The Quarry

[Rage Menelas]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]Ryan watched the old man waltz out of the room, but his own pensiveness retarded his immediately following. He had always been intrigued by the question of time travel, although he was a huge skeptic. He simply had never believed it possible. He was having trouble getting his mind around it now.

One question in particular kept rattling around in his head. How could a society capable of time-travel function? For instance, in business or the stock-market, you make a mistake you simply leap back in time and fix it... or you simply leap forward to see what company makes a mint, return to your time, invest all you've got and clean up! What kept people from doing that? He had to know...

He rushed out into the corridor and almost ran headlong into Charlie patiently awaiting him there. Before we proceed with the tour, he said, I have some more questions about time-travel.

Charlie smiled warmly, listened intently as Ryan laid out his case for the potential machinations of the technology in a working society. Then he asked a question of his own. Does your world have technological capabilities that could prove dangerous if used unwisely?

Ryan blinked once and answered, why... of course... practically every advance in science brings inherent dangers...

And how does your world keep these dangers from actualizing?

Uh... well, laws and regulations that govern their use, I suppose...

Yes... it is the same with us, he announced. But there is more... the very fabric of time self-governs to a degree. For instance, travel into the past is impossible or I should say travel backwards in a single time-stream is impossible. Do you understand this phrase: Time-stream? Ryan shook his head absently. Time is like a flowing body of water, like a stream on your Earth. Now suppose you are in a tiny watercraft on this stream. If you leap straight up as high as you can and forward that is: downstream you may land back in the vessel fairly easily. Now, do the same upstream. You will likely get wet.

Ah... Ryan nodded. That made sense.

You see, there are too many variables in time. Travel backwards lands you on a parallel stream instead of your own. We actually utilize this principle as a form of entertainment on my world, much like your reality TV fad. They send a probe back several decades and watch what it broadcasts. It is generally quite amazing.

So what about travel forward into the future?

That is much more stable. As I said, you can jump forward in a small boat much more safely and with more certainty about where you will land. But the laws of probability still apply. For instance, in your case, if I had been able to look into the future a moment before you pulled the trigger there would have been dead sorry for the pun certainty of the exact outcome. But looking forward a day would introduce some minor variables, a week even more, and in a month the variables would most likely begin to alter events dramatically.

Yeah... that's logical. I was an Operations Specialist in the navy. First thing I learned is that distance magnifies errors. A two-degree error in course can translate to several yards a mile away and several miles, a hundred miles away. You can miss your destination that way.

You have the principle, he nodded and patted his apprentice on the shoulder affectionately, then turned and continued on his trek.

Ryan shook his head in amazement. That dapper little alien fellow had just managed to gain several notches on his 'wise-beyond-his-years' meter. He even found himself much less irked by his circumstances than before, for the man was quite an exceptional teacher. Damn! He supposed this meant he would have to stop calling him Yoda! Too bad, he really enjoyed his own sarcasm at times...