A Man in Tweed breezed past the secretary’s desk, since she wasn’t there anyway.
The University President was in. Like he usually was this time of day.
“Come in — come in” said The University President in a jovial manner. He actually got up and clasped the Man in Tweed’s hands in both of his.
“What can I do for you — haven’t seen you around for some time. Missed the department holiday party again.“
“Yes,” said the Man in Tweed. “Shocking waste of time that. Ironic! That it’s a shocking waste of time — ha!”
“Mmm what do you mean?” said the University President.”come have a sit-down. Tell me all about it. Are you OK? you’re looking whiter than normal!”
“Just that — wait, what time is it?”
“A little past 3PM,”
The Man in Tweed’s eyes rolled up for a moment, as if he was calculating. His fingers traced out some arcane symbol on his chair arm. “We have time.” he said and pulled out his pipe, then systematically began to pack it with fragrant tobacco.
“Now — “ began the University President. “You know that’s forbidden on campus grounds.”
“Of course” said the Man in Tweed, thoughtfully lighting his pipe and blowing a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. “How long have we known each other?”
“About 15 years — give or take.”
“I have to say, it’s been nice knowing you!”
“”Uh why do you say that? Is there something we need to talk about?”
“Relax!” said the Man in Tweed between puffs from his pipe. “Where is your secretary?”
“She just left. Took the day off — the thing landing in the Pacific and all.”
“What do you know of it — the Pacific thing? “
“Nothing, CNN has broken off from its usual commentary of the US’s political circus. They are covering whatever-it-is. So far their California office is just repeating that something landed about 400 kilometers south of Midway and Hawaii is having a blackout. Midway too apparently.
“We have plenty of time then” said the man in tweed. “We’ll have a ringside seat.”
“I don’t get you.”
“You have a great view out of this office. The city to the west and the Pacific coast beyond — perfect!”
“What’s this all about” asked the University President.
“Remember what my sabbatical project was?”
“You were doing research on — what was it? A new kind of router?”
“Switches actually. The routers are conventional. We applied quantum tunneling to switches, tried to reduce lag between nodes and increase throughput at the same time. Same-time! Ha-ha! Bad joke!”
“I don’t get you.”
“You will!”
“Look, you’re getting me worried.”
“It’s OK, at least for the ah — next few minutes or so. Anyway, we successfully built a quantum switch. One that we could pump data thorough. And we found no detectable lag. We can read lag on almost any electronic device by simply applying λν = c (nu times velocity equals the speed of light) where: c = 300,000 km/s or 3 times ten to the eighth power per millisecond — “
“ — Ah, you know I’m not into that mathematics stuff.” said The University President.
“Oh, sorry,” said The Man in Tweed. “We um — expected the lag to be reduced. We didn’t expect there to be no lag at all! We pumped time-stamped blocks through and and found -” The man in tweed puffed thoughtfully on his pipe.
“You found?“
“We found that the time-stamped data blocks had a small error. We were reading them slightly before we sent them.”
“That’s nonsense” said The University President. “Even I know that you can’t send information into the past.”
“True — true enough” said The Man in Tweed. “Sending information into the future is child’s play. All you need is a box, you put a note in the box and don’t open it for a hundred years. Voilà! Information into the future from the past.”
“Like a library.” said the University President.
“Quite — quite” said the man in tweed. “ A library is a sort of time machine, sending lots of information from the past into the future. But a person in the present cannot send information in the the past — certainly not into his own past!”
“You’re talking about the many worlds hypothesis.”
“Yes, so if there are an infinite amount of worlds with an infinite amount of us‘s then it stands to reason that a person in the present could send information to some version of himself in the past!”
”How?”
“Well; the errors we got in the time stamps were tiny negative errors, that means “
“The quantum tunneling was sending information into the past?”
“Exactly! A very small amount though. A couple of million Plank lengths which are unbelievably small units, about ten to the minus twentieth the size of a proton.”
“So, how is that useful?”
“Well — see the electrons were entangled with earlier versions of themselves. Reflecting states they would have had in another place but in an earlier moment.”
“Look, began the University President.” I’ve got a meeting in — oh about 30 minutes — “
“Don’t worry about that, all of this will be done before then. Where was I? Oh yes! The quantum loop circuit.”
The quantum loop?”
“Yes — yes! We created a feedback which ran the data in a circle for a set amount of time. Around the quantum switch you see? We could set seconds and calculate how many times the data rotated through the circuit. Millions of times per second. Don’t you see?”
“Not really.”
“Well once we started looping the data we began to note a drop off of returns, the data was going in but not coming back out”
“Where was it going?”
“We were’t sure — at first. We set up a standard IP protocol and sent U+2406. I assumed that there might be — um apparatus on the other side and the quantum tunneling was not a complete loop. I was expecting that the delays and time-stamp errors would increase as we ran the ack-word many millions of times through the loop. We ran it back around 60 seconds which looped the information back around ten to the sixtieth power times around the bend and we calculated that it went back into the past around a half hour or so. Then we started getting ack-words from our own equipment. But not the ones we sent you see?
“Ack words?”
“Yes — acknowledgments but not from our routers! From identical ones somewhere else. We ran things back even further and got — “ The man in Tweed trailed off and puffed on his pipe.
“Well? Did it?” said the University President. “Did you get a message from yourself?”
“Well no” Said the man in tweed. “That would be impossible! We would have gotten a message before we sent it and that’s just not logical — causality and all that. No the information was from one possible past self. A doppelganger if you will. “
“Like a ghost?”
“No. It was me in another place. An identical me I presume. But one that became — different the moment I communicated with — it.”
“How so?”
“Let me back up a little. We sent out messages to the past several thousand times. We didn’t get a response — not until we broke through a temporal threshold of some kind. It was about one hour into the past or zero point six to the power of forty-seven Planck units. Then we started getting replies.”
The floor shuttered slightly. The TV mounted on the wall swayed as did the 1970s swag lamp in the corner.
“What was that? “ said the University President.
“Oh nothing, just a little for-shock. Anyway. Somebody replied. We got a receipt acknowledgment and immediately got a message back. It didn’t say very much. That they — I or whomever was surprised this worked. Then it went dead. We got no reply after that and no receipt from the doppelganger routers.”
The TV on the wall flicked a little and a tinny voice was repeating that airliners over the Pacific were no longer responding to controllers. Also something about missing ships and a complete blackout of Hawaii. The man in tweed got up from his chair and turned the TV off. Then, opened a cabinet, pulled a bottle of whisky and a couple of glasses.
“Want some?” he asked grabbing two glasses.
“Put that back” said the University President. “Not at this time of the day!”
“Nobody’s going to care” said the Man in Tweed. He poured two glasses and sat down again.
“So you got your reply?” said the University President. He was fingering his cell phone under his desk.
“Yes” said the man in tweed. “ we got several replies and had a few conversations. When we stacked even more cycles — dialed back the time a few more hours we had longer conversations, but they all went the same way.” Surprise, then silence. A few of my doppelgangers said something strange was happening.”
“Ah — something strange? Like what?” The University President was trying to dial a number.
“Just strange.That was before the chain-letter “
The University President was still fiddling with his cell “Um — go on! This is getting interesting.”
“Hum quite-quite” This went on for a time, each one lasted only a couple of messages before they went dark so to speak. So we ran the loop back a few more hours. We got good, reliable data then.”
The University President was still fiddling with his cell.
The Man in Tweed stopped his story. “You were trying to text Campus Safety? Remember they changed the trouble-text to 4435?”
“Um,” said the University President looking up for a moment. “Thanks.” He typed a couple of lines and set down his phone.
“It’s going to take them, um about six or seven minutes — more than enough time. Anyway. We got data back. The doppelgangers were me alright and something else. “
“What?”
“Each one went dark about two hours after getting the first T-mail message from me.”
“Went dark?”
“Yes — well not only the doppelganger — everyone I presume.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes everyone — I can see you are not interested so — ”
“No!” Said the University President.”this is fascinating!”
“Ha ha!” said the Man in Tweed. “Well, we found that in each instance of communication. The doppelgangers in the other time-space all perished within a few hours.”
“How do you know that?”
“The chain letter!”
The floor shuttered more violently. Several cars in the front lot began alarm honking.
“I think we are having an earthquake, perhaps should go to the shelter!” He started to get up from his desk.
The Man in Tweed didn’t move.” No. Stay here. You’l have a good view and the shelter won’t make a difference anyway.”
“Won’t make a difference? Why?”
“Because of the chain letter — I told you!”
“Chain letter?”
“Yes — I received a letter from the past which explained what was going on. From the standpoint of each doppelganger. This is after we went beyond the two hour limit. One of the me’s down the line wrote a — well here!
The Man in Tweed dug a paper out of his pocket and tossed it on the University President’s desk. The University President picked it up gingerly.
“To whom it concerns” recited the man In Tweed. It is imperative that you destroy your apparatus and make every effort to prevent receiving information from the future. I URGE you to do this now, before finishing this document. If you receive a message from a future self, your world and all of humanity is doomed.
I don’t know who is responsible, but some power stops any attempt to break causality. If you have already received a message from the future forward this message to your future self. This in hope that the cycle can be interrupted and some part of humanity can be spared. Good luck!
We are being destroyed by the Moon falling out of orbit.
Black hole in solar system
Massive solar flare.
Gamma Rays
Earth core becomes unstable.
Sun Explodes
Large asteroid lands in Pacific.
The floor shook violently, the lights flickered and went out.
“That last one is mine” said The Man In Tweed.
“Yours? Then you received this from the past? And you say all of these — calamities happen shortly after?”
— Oh tut-tut! Said the Man in Tweed. Getting a message from the past is fine remember? Getting a message from the future — that’s”
“You mean.”
“Yes, I got a message from a future doppelganger the moment I started reading this. When I checked, there were already reports of the Pacific landing. So I added the last line, sent it to my future self. Then came straight here. Not much more we can do I’m afraid.”
There was a rumbling and the floor started to shake. There were air raid sirens going off in the distance.
“So — ah” what do we do now?” said The University President.
“Do?” Said the Man in Tweed. “ Why nothing! Watch the show! We have about oh — two minutes before the blast-wave gets here. Like I said; it’s been nice knowing you!”
The University President was silent for a moment, both men were aware of a rumbling sound and the sky seemed to be getting dark.
“I’ll take that drink now” said the” University President.
“I thought you might” said the Man In Tweed.
G Allen
Albuquerque New Mexico — US. 2017.
G Allen is a technical geek who does various IT related things and writes on the side. If you liked this story, please mash the “heart” button. Or leave a comment.
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