Writing Prompt: A mundane action has prompted a visit from the Time Travel Police
Monday, May 26, 2014
I caught the egg.
It dropped out of thin air and into my hand like I was waiting for it to arrive. Catching apported eggs is not something I normally do when I'm grocery shopping, so three things happened in quick succession:
At which point, my hand closed on the egg and there was a crunchy noise and the ooze of raw egg, slimey and cold, through my fingers.
"You, you slag, are being arrested on suspicion of 'aving given Causality a right kicking. You do not have to say anyfing, but it may 'arm your defence if you don't mention, when questioned, summink you later rely on in court. D'you unnerstan'?"
There were two of them. Middle aged men with greying hair and beer bellies wearing off the peg suits that were valiantly denying the existence of the beer bellies whilst at the same time drawing massive attention to them. Both men were holding out wallets with warrant cards in them.
"What?" I said. Eloquent under stress, that's me. The man on my right, in a navy blue suit, rolled his eyes and looked pained. The man on my left, wearing a grey suit with stains on the jacket lapel, sighed.
"You've been nicked, son. I have nicked you. Nicking is what is taking place at this time. And you are the nickee. On account of me being Detective Inspector Bloke of the Temporal Flying Squad, and him being Detective Sergeant Geezer. Any questions?"
I blinked several times.
"Yes, many. Can we start with you confirming for me whether or not you're having a laugh or not? I'd then like to find out what kind of idiot you take me for and then, to round this off for for the moment, I'd like to know which of the many picturesque local villages is currently missing it's idiot."
D.I. Bloke seemed to think this over. Standing in the hard and slightly flickering light of my local budget supermarket he had a hallucinatory quality and I might have passed him off as a bad dream had I not been able to smell him; cigarettes, coffee, something with sandalwood in it that might have been aftershave.
"No," he said eventually "I am not 'avin' a laugh. I don't take you for an idiot, I take you for a existential fret to the 'ole 'kin cosmos an' if you must know I'm from Pinner! Now, are you comin' quietly or do I get to slap you about a bit first?"
I shrugged.
"Whatever. I know there's no such thing as the Temporal Flying Squad, and I know there's no way I can be a threat to the cosmos. This is some stupid TV show bollocks, so reveal the cameras and jog on."
Bloke turned to Geezer.
"Sergeant, taze this gobby bastard until 'ee wets 'isself and the slap the cuffs on him."
I was just about to protest when Geezer spoke up.
"No, Guv. Think it through. If he wets himself, we have to ride home with that. Isn't today going badly enough?"
When he didn't get an answer, Geezer turned to me.
"Look, pal, you did it. We saw you. You caught an egg that hadn't been thrown. Do you have a post graduate degree in temporal physics, physics, mathmatics or philosophy?"
"No!"
"Then you'll have to take my word for most of this," said Geezer "but it goes something like this: if you violate causality, even a little bit, it starts to unravel. By the time you reach our era, the range of possibilities is absurd. Time travel is possible, for example. Literally, the only thing holding the universe together is the observer effect and that has some unpleasant side effects."
Despite myself, I was fascinated.
"Like what?"
Bloke leaned into my field of vision.
"Like the fact that D.S. Geezer here was born in Mumbai, but when he joined the TFS he slowly became a white middle aged Londoner. There is a strata of the popular consciousness which expects coppers in a Flying Squad to behave and look a certain way. Even our names have changed."
"Under normal circumstances, I can't even speak English" said Geezer.
I dropped the remains of the egg, the better to wave my arms around helplessly and to no great effect.
"I don't understand! This all sounds like bollocks!"
"Yes! It is!" Geezer siezed me by the shirt and pulled me down to his eye level "And that's how the universe works now! Do you want to know what our time machine looks like? It's a phone box! Because people expect time machines to look like phone boxes! And that's not even how the Observer Effect is meant to work! But there are nine billion people with ready access to the sum total of human entertainment and only low quality higher education reinforcing it!"
I tried to imagine what might happen to a world where nine billion people were imprinting it with their expectations instead of observations, but large parts of my imagination recoiled from the idea in utter horror and sat gibbering in a corner. I work in tech support, so my opinion of people isn't exactly high. If I was called on to give a "humanity has such potential" speech to visiting aliens, I wouldn't be able to say anything for laughing.
"All of this because I caught an egg that hadn't been thrown?" I asked, siezing on the one thing that still seemed concrete. And you can tell how not concrete the day had become if an unthrown egg is your sole source of certainty.
"Yep" said Bloke.
At which point, I had an idea.
"If the egg wasn't thrown, but was caught, surely all we have to do is throw the egg?"
Bloke glared at me.
"The one you crushed?" he said.
"Yes," I said, "the one I crushed. But the one which wasn't crushed when I took it out of the egg carton."
I walked over to the stack of cartons and picked one at random. The space in the row at the front told me I'd picked correctly.
"But you didn't take it out of the carton," said Bloke "that's the problem."
"No, but I will have," I explained "when you use your time machine to pop us back so I can take the egg from the carton and throw it into the air."
Bloke seemed unconvinced.
"Look," I said, "it works, honestly. I was waiting with my hand out to catch the egg. I can't have known what was going to happen, but apparently I did. And it would also explain why you two didn't have to come and find me. You were right here the moment the egg arrived, as if you'd been waiting. I should have heard you approach, but didn't! Don't you see? This is a predestination paradox!"
The two coppers frowned.
"Even if it is," said Geezer hesitantly "how will that help?"
"Judo" i said, and then had to explain.
I was proposing to use the problem against itself. Based on what the Police had explained, causality had failed and the universe was being shored up by a sort of "continuity" based, in large part, on popular myth and ignorance. The universe did what people expected it to do. That effect started here, now, and must therefore be in action here and now.
"Which means," I concluded "that if my expectation is that the completion of a loop is, in effect, a reset switch that resolves a paradox rather than perpetuating it, that's what the universe will do!".
They thought about it.
"Worth a try" said Bloke.
Time travel is weird. As you do it, the experience of it unravels from your memory leaving you with the strong impression that someone has popped open your skull and licked your brain.
I stood in the supermarket and flicked open the carton. I took the egg out, stood where I remembered standing before (or, rather, later) and took a deep breath.
I threw the egg.
It dropped out of thin air and into my hand like I was waiting for it to arrive. Catching apported eggs is not something I normally do when I'm grocery shopping, so three things happened in quick succession:
- - I was momentarily impressed by my own reflexes. Like a boss I thought.
- - I was then immediately curious about the airborne egg, and looked up.
- - A hand arrived on my shoulder and a gruff male voice with a North London accent said "You're nicked, son".
At which point, my hand closed on the egg and there was a crunchy noise and the ooze of raw egg, slimey and cold, through my fingers.
"You, you slag, are being arrested on suspicion of 'aving given Causality a right kicking. You do not have to say anyfing, but it may 'arm your defence if you don't mention, when questioned, summink you later rely on in court. D'you unnerstan'?"
There were two of them. Middle aged men with greying hair and beer bellies wearing off the peg suits that were valiantly denying the existence of the beer bellies whilst at the same time drawing massive attention to them. Both men were holding out wallets with warrant cards in them.
"What?" I said. Eloquent under stress, that's me. The man on my right, in a navy blue suit, rolled his eyes and looked pained. The man on my left, wearing a grey suit with stains on the jacket lapel, sighed.
"You've been nicked, son. I have nicked you. Nicking is what is taking place at this time. And you are the nickee. On account of me being Detective Inspector Bloke of the Temporal Flying Squad, and him being Detective Sergeant Geezer. Any questions?"
I blinked several times.
"Yes, many. Can we start with you confirming for me whether or not you're having a laugh or not? I'd then like to find out what kind of idiot you take me for and then, to round this off for for the moment, I'd like to know which of the many picturesque local villages is currently missing it's idiot."
D.I. Bloke seemed to think this over. Standing in the hard and slightly flickering light of my local budget supermarket he had a hallucinatory quality and I might have passed him off as a bad dream had I not been able to smell him; cigarettes, coffee, something with sandalwood in it that might have been aftershave.
"No," he said eventually "I am not 'avin' a laugh. I don't take you for an idiot, I take you for a existential fret to the 'ole 'kin cosmos an' if you must know I'm from Pinner! Now, are you comin' quietly or do I get to slap you about a bit first?"
I shrugged.
"Whatever. I know there's no such thing as the Temporal Flying Squad, and I know there's no way I can be a threat to the cosmos. This is some stupid TV show bollocks, so reveal the cameras and jog on."
Bloke turned to Geezer.
"Sergeant, taze this gobby bastard until 'ee wets 'isself and the slap the cuffs on him."
I was just about to protest when Geezer spoke up.
"No, Guv. Think it through. If he wets himself, we have to ride home with that. Isn't today going badly enough?"
When he didn't get an answer, Geezer turned to me.
"Look, pal, you did it. We saw you. You caught an egg that hadn't been thrown. Do you have a post graduate degree in temporal physics, physics, mathmatics or philosophy?"
"No!"
"Then you'll have to take my word for most of this," said Geezer "but it goes something like this: if you violate causality, even a little bit, it starts to unravel. By the time you reach our era, the range of possibilities is absurd. Time travel is possible, for example. Literally, the only thing holding the universe together is the observer effect and that has some unpleasant side effects."
Despite myself, I was fascinated.
"Like what?"
Bloke leaned into my field of vision.
"Like the fact that D.S. Geezer here was born in Mumbai, but when he joined the TFS he slowly became a white middle aged Londoner. There is a strata of the popular consciousness which expects coppers in a Flying Squad to behave and look a certain way. Even our names have changed."
"Under normal circumstances, I can't even speak English" said Geezer.
I dropped the remains of the egg, the better to wave my arms around helplessly and to no great effect.
"I don't understand! This all sounds like bollocks!"
"Yes! It is!" Geezer siezed me by the shirt and pulled me down to his eye level "And that's how the universe works now! Do you want to know what our time machine looks like? It's a phone box! Because people expect time machines to look like phone boxes! And that's not even how the Observer Effect is meant to work! But there are nine billion people with ready access to the sum total of human entertainment and only low quality higher education reinforcing it!"
I tried to imagine what might happen to a world where nine billion people were imprinting it with their expectations instead of observations, but large parts of my imagination recoiled from the idea in utter horror and sat gibbering in a corner. I work in tech support, so my opinion of people isn't exactly high. If I was called on to give a "humanity has such potential" speech to visiting aliens, I wouldn't be able to say anything for laughing.
"All of this because I caught an egg that hadn't been thrown?" I asked, siezing on the one thing that still seemed concrete. And you can tell how not concrete the day had become if an unthrown egg is your sole source of certainty.
"Yep" said Bloke.
At which point, I had an idea.
"If the egg wasn't thrown, but was caught, surely all we have to do is throw the egg?"
Bloke glared at me.
"The one you crushed?" he said.
"Yes," I said, "the one I crushed. But the one which wasn't crushed when I took it out of the egg carton."
I walked over to the stack of cartons and picked one at random. The space in the row at the front told me I'd picked correctly.
"But you didn't take it out of the carton," said Bloke "that's the problem."
"No, but I will have," I explained "when you use your time machine to pop us back so I can take the egg from the carton and throw it into the air."
Bloke seemed unconvinced.
"Look," I said, "it works, honestly. I was waiting with my hand out to catch the egg. I can't have known what was going to happen, but apparently I did. And it would also explain why you two didn't have to come and find me. You were right here the moment the egg arrived, as if you'd been waiting. I should have heard you approach, but didn't! Don't you see? This is a predestination paradox!"
The two coppers frowned.
"Even if it is," said Geezer hesitantly "how will that help?"
"Judo" i said, and then had to explain.
I was proposing to use the problem against itself. Based on what the Police had explained, causality had failed and the universe was being shored up by a sort of "continuity" based, in large part, on popular myth and ignorance. The universe did what people expected it to do. That effect started here, now, and must therefore be in action here and now.
"Which means," I concluded "that if my expectation is that the completion of a loop is, in effect, a reset switch that resolves a paradox rather than perpetuating it, that's what the universe will do!".
They thought about it.
"Worth a try" said Bloke.
Time travel is weird. As you do it, the experience of it unravels from your memory leaving you with the strong impression that someone has popped open your skull and licked your brain.
I stood in the supermarket and flicked open the carton. I took the egg out, stood where I remembered standing before (or, rather, later) and took a deep breath.
I threw the egg.
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