Time does not exist. Concepts like past & future, life & death, would be mere reflections of our perception.
Thus postulated Rodney Green, a brilliant and renowned physicist, who strongly believed that our linear understanding of time is nothing but an illusion of the human mind. According to him, the true nature of the universe follows the pattern devised by the ancient philosopher Parmênides, all events coexist simultaneously in the same dimension although imperceptible to human senses.
Furthermore, Green defended that true time traveling would be in fact a journey of the perception. A travel not of the body but of the mind instead. It provoked quite a commotion throughout the scientific community when he exposed his ideas on the Third Congress of Time Mechanics in Boston, 2063. After all, his concepts about the fabric of time were too bold for them to accept.
Green insisted to uphold theories that were abandoned on the previous century. Theories that denied the very existence of Modern Temporal Mechanics.
But instead of bringing him down, all the disbelief and disdain he got from his colleagues only gave him more strength to act.
* * *
Green was a man of an impetuous spirit. He defied anyone who would dare to contradict his ideas as if fighting for his own life. A behavior that bore arrogance.
He had the narcissistic pleasure of promoting himself through the polemics he often created. Which only added to his image of being egocentric and overbearing.
An image he thought went along just fine with his position as Head of the Quantum Physics Department of the Chicago Advanced Research Institute (C.A.R.I.).
An image that his fiancée, Maureen Tanaka, never bothered to pay attention to.
Maureen saw Rodney as a misunderstood man who, under a façade of harshness and contempt, hid a caring and loving heart, and a sincere concern with the welfare of mankind.
If the truth about the man that Rodney Green truly was resided in his fiancée’s, or in the world’s perception of him, it became irrelevant after what succeeded: Green’s doomed voyage through the tortuous tides of perception and reality!
* * *
To better understand the experiment created by Rodney Green, it is important to understand the era in which it was conceived. The first half of the 21st century witnessed the Internet assimilate all other means of communication in a aggressive pace that only consolidated its irreversible presence in all aspects of human existence.
From the most complex machines to the simplest tools, everything was controlled and operated from within the Net. The fine line between private and professional life no longer existed. The only absolute value was PERFORMANCE.
In the year 2039, came the next technological breakthrough: The cyber technology that allowed the human brain to directly interface with the Net. The procedure couldn’t be simpler, diminutive computer chips were implanted at the base of the cerebellum by a simple injection.
Once inserted, the chips would connect themselves to the central nervous system and from there to the brain. Equipped with high velocity transmitters, they would connect the user to the Net in real time through the world wide satellite network.
By the end of that year, every man, woman, and child on Earth was on line. The barrier between virtual and real had been finally broken.
That technology would later be the key upon which Green would try to prove his theories about time traveling, or using the term he preferred: MIND JOURNEY.
* * *
Green planned to do a lot more than just traveling to the past or future. What he had in mind was intended to put his name along with the ones like Newton, Einstein, Hawking... He wanted to travel beyond the boundaries of birth and death: The ultimate barriers of human perception.
It was stipulated that our tri- dimensional awareness or, in lamest terms, the human consciousness, could not survive the expiring of the physical body. Rodney, however, was convinced that a mind endowed with four-dimensional perception, or as he called it 4DP, would be able to witness whatever existed beyond those barriers.
He was after the ultimate knowledge: The mysteries of life and death.
That’s right. Green strongly believed he could find the answers to mankind’s utmost questions: Where did we come from? Where will we go?
“Few are this young man’s ambitions”, the director of C.A.R.I. would sarcastically put when asked about Green’s determination in proceeding with his experiment. “And nonexistent is his better judgment,” he would say concerning Green’s obstinacy to be the first man in history to embark in such mind journey.
The possibility of being wrong was so absurd to Green that the thought had not even crossed his mind. After all, in his whole life, Green was always right about everything else, so it would not be in his finest hour that he would fail.
He expressly demanded that the only person outside the C.A.R.I. that would be allowed in his lab would be Maureen. Aside from her, there would be three of his assistants present, whose functions were to monitor if the mind journey was functioning properly; and also two medical doctors who would be responsible for keeping an eye on his life signs.
* * *
Green was ready as he had never known himself to be in his whole life.
One of the assistants gave Green the injection containing his prototype of a subcutaneous chip. Once activated, the new device would link his mind to the supercomputer, from which he would commence his journey.
“I’ll be back soon, honey,” he told Maureen with a gentle smile, trying to disguise his anxiety.
Maureen backed away to the doctors. Her eyeballs were like two tiny lakes as she was holding her tears. She had an eerie feeling that something bad was about to happen. She took quite a fright as the supercomputer systems were activated by one of the assistants.
She watched in anguish as Green’s eyes opened wide and lifeless. He seemed to be as distant as one could be as his mind dived deep within itself.
Although his external look was catatonic, his inner mind was just the opposite. His intellect and senses were sharpened by the experience. He was thrilled, overwhelmed with scientific curiosity.
Green was now certain he was the most suitable man to deal with that new world that was opening itself to him.
Despite what others claimed, Green did not choose to be the first man to embark in a mind journey for the sake of fame alone. He truly believed that his unique understanding of the project would be paramount to its success. Considering that he was the only person who really grasped it in all its marvelous complexity, it was obvious he had to be the one.
To Rodney Green that was his job. That was his life. That was it.
* * *
Rodney’s mind crossed over the initial torpor caused by the trans-dimensional phasing. As his neurons adjusted to the massive amounts of bioelectric information bombarding his brain from the subcutaneous chip, his mind began to clear.
The mind screen appeared almost immediately after that. It was similar to the virtual screen that used to form in the mind of the users as they accessed the Net through regular chips.
Instead of displaying surf options and commands, the menus of the mind screen provided navigational panels for the journey. And instead of pages, it showed the outside world as received through his eyes.
The mind screen was showing the ceiling of the lab. The mind journey options on the menu superposing it were blinking in stand-by mode.
Controlling his excitation and, even that just for a split second, the fear of the unknown inherent to all human beings, Green mentally adjusted the 4D-dislocation factor controls to minus twelve hours. He then activated it.
On the mind screen, the white ceiling gave place to a complete darkness, as if the lights of existence itself had been turned off. After a brief moment, which in his state of apprehension seemed like forever, from the darkness appeared an image of Maureen’s beautiful face, illuminated by candlelight.
* * *
Although to the people present in the lab Green’s expression remained unaltered, inside his mind he was in complete euphoria.
Green was back at the restaurant where he took Maureen the night before. Everything happening just as he remembered. He was not only relieving those memories, but the experience itself!
He heard himself say to Maureen the exact same words and assurances he gave her then as he tried to tranquilize her about the coming experiment. He could hear her frightened reaction, feel the warmth of her touch, the sweet taste of the wine, and the palatable aroma of the food. Every gesture, action and nuance was exactly as he remembered.
At last the mind journey was a proven fact. Just as he always believed it would be.
Although he was always sure about his theories, actually living it had provoked on him such an emotional overflow like he never experienced before.
But he knew better. Not to allow himself to be taken by his own emotions. He calmed down and began to put his thoughts back in the experiment.
The first phase had occurred just as planned. The dislocation timer seemed to be working perfectly.
Another confirmation was the fact that just as he conceived, the mind journey could only transport one’s mind to their own body. In other words, one could never find oneself inside another person.
The only thing he wasn’t quite sure was about what would happen to the mind of the host. Would the arriving mind take over the host’s body? Would the two minds merge? Exchange places?
As Green tried to move an arm or to say a different word to Maureen, he found he could not. He had no choice but to stay inside his body as a passive watcher. A stowaway in his past self’s mind.
That was a pleasant surprise to him, because like this there was no risk of altering the so-called past events and thus change his future. That was perhaps the facet of his work that had been most criticized by his peers: The fear of a man traveling through time and altering reality. “The fools,” he thought.
However, there was something bothering Green... A noise in his mind.
At first he thought it should be a side effect of the experiment, but as he paid closer attention to it, it seemed quite familiar to him. He came to realize that was the thought process of the host’s mind, echoing in his own.
Meanwhile, the dinner was ending. His past self and Maureen were heading back home. He knew he could stay there a little longer and relieve the wonderful time they were about to have. But there was still so much to do, so much to explore... He decided to proceed to phase two.
Green then set the dislocation timer to minus ten years.
* * *
The darkness once again filled his mind. That second time took a lot longer than the first. A sudden anguish feeling took over his senses.
The intensity of the brain stimulation bombardment, added to the time displacement stress, was starting to take its toll.
Fortunately for Green, the darkness at last gave place to the tri-dimensional world.
The mind screen was showing him traces of his face reflected on some blurred mirror. Green was unable to discern the picture in the steamy environment. He was obviously shaving... but where and when?
Almost subconsciously, he again tried to control his past self, in an attempt to leave that place and find out if this time jump had been as successful as the previous one. But again, to no effect. He was just as powerless as he was before.
* * *
His past self washed the blade on the water, and then put it aside. As he dried the mirror with a towel, Green could finally get a clear image of his face. He rejoiced to find himself back in his early twenties, back in a bathroom of his frat house... The sense of weirdness was huge.
The face Green saw in the mirror looked somewhat strange to him. Not for the features, after all he hasn’t changed that much in a decade, but for the look in his eyes, a glow of hope inherent to youth... A glow he thought he’d never see in his face again.
Green watched as his college self left the bathroom to the corridor of the frat house he once considered his home. It was both wonderful and scary to feel that wooden floor under his feet once more, seeing faces of long forgotten friends as he passed by them.
Even after having submitted himself to an extensive psychological preparation for the experiment, confronting the passage of time was no stroll through the park. In fact, he felt his heart real heavy.
His past self entered a bedroom... his old bedroom! Green was thrilled to see his beloved desk, where he spent countless hours studying, wondering, dreaming... the antique CD player his mother gave him and that he would come to miss a couple of years ahead... his cozy bed placed near the window and beside his roommate’s... JASON!
Jason, the best friend he ever had, the man he once saw as his own brother, was there, standing right in front of him!
If Green had any control over his past self, he would have cried. There were so many things he wanted to say to him. But it was useless, all that came out from his mouth was the typical guy talk about girls and jet- bikes.
He would never be able to warn Jason about the night that will come three years from then. The fight Jason will pick up with a drunk, the knife that guy will be carrying, the senseless death Jason was destined to have.
All he could do was staring at his dead friend, hearing his past self laughing about some stupid joke he just said.
For a brief moment, he remembered his future colleagues... It seems they were right about one thing after all. If he could, he would have done exactly what they feared most, he would have changed history. He couldn’t help but to feel ashamed.
That shame along with the unbearable incapacity to save his friend were just too much for him. He took a good look at his long gone pal, wished him one last goodbye and then proceeded to his next stop in time.
* * *
The darkness lasted even longer that time... So was Green’s fatigue...
His mind achieved its destination. The world that appeared in front of him was both strange and fascinating.
It was a place of crazy proportions. The walls were huge as mountains and the ceiling seemed high above the sky. Green found himself entrapped within a huge wooden cage.
Then he heard his past self crying... of hunger.
What came next left him totally baffled: His mother appeared above the cage, her size was immense. She was like a Titan from the Greek mythology. Her face, however, was just as kind and warm as ever. And impressively young... just like in the old family photos.
She took his small body in her arms, holding him close to her chest as she sat in a comfortable chair. She unbuttoned her blouse, allowing his impatient past self to feed on her breast.
The pleasurable sensation caused as the warm milk nourished him, gave Green a soothing feeling of familiarity and relieve. He got as calm as he never had been in all his adult life.
Green had been successful once more. He had reached his first months of life.
The next step would be the last before he tried to cross to what lies beyond his own lifetime. He set the timer to go back eight more months, which would put him back inside his mother’s womb.
* * *
The jump lasted shorter than the previous one. However, this time the darkness did not go away on the mind screen. For a moment, Green was worried, but soon the familiar echoing of his past self’s mind could be heard in the background. Only this time it felt stranger than before. It was not consistent anymore, more like an impression than a thought. Or perhaps the beginning of a thought... After all, it was the mind of a fetus!
Green found himself immersed in the dark depths of his mother’s placenta. A liquid, warm, and silent universe. He could feel his tiny lungs filled with amniotic fluid. The barely noticeable movement of arms and legs still in state of development. The faint beating of his heart, a heart still immaculate, free from the harsh reality of the world. For a brief moment, Rodney Green remembered what absolute peace meant.
Although tempted to stay in that serene environment a while longer, he knew he had to proceed to the next phase of the experiment, to move deeper into his past... to go before the time of his own birth. He had theorized about this, about what he could find, or not. Now that moment was near, he remembered all of the philosophical hypotheses about existence.
Would he go back to another incarnation of himself, a king, or perhaps a beggar? Or would he simply become nothing, nonexistent? And if so, having no destination to hang on to, could he get lost... unable to reach back?
He never discussed those theories with anyone, especially Maureen. He did not want to frighten her. And there was nothing she could say that would make him give up. Whichever theory was true, he was going to find out. He just had to.
Green set the timer to eight months earlier, and jumped. He was prepared for anything... except for what came next.
* * *
At first, it was just like all the previous jumps, but then he experienced intense agony.
The usual darkness, familiar to all jumps, was violently replaced by a powerful blinding light, harbinger of intense pain.
Green felt his mind being warped, shattered. Split in a multitude of directions and realities.
His power of reasoning gave place to the purest and most basic form of fear, where thoughts are no more and all that is left is an animalistic survival instinct.
Green’s perception was brutally stretched throughout both fifth and sixth dimensions altogether. For a moment, he felt an infinite consciousness surrounding him... passing through him! A consciousness that had no limits, both in time and space. Existing above, beneath, and beyond the entire universe and all its dimensions. Could that be... GOD?
Suddenly, the intense blinding light was just GONE. Green’s mind was whole again... sort of.
Although his perception had returned, the shock of having his mind twisted and turned upside-down had almost driven him mad.
Green could not understand why the supercomputer safeguards, programmed to automatically disconnect him from the machines in the event of him losing control over the journey, did not engage.
Green looked at the mind screen and, to his awe, found it split in two. Better saying... his mind had!
* * *
Surrounded by a profound darkness, each screen was showing an entirely different image. As Green turned around, he realized he was no longer just one being but TWO instead!
There were two separate Rodneys, exactly alike, in all detail. He stood there for a second looking at himself, as if to a mirror image, only this image was just alive as he was. Not only that, they were intrinsically connected, both extensions of one single self, immerse in the confusion caused by the paradox.
The two Rodneys looked at the mind screens. One showed the image of a younger version of his mother, all sweat lying on a bed. The other showed his father, just as ecstatic as his mother, moving his body frenetically.
Although completely unexpected to him, the conclusion was obvious. Being unable to target a nonexistent version of a past self prior to his own birth, he had been sent to the nearest time possible, the time of his conception, being divided into the minds of his parents.
It made sense. Time relocation could only be achieved inside a person’s mind, but since a person is originated from the copula between a male and a female--
Both versions of Green laughed at their own expense. Having always been so sure of his own geniality, Green was certain he had anticipated every possible outcome of the experiment.
He then realized... The images were running backwards... and going faster. Could that be a malfunction of the equipment? Or perhaps being caused by the rupture of some interdimensional law related to the paradox itself?
Such considerations were irrelevant to Green at that time. For he knew he was engaged in a struggle for his life.
* * *
The lives of his parents were retrogressing before his eyes in an accelerating pace. Although he tried to stop the procedure, the paradox somehow kept him and his duplicate locked towards the past.
His parents’ lives quickly reached adolescence. From there to childhood would be a matter of seconds.
Green knew that if he remained connected to his parents’ minds, he would be dragged beyond their births and a new paradox would take place.
He and the duplicate would be split in two others. There would be FOUR versions of him then. The acceleration would then continue, exponentially. Generation after generation, he would be running down his family tree, to a point that he would be so divided that he would eventually cease to exist as a single mind.
* * *
As his parents reached their first months of age, Green knew he had only but a few moments before he would be unable to avoid his terrible fate.
Struggling to attain reasoning, as he felt the approach of the next paradox, each of his selves started to work together, setting the dislocation timer to a blind jump forward. He had no time for calculations... and his mind was fading fast.
Both his selves had to jump together. And so did Green and his duplicate.
* * *
The light again turned into darkness.
As the darkness itself began to dissipate, Rodney noticed the image of a green ceiling showing on ONE SOLE mind screen. Green was his old single self once again.
And like any man that stares death in the eye and lives to tell the tale, he was finally able to rest. Even if just for a brief moment.
The experiment had proven to be extremely dangerous. That alone would be more than enough reason for it being embargoed by the scientific community, and he could not allow that. At least not before he was through.
For despite the revelations he had with the jumps to the past, Green’s real fascination lied in the future. After all, history can always tell the past of anyone or anything. But the future... There had never been any scientific method to better explore it than the mind journey.
Green, however, had a dilemma. In a journey to the past, he had the luxury of knowing dates and events, like the moment of his birth. But how could he pinpoint the exact day of his death? It could be seconds, days or decades ahead.
And what if he was to have children? Would his mind then be split the same way it was with his parents?
Green believed he survived the ordeal due to his superior intellect, but he wasn’t sure he could go through that again any time soon.
Green checked the dislocation timer. The emergency jump had brought him one year after his original point of departure at his lab.
As he wondered why the stillness of his condition, he noticed that the echo of his future self’s mind was absent. As if this host’s mind was hollow.
However, since this was his first jump towards the future, he didn’t know if the same rules of mind journeying to the past would still apply. He got enthusiastic about the idea of maybe being able to control that body.
Green tried to move an arm. To no small disappointment, he found out he could not. Like before, he was a mere observer of the events shown on the mind screen.
At least, he was still able to experience the sensations offered by the world around him through the host’s senses. As he concentrated on those senses, he noticed an uncomfortable sensation of having something stuck in his throat and an uneasy itch in his right arm.
The green ceiling did not provide much of a clue as to where he was. He seemed to be lying down somewhere, resting... but he felt something was wrong... very wrong. He could not go home without finding what it was.
Green decided to risk a short jump forward. He set the timer to one month ahead.
* * *
The familiar darkness came for a brief moment. Then was gone.
Since the mind screen showed the same green ceiling, at first he thought the jump had not been successful. Then, he noticed that the brightness inside the room was somewhat different. Instead of daylight coming from some spot to his left, there was the faint light of a lampshade to this right.
Green checked the dislocation timer. He had jumped indeed one month into the future. So how could he be lying still in the same place and position as he was before? Coincidence?
As he was wondering, he came to realize that the room was actually very similar to the one of the hospital where his mother passed away... So that was it! He was ill or injured! Probably victim of some sort of accident.
But, if that was so, how come he didn’t feel any bandages or restraints anywhere in his body? Actually he felt nothing other than that same uncomfortable sensation in his throat and the itch in his arm. Green again set the timer. This time,
one year ahead.
* * *
As the jump ended, he found himself still in the same room, staring at the same green ceiling, and feeling the same discomfort in the throat and the itch in the arm. He finally understood. He was not just sick... he was in a COMA.
* * *
Green was appalled. Whatever happened to him, his bizarre condition had to be caused by something that transpired no later than one month after his mind journey. Or perhaps during it!
It would take a series of short jumps in that period of time to determine the precise event that caused his undoing. Could it be something he did? Or something he was about to do? But what would that be?
All those questions were ricocheting in his mind but instead of putting him down, they gave Green more determination. If he would be doomed to spend the rest of his life in a coma, then he had nothing else to lose, so again he chose to go even forwarder. It was time to know what lies beyond death.
Green set the timer to thirty-three years ahead.
* * *
The darkness lasted quite longer this time, just as he expected. As it faded, the mind screen again displayed the same green ceiling. Only this time it was different. The green was pale, the paint itself was slightly peeling, showing the effects of the passage of time.
Green’s spirit was shattered as he was taken by an insurmountable terror. It was only then that the idea of spending the rest of his life in that condition truly hit him. He was despaired. If it was that what the future had in store for him, he would do anything... anything at all to change it.
Absorbed in his own thoughts, Green was taken by surprise by an expected changed on the image showed by the mind screen.
An old woman had come to sight. Her hair color was all gray, and she had more than a few wrinkles under her eyes. Still, that was a face Green knew quite well. It was Maureen’s! She was leaning over his future self, to kiss him.
Green was both fascinated and shocked. Not to find his fiancée aged more than two decades, but to recognize in her eyes the same love and tenderness she always had. It was gratifying to know that her love for him had not diminished, especially considering what she must have been through.
However, there was something bothering him. The expression on her face, a mix of sadness and conformity, was something he never saw in her.
To realize that he caused such suffering to the woman who stayed by his side all those years... He was ashamed. That was just too much for him to bear. Green set the timer to fifty years ahead.