Subject: A Quick Jaunt With A Madman
Keywords: Time Travel in a Ford Escort



        It's been quiet around the lab recently.  Deathly quiet, one
        might say.

        A few days back I started to piece together an apparatus for
        time travel, and to be completely honest, it is working like
        a charm.
        Mad, am I?  Perhaps.  But remember that they said the same of
        Da Vinci and Van Gough.

        How does this impossiblity work, you ask?  Simple.  As we
        know (or at least strongly believe), the speed of light is
        unattainable.  But if, just say if we do attain light speed,
        we can travel back in time, correct?  So the theory goes,
        anywho.  But speed is simply motion in reference to a given
        point, correct?

        Ah, and that's the beauty of it all.  Mad as a hatter they'll
        say.  Ah, who cares.  As long as my Truely Evil Cat/Familiar
        Desdinova the Cat understands, all is well.  She is the one
        that gave me the idea.  Mad as a hatter.

        Speed.  Two cylinders rotating antiparallel to each other.
        Each going at a little better than half the speed of light
        (there is a slight distortion in the space/time continuum
        as you approach light speed, so I compensated for it with the
        extra speed.), and in reference to each other, they are going
        at light speed.  Using certaing rather minor modifications to
        a Ford Escort (stick-I've made her into a 12-speed transmission
        to help the acceleration process)  I devised a cockpit of sorts,
        and I altered the innard of a Sears radio to help out in the
        navigation.

        As of yet, I haven't really talked to anyone of great importance
        (I don't want to screw up history too much.  Don't know what
        that will do to me.  Could create a paradox under which I may
        never exist.).  The trip, however, is extremely interesting.

        Mad, they'll say.  Looney.  Nutz.  Crazy.  I can smell it.
        Give him a long sleeved lab coat and a box of crayons.

        First, I climb into the "cockpit", which is nestled inside
        the two cylinders.  Turn on the ignition, and the cylinders
        begin to rotate.  Basically, nothing major happens until you
        hit about 8th gear, when you cross from subspace into the
        secondary continuum (that is what I call it.  It lays between
        subspace and hyperspace.).  Shapes begin to shift.  Straight
        lines cease to exist.  Light begins to collect in little
        eddies along the edges of the cockpit as I begin to actually
        begin to make ripples in it.  Beautiful.  Have you ever seen
        a multifacted prism?  That is what it is like-looking into a
        liquid polyhedron.  A sight meant for the very Gods themselves.
        Even if they don't exist.

        But I swear to you that it is true.  No matter how mad I may seem,
        it is true.

        When you hit 11th gear, you enter into lower hyperspace (there's
        a nasty kick as you enter.  Wear your seatbelt.)  The starfield
        is this really wild streaked mosaic.  The clock stops as you get
        close to outrunning its Mentor.

        Then you hit 12th.  There's a flash of light (wear sunglasses)
        and things go black.  It takes a few minutes for the light to
        accelerate to the point where it can keep up with you.

        This is True Hyperspace.  Clocks reverse, trees grow young and
        return to seed, water undoes its own work on stones and river
        beds, Mother Nature begins once again to harmonize with Sister
        Earth and Father Time.

        I dare not go forward yet.  I don't want to see things growing old
        and dying, man destroying everything that Mother Nature and Sister
        Nature have meticulously made through their own savage manipulation.

        Of course I'm mad.  Don't question that.  I am crazy.  I have to
        be.

        But I think I'm going to go back.  Back before apes descended from
        the trees.  Back before the human race decided that we are superior
        to all else, that Nature would have to bow down before us and
        submit.

        Mad, they'll say.  Mad...

           Okay,  enough of the technical stuff.  One need not know that
       when  the  speed  of  light  is  approached  that  the star field
       becomes  distorted  and  that  you  get  some  incredible  photon
       eddying  effects.   Fascinating  perhaps  only  to the one deemed
       "unfit to associate with for reasons of insanity."

           I  don't  care.  Let them all rot in their own private little
       hells.   They  can have them.  I care not for their desire to fit
       in  with  everybody  else.   I  care  not for the conformity, the
       silly  formality  and  social  graces which restrict the mind and
       soul to earthly pursuits.

           Idiots,  all of them.  Fools.  Even the scientific community,
       for  which  I  have  lived  all  of my life, thinks this is all a
       raving  fantasy.   'Time travel is impossible,' they say.  'Leave
       it  to the silly sci-fi writers to deal with.  At least they know
       what they do is fiction.'

           As  if  I do not.  I, who stood before them, lauded as one of
       the  greatest  minds  of  qunatum physics and relativity.  I, the
       man  that  recieved  the  Nobel  Prize  in 1994 for work that was
       nothing  compared  to  what  I  have  done now.  And they cast me
       aside, telling me that my mind has finally cracked.

           Who  do they think they are?  Once I sat in the chairs of the
       Gods,  and  now  I  subsist  in  their sewers.  Bitter, am I, you
       ask?  I don't see why I shouldn't be.  I have the right.

           I  must  prove them wrong.  I must.  They must believe me, no
       matter how difficult it is for them to accept.

           But  wait.   What  if someone more insane than I wants to use
       what  I  have  discovered  as  a tool for evil?  One must realize
       that  I  am  not  evil, only crazy.  There is a grave difference.
       One  can  be completely sane and be evil, as can a raving lunatic
       such as myself be compelled to be a force for good.

           So  I  must  leave.   Take  all  my research with me, burn it
       perhaps,  but my love of knowledge and sharing is greater than my
       loathing  of  humanity.   Because  at the base of everything, the
       human  race  is  inherantly good.  My only consolation is that no
       matter  how  I  hate  people, that at the base of everything, the
       human  race is as noble as everything King Arthur ever dreamed it
       could be.

           But  to  be  enslaved.   Oh,  to be enslaved to a world where
       mediocrity  is stressed, where only the rotten parasites come out
       on  top.   Leeches,  the lot of them.  They use the Mother's Body
       until  it  becomes  a dry husk, and move on, not caring that this
       could possibly be the last meal they ever have.

           Maybe  that's why they think I'm crazy. Because I dare to say
       something  they don't want to hear.  Are they so afraid that I am
       right?

           Maybe  that's  why  I'm  going back.  Maybe that's why I have
       decided  to  leave this smog-infested nest of vampires for a time
       without  so  much  as a goodbye to my family.  They, too, think I
       should  be put away.  They'll never come out and say it, but when
       my  little girl says "Dad, I don't think you should be living all
       alone  anymore.   Who  knows  what  might happen.  You might hurt
       yourself."

           In  other words, I might go crazy and go on a rampage with an
       outdated  assault  rifle  like the AK-47 at the local McDonald's.
       Or  maybe  she  is afraid that in my misery, I will decide to end
       it all.

           The  thought has crossed my mind.  But I can't do it.  I have
       too  many  things yet to discover.  So I leave this note in hopes
       that   my   family   finds  it  on  the  end  table.   They  will
       understand.   I  will  be in touch, and I will keep good notes of
       what  I  find.   But  I can guarentee that I will not be back for
       some  time.   I  must  find  a reason to it all.  There has to be
       one.

           And by the Gods themselves, I will find it.