Time Loop Reconciliation
by Nathaniel Bates
Ned sat in the first row facing away from the teacher. It was a long room, seemingly longer than its stated dimensions, as if an extra dimension had opened in hyperspace in order to accommodate so many students. It was like the Breakfast Club in that everyone was there. The entire cast of the Breakfast Club was present; the beautiful girlfriend of the Football Captain, who did somewhat resemble Molly Ringwald; the school jerk, various social outcastes; and Ned himself, the “school nerd” as he called himself. Ned may have been the school nerd just a few years before. But now he was another student in Saturday School. Unlike the Breakfast Club, there was no breaking of windows, deep discourse, or communication of any kind. Saturday School was an all Saturday morning affair that brought many students together, but in silence.
Ned sat at his desk and read through lines of equations dealing with general relativity and time loops. He only half understood them, if that. But he knew that he was not going to be studying for his tests next week, since that would be prosaic and rule following, so this would be the way he would stimulate his mind. The equations were from Kurt Gödel and they described a time loop in which the future might influence the past, in turn to influence the future, without any violation of causality. Ned could not go back in time and change his offensive, chronic tardiness to his AP Calculus class. But he could possibly change its meaning for his own future if quantum uncertainty could possibly enter the picture.
As Ned sat and read, he noticed the girl in front of him. He had never met her before, and figured she was probably from another school since schools in the District all sent troubled students to the same Saturday detention. Apparently troubled students needed some reshuffling. Or, perhaps, there was a shortage of teachers willing to shepherd the program. Either way, she was a student he never met. She was heavy set and was constantly rocking. She had rocked herself for over an hour. Ned figured she had some kind of nervous disability, probably some kind of diminished capacity, he reasoned. Ned could not understand why she was being punished if she did not have the full capacity to understand her actions. Sending her to Saturday School instead of helping her with therapy was one more injustice in the world that Ned knew following the rules simply enabled.
The detention teacher was a great teacher outside of detention class. He was the photography teacher of the school, and was not to be blamed for policies. It was the System that was rotten. In Ned’s mind, it was possible that maybe, just maybe, potential futures could be accessed that could influence the past, and then make those futures happen. It would not violate causality because the future that influenced the present WILL happen. Perhaps he could use this power to change the world in some way.
As Ned read, he paused and looked at the clock. It was 10:45 AM and another 75 minutes remained. The point of the whole exercise was to teach him a lesson. The lesson was well taught and he would not be late again. The lesson had been well taught by 10:45 and yet a whole hour and a quarter remained. Time may be malleable to Gödel, but it seemed to drag on for Ned.
Ned also had a book of the poetry of Wordsworth with him and read it for a while to distract himself. Romantic poets were revolutionaries who did not accept the social order as it was. They also did not accept the dehumanization of industrial society. They loved the natural world and wanted it explored. Ned wished he had teachers like them in English and History classes. He wished he had Gödel for his Math class, Einstein for his history class, and Hypatia for his as yet non-existent Philosophy class. Or at least he wanted Hypatia if her picture was depicted accurately.
Ned barely turned his head but he could not help but to notice Darcy. She was a brilliant biology student who, like Ned, was somewhat out of place in detention. She wanted to study whales. She skipped class, but never biology. Her AP Biology teacher loved her. No other teacher did. She once skipped school in order to march against logging and the destruction of forests. Saturday detention was a regular habit for her. She still managed to get straight A’s in her classes.
The point the school might have been trying to make, if it was conscious in any way, was definitely made by 11:30. Ned resolved never to come back. What was odd was the fact that most people there were “regulars.” Giving up their Saturday mornings never seemed to faze them. It was as if they needed Saturday School as structure. Institutionalization was something Ned wanted to avoid. He knew that he had 30 minutes to make this waste of his life count. He returned to his equations and resolved to understand them as best he could before his attention was distracted by the world outside of the room he was in. Darcy turned his way and smiled. Ned smiled back. The detention teacher noticed but said nothing. Ignoring problems was a big part of survival in his position.
10 minutes were left and it stretched on. Suddenly a tile in the ceiling fell, startling everyone. The school jerk yelled, “Hey, it’s dangerous. You have to let us go early!” The Football Captain’s girlfriend grimaced. The school jerk was a friend of the Captain of the Football team but not his girlfriend. They each sat far from one another. Ned was no friend of his either. And frankly, Ned was more tired of the school jerk than he was of detention.
Yet, Ned did hope it could end early. Time seemed to stretch more than a few —well, all right, 8—tardies would necessitate that it should. The tardies did not add up to an entire Saturday morning. There was a slight break but not enough to keep him from being tired. Ned’s resolve to make the most of himself shown through. He left Wordsworth and continued to try to understand how Gödel’s time loops worked. An immense gravitational field was needed for backwards time travel, as was a rotating object. The fact that a rotating object underwent time dilation, but an object moving straight did not, and simulating faster than light velocity even though actual faster than light speed was not possible. Faster than light meant backwards in time, or so one could be fooled. Ned visualized light cones. He ended up drawing them on his paper. He was the first kid ever in his High School to draw light cones during Saturday detention. He would probably be the last. But he would not let the day go to waste.
It was the last five minutes of a class that taught nothing. Ned harbored no ill will about the matter. He liked the photography teacher, when they were in regular school. He also liked his Calculus teacher. Even the Vice Principal who sent him there was a kind lady. Ned blamed no one, including himself. His grievance was societal. In part it was a simple matter of definitions. The simple matter is not, was not “Saturday School” properly called because there was no school. No learning was being accomplished. No one was helping the girl in front of him or even listening to her.
Ned needed one final distraction. He pulled out his calculator and started to play around with the logarithm function. Log 32 divided by Log 2 was exactly 5, even though Log 32 and Log 2 were irrational numbers. It was because 2 to the fifth power was 32. Ln 5 plus Ln 6 was equal to Ln 30, even though one added the logs instead of multiplying them. Log 80 minus Log 8 was Log 10 even though one subtracted instead of dividing. Log 60 minus Log…
The clock suddenly struck 12:00 and the teacher announced that it was finally all over. Just like that, the distractions of the world rushed in. Students began to sign out. Darcy left the room with a book on Narwhals and other sea mammals. She wore jeans and had flowers in her hair. Darcy was as beautiful as the football player’s girlfriend, if more awkward socially. It was amazing that she maintained an A average even with her cutting classes. But that was the age, an age before high college costs, social media, and before climate change destroyed so much of the planet. It was 1990, still a time of possibilities. It was a time of wonders, a new time when the Berlin Wall fell, Chinese students had rebelled in Tiananmen Square, Apartheid was ending, and slim chances were opening up for social change as the Reagan decade was ending and environmentalists were rising up. The 90’s became a time when computers were becoming smart. Outer space was opening up. Musical tastes were becoming more varied. Even calculators, Ned’s favorite distraction in class, were becoming cutting edge with new graphing utilities.
But wonders such as Darcy maintaining an A average while cutting class was something else even for 1990! She left before Ned had the nerve to ask her out.
II
Ned poured over the notes to his lecture trying to get each equation mentally translated into an English sentence. Even though these were graduate students, Ned knew that they would not easily understand Gödel’s take on General Relativity. The questions raised by causality were too great. The possibility of time travel to the past altering the past raised philosophical questions about causality that went beyond the equations. Ned was a mathematician and philosopher, not a physicist. He knew that some aspects of General Relativity and most aspects of Quantum Physics were beyond him. What was not beyond him was the hope that his lectures on mathematics and philosophy were making a difference to someone.
Too many of the young people in his classes were despairing of the world. Climate change and injustice got drum beat coverage on the news. An attempted coup sought to overturn an election. Most of them had voted for the current President hoping for change with a disappointment that Ned expected from his own youth. He voted for Clinton hoping for change. Decades later he knew that establishment politics would always disappoint. He too voted for the current President to get rid of the last one. But he also knew that Clinton disappointed. So did Obama. And so would the current state affairs in Washington while fires burned in California. How different from when Ned was a youth in High School, looking to a bright future.
Ned stood in front of the lecture hall and for forty-five minutes explained the light cones and the fact that a rotating light cone in Relativity would affect a time loop. At the end of the lecture, Ned pointed out the causality paradox of the future influencing the past. He also invited students to ask themselves the question of what was the one thing they would change in the past if they could. Ned said that if he could do it all over again he would retain the enthusiasm of youth and not sacrifice it on the alter of the nihilism and cynicism that came to society during the nineties. Globalization and corporate economics downplayed the concept that collective action could change the world. Ned himself bought into that, he admitted before the class, and would change it if he could.
It was a powerful and moving lecture. Ned received a standing ovation. As students were leaving, one of them came up to him and shook his hand. He was Roland Chang, an engineering student. “Professor,” he began, “I have begun work as an Intern for a Silicon Valley concern that is very much invested in what you are discussing. I was hoping to interest you in a position with us that would be far more lucrative than the Professor’s salary you are currently living on.” Ned was not surprised. He knew The Pitch. Ever since the nineties Silicon Valley had complicated everything. They even altered the simple scientific calculators he grew up with and played with in High School class when he was supposed to be, well, doing something else he was not sure what.
“Well, Roland,” Ned began politely, “by all means tell me what your ‘concern’ is concerned with.” Ned had not meant to be rude, merely somewhat deadpan in his humor.
Roland Chang simply smiled. “Professor, with the assistance of DARPA technology not currently in the public domain we are using principles of Quantum Gravity to simulate the very high gravity you are discussing in order to affect time travel. In essence, we are inventing a time machine.”
The word “DARPA” sent a slight chill in Ned. It was a chill left over from his days as a vegan Edgelord suspicious of the military. Ned never made it as a vegan Edgelord because meat was too tasty and because offending people was never his preferred form of humor. But, DARPA still sent a chill in him. So did the possibility of time travel being in their hands. He knew that “quantum” always came before pseudo-science and that quantum gravity was yet unsettled science. However, he did not know enough to rule it out. DARPA had access to the brightest minds and he was too scared of appearing stupid in front of physicists to rule it out in the presence of Roland.
Before Ned could say, “tell me more,” Chang slipped a card into his hands. The card said “Gödel-tech.” The name was catchy. Of course Ned would never go along with a military-connected company that went against any residually pacifist principles he might have had. But a company called “Gödel-tech” had the mixture of the Star Trekkie and the ridiculous that suggested the venture was harmless.
Ned called the number on the card – just for entertainment and met the CEO of the company. The CEO had a Mohawk, naturally, and the company was in a basement. Ned figured the “DARPA” connection was probably tenuous at best. The basement had posters of Einstein and Gödel walking together. This was a winner as far as Ned was concerned. He would definitely hold on to his life savings. But he admired the determination of a bunch of college students in a basement. It reminded him of his own days in their shoes, albeit in Ned’s case without investors or much of a business plan.
The CEO was named James and he held out his hand. “Professor,” James began, “we need your mind here with us.” A line that corny lessened the fear Ned had about DARPA. He began to suspect there was no actual DARPA connection. “More than anything, it is your consciousness that we need. We want you to be a part of our time travel experiments. In fact, with our technology we have been able to focus on a particular part of your life that is interesting to us.”
Hairs were raised on Ned’s head. Hearing about his personal life brought back the concern about just what he had gotten himself into. “What part of my life are you talking about?” Ned queried. It was a question with much curiosity behind it, one that opened James to any number of responses.
“We want to focus on your late teenage years. In particular, we want to focus on your teenage love of Relativity, Gödel, and rebellious angst.”
Ned did not know what to say. He never shared anything about his early life with any students. The thought flashed in his head that this really was a DARPA operation, or something to do with the NSA. It is possible, Ned surmised, that the FBI was indeed tracking him. “Just what area of my life do you wish to focus on?” Ned asked. It seemed almost like a follow-up question, asked more to himself than to James.
“We are particularly interested in your time in High School reading about Gödel when you should have been studying for finals. I mean, you were in detention and you could have at least used that time to study for your finals. Instead you chose to read mathematical equations and Romantic era poetry. That shows, well, gumption. We respect that.”
Ned really did want to know why such a personal detail of his life was somehow open for someone half his age to know, especially someone whom Ned had never met. Even more so, he wanted to know just what technology required them to meet him. More to the point, he wondered why they respected him so much for being a teenage schmuck. The last point filled him with a strange pride. Maybe he was still, on some level, that stubborn and prideful young man and perhaps there was power in that.
Ned faced down the intimidating stare of James. James was clearly making a power play. It was more and more clear that this was a DARPA operation, one with access to personal information of the type Snowden had warned about. It was also clear to Ned from his dealings with FBI agents at demonstrations who tried to intimidate him by constantly taking his picture or by pretending to be psychologists with notepads that he could not show fear. They did not respect fear.
“Well James,” Ned responded, “if you are wondering why I went to Saturday School and was so intellectually productive, you might say from the lives of Gandhi or Thoreau that some of the best writing and reflecting can be done in prison.”
Ned knew that on some level he had to go along with the program, even if just to gather information. It became more and more apparent to him that the program involved MKULTRA mind manipulation and not actually any real principle of General Relativity, time loops or anything of the kind. No real theory of Quantum Gravity allowing for the intense gravity of a black hole to coexist with Earth conditions could possibly come out of current Physics. James was likely a front for DARPA’s psychological warfare department, not their physics department. What they wanted was his mind. What made him go along was the most dangerous element in the Universe of science, curiosity. As much as Ned feared the government, his curiosity about whether or not time might ACTUALLY be traversable was stronger than his fear of the dark and mysterious unknowable deep state.
Ned knew the program by now. The idea was to wire up his brain to some contraption he and they barely understood, which DARPA purportedly did understand, in order to use it to travel through time. James claimed that the mind was a “quantum computer, according to a garbled interpretation of mathematician Roger Penrose, and thus could simulate quantum gravity and thereby allow rotating electrons to travel back in time. It was not quite what Penrose believed. Yet, Ned never corrected him.
Roland Chang, whom Ned trusted somewhat more than James, was chosen to lead the session. Chang began, “Professor, we will project your mind back to 1990. What we want are the exact equations you read in that room. To begin focusing, what did you do after detention let out?”
“I went to the creek and meditated,” Ned continued, “I was looking at the creek and saw the wave patterns. I thought of the deep patterns of the Universe.” Ned began to become sad all of the sudden. Although the creek was beautiful, there was an expansively lonely aspect to it all, a kind of cosmic loneliness that bespoke of a vast Universe and a small young man.
The creek was behind the school and Ned would often go there alone at lunchtime. It was just over the boundary from campus, just over the limit of where he was supposed to be. One time the Administrators saw him there and simply told him to leave, without consequences. His being there was a philosophical statement of the meaninglessness of social norms. Yet, it was also a double edge because his own ego was meaningless in a vast Universe. He wished Darcy had been present. There was the beauty of the blue almost summer sky only.
Ned the grown man realized how vivid the memory was. He had to refocus on the hours before. Ned was able to position himself in the body of a young man, a body surprisingly free of lust—-“adolescent lust” being an adult projection on to youth if there ever was one. What Ned actually experienced in the presence of Darcy was the longing to love and to be loved. Alas, he knew only his equations. Ned was once again sitting in front of equations, looking up at the clock. It occurred to Ned that it was not the actual equations they were after, but his intense focus on them. They wanted HIM, not the equations. He was giving himself to them.
What was strange to Ned was that he could see his entire life in front of him, as if time were planned out. He saw himself on his bike on a trail with Autumn leaves all over it, escaping from his problems, escaping home with a progress report from school sent home to his parents during his Senior year. Ned saw himself in college, at demonstrations, at museums, in Yosemite, in front of his telescope, and awkwardly expressing himself in meetings. Ned realized that from the standpoint of himself sitting in his desk in Saturday School that his worse sins were in front of him and not those that sent him there. He sat in Bad Class from the vantage point of relative innocence.
Once again Ned looked at Darcy, after all of the years had passed. She was indeed beautiful, and innocent like he was. But his view as a much older man was different. Would he not corrupt her, he wondered? Would his path not have taken away her innocence into the darker realm of cynicism, a mind that could not quite see Nature as pure and undefiled as she could? Ned saw a world of predation and natural balance as well as empathy. He saw it all as inseparable. Darcy saw love of animals, an innocence that was transgressive but still innocent.
Ned could not change the past anyway. What he saw was something that Ned the teenager could not see in Darcy, and innocence that needed protection. Was it all worth it just to see her again?
Ned was back in 2021 and just in time to see the news gathering storm about the latest apocalyptic plague, environmental destruction, or loss of democracy. 1990 was a time of relative innocence, if only to the young, who as old folk could look back to the Good Old Days. Ned was also sad about what could have been avoided since 1990. He also thought back to the time in 1978, 12 years before, when he was five years old and argued with his grandma about Santa Clause. Years later he realized that Santa Clause was a form of Kabbalistic symbolism for Gentiles and that the argument was pointless. In college Ned figured Saint Nick was an old radical from Rome who challenged the bourgeois morality of the ruling class. It was his way of reconciling with his grandma, and with his long dead grandpa. So much of fanaticism in any direction is yes/no dualism that tears families apart, and tears souls asunder. His soul would be torn asunder if he did not get control the situation he was in, and possibly expose James to the world.
“Professor,” James began with a sinister bland smile, “our purpose with you is not really to get those equations. They are in the public domain. Our purpose is to change the timeline.” The words hit Ned like a ton of bricks. “Darcy has become an ecological activist who threatens the stability of the world economy.”
It was obvious that the profits of fossil fuel companies were what James meant when he invoked the stability of the world economy. To him the two were inseparable, in spite of his Mohawk and college basement demeanor. This guy really was who he claimed to be.
James continued, “You must somehow influence her on to another path. Get her involved with your equations. Ask her out and get her involved in your life. She will forget all about her environmental work and the timeline will be set for us!” – “And you will be rich,” were the words implied. James did not need to say them. Ned knew from the age marks on his eyes that innocence cost money these days.
Ned knew James was not lying. If he asked Darcy out she would be distracted from her real life’s mission. It was his greatest regret never to have asked her out. And yes, they were trying to appeal to that self-interest in him, to make him one of them. Yet, Ned knew that Darcy had a mission and it did not involve him, his ideas, or his dreams. They involved her dreams, her strength, and her reality.
Ned also knew that timelines could possibly be altered if there was a future point influencing the present. It was not impossible according to some models of Physics. Retro-causal influences from a possible future timeline could potentially enable the present to influence the past, in turn leading to a new present, in turn leading more naturally to that future. It was a theory in physics never well fleshed out by an obscure Physicist. Presumably causal paradoxes could be overcome. At least that was what “Science Journal American” suggested in an article he half-read over morning coffee.
James wanted him to go to his teenage years, when Darcy cut school to go to an environmental protest. He would meet up with her and try to talk her into another path in life. The influence would be friendly and subtle. But the damage would be done. Stock options galore waited for him if he complied. And yes, he would have her hand in marriage. At least this is what the sexist pig James thought. In his mind, money is all that influences human relationships.
Ned saw a troubled look on Roland’s face. It was one thing to be part of the next geeky start up. It was another thing to sell out the environment. Ned picked up on the distressed look on Roland’s face and winked while James reached down for a piece of paper Ned was supposed to sign. Roland, beginning to wake up, knew that Ned had a plan. His professor would not sell out. It was all a ruse and Roland learned his lesson. It was an important lesson that imparts wisdom on anyone sage enough to learn it. Never trust a start-up that wants to hire you before you finish University.
The brain machine was hooking up to Ned, its star consciousness performer, as if by its own sinister volition. Why Ned? James explained that it was because Ned had a self-reflective mind whose quantum nature was both digital and analog at the same time. He was on the Asperger Spectrum, the “particle” part of the brain, but also highly capable of complex metaphoric thinking, the “wave” part of the brain. That combination looked good to DARPA. The radical politics was harmless dilettantism. They had neutralized radicals before, mostly by co-opting them with promises of wealth under the current model of capitalism. The system would all be reformed, of course.
Roland put the electrodes on Ned’s head, and Ned lay down.
Ned was back in High School. Darcy was planning school walkouts decades before Greta did. She just did not have social media or any kind of sympathetic press. Ned came up to her and said, “May I join you, Darcy? It would be my privilege!”
Ned meant it too. He spent a lifetime of regret that he never joined the protest against climate change and Ozone depletion, one of the biggest environmental stories of the 80’s and early 90’s. He would undo his greatest regret in a whole new timeline. He would do so then and there, in the moment. Darcy agreed and off they went. Ned marched through the streets of San Francisco. Darcy looked beautiful with flowers in her hair, but also strong. Ned could not understand why society saw a choice between those two.
Darcy’s was a strength born of radical maternal empathy. It was not a false strength so promoted in the culture but a real strength. It was purity and transgression combined. Ned wanted to abandon his adult life, go back, and do it all over again. After the demonstration they went to Golden Gate Park, and to the Academy of Sciences. They walked along the beach, dancing with the waves. They spent that evening near the Camera Obscura in the Outer Richmond District.
The next day school was in session and both were called down to the Office. Of course, this never happened in the original timeline. Only Darcy was called down but this time Ned was there too. As Thoreau once asked of Emerson, “What are you doing out there?”
The two were given Saturday School. It was an inevitable consequence, often given without much discussion of the why or root philosophy of it. Ned read his equations this time, but he also brought a book on deep ecology. Ned and Darcy found desks close enough together where they could hold hands. They held hands tightly for all of Saturday morning. The photography teacher ignored them. It occurred to Ned that his allowing them to hold hands was an act of solidarity.
With Darcy’s other hand she worked on an article for Gaia Magazine. She was a writer now. It was a long Saturday morning in an impersonal institution but they did not spend it alone.
Ned came to and James only laughed. “Did you actually think you two could cheat time? Did you think you could actually influence the timeline to even further cause disruption to global stability in the name of some utopian plan? Yes, I knew what would happen. I knew what you would do! The whole point of this experiment was to convince perfectly rational people to believe in time travel poppy-cock. This was all our illusion, Professor! Psychological warfare is all about manipulating strange beliefs, unleashing superstitious psyops on the enemy just as Landsdale did in the Philippines. It is why we encourage and often stage sightings of UFO’s, monsters, Big Foot and Ghosts. And yes, even two perfectly rational people like you and Traitor over here could believe in,—” he made a contrived pause with a laugh, ”—time travel!”
James walked out of the door and two men in suits joined him. They had the brainwaves, the controlled imagery, and the ability to manipulate emotions. Ned had given himself, his precious memories. Yes, Darcy was safe from timeline manipulation. At least the timeline was solid, never to be changed. It was not so much loneliness that overcame Ned as a sense of philosophical calm. A world that could not be altered at will was in some ways a safer world.
“Sorry Roland,” Ned offered, “The money will not be coming your way. I guess you will have to finish your degree. I hope that Post-Doc work agrees with you.” With that the two friends parted in opposite ways, but to remain friends.
Ned returned to the University and set his keys down on the desk. That night there would be a faculty party. Ned never drank. Well, almost never. He decided to go and to schmooze with faculty from other departments he almost never got to see, like Art History and Biology. The timeline was normal, the same trees and cracks in the pavement. There was the same smoke in the air from the fires he never got to help prevent. Ned saw the same newspaper stories on the news stands as he passed by. Dystopia University still had the same ominous corporate renaming of buildings.
As Ned walked in the party he noticed someone. She was a new Biology Professor who had just come back from a survey in the Mojave. He stared for a second and realized it was Darcy. “After all these years!” Ned exclaimed. His surprise was genuine. Darcy seemed less surprised, which was odd to Ned. It was as if she was expecting him. Darcy smiled and said, “Well old friend, fancy seeing you here! It has been a while since we last held hands in Saturday School!”
It took a minute bordering on eternity. The eternity was embedded in the second while the second opened the door to eternity. “Yes,” Ned began, “And now that we are reunited, hopefully for good, we have to go back there some time.”
