Riding the Light |
I metamorphosed within the calibration saddle. It isn't that I was clumsy or distracted but I had no conception that temporal backlash was possible. Now that I've been subjected to it, I prefer to call it reflux distribution, a phenomenon whereby modified light, in attempting to surpass current time, must endure a brief exposure to its antithesis where it proceeds in reverse. Maybe that is how the universe coughs, hiccups or pukes. I don't know that there is a rational explanation for what happened to me during the experiment with the prototype, but something ought to be said about it. As the chief engineer involved with he company's ambitious time project, I, call me Icarus, spent two years building the huge camera and another deciphering the orbital coordinates for its programming mechanism. From the very first, I decided to take advantage of its size to personally accompany its initial experimental pulse in order to verify its operation and workability. That is why I constructed a miniaturization cockpit, a three micron chamber, so that an observer, a very reduced me in this case, could ride the modulated photons to see what was going on. The optical nacre module between the lens and the shutter allowed me that discretion, though it was not designed to handle the miscellany that occurred. I simply sat back and waited for January 23, 1945 on the controller, glancing occasionally at the mirror chip screen that would receive the images. That is 012345 in rectangular coordinates, just in case you can conceive my restoration. There was no fallacy in any of the planning, no error in the material construction, no bugs in the programming or intrinsic snafu in the theory. It would have worked perfectly but for my being there. No doubt I should have anticipated the warnings of other theorists, that traveling into the past is fraught withdanger because any change, no matter how slight, could produce drastic results. I am the living proof of that! Why did I pick that particular date when so many more important ones were available? I remember my father talking about it, saying that at the end of the war, a valuable emerald was stolen from the Louvre, the case never solved. At the time, a Nazi commander, one Otto Luber, was under suspicion, though it came to nothing. My reasoning convinced me that a perfect way to prove that light could be intercepted would be to start with something like that, a theft on a known date. What a brilliant inspiration. I don't know for a fact that another date or action would not have produced a similar result. My suspicions include the possibility that past events are individually responsive within the continuum, that every date has its own peculiar reflux. The task of testing the prototype fell to me because I conceived the camera. They, the company executives, thought it was a spendid idea, being able to photograph the past and produce digitized snapshots, proving that this or that did or did not actually happen. The theory is relatively simple. Light escapes from earth as photonic energy. Whoever perpetrated the theft at the Louvre on 012345 was still circumnavigating the galaxy as an image, as undeniable electron truth. Einstein proved that light bends. Rosencranz postulated that galaxies are magnetic, that all elements must orbit the central mass, a dak hole. I came up with the thought that light, in following this principle, must eventually return to earth, that its orbit was therefore predictable and could be intercepted. Ergo, my camera, the Icarus travesty, ostensibly designed to capture an image trapped by its orbit in space. All I had to do was wait for Cokely to invent the shimmering coil so that a warp engine could be designed and the speed of light exceeded. I should not have done it alone, but I wanted to be sure. Everything was correct. Once I researched exactly where the Louvre was on that date from the galactic point of view, I had a staring point. It commenced at a constant rate of 186,000 mps from France, forced by the sun to wallow between centrifugal and gravitational realities. Overtaking it along the projected trajectory required a warp busting Emerson pulse which would return to the camera's reception antenna in ten seconds. I know it worked but I cannot prove it because operating the camera is no longer possible for me. The thief, that very same Otto Luber, is still hidden in obscurity, about twelve feet from where I am in an unrecoverable matrix of swirling electrons, what used to be film and is now an optical semiconductor flash tank. The backlash changed me somehow. I don't think there was a way to predict that a miniaturized human being could be converted into a two dimensional image. All I have now is length and height. Depth is out of the equation. I remember worrying about things like paying the rent and making Sandra happy. Now my concerns center on the porous condition of the fibers in the paper I have become. Before, dirt and dust particles were motes beneath my notice. Now they fill the gaping holes of my existence, apertures that humans cannot see without a microscope. Whereas tiny organisms once captured my imagination because of their powerful effect as viruses and microbes, you should see their horrifics from the planar point of view. Dragons the size of fleas; Rottweiler amoebic slime. I suppose it could be worse. It could have made me a one-dimensional blob of useless memory. I am an image, a flat representation of what I use to be, grafted onto a piece of blank, white paper, the one on which I was going to record the instructions on how to operate the camera. No one will ever get the sequence right because I was told to make it deliberately obtuse. That I did ... with impunity. I was going to describe the calibration sequence next, but the reflux pulse occurred before I could get to it. One moment I was staring at the controller. The lamp illuminated, signaling me that I was riding in tandem with the pulse, seeking to overtake the light from 012345. Suddenly, Luber was there in the museum with the emerald in his hand. The change occurred very quickly. By being there to observe him, I did not know that my own face would be amplified and embossed on the museum's glass panel. I do know that he saw my reflection becuase of his words, "Vas ist das?" That was the change, the alteration not included in the original light and the source of my subsequent forced metamorphosis. The caterpillar became a superbutterly without having to wait for the chrysalis to develop. But, like the old time photographs, I was the one who got developed and the chemistry was such that no apothecary will ever be able to duplicate it exactly. The timing is forever lost in the shutter and the event itself, Luber and his theft, safely entombed in the optical nacre module. The camera is a futility and should never again be engaged. Planar living is boring because I am forced to look at the same scenes ad infinitum. It was a technician who walked into the camera, saw my icon lying helplessly on the floor, superimposed on the paper. He pinned me to the wall with a thumb tack. I suppose I'm fortunate he didn't penetrate my head or decide to use me as a dart board. Still, sooner or later, when they can't find the former me, someone is going to rip this flat, irritating imitation off the wall and throw me into a wastebasket or a paper shredder. I don't know what will happen after that. You're probably wondering how I'm communicating. It seems that beings who live in a two-dimensional world can influence small, black dots or pixels just by thinking about them. I hope it is before trash removal. Check the garbage, please. If you see my visage, draped with a paisley tie, that is really me. With a little luck, by then I'll have something figured out for reconverting. If not, well, it's been a bit of a page turner, a slice, if you will. Oh, and another thing. Being pancaked does not extricate the senses, though I don't suppose I'll ever taste anything again. Ironic that the world really is flat. Should you chance to scan me, have a care that I don't get tangled up in the printer queue because I am lost enough as it is. I do wonder if being copied will be an orgasmic experience. W.A.Rieser |
