TIME PUMP

Forward:

In 1980, I called up Ben Bova at Analog about submitting a story. Fortunately, no deadlines were discussed, since I didn't get it in the mail until ten years later in 1990. Stanley Schmidt responded encouragingly, and now that another thirteen years have gone by, I've decided to self-publish here.

One of the many things that I admired most about Isaac Asimov was his willingness to create an entire short story just to set up a single pun. One or more of the puns and other references in this story may be a bit dated for some of you; if so email me at comments@gosto.org for an explanation.

Chapter 1

One sweltering afternoon at Princeton University, Namdoog Neb was in the Physics Library attempting to concentrate on his thesis.

The subject of his thesis was time travel, and at the moment he was mired in the mind-bending convolutions and apparent paradoxes to be found in the current literature on the Causal Ordering postulate (COP). After weeks of research, this most fundament bar to time travel (i.e., cause must precede effect) had nearly convinced him that a new thesis subject was in order.

Out of a sense of commitment, along with a healthy measure of desperation, he doggedly pursued every reference to the COP available. He knew that before he could whole-heartedly explore other subjects, he had to confirm in his own mind the validity of the accepted concept that future advances could never be somehow transmitted into the past to aid in solving the host of man-caused-problems-about-to-become-catastrophes threatening all life on earth.

It happened that on this particular afternoon the air conditioning was not working in the Library, and the heat was in close competition with the obliviously noisy would-be repairmen in destroying his concentration. Namdoog suddenly realized he had read the same paragraph three times while gaining no hint of its contents. At the same time, his sensory filters relaxed enough to let him know that a semi-conscious part of his mind been listening in fascination to a conversation between two nearby repairmen.

"Conversation" was not the right word - it was more like a lecture. The speaker was a heavy-set older man in regulation blue shirt and coveralls, addressing a similarly-attired youngster, apparently an apprentice, who had asked how a heat pump works. His senior was basically telling him that he didn't know and didn't need to know how it works in order to fix it. Namdoog decided to take a breather and considered helping the apprentice with his question. He was about to motion him over when he was struck by the most interesting thought he had had in days: Would the COP allow a "time pump", which instead of displacing heat from one location to another, displaced time from one volume of space to another, slowing down the rate of time in one volume, balanced by a speeded up rate in the other volume? He knew that fate had taken a hand to provide him with a new thesis subject, and a new angle on accelerating technical advancement. In a very short time, as human history is measured, he realized that fate had handed him the future.

Chapter 2

"Dr. Neilson, we're ready for you now." Dan Neilson nodded to the duty nurse, and followed the blue stripe down the hallway toward the brilliant light. "Like a dying man's out-of-body experience" he thought, "Very appropriate for a dying man." The genetic disease that threatened his mind and his life was at once a new dilemma and an ancient enemy; it had slowly killed his father, but he had always felt a cure would come along before it awoke in his own genes. The cure hadn't come, and now this last resort had become his only hope As he neared the light it seemed to dim; he knew this meant he had entered the Temporal Deceleration Zone, and that the world outside had begun to accelerate faster and faster, until a second to him would be a year to the rest of the world. In his mind's eye he saw family and friends age and turn to dust, cities transforming into the world of the future. Would there be a place for him in this strange new time?

He had only taken three steps into the zone when it brightened - he had caught up with the cure!

Running back up the corridor, he saw the same duty nurse waiting for him. His first reaction was "It didn't work!" In a strangled voice, he asked "How long?" The nurse smiled and replied "Just under three years." Dan saw his wife and daughter, clearly not dust, running toward him. "How?" he croaked. The nurse had had this conversation many times, but her joy at giving good news was evident. "The researchers in the Accelerated Zone have been cranking out cures faster than we can implement them." Dan took a deep breath, found his voice, and asked "Where do I volunteer for the AZ?" The nurse beamed "We get a lot of recruits this way. Your treatment starts tomorrow - when you're done with that, give us a call." Further conversation could not compete with the energetic arrival of Dan's family.

Chapter 3

Dan had never really thought about how his specialty, psychiatry, would be applied in the Zones. Like most people, he envisioned the Decelerated Zone as a holding pattern for the terminally ill and future faddists, and the Accelerated Zone as a super-tech R&D laboratory for the "hard" sciences.

Now, three "real" years after his cure, he had made three trips into the AZ. Each trip was for one subjective year (one second "real" time), and he had now "caught up" chronologically with the three years the world had aged during his three seconds in the DZ.

He was planning another trip into the AZ, to continue work with a patient who really needed him - who literally would not survive another minute without his help.

His wife, who was a physicist, and his daughter, a metallurgist, would accompany him on this trip. They had all developed friendships with other AZ "trippers", which insulated them somewhat from the dislocation of friends traveling through "real" time. In fact, AZ trippers generally agreed that life in the AZ, where technology develops at the pre-AZ pace, seemed more "normal" than life in "real" time, where the morning paper would announce that the latest "AZ Download" was high-temperature superconductors, the afternoon paper would announce the advent of economical fusion power generation, and the evening edition would quote promising results in FTL travel experiments.

Chapter 4

Namdoog had only himself to blame. He may not have foreseen that one of the first applications of the AZ would be to rid the world of undesirables without having to indulge in politically sensitive activities, such as executions, by simply letting the convicted live out their natural lives in the AZ. He should have foreseen that irate relatives of the said convicted might vent their ire on him. His lack of foresight, combined with one particularly extreme case of such ire, resulted in a head injury which impaired certain of his mental faculties.

Impairment notwithstanding, Namdoog continued to work on his latest project, that being development of an energy source sufficiently efficient to power the FTL vehicles that had been proven, in theory, to be practicable.

The resulting vaporization of a rather popular part of the planet resulted in Namdoog's classification, despite his earlier contributions, as an undesirable of the highest order.

As was the law of the land at the time, upon his conviction Namdoog was sentenced to one second (one subjective year) in the AZ for medical and psychiatric evaluation. During this time; he spent only the minimum required time with Dr. Neilson. As a means of self defense, he used the time to overcome the theoretical obstacles to creating an AZ within an AZ. He not only succeeded, he managed to convince certain of the more dedicated trippers to relocate into this second order AZ, whereupon they proceeded to develop a means to repair the physical damage to Namdoog's brain.

This would seem to be the end of our hero's problems, except that the second order trippers, being independent-minded sorts, avidly produced and merrily populated ever higher orders of AZ's until advancements were downloaded into realtime from the effectively infinite future, destroying any sense of normalcy or continuity forever. Namdoog, in an unusual moment of contemplation of consequences, became catatonic upon realization of what he had wrought.

Back in court (one second after his conviction, and before the maelstrom of infinite innovation had become commonly apparent), Namdoog stood next to his perplexed advocate, Dr. Neilson, who had seen his patient (and savior) physically cured only to show up psychologically jammed, and undoubtedly on his way back to the AZ forever (or at least a minute, whichever came first).

Namdoog needed a reprieve granted by this court, because it would be unwise to rely on the appeals process. The political and judicial quagmire created by sentences to the AZ had been placed, by law, in the lap of the only official who was both sufficiently highly placed as well as politically expendable, that being the Vice-President of the United States, who now acted as final arbitrator in such appeals. Dan quailed at the thought of relying on this process, not to mention the particular individual in office.

Dan obtained a brief recess in which to consult with his patient's comrades in the AZ. Upon learning of the higher order AZ's, and their latest product (a device for trans-galactic communication with thousands of alien cultures, he overcame his shock, surmised the reason for Namdoog's condition, and obtained an order for a DZ year of therapy.

The actual cure took much less than a year, so Dan and Namdoog appeared back in court for a final hearing. The people present were basically the same as at his last appearance, but the hallowed halls of the court building had been replaced by an open air park. In the months Dan and Namdoog were in the DZ, mankind had generally forsaken buildings, roads, surface vehicles, etc. in favor of a transparent "second skin" a few molecules thick, which was undetectable in its normal state. Dan noticed that the court clerk had chosen the "normal state" as her attire, but tried not to let it distract him from the task at hand.

The court announced that advancements in rehabilitation had been such that no more AZ sentences were being handed down, and, incidentally, that every decision made by the Vice President, for this and other obvious reasons, had been declared null and void. The court further accepted Dan's recommendation that Namdoog be declared cured and released, particularly in light of the fact that as long as Namdoog (and everyone else) stayed inside their respective skins, no one could ever damage anyone or anything else again.

Chapter 5

Namdoog and Dan were, of course, intensely intrigued by the skins. The current version maintained temperature and humidity to taste, was undetectably yielding yet invulnerable to a nuclear blast, and filtered air, water, and food of all harmful substances. (Actually, the skin followed the stretched-and-tangled-doughnut configuration of the human body, along the surfaces of the respiratory and digestive tracts, so that no substance actually entered the body without passing through the skin, which also recycled anything the body was done with. Dan particularly appreciated the fact that the skin transmitted the actual taste and texture of foods, without allowing a single molecule of harmful chemicals through. The skin even kept track of the nutritional balance of food consumed, allowing the proper amounts to pass, recycling excesses, and storing reserves of trace elements deficient in the owner's normal diet.

The skin contained visual and aural enhancers, simulating the desired daylight scene night or day. The skin responded to the wearer's commands by detecting brain waves, and could simulate a 360-degree visual and aural environment. Dan became accustomed to receiving a call from a client (via modulated neutrinos, skin-to-skin), whereupon he would call up a meeting environment simulation, into which the client's image would be inserted (and his into the client's simulation), for the session.

A few months passed. Namdoog had (of course) been experimenting with skin enhancements. The modes of transportation of the day were generally aerial (hang gliders, fusion-powered planes, etc.), and Namdoog wanted to build some motive force into the skin. The skin obtained all the energy it required for its functions from excess body heat and sunlight. It had been designed without an internal energy source in order to preclude adding to the thermal pollution of the ecosphere.

The maelstrom of change had been replaced by a more peaceful trend toward individual choice of lifestyle. With all physical needs provided for, and no known limits on lifespan, people began to learn to pick and choose the environments and experiences which fitted into their personal philosophy and development. Major issues of the day: How far down the food chain should skins be provided to animals and lower species? What should be done about the apparent cruelty of nature to its non-sentient residents?

Eventually, Namdoog hit upon a rather convoluted solution to the transportation problem. He redesigned the skin material to allow it to extend monomolecular pseudopods, which could expend and absorb energy with sufficient efficiency so as not to present a thermal pollution problem. A pseudopod would extend, however many kilometers, and attach near the target. Other pseudopods attached in alternate directions to provide stabilization anchorage. Finally, a pseudopod would form an air-tight envelope covering the skin, and expand until it contained a lighter-than-air volume. The extended pseudopods would then contract or expand as required to move the skin to the target.

One side-effect of Namdoog's enhancement (yes, yet another reality-wrenching side effect) was that pseudopods could be conjured up in any combination of sizes, shapes, surface textures, and appearance, providing fully tactile simulations of any imaginable environment - the Taj Mahal, a south seas isle, a sunny meadow, with or without simulated companions - the possibilities were literally endless. It was no longer necessary to travel in order to experience more than visual and aural simulations. In fact, individually controlled simulations became indistinguishable from reality

After a few centuries of experimenting with his new "reality generator", Namdoog decided it was about time he tried to make some progress on some ancient but REALLY far-out problems, like exploring higher dimensions, discovering the purpose of the universe, bringing back the dead, getting in touch with God, etc. But that's another story.