My String Theory

I am a traveller in time although I have to admit we all are.Mostly we have but one choice and that is to travel in a forward direction at a rate of one second per second.

But we have heard from our friends that they have travelled through time often more times than just once.

Even then they recount their lives as previous lives.

I want to draw to your attention a little fact of life you may not yet have realised. Sometimes we are reincarnated into a previous period of time.

You must have noticed this. Those people you suddenly meet who you were never aware of before yet they appear to have been around all your life.

The secret is that we do travel in time in both forward and reverse directions.

OK, by now your head is starting to hurt but let me explain myself. You will have heard of string theory – that there are 10 or 11 dimensions. You will have also been aware of the three physical dimensions and the fourth temporal dimension.

I am only comprehend six dimensions myself, I include gravitation as the fifth dimension and temporal folds as the sixth.

Infinity.

Sorry about that, but we all have trouble with this member of the first three dimensions and sixth dimension.

Infinity can be approached from two directions. Take the big one first.

Our physical galaxy, the Milky Way is very big and we cannot conceive of travelling from one end of our galaxy to the other end in a single lifetime at even the fastest physical speed an item of matter such as a spaceship could travel.

But there are billions of galaxies in deeper and deeper space.

In fact we are told that space is infinite and therefore there is no outer limit to this physical space.

At the other end we talk about atomic and sub-atomic particles each consisting of even smaller particles each infinitely of smaller dimensions right down to zero size. But does it stop here?

No.

Alright we cannot prove it or demonstrate it as such but temporal folds provide the path from each of the two extremes of infinity and give us the means to travel forward and backwards in the first four dimensions using the fifth dimension for transport.

And that is what I did.

It is now 2007 and we have heard from our linear time travellers, the pigeon, the cat, the humans and the tree.

Using linear time as the measure of where I come from I was conceived in September 2173 and breathed for the first time in March 2174.

My parental genes were provided by three people, two eminent scientists selected for their brilliance in their own fields of research and an eminent statistician.

I left 2211 for 1984 and have spent the remainder of my time here the past 23 years getting by and trying to return to my own age.

And this is where I have the paradox. I have aged 23 years in the 20th and 21st centuries. I have lost my hair and what is left is grey. So when I return to my own time I will look like a man of 110 years. So should I try to return 2234 or 2274?

But who knows what advances will happened between 2211 and 2234 and indeed between 2211 and 2274?

I will be out of time, out of my depth surely?

However, I have got one advantage in that I have done it before.

The effect on me was devastating even then, when I was a relatively young man. It took me over a year to find a way of fitting into 1980s Britain. And it has been a struggle to get a viable living in which I would have freedom to do my research into finding my way back.

I have also got to admit that I have broken the rules of time travel.

At the university I was working at in 1986 I had a relationship with Mary Pilkinton. She gave birth to our daughter Michelle in August 1987.

My other daughter Elaine has just told us she is expecting a baby herself. The thing is that her now ex-boyfriend’s surname is the same as mine.

At this point you may be starting to understand my dilemma.

Mary is putting pressure on Elaine to have an abortion and Elaine is inclined to agree with her mother.

But if this baby turns out to be one of my ancestors and it is aborted will I cease to be?

Ouch.

And right now Michelle and Elaine are at the clinic ………..

Copyright © Stuart Danton 2007