Dr. Twissell

Time Portal: the Next Generation

Below on this blog page is the first chapter of Abigail Longfellow's novel, Time Portal. The name of the professor of applied mechanics (Twissell) in Abigail's story comes from Isaac Asimov's 1955 time travel novel, The End of Eternity. The first commercial computers (example) were just becoming available to large corporations in the early 1950s and Asimov did not bother to clutter his story with any details about computers, although he pretended that computers could be used to calculate the course of cultural and technological progress in alternative futures (Realities). 

Asimov described his character Senior Computer Laban Twissell as being a member of the ruling "Computers" of Eternity and described these human Computers as using devices such as the "Computaplex" to predict the future. In Eternity, how did someone become a Computer? We can only guess that it usually involved some kind of advanced training. But what if copies (analogues) of Twissell existed in several Realities?

Was there an Eternity University? Asimov did not inform his readers about such details in The End of Eternity. However, at one point, on page 35, Asimov referred to Computer Twissell as "Dr. Twissell". I suspect that mention of Twissell being a doctor was an unintentional error by Asimov, almost a reflex for Asimov to use that term in The End of Eternity. After decades of thinking about "Dr. Twissell", I finally could no longer resist the temptation to create my own version of the good doctor for the story Time Portal.

Asterothrope

Inclusion of a dodecahedron in Chapter 1 of Time Portal is a tip of the hat to Jack Vance and his 1951 story "Men of the Ten Books".

For my science fiction story Old Time Gaming, I imagine that Abigail wrote Time Portal between 1814 and 1817. When an effort was made to get the novel published in 1830, Maria Green objected and "killed" poor Abigail. Luckily, Abigail had already passed her Asterothrope genes on to her children, particularly her oldest daughter, Kate Phillips. Abigail's children eventually told Abigail's grandchildren the story of how Rylla battled Maria Green with advanced nanotechnology. Later, Emma Phillips wrote a series of stories about teleportation, telepathy and time travel in 19th century Australia. Versions of those stories ended up in the archives of the Writers Block at Observer Base, as mentioned in Chapter 1 of Old Time Gaming. Here, below, is Chapter 1 (2,500 words) of Time Portal.

________ CHAPTER ONE _________

"Dr. Twissell!"

Kepler Science Building

The professor was hurrying across campus, on his way to an Introduction to Mechanics class session in the new Kepler Science Building at the very edge of campus, inconveniently far from his laboratory in the old Nollet Science Building. During the holiday break he had finally gotten married. Twissell's new wife (Becky, a recent graduate from the university) was a remarkable young woman with many charms and he loved her dearly, but he had found it impossible to spend any time preparing for the new term. 

Keeping up with a wife as energetic as Becky was over-loading his rather limited social skills and leaving no time for his work. Twissell looked up at the overly-ornate facade of the new science building and could not stop himself from being reminded of his wife's absurdly heavy use of cosmetics on any occasion when they went out in public.

 "Dr. Twissell!"

This second calling of his name was much closer and Twissell could not ignore it and pretend that he had not heard Patty. He slowed and turned his head over his shoulder and saw that his student, Patty Bekom, was rapidly gaining on him. He kept walking, now moving up the steps at the front of the science building. Today would be his first time teaching in the new building and he was not sure how to find the lecture hall where the class session was scheduled to take place. Soon Patty was beside him matching his fast walking pace. "Good afternoon, Patty. I'll drop by the lab after-"

Uninterested in small talk, Patty shouted out, "Professor, I found it!"

Unable to hide the hint of annoyance in his voice Twissell asked, "You found what?"

"My grandmother's diary... written in 1937... where she explains the Pythagorean Symmetries!" Patty waved a diary at Twissell.

Twissell vaguely remembered one of Patty's never ending series of enthusiasms from a few years previously when she had been a senior in his Advanced Mechanics course. Patty seemed to believe (or fantasize) that her grandmother was a mathematical genius, solving the great problems of mathematical physics in her spare time while living on a sheep ranch in the Outback and having left behind her great discoveries on the pages of her personal diary. Now Patty was a research student in Twissell's lab, and he had hoped that she had outgrown her pseudoscience fascination with myths about Pythagoras, Plato and other ancients. Twissell entered through one of the big sliding glass doors at the front of the Kepler building and told Patty, "Don't make me late for class."

She followed him into the lecture hall and to the podium and asked. "What is the subject of the lecture?"

"I will begin the Electricity and Magnetism unit today."

Patty forced the old diary that she was holding into Twissell's hands and told him, "Read this! Starting at page 137. I'll take your lecture." She stepped out in front of the podium and told the class, "In 1752, Benjamin and William Franklin detected an accumulation of electric charge on a detector during a lightening storm. Was Franklin conducting a scientific experiment?" Patty pointed at a student in the front row who shrugged. The boy had been admiring Patty's long shapely legs and had not been listening to her. Indeed, Patty seemed almost to float on her buoyant strides which never ceased as she spoke to the class.

Patty continued, "Let me remind you, Franklin's experiment involved a string made from hemp. Maybe Franklin was smoking the hemp... how else can we explain anyone familiar with the potential lethality of lightening would fly a kite during a lightening storm?" Not waiting for an answer from the students, she waved a hand at Twissell and said, "I'm taking over for Dr. Twissell today so that he can read an important document."

Twissell shook his head in dismay at Patty's brash and unconventional style, but he saw that she had almost instantly captivated the room full of students. He sat in a chair at the side of the room and opened the diary to page 137. Twenty minutes later, he asked a nearby student for a sheet of paper. Patty was saying, "The word 'electricity' was first used in 1646... before that, William Gilbert used the term 'electricus'. It was Gilbert who popularized the idea that planet Earth is a giant magnet. How did he come to that conclusion? And who knows the etymology of 'electricus'?"

Twissell carefully wrote out a series of equations on the sheet of paper then rose to his feet and departed from the lecture hall. Patty ended the lecture soon after his departure and assigned a set of homework problems to the students and then she raced towards the lab, arriving just as Twissell was powering up the galvanic net that was spread across the big work table at the back of the lab. 

computarray

Running past the hulking components of the enormous computarray that occupied most of the front half of the laboratory, Patty called out, "I already incorporated the Pythagorean Symmetries into the net!"

Twissell examined the new configuration of the net and felt for hot spots in the wires. He pulled the sheet of paper and the little diary out of his pocket and handed them to Patty. "It looks like we both expanded Francesca's temporal quadraine in the same way."

She scanned down his set of 11 equations, only slightly irked by his insistence in using the out-dated Newtonian notation. Nodding, she said, "This is the only way to apply Pythagorean logic to the quadraine." She pointed to a gap near the center of the new net. "It is almost a perfect fit for the toridus, but in this new net there are 11 leads, not 12."

Ignoring the mystery of why there should be 11 spatio-temporal dimensions, Twissell turned off the power to the net then he turned around and went to the side bench where the toridus sat, enthroned in its wooden stand, glistening under the laboratory's bright lights. Using a wrench, he undid five small nuts and popped off one of the gold plated dodecaides. Patty asked, "What should take the place of that pentagonal plate?"

Twissell said, "This face could simply be set on the bench. Then we don't need the stand." He impatiently crammed a few dangling wires up into the toridus then carried it over to the work table and set in down at the center of the net. Twissell stepped back from the table and Patty quickly soldered the 11 terminal wires of the net to the 11 remaining gold plates of the toridus. Eager to test the new configuration, she then reached for the power switch. 

Before she could switch on the power, Twissell grabbed Patty's hand. They looked into each-other's eyes. Patty smiled and said, "We were so stupid, spending years trying to use the number 12."

Twissell said, "We should now probably take the time to extract the superfluous subnet from the toridus."

in an alternate Reality

"Later! That can wait! I can't wait to see if this works..." Patty struggled to twist her hand away from his strong grip. "Let me power up-"

He pulled his hand back and Patty threw the switch. There was a bright flash of light and a loud 'bang' and when they could see again, the toridus was gone. Patty shouted a war whoop and they both danced a little jig before throwing their arms around each-other and hugging. Holding Patty at arms length Twissell said, "I wonder where the toridus is now..."

Patty said, "The question is: when is it?" She checked the time. "If it did go into the future then we could see it re-materialize at any time."

Twissell sighed and shook his head. He went and opened the windows at the back wall of the lab to let out the smoke from all the burnt wires in the over-heated net. Turning back towards Patty he said, "You know, if we just made a Time Portal then the toridus is still there! We just can't see it because it has been spread out all up and down the timeline and out into the 11 dimensions." He gingerly put his right hand where the toridus had been, but could feel no remnant of it in their conventional three dimensions of space.

Patty said, "I would advise you not to put your hand there. According to my theory, the toridus could return to our time coordinates and destroy your hand." She went to her desk and picked up a notebook. "Look at this... I believe that this is the proper treatment of the problem..." She paged through her notes, looking for her latest calculation of the power-time relationship that could theoretically predict how far through time an object could be propelled by a given force.

Twissell laughed and said, "What if you are wrong? Maybe the question is: can we find a way to use the time portal that we just created? We can try sending a small object into the future." He pulled off his wedding ring and tied it to a silk thread and suspended it, letting it dangle in front of him by the thread. Twissell then flicked the ring and set it spinning. He slowly lowered the spinning ring by the string into the former location of the toridus.

"Between terms, while you were busily screwing Becky, I calculated the temporal displacement parameters." Patty now turned towards Twissell and was saying, "Look at this calibration curve..." as she looked up from her notebook. Quickly realizing what he was doing with his wedding band, she said, "So that's where the ring came from!" She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a gold ring that she had found in a dusty corner of the laboratory about a year earlier. There was a loud 'ping' and when Patty looked up, now holding the ring between her finger tips and moving her hand out towards the professor, she saw that he was looking at the end of the thread where the ring had been just a second before.

Twissell looked at Patty and saw his ring in her hand. He went over, grabbed the ring and slipped it on his finger. It fit perfectly. "Where did you find my ring?"

Wordlessly, she went to a dim and dusty corner of the room and pointed. Twissell followed Patty into the corner and then looked upwards and after a moment he pointed to a spot on the wall up above their heads: there was a small chip in the wall paint. He looked back at the net and nodded. "The ring went flying off so fast... I could not see what direction it went. If it moved perpendicular to the centripetal vector...."

Patty could do the trajectory calculations in her head. "Assuming you put about a dyne of force into the ring's rotation, my calibration curve says..." She handed the notebook to Twissell, completed the calculation in her head and continued, "...yes... a year into the past would be just about right!"

Twissell rubbed his chin and asked, "Why not into the future?" Twissell checked the equation that Patty had used to generate the calibration curve and laughed. "This is the Fourier decomposition of Euler's flow equation." He picked up the sheet of paper holding the equations for the Pythagorean Symmetries. "The flow equation is equation six, in the rather arbitrary order used for my list."

Patty nodded. She had already recognized her calibration curve as being an alternate version of that Pythagorean Symmetry. She told Twissell, "That's why I was confident in the validity of my calibration curve."

Twissell took her hand and shook it. "Congratulations, Doctor Bekom."

Patty smiled broadly, realizing that her mentor was acknowledging that she had made a major discovery, one worthy of her being granted her doctoral degree. "Thank you, Dr. Twissell."

Glancing over her shoulder and looking at her desk alcove, Twissell could see a photograph taken the day of Patty's college graduation with a level one degree in Mechanics. He added, "Enjoy the moment, because this is the only recognition you are going to receive."

 "What are you talking about?"

"We can't possible announce the existence of this time portal to the world, not until we understand the polarity question." Also in Twissell's mind was a larger problem: that he could not explanation the mechanism by which time travel actually worked. He specialized in applied physics and he did not understand the theory of time travel.

Patty protested, "I don't care about the polarity. Time travel into the past is... it is...." She was at a loss for words to describe the importance of their discovery. What did it matter if time travel into the future was impossible? She'd long been aware of a fundamental temporal asymmetry in the temporal equations. She'd guessed that due to the problem of paradoxes, travel into your own past would be impossible. She had been wrong about that, but now it did not matter.

They argued for over an hour before Patty finally agreed to say nothing to anyone about their discovery. "At least until we do a few more experiments and confirm the shape of the calibration curve." It was important to determine if the energy requirements for time travel increased exponentially with mass or temporal distance.

the charming Becky

Arriving home late that evening, Twissell faced the ordeal of trying to explain to Becky why he had been working in the lab so late with his young student. After he finally had that fire extinguished, he quietly got out of bed, dressed and returned to the Nollet Science Building. He could not sleep, not with the nagging question that was spinning through his mind. 

Twissell rummaged around in the Department of Mechanics storage room for five minutes then headed off to his lab, carrying a heavy object: an old wheel cover. In the lab, he looked at the net and set the cast-iron wheel hub where the toridus had briefly been linked into the net. He then spent a few minutes crafting a note to Patty. Satisfied with his hasty preparations and unable to suffer through any more delays, he jumped up on the table, balanced on the hub and started himself spinning.

Not long after daybreak, when Patty arrived in the lab, she looked at the net and could see that someone had been messing around on the table. The wires of the net were now in disarray as if they had been kicked and scattered across the table top. Then she found the note from Twissell:

Dear Dr. Bekom-

Since there is no known record of me from the past, I expect my experiment to fail. In any case, I will try my best to get word to you from the past. My hope is that by using your temporal callibration curve, I will arrive at a point in time close to when Francesca abandoned work on the temporal equations. Working together, she and I might be able to learn how to use the portal to travel into the future. I suspect that with her amazing mathematical insight, Francesca was close to the solving the polarity problem. It is a never ending mystery: why did she give up her work at such a young age? Using the portal in an anterograde mode is my only hope of returning to this time. Don't feel that you have to explain any of this to Becky. Science first, always! Also, if you don't hear from me, don't repeat my folly by trying to travel into the past. Wait for me to return.

-Your misguided mentor, Twissell

_______________ End of Chapter 1 of Time Portal ____________

data from the Ngram Viewer

As shown above, within fiction, the idea of using rockets to travel into outer space first "took off" in the 1930s, right at the time when Isaac Asimov became an avid reader of pulp magazine science fiction. Among all English language books, use of the term "rocket" began to rise ten years later, about 1940. It was in the 1940s that the first electronic computers were built and by the early 1950s the term "computer" was more likely to appear in English language books than "rocket". However, within domain of fiction books, "rocket" persistently remained much more popular than "computer". Asimov's 1955 time travel novel The End of Eternity made mention of both computers and rockets, although space travel played only a minor role in the story and the emphasis was on time travel. I love the fact that Asimov included computers in his time travel story. I imagine that Emma's version of Time Portal was written in another Reality, so I use the term "computarray" to refer to the calculating machines in Dr. Twissell's lab.

Jump to Chapter 2 of Time Portal.

Next: Part 8 of Old Time Gaming.