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Time Twister by David Francis

Prologue: 'I'm sorry Professor Lugbender, I'm afraid I just can't visualise it. I still don't see how an infinite three dimensional universe can exist within a finite four dimensional matrix!' The year 2130, the place Milton Keynes City, cultural capital of the world. It is 4:15pm on a hot, bright late November afternoon. Professor Jertzy Lugbender, Departmental Head of Theoretical Weird and Quite Unlikely Stuff at the Federated Union Corporate University of Newport Pagnell, is having tea with two of his students in the palatial university gardens. 'Well Dorkslinger, it is really quite simple. Imagine if you can a matchbox full of two dimensional matches. Now, because the matches have only two dimensions, length and width, but not depth, it possible for for the three dimensional matchbox to contain an infinite amount of them. And thus it is with our universe that the same principle is applied when when we think about its three dimensional nature in relation to the fourth dimension, Time.' The professor's clipped eastern European tones bounced between the two avidly listening students with little discernible effect. 'I'm afraid I can't see it either, professor.' remarked Thatcherbite, the lankier and far spottier of the two. 'Ach!' spluttered Lugbender, throwing his hands up into the air in mock despair at the latent stupidity displaying itself before him, 'Why can you not see the obvious?' One of the hands fell back into his lap, but the other continued to spin lazily around in mid-air instead. Showing off its utter contempt for the apparently incontrovertible laws of physics it performed a stately victory roll before slowly spiralling down to land with a soft thump in the sugar bowl at the centre of the small table about which they all sat. Dorkslinger dutifully reached over and handed it back to the professor, thereby avoiding a potentially quite excruciatingly embarrassing few moments. 'Ah, thank you. I really must get these things fixed on properly. Now, where was I? Ah yes. Think of the fourth dimension as a transparent cube with a block of solid light at its putative centre. This light block represents our three dimensional universe, and all the events that occur within the light block do so simultaneously, but each perceptual entity within the light block only experiences these events from from one moment to the next, thus giving it the illusion of of moving in a linear sequentially which it experiences as the passing of time. From the fourth dimension a perceptual entity's life-span would look like a tangled piece of spaghetti formed of light, but from the entity's three dimensional point of view it would only experience the spaghetti one tiny slice at a time. 'Now, some scientists and philosophers have taken this to mean that all events in the universe are pre-determined, but this does not prove to be the case. If we take at random any point along an entity's piece of spaghetti, then at that precise point an infinity of probable realities (or lines of spaghetti if you prefer) radiate away into the future, while the past remains a solid fixed one-piece of spaghetti. Thus, events that that have already occurred perceptually are fixed and unchangeable, but events that have yet to occur are only fixed by probability, and so are infinitely variable. 'It is all a question of perception. The nature of the universe depends entirely on how one perceives it. Simple, yes?' Dorkslinger sucked at his bottom lip as he frantically tried to devise a way of escaping from the professor's tea party without causing terminal damage to his grades. 'I'm still a little fuzzy on this whole matchbox thing.' said Thatcherbite. 'By the sacred hairs of Elton John!' cried Lugbender, and snatched up a sugar cube which he held aloft. 'Within a single molecule of this sugar the universe is mirrored in its entirety. We cannot understand it because we are within it! Just like the notes in a piece of music cannot step back to appreciate the the whole piece, neither can we. In this case it is we who are the notes and the universe is the music. Do you see?' Thatcherbite pursed his lips in a Herculean struggle for understanding. 'Hmm', he said, 'Are you trying to say that sugar cubes are are somehow intrinsically connected to matchboxes. Universally speaking of course?' Lugbender's face turned a deep shade of red and his large ears began to tremble violently. 'Let me put it another way.' he said through gritted teeth, 'Every person's mind, the way in which they think, affects the lines of probability that are generated out before them. For example, when you arose this morning the most probable sequence of events before you would have involved going to eat breakfast, off to lectures, coming here for tea, and then out tonight to experiment with how much alcohol your body can absorb before it ceases to function, yes?' Thatcherbite nodded carefully. 'But,' the professor went on, 'You have now now both irritated me to such a degree that I am going to have to kill the pair of you, thus demonstrating how your thoughts and actions this afternoon have completely recalculated your probability lines towards, what this morning, would have been a very improbable event. Now do you see?!' Dorkslinger immediately fell backwards off his chair, his rational capacity to gibber rendered temporarily inoperable by the sight of Lugbender sweeping a huge double-headed battle-axe up from beneath the table. Thatcherbite leapt back and cried, 'Aha!', an Uzi Mark 3 Body Splatterer emerging from the folds of his voluminously baggy tee-shirt. 'Fooled ya, professor!', he shouted triumphantly, 'Little did you know that I have a Relative Probability Sequencing Calculator hidden in my room!' 'Damn you!' snarled Lugbender. 'Yes', said Thatcherbite, 'It warned me that something like this might happen today professor, or should I say Alf Watkins, interplanetary trickster, master of disguise, interstellar con-man and general all-round galactic bamboozler!?' 'Buggerit!' growled Lugbender as he threw the axe down. Dorkslinger abruptly launched himself vertical and kicked the gun from Thatcherbite's hand, and in a deceptively impressive flurry of arms and trenchcoat produced a viciously intimidating Husquarvana Tech 4 Laz-Cannon from his boot-top. 'Hold it right there!' he bellowed, 'Very clever Thatcherbite, but not clever enough, for I am the real Alf Watkins!' 'Oh no you're bloody not!' shrilled Lugbender indignantly. BOOM 'Hmm, as you've just vaporised the professor I suppose you must be the real Alf Watkins.' conceded Thatcherbite. 'Bloody right matey-boy', said Dorkslinger, 'And now that you have discovered my secret I'm afraid I cannot let you live any longer, either.' 'Reasonable enough I suppose.' agreed Thatcherbite. BOOM Thatcherbite shook his head sadly. 'Just as well I sabotaged his gun this morning', he said, 'Stupid boy should have known better than to mess with the real Alf Watkins.' And with that, Thatcherbite, or Alf, skipped out of the gardens and off into the sunset, whistling gaily and musing, 'It's been an odd sort of a day. Why, only this morning I could have sworn that Alf Watkins was nothing more than a phantom figure devised by the collective unconscious of a society too well ordered and structured to produce a real Alf Watkins of its own. Thus, it is forced to invent one in order to alleviate the repressed wants and desires of a people who would ordinarily be too frightened to challenge the system as individuals, and therefore live out their feeble fantasies by proxy through the fictitiously awesome adventures of Alf Watkins. And now it seems that somehow, quite improbably, I have actually become him. Very odd, but I can see that it has got definite possibilities. Oh yes, definite possibilities!' ENDS

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