The big Bősendorfer piano stopped. Stephan had been playing it along with the stereo, accompanying the music of Bryan Ferry, Zoe Keating, VNV Nation and Metallica. I was rather enjoying it from up in my room, where I was trying to decide if I should play with my Barbies, plastic horses, or Hotwheels. My language lesson lay scattered on the floor amongst the toys – it was unfinished. I was supposed to be listening to my French audio files, and filling in the vocabulary blanks in my study book. My mind was elsewhere. Something was up, and I could sense it. Downstairs, Stephan was antsy.
Why did Stephan stop playing the piano? I got up and looked out my window, and didn’t see signs of him in the garage. I then heard the door ringer go off, and heard the voices of some of his school mates. I sat back at my Barbies, having one of them drive her pink Corvette, pretending that it was a black Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 VT.
Stephan and his school mates moved outdoors, for one wanted to have a smoke. I could hear their voices much better. They stood and talked a while, and I could smell the cigarette. I went to the window and looked out. Below me, there stood Stephan and the two brainy looking guys about his age. Quietly I opened my window just enough to catch some words. Sometimes Stephan got into some interesting conversations, and I loved to evesdrop. This time it wasn’t about race cars, girls or the monarchy.
Stephan asked, “So what do you think of the new breakthrough at Livermore, over in the States?”
“What, you mean the large sustainable wormhole?”
“Yes. What do you think it means? Will we put it to practical use? Time travel for an instance?”
“More than likely we will. We would have to do it through the next generation of computers just coming out – you know the seven tier quantum computer.”
Stephan smiled and leaned a tad into the conversation, “Exciting stuff. You mean the machine that uses the principal of quantum entanglement, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That could also mean more than just time travel, but also travel over great distances through space in short time. I figure it would basically freeze time, so that time doesn’t pass while whatever object traveled light years.”
One student, a blond guy in sweater and cords said, “At the level this thing works, space and time are interchangible. You know, based on the Pythagoran Theorem and imaginary time, real space – or imaginary space, real time. Think of imaginary numbers and how they’re graphed, then plug in four right triangles, you know that. Then apply the equation one over two rooted. Remember roots give off both positive and negative numbers, and those are applied to space or time…”
Stephan listened rather rapt.
“Another bent is to go ahead and plug back in lambda to Special Relativity – lambda is the medium on which entanglement rests. Think of electrons being in simultaneous communication clear across the universe!”
Stephan accepted a cigarette, “Awesome shit. But I don't know how you can use imaginary numbers! I read about it on in a scientific bulletin at school, than hit some websites to find out more on the machine. But really, do you really think they’ll achieve time travel?”
“They have to a limited extent already.”
“You’ve got to be fooling me.”
“With the first generation quantum machines, they did it with the help of lasers. We're at the seventh generation now. Do you remember the Feynman diagrams in class last week?”
“Most certainly. The reverse time diagram.”
“There you have it. Those machines have already done it.”
Stephan looked amazed. He said, “So it’s just a matter of doing it with objects and not photons.”
“And that’s what just happened at Livermore.”
I chilled hearing that, spying on the adults. Time travel and wormholes. They don’t talk about that at school during the science lessons, that’s for sure.
Stephan led the men to his garage, Asking, “What will time travel really mean for society? I must say, time and far space travel will upset the fabric of our civilization … or improve it. Push along evolution … how does one govern human time travel ...”
The words I clearly remember hearing Stephan say will change our lives, and our world, and I knew it even then. He stood at one of his engineering projects, and said, "You guys know that I've put you on my payroll, and you have got a job for life. You signed all the non-disclosure statements and oath to secrecy. You're security clearances are in effect. What I am about to say is for your ears only."
The two student nodded in a dead serious way.
Stephan said solemnly, "The head of the World Federation, Richard Wilcox, already as the technology that can take a man through bent time and space. His people have been using this tech for a long time. I want you two to assist me in developing the same. I have to have this tech. I have to somehow be a match Wilcox and his World regime. It's critical. It's survival for all of us. Now I'm paying you very well, and making you into very wealthy men, and heros if you succeed. I'm stealing the tech, and you'll build the machine."
Their voices faded as they entered the garage. Stephan talked awhile, and then went about showing his guests some of his mechanical projects for his engineering classes.
Wilcox can bend space and time? Really? I tried to fathom that.
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