Orbit 11 - [Anthology]
Page 22
We rise and slowly move over the great expanse of rusted metal, hesitantly, as visitors in a great cathedral move. And as cathedrals seem to breathe a cool silence of stone, so does this object seem to exude a dry, rasping silence of heat. There does, indeed, seem to be an unnatural stillness and a held feeling, a tightness of the stomach, caught in the air above and around it.
We move slowly and from this close, subjective standpoint it seems to assume a vastness in the mind, although if seen from two miles up it would hardly be visible. The air above the brown surface is warped with heat and wreathed with sun-smoke, and the force of our passage dislodges tiny particles of rust, which hang and spin in suspension for moments at a time.
We reach the edge of the main bulk and look straight along the rusty tail of metal to the horizon. Immediately in front of us, a bundle of white sticks protrudes from an oblong aperture in the metal, seeming not part of this, but a separate thing, a thing out of place in the great expanse of rusted metal. Now that we have seen this one we see others. There are quite a few of these bundles of sticks glimmering in the brown.
We cross the highway, moving over the striped safety barriers, stopping in midair. Below us, the sand is covered with small, isolated blots of brown, fallen from the main mass. A huge steel pillar thuds unmovingly into the ground at the edge of the pattern of blots, supporting the flat, raised surface of the road. We fall slowly to the ground. Above us, some sixty feet above, the highway arches, stiffspanning the earth, the metal fountaining outward and outward, a still steel river, a tense spring, caught in the insect legs of metal supports. On the other side of its width, through the cool shadow beneath it, other brown objects can be seen. One is surrounded by bundles of splintered white sticks.
We imagine the creation of the thing. We see in our minds the panic, the fear, the desperate, terrifying flight, the awful sound of the roaring engines, the screaming horns, the jangling, discordant rupture into fractured reality, lights, sounds, flashes, the flight from . . . what? All the lines meeting in this brown mass, time lines starting at different points in time, stopping, starting, moving on, from different origins, crossing and diverging, lives in all their complexity, moving forward with the irresistible pressure of predestination behind them, moving on into the blindness of time and the incomprehensible image of space. And then this strange meeting. This decaying knot of lifelines, this brown blob which is the manifestation of the intersection, the binding together of the spidering separate lines, the web of the incomprehensible, enigmatic accident.
The thing seems to us to be a work of art, an attempt at communication, as if the poet despaired of making himself understood by direct attacks on his meaning and attempted the touching of intellects indirectly. The enigma of the poem.
And perhaps, perhaps it is a work of art, by an artist incomprehensible to us. One who weaves the strands of fate and time, one who moves the lives of men; world-strider, he, stars his jeweled footsteps. Perhaps there is a standpoint, a way of looking at the object, a state of mind, perhaps, from which the pieces will fall into place, turn and spin with the eye, and reveal. . . .
Perhaps something which will have duration in a world of sputtering stars, dying planets, fading gaseous life. -
We move, trying to find the standpoint.
Cut / broken glass / Cut / twisted steel / Cut / melted rubber / Cut / tarnished silver mascot.
There is no such standpoint. All we see is the vast sun-welded structure of wrecked cars and bones.
We rise and turn toward the brown tail, following it to its origin, skimming over the almost unrecognizable hulks of the automobiles. A brown stain appears on the horizon. It grows and grows, vast, vaster. Buildings, towers, spreading sideways in the distance. We move toward the myth leaving behind us its crystallization.
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* * * *
Hank Davis
TO PLANT A SEED
In a dark place which is filled with light, but none for seeing, are nine figures. They do not move.
People have been known to voice opinions:
1) “The seed? Well, I don’t know, now. Never had a garden myself. What kind of seed do you mean?”
2-6) Omitted because of similarity to 1).
7) ”Sure, I’ve heard of the Seed. Can’t see any reason for it. Why should they spend so much money for something that nobody will live to see? That’s what I say. We’ve got enough problems to solve right now without throwing money away on something billions of years in the future.”
8) ”If those people want to commit suicide together, it’s all right with me, but why use my tax money to do it? Even the people working on the Seed admit that there’s no way it can benefit anybody now living or anybody who will ever live in this universe.”
9) ”Never mind basic research, because there is no information to be gained. And I really am not concerned about the money required, not because I don’t think that it could be put to a better use, but because I don’t think it would be put to a better use, Seed or no Seed. My objection is that this project is the last gasp of the notion that man is master of the universe and the cosmos belongs to him. That notion nearly made the Earth uninhabitable in the last century and we’re better off without it. If we want to build a Seed and give the next universe the dubious gift of human inhabitants, why such a hurry? We have billions of years ahead of us. For once in our thoroughly botched career, let’s take time to think it over.”
* * * *
Dust does not fall, air currents do not flow, sound is not heard. The molecules of the air do not move.
The Seed was explained:
MODERATOR: But do you really think, Dr. Cullins, that anyone would dare to shut
himself off from the world that he knows, never to see it again, not knowing where he was going?
DR. CULLINS: Certainly. People have set out to colonize in the past, not really
understanding what they were facing. People have to set out to explore, not knowing what they would find or if they were coming back. And the Seed is even more fundamental in its thrust, calling out not merely to see something new that none have seen before, or to the desire for living space, but to the very survival of the human race. The drive to survive is potent in our instincts. This form of race survival is more abstract and must appeal to the intellect, but I believe that the drive to survive is as potent in the intellect as it is in the blood.
MR. GRAY OF THE NEW YORK TELEFAX: Still, Dr. Cullins, this proposal of yours is
hardly pressing us, for we literally have all the time in the world to prepare such an, ah seed, while more pressing matters concern us on our own planets.
DR. CULLINS: We may have all the time in the world and we may not. We don’t
know everything about stars and our own star might become nova in the next five minutes. Then it will be too late. In fact, far from having all the time in the world, our clear priority is the planting of the Seed which might take, at most, five years. Then we can return the resources that were temporarily diverted to the Seed back to the general pool of resources—though I doubt that such a comparatively small drop in the pool will affect those pressing matters that Mr. Gray mentioned, particularly since those matters have been pressing us for several centuries.
MR. MEISENHEIMER OF WORLDWEEK TELE-ZINE: But even if we don’t have
unlimited time, the question remains: why should we do it at all? To spread at a reasonable pace through our corner of the galaxy is a sensible endeavor. This is our universe, for we evolved in it. As long as we displace no other intelligent beings, surely we may colonize other planets, even in other stellar systems. But another universe would have nothing at all to do with us. It would belong to those beings which evolved in it and to plant your seed would be a—a new form of imperialism, usurping the rightful inhabitants. Let us stay in our rightful domain.
DR. CULLINS: Take any man now living, Mr. Meisenheimer, and in his place
might stand a horde of other animals. Just b
y being alive, you have concentrated a quantity of organic materials in one place and removed them temporarily from the life cycle. If that is evil, then you and I and every other human being should immediately commit suicide. If it is evil to send men into the next universe, then why is it right to send them to other stellar systems? The next universe is simply a continuation of this universe and man is as much a creature of that universe as this one.
* * * *
Excerpt from transcript of Meet the Media
. . . and one of the hardest spooks to exorcise is the notion that Man Was Not Meant to Outlive the Universe, though it is never stated in that explicit form. A century ago, or even later, the objection would have taken the form: we are going against God. Society is too secularized now for it to be so expressed, of course. I would, in fact, prefer to battle God rather than the faceless formless commandment that exists in the minds of so many. He would be specific and I could cite the absence of specific injunctions against the Seed in scripture or employ extracts for my own cause. (I have some in mind, just in case.) And the old view of man as subduer of the earth is more favorable to the Seed than the modern one of Man the Destroyer. How can I fight this faceless spirit, ruler of cavemen who fear the open sky?
* * * *
From a letter written by Cullins to Cain shortly after the former’s appearance onMeet the Media.
Q: Is that letter of Cullins’ noble or merely pompous?
A: Both.
Q: I noticed a moment of hesitation back there when he said that the drive to
survive is as potent in the intellect as in the blood. Why was that?
A: He was being very careful not to say what he says in private: that the drive to
survive is as strong between the ears as it is between the legs.
* * * *
INSIDE THE TIME REFRIGERATOR
Does the McJunkins field work because of a flaw in the law of conservation of temporal momentum? Not really, any more than the operation of a refrigerator disproves the fundamental principle of thermodynamics which states that heat tends to disperse. Translating the intricate mathematics of the McJunkins field of equations into plain English, the average time within the field remains constant. Just as a refrigerator makes the air within its walls cold by raising the temperature of the air outside by an equal amount, the McJunkins field stops time within its enclosed volume while speeding time up elsewhere.
The amazing thing about the McJunkins field is that the region of speeded-up time is confined entirely to the surface of the field—a two-dimensional space!
* * * *
FOREVER IN A FEW SECONDS
When the field generator is switched on, a field is created and its size is determined by the power applied to the generator. Expanding from the center of the field is a sphere of slowed time. Like a balloon being blown up inside another balloon, the sphere of slow time expands and the hollow sphere of fast time decreases in volume. When the two volumes are equal, a clock in the slow zone would be running only half as fast as it would in the fast zone; and the same clock, taken outside the field, would run one-third faster than it would in the slow zone.
The changing of times in the two zones, as well as the rate of expansion of the slow field, slows as the thickness of the fast zone approaches zero. The rate of change is what scientists call asymptotic.
For an example of an asymptotic rate of change, consider a grasshopper that is trying to cover a distance of two feet. On the first jump, he covers half the distance, landing a foot from his goal, but he now is tired and his next jump covers only half a foot. He has still less energy this time and his third jump will take him forward just one-fourth of a foot.
When will the grasshopper reach his goal? Never, obviously, although he can get as close to it as he likes. Likewise, the thickness of the field of fast time should never reach zero and the time flow in the slow zone should never come to a full halt.
This, however, is a mathematically pure situation. Obviously, the grasshopper can continue to make smaller jumps only if his body shrinks with each jump and can shrink without limit, which cannot happen. Similarly, the time flow will slow down without ever reaching zero only if time can be divided into ever smaller intervals. It cannot. We know that a piece of metal cannot be divided forever without finally being reduced to one atom, which must be divided into subatomic particles, which particles can be divided into quarks but no further—for quarks cannot be divided into anything smaller! There simply is no particle of matter which is smaller than a quark. Similarly, the quantum is the smallest possible amount of energy that can exist. As we have known since Samuel Soto’s electrotemporal equations were experimentally verified, both space and time likewise have a quantum structure. If you divide a second into two halves, then into quarters, then continue, you will reach a unit of time which cannot be divided.
Dividing a second may sound like a fanciful notion, but the McJunkins field is constantly dividing time into smaller units. And, as the zone of slow time expands, the moment comes when the rate of slow time flow is one time quantum away from being zero. At the same time, theory indicates, the thickness of the hollow shell of fast time is one space quantum thick. The next expansion of the field shrinks the hollow ball to zero thickness and time stops completely within the field. A process that mathematically, should take forever is completed in a few seconds!
* * * *
.. . The McJunkins effect does not invalidate the principle of Einstein’s Relativity that simultaneity is meaningful only for reference systems at rest with respect to each other. The rate of time flow in—or rather on—the surface of a McJunkins field is not infinite and it will apparently vary according to the Einstein transformations.
* * * *
WHAT GOOD IS IT?
Can the McJunkins field ever be more than a scientific curiosity? The final answer is not yet clear. The possibilities would seem endless—perfect suspended animation for starship crews or victims of incurable diseases, an impenetrable barrier, even an ideal refrigerator—but the simple fact is that we know of no way to turn off a McJunkins field once it has been created. For all practical purposes, the field, once established, will last forever. It might still have use as a weapon. A McJunkins field generator could be turned on and “freeze” an enemy for all time.
But this proposal, while possible, is impractical. Interestingly enough, the power requirement for establishing a McJunkins field is less dependent on the size of the field than on the total mass enclosed. The energy of several AN-bombs would be required to freeze even a small city. Small wonder that the first (and, to date, the only) McJunkins field established was not only small, but enclosed nothing but the field generator and a sphere of air!
In fact, only one proposal has been put forward for the use of the, McJunkins effect—and that proposal is little short of fantastic! It is so fantastic that one might be tempted to dismiss it as the suggestion of a crackpot. But the proposal comes from Dr. Roy M. Cullins and Dr. E. John Cain, both respected men in their fields.
We have known for three decades that the universe is cyclic in nature, Dr. Cullins points out. That is, our universe was preceded by another one which collapsed under its own gravity and was compressed almost into a geometrical point, then exploded in what has for a century been called the Big Bang. The matter expanded from the explosion and filled space, condensing into galaxies of stars. Our universe is still expanding, but the galaxies will, at some time in the distant future, cease their outward flight and begin the long fall back to the point where the universe was born, to fuse together again into an unbearably small space, then explode outward in a new Big Bang, giving birth to a new universe. This cycle had no beginning and will continue without end. And it is inconceivable that man, should he still exist in that far future, should survive the contraction of the universe.
* * * *
A LIFEBOAT FOR DOOMSDAY?
Or it was inconceivable until the discovery of the McJunkins Effect. The propos
al of Cullins and Cain is that a standard starship be fitted with a McJunkins generator powerful enough to create a field surrounding the ship. That ship could survive the collapse of the universe, for not even the weight of the collapsing universe could force anything into a zone where there is no time, hence no motion. When the new universe expanded and condensed into new galaxies, the ship would still be unscathed in its field and the crew would not have aged even a second from the moment that the field was established.
As had been stated earlier, for all practical purposes a McJunkins field lasts forever—but only from the standpoint of a human lifespan.
Actually, a McJunkins field, left to itself, will not last forever. For every field established, a time would eventually come when the field would break down as quickly as it had been established. The time between creation and collapse of the field is a function of the mass within the field. A field which enveloped the mass of a star would collapse almost as soon as it was generated. The field that Dr. McJunkins created in his experiment enclosed five pounds of generator and less than a pint of air and would last several hundred times the span of a cycle of the pulsating universe. By carefully measuring the mass of the star-ship within the field, Cullins and Cain observe, the field could be timed to collapse as little as a few billion years after the new Big Bang.