going?”
I did the math in the palm of my hand. “Two thousand miles a minute and sixty minutes in an hour,” I calculated. “That means the train is traveling a hundred and twenty thousand miles an hour!”
Mr. Applegate smiled. “As we know, any rocket ship going a hundred and twenty thousand miles an hour would just disintegrate from the heat. Even if the rocket ship was made of some amazing substance not yet invented, a passenger would die instantly from the g-forces,” said Mr. Applegate.
“But how could it actually happen?” I asked.
Mr. Applegate sighed before he answered. “Einstein went just so far in his math, Oscar. But he didn’t go far enough. He never considered negative velocity or time pockets.”
“Time pockets?”
“Long story short, Oscar, if you were to sit in our make-believe rocket ship and it went east to west, you’d fly into tomorrow.”
“I would?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Applegate. “East to west, you would go into tomorrow, and if you kept going, you’d fly through a hundred tomorrows if you wanted.”
“But California’s west of here, and it’s Pacific time, two hours behind us,” I argued.
Mr. Applegate smiled. “You’re forgetting the international date line, Oscar,” he said. “No one knew how to contain the endlessness of time, so they made a seam around the surface of the world. But it isn’t real. If your rocket ship flew over that date line three hundred sixty-five times, you’d be a year ahead. In no time at all, you could go ten years, even a hundred years into the future. Of course if you went west to east, you’d fly into yesterday and then a thousand yesterdays. To go forward into time that hasn’t yet happened, you would have to slow down enough to plunge into a time pocket in Einstein’s frozen river. You’d have to use negative velocity. Then you might do it.”
Mr. Applegate’s voice turned dreamy. “
Scientific American
claims that German scientists have been beavering away on all this in secret laboratories,” he said. “They are working on time pockets. They call them
Zeithülsen
. They’ve built a primitive particle accelerator hidden underneath some mountain in the Black Forest. They’re experimenting with snails and other mollusks, sending them backward and forward in time. Then they’ll try it with mice and then chimpanzees. Eventually they will try to send a person back to 1914 and reverse the outcome of the Great War.”
“Reverse the outcome of the war?” I asked. “The Germans lost the war. We beat the pants off them!”
“Yes, they did,” said Mr. Applegate. “That’s why they want to monkey with history. They want to change it so that they beat the pants off us. Who knows? They have very clever scientists in Germany.”
Mr. Applegate smiled again, this time sadly. “I could have been one of those scientists, Oscar. I could have run the American Negative Velocity Lab. There is none now, of course. American science doesn’t believe in negative velocity.”
“You could be head of the lab, Mr. Applegate?”
“I am an old man now, Oscar,” said Mr. Applegate. “But when I was young and my mind was agile, I was the most promising graduate student at the University of Texas Department of Mathematics. I wrote my thesis on negative velocity theory, starting with Einstein’s equation E=MC 2 and then improving on it and finishing it to its logical conclusion. I wanted to get a scholarship to Princeton to get my doctorate, Oscar! I wanted to change the world!”
Mr. Applegate swallowed very hard. He lifted both his empty hands as if something precious had dropped from them.
“Unfortunately,” he went on, “no one in the Mathematics Department at Princeton could understand my paper. I didn’t get my scholarship. I was a poor boy, so instead of becoming a world-famous professor like Mr. Einstein, I had to settle for being a high-school math teacher.”
Mr. Applegate picked up a disabled freight engine from one of
I did the math in the palm of my hand. “Two thousand miles a minute and sixty minutes in an hour,” I calculated. “That means the train is traveling a hundred and twenty thousand miles an hour!”
Mr. Applegate smiled. “As we know, any rocket ship going a hundred and twenty thousand miles an hour would just disintegrate from the heat. Even if the rocket ship was made of some amazing substance not yet invented, a passenger would die instantly from the g-forces,” said Mr. Applegate.
“But how could it actually happen?” I asked.
Mr. Applegate sighed before he answered. “Einstein went just so far in his math, Oscar. But he didn’t go far enough. He never considered negative velocity or time pockets.”
“Time pockets?”
“Long story short, Oscar, if you were to sit in our make-believe rocket ship and it went east to west, you’d fly into tomorrow.”
“I would?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Applegate. “East to west, you would go into tomorrow, and if you kept going, you’d fly through a hundred tomorrows if you wanted.”
“But California’s west of here, and it’s Pacific time, two hours behind us,” I argued.
Mr. Applegate smiled. “You’re forgetting the international date line, Oscar,” he said. “No one knew how to contain the endlessness of time, so they made a seam around the surface of the world. But it isn’t real. If your rocket ship flew over that date line three hundred sixty-five times, you’d be a year ahead. In no time at all, you could go ten years, even a hundred years into the future. Of course if you went west to east, you’d fly into yesterday and then a thousand yesterdays. To go forward into time that hasn’t yet happened, you would have to slow down enough to plunge into a time pocket in Einstein’s frozen river. You’d have to use negative velocity. Then you might do it.”
Mr. Applegate’s voice turned dreamy. “
Scientific American
claims that German scientists have been beavering away on all this in secret laboratories,” he said. “They are working on time pockets. They call them
Zeithülsen
. They’ve built a primitive particle accelerator hidden underneath some mountain in the Black Forest. They’re experimenting with snails and other mollusks, sending them backward and forward in time. Then they’ll try it with mice and then chimpanzees. Eventually they will try to send a person back to 1914 and reverse the outcome of the Great War.”
“Reverse the outcome of the war?” I asked. “The Germans lost the war. We beat the pants off them!”
“Yes, they did,” said Mr. Applegate. “That’s why they want to monkey with history. They want to change it so that they beat the pants off us. Who knows? They have very clever scientists in Germany.”
Mr. Applegate smiled again, this time sadly. “I could have been one of those scientists, Oscar. I could have run the American Negative Velocity Lab. There is none now, of course. American science doesn’t believe in negative velocity.”
“You could be head of the lab, Mr. Applegate?”
“I am an old man now, Oscar,” said Mr. Applegate. “But when I was young and my mind was agile, I was the most promising graduate student at the University of Texas Department of Mathematics. I wrote my thesis on negative velocity theory, starting with Einstein’s equation E=MC 2 and then improving on it and finishing it to its logical conclusion. I wanted to get a scholarship to Princeton to get my doctorate, Oscar! I wanted to change the world!”
Mr. Applegate swallowed very hard. He lifted both his empty hands as if something precious had dropped from them.
“Unfortunately,” he went on, “no one in the Mathematics Department at Princeton could understand my paper. I didn’t get my scholarship. I was a poor boy, so instead of becoming a world-famous professor like Mr. Einstein, I had to settle for being a high-school math teacher.”
Mr. Applegate picked up a disabled freight engine from one of
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