign, which must be his promised Delphic
revelation:

I AM THE MATRIX OF MAN.

           
Of course! Of course! He has made
himself that over the years. What else?

 
          
A
matrix is a mold for shaping a cast. And indeed, out of him shapes have been
molded increasingly since the late 1990s, such has been his influence.

 
          
Was
he sent hindwards to save the world from self-slaughter by presenting such a
perfect paradigm—which only frayed and tattered in the Eighties when it did not
matter any more; when he had already succeeded?

 
          
But
a matrix is also an array of components for translating from one code into
another. So Yang’s demodulation of information hypothesis is revived, coupled
now with the idea that the VSTM is perhaps a matrix for transmitting the
“information” contained in a man across space and time (and the
man-transmitter experiments in orbit redouble their efforts); with the
corollary (though this could hardly be voiced to the enraptured world at large)
that perhaps the passenger was
not there
at all in any real sense; and he had never been; that we merely were witnessing
an experiment in the possibility of transmitting a man across the galaxy,
performed on a future Earth by future science to test out the degradation
factor: the decay of information—mapped from space on to time so that it could
be observed by us, their predecessors! Thus the onset of madness (i.e.,
information decay) in our passenger, timed in years from his starting point,
might set a physical limit in
light-years
to the distance to which a man could be beamed (tachyonically?). And this was
at once a terrible kick in the teeth to space science—and a great boost. A kick
in the teeth, as this suggested that physical travel through interstellar
space must be impossible, perhaps because of Man’s frailty in the face of
cosmic ray bombardment; and thus the whole development of intensive
closed-cycle life-pods for single astronaut couriers must be deemed
irrelevant. Yet a great boost too, since the possibility of a receiverless
transmitter loomed. The now elderly Yang suggested that
1
December 1985
was
actually a moment of lift-off to the stars. Where our passenger went then, in
all his madness, was to a point in space thirty or forty light-years distant.
The VSTM was thus the testing to destruction of a future man-beaming system and
practical future models would only deal in distances (in times) of the order of
seven to eight years. (Hence no other VSTMs had imploded into existence,
hitherto.)

 
          
(2010)

 
          
I
am tired with a lifetime’s fruitless work; however, the human race at large is
at once calmly loving and frenetic with hope.
For we must be
nearing our goal.
Our passenger is in his thirties now (whether a live
individual,
or only an epi- phenomenon of a system for
transmitting the information present in a human being: literally a “ghost in
the machine”). This sets a limit. It sets a limit. He couldn’t have set off
with such strength of mind much earlier than his twenties or (I sincerely hope
not) his late teens. Although the teens are a prime time for taking vows of
chastity, for entering monastries, for pledging one’s life to a cause. . . .

 
          
(2015)

 
          
Boosted
out of my weariness by the general euphoria, I have successfully put off my
retirement for another four years. Our passenger is now in his middle twenties
and a curious inversion in his “worship” is taking place, representing (I
think) a subconcious groundswell of anxiety as well as joy. Joy, obviously,
that the moment is coming when he makes his choice and steps into the VSTM, as
Christ gave up carpentry and stepped out from
Nazareth
. Anxiety, though, at the possibility that
he may pass beyond this critical point, towards infancy; ridiculous as this
seems! He knows how to read books; he couldn’t have taught himself to read. Nor
could he have taught himself how to speak in
vitro
—and he has certainly delivered lucid, if mysterious, messages
to us from time to time. The hit song of the whole world, nevertheless, this
year is William Blake’s The
Mental
Traveller
set to sitar and gongs and glockenspiel . . .

 
 
          
For
as he eats and
drinks he grows Y
o
linger and younger every
day;

 
          
And on the desert wild they both
Wander
in terror and dismay . . .

           
The unvoiced fear represented by
this song’s sweeping of the world being that he may yet evade us; that he may
slide down towards infancy, and at the moment of his birth (whatever
life-support mechanisms extrude to keep him alive till then!) the VSTM will
implode back whence it came: sick joke of some alien superconsciousness,
intervening in human affairs with a scientific “miracle” to make all human
striving meaningless and pointless. Not many people feel this way openly. It
isn’t a popular view. A man could be torn limb from limb for espousing it in
public. The human mind will never accept it; and purges this fear in a long
song of joy which at once mocks and copies and adores the mystery of the VSTM.

 
          
Men
put this supreme man into the machine. Even so, Madonna and Child
does
haunt the world’s mind. . . .
and
a soft femininity prevails—men’s skirts are the new soft gracious mode of
dress in the West. Yet he is now so noble, so handsome in his youth, so glowing
and strong; such a Zarathustra, locked up in there.

 
          
(2018)

 
          
He
can only be 21 or 22. The world adores him, mothers him, across the
unbridgeable gulf of reversed time. No progress in the Solar System, let alone
on the interstellar front. Why should we travel out and away, even as far as
Mars, let alone Pluto, when a revelation is at hand; when all the secrets will
be unlocked here on Earth? No progress on the tachyon or negative-time fronts,
either. Nor any further messages from him. But he is his own message. His
presence alone is sufficient to express Mankind: hopes, courage, holiness,
determination.

 
          
(2019)

 
          
I
am called back from retirement, for he is holding up signs again: the athlete
holding up the Olympic Flame.

 
          
He
holds them up for half an hour at a stretch— as though we are not all eyes
agog, filming every moment in case we miss something, anything.

 
          
When
I arrive, the signs that he has already held up have announced:

 
          
(Sign
One)
this is a very slow time machine.
(And
I amend accordingly, crossing out all the other titles we had bestowed on it
successively, over the years. For a few seconds I wonder whether he was really
naming the machine— defining it—or complaining about it! As though he’d been
fooled into being its passenger on the assumption that a time machine should
proceed to its destination instanter instead of at a snail’s pace.
But no.
He was naming it.)

TO TRAVEL INTO THE FUTURE, YOU MUST FIRST
TRAVEL INTO THE PAST, ACCUMULATING HINDWARD POTENTIAL. (THIS IS CRAWLING
DOWNHILL.)

 
          
(Sign Two) AS SOON AS YOU ACCUMULATE ONE

 
 
         
LARGE QUANTUM OF TIME, YOU LEAP FORWARD BY THE SAME TIMESPAN
AHEAD
OF YOUR STARTING POINT.
(THIS
IS SLIDING UPHILL.)

 
          
(Sign Three) YOUR JOURNEY INTO THE FUTURE
TAKES THE SAME TIME AS IT WOULD TAKE TO LIVE THROUGH THE YEARS IN REAL-TIME;
YET YOU ALSO
OMIT
THE INTERVENING YEARS, ARRIVING AHEAD INSTANTLY.
(PRINCIPLE OF CONSERVATION OF TIME.)

 
          
(Sign Four) SO, TO LEAP THE GAP, YOU MUST
CRAWL THE OTHER WAY.

 
          
(Sign Five) time divides into elementary
quanta. NO MEASURING ROD CAN BE SMALLER THAN THE INDIVISIBLE ELEMENTARY
ELECTRON; THIS IS ONE “ELEMENTARY LENGTH” (EL). THE TIME TAKEN FOR LIGHT TO
TRAVEL ONE EL IS “ELEMENTARY TIME” (ET): I.E., 10
²³
SECONDS; THIS
IS ONE ELEMENTARY QUANTUM OF TIME. TIME CONSTANTLY LEAPS AHEAD BY THESE TINY
QUANTA FOR EVERY PARTICLE; BUT, NOT BEING SYNCHRONIZED, THESE FORM A
CONTINUOUS TIME-OCEAN RATHER THAN SUCCESSIVE DISCRETE “MOMENTS” OR WE WOULD
HAVE NO CONNECTED UNIVERSE.

 
          
(Sign Six) TIME REVERSAL OCCURS NORMALLY IN
STRONG NUCLEAR INTERACTIONS I.E. IN EVENTS OF ORDER 10
²³
SECS. THIS
REPRESENTS THE “FROZEN GHOST” OF THE FIRST MOMENT OF UNIVERSE WHEN AN “ARROW OF
TIME” WAS FIRST STOCHASTICALLY DETERMINED.

 
          
(Sign
Seven) (And this is when I arrived, to be shown Polaroid photographs of the
first seven
signs. Remarkably, he is
holding up each sign in a linear sequence from our point of view; a
considerable feat of forethought and memory, though no less than we expect of
him.) NOW IT is invariable & FROZEN IN; YET UNIVERSE AGES. STRETCHING OF
SPACE-TIME BY EXPANSION PROPAGATES “WAVES” IN THE
SEA
OF
TIME
,
CARRYING TIME-ENERGY WITH PERIOD (X)
PROPORTIONAL TO THE RATE OF EXPANSION, AND TO RATIO OF TIME ELAPSED TO TOTAL
TIME AVAILABLE FOR THIS COSMOS FROM INITIAL CON- STRANTS. EQUATIONS FOR X YIELD
A PERIOD OF 35 YEARS CURRENTLY AS ONE MOMENT OF MACRO-TIME WITHIN WHICH
MACROSCOPIC TIME REVERSAL BECOMES POSSIBLE.

 
          
(Sign
Eight)
CONSTRUCT AN “ELECTRON SHELL” BY SYNCHRONIZING ELECTRON REVERSAL. THE LOCAL
SYSTEM WILL THEN FORM A TIME-REVERSED MINICOSMOS & PROCEED HINDWARDS TILL
X ELAPSES WHEN TIME CONSERVATION OF THE TOTAL UNIVERSE WILL PULL THE
MINI-COSMOS (OF THE VSTM) FORWARD INTO MESH WITH UNIVERSE AGAIN I.E. BY 35
PLUS 35 YEARS.

 
          
“But
how?” we all cried. “How do you synchronize such
an infinity
of electrons? We haven’t the slightest idea!”

 
          
Now
at least we knew when he had set off: from 35 years after 1985.
From next year.
We are supposed to know all this by next
year! Why has he waited so long to give us the proper clues?

 
          
And
he is heading for the year 2055. What is there in the year 2055 that matters so
much?

 
          
(Sign
Nine
) I DO NOT GIVE THIS INFORMATION TO YOU BECAUSE IT WILL LEAD TO YOUR
INVENTING THE VSTM. THE SITUATION IS QUITE OTHERWISE. TIME IS PROBABILISTIC, AS
SOME OF YOU MAY SUSPECT. I REALIZE THAT I WILL PROBABLY PERVERT THE COURSE OF
HISTORY & SCIENCE BY MY ARRIVAL IN YOUR PAST (MY MOMENT OF DEPARTURE FOR
THE FUTURE); IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW YOUR PREDICAMENT TOO EARLY,
OR YOUR FRANTIC EFFORTS TO AVOID IT WOULD GENERATE A TIME LINE WHICH WOULD
UNPREPARE YOU FOR MY SETTING OFF. AND IT IS IMPORTANT THAT IT DOES ENDURE, FOR
I AM THE MATRIX OF MAN. I AM LEGION. I SHALL CONTAIN MULTITUDES.