Let’s say the QM time-travel people were right. Particles are able to influence each other traveling away from each other at huge distances, because they’re actually traveling back in time to an earlier position when they were in immediate physical contact. So time travel on the quantum mechanical level is possible—technically.
But let’s say Hawking was also right. The Universe can’t allow time travel—for to do so would unravel its very being. So it protects itself from dissemination of information backwards in time.
That wouldn’t be so crazy. People are saying the Universe can be considered one huge organism—a Gaia writ large. Makes sense then, that this organism, like all other organisms, would have tendencies to act on behalf of its own survival—would act to prevent its dissolution via time travel.
But how would such protection express itself? A physicist figures out a way of creating a local wormhole that can send some information back in time—back to his earlier self and equipment—in some non-blatantly paradoxical way. It doesn’t shut off the circuit that sent it. So this information is in fact sent and in fact received—by the scientist. But the Universe can’t allow that information transfer to stand. So what happens?
Hawking says the Universe’s first line of defense is to create energy disturbances severe enough at the mouths of the wormhole to destroy it and its time-channelling ability. OK. But let’s say the physicist is smart or lucky enough to create a wormhole that can withstand these self-disruptive forces? What does the Universe do then?
Maybe it makes the scientist forget this information. Maybe causes a minor stroke in the scientist’s brain. Maybe causes the equipment to irreparably break down. Maybe the lucky physicist is really unlucky. Maybe this already happened lots of times.
But what happens when a group of scientists around the world who achieve this time travel transfer reach a critical mass—a mass that will soon publish its findings, and make them known, irrevocably, to the world?
Jeez!—I jammed the heel of my hand into my car horn and swerved. The damn Volkswagen driver must be drunk out of his mind—
So what happens when this group of scientists gets information from its own future? Has proof of time travel, information that can’t be? The Universe regulates itself, polices its timeline, in a more drastic way. All existence is equilibrium—a stronger threat to existence evokes a stronger reaction. A freak fatal accident. A sudden massive heart attack. Another nomotive, drive-by shooting that the Universe already dishes out to all too many people in this hapless world of ours. Except in this case, the Universe’s motive is quite clear and strong: it must protect its chronology, conserve its current existence.
Maybe this already happened too. How many physicists on the cutting edges of this science died too young in recent years? Jeez, here was a story for Jack all right.
But why Lauren? Why did she have to die?
Maybe because the Universe’s protection level went beyond just those who received illicit future information. Maybe it extended to those who understood just what it was doing, just—
Whamp! Something big had smashed into the rear of my car, and I was skidding way out of control towards the edge of the Throgs Neck Bridge, towards where some workers had removed the barriers to fix some corrosion or something. 1 was strangely calm, above it all. I told myself to go easy on the brakes, but my leg clamped down anyway and my speed increased. 1 wrenched my wheel around, but all that did was spin me into a backward skid off the bridge. My car sailed way the hell out over the black-and-blue Long Island Sound.
The way down took a long time. They’d say I was overwrought, overtired, that I lost control. But I knew the truth, knew exactly why this was happening. I knew too much, just like Lauren.
Or maybe there was a way out, a weird little comer of my brain piped up.
Maybe I didn’t know the truth. Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe if I could convince myself of that, the Universe wouldn’t have to protect itself from me. Maybe it would give me a second chance.
My car hit the water.
I was still alive.
I was a pretty fair swimmer.
If only I could force myself never to think of certain things, maybe I had a shot.
Maybe the deaths of the physicists were coincidental after all…
I lost consciousness thinking no, I couldn’t just forget what I already knew so well… How could I will myself not to think of that very thing I was trying to will myself not to think about… that blared in my mind now like a broken car horn… But if I died, what I knew wouldn’t matter anymore…
I awoke fighting sheets… of water. No, these were too white. Maybe hospital sheets. Yeah, white hospital sheets. They smelled like that loo.
I opened my eyes. Hospital rooms were hell—I knew better than most the truth of that—but this was just a hospital room. I was sure of that. I was alive.
And I remembered everything. With a spasm that both energized and frightened me, I realized that I recalled everything I’d been thinking about the Universe and its protective clutch…
But I was still alive.
So maybe my reasoning was not completely right.
“Dr. D’Axnato,” a female voice, soft but very much in command, said to me. “Good to see you awake.”
“Good to be awake, Nurse, ah, Johnson.” I squinted at her name tag, then her face. “Uhm, what’s my situation? How long have I been here?”
She looked at the chart next to my bed. “Just a day and a half,” she said. “They fished you out of the Sound. You were suffering from shock. Here,” she gave me a cup of water. “Now that you’re awake, you can take these orally.” She gave me three pills, and turned off the intravenous that I’d just realized was attached to me. She disconnected the tubing from my vein.
I held the pills in my hand. I thought about the Universe again. I envisioned it, rightly or wrongly, as a personal antagonist now. Let’s say I was right about the reach of its chronology protection after all? Let’s say it had spared me in the water, because I was on the verge of willing myself to foiget? Let’s say it had allowed me to get medicine and nutrition intravenously, while I was unconscious, because while I was unconscious I posed no threat? But let’s say now that I was awake, and remembered, it would—
“Dr. D’Amato. Are you falling back asleep on me?” She smiled. “Come on now, be a good boy and take your pills.”
They burned in my palm. Maybe they were poison. Maybe something I had a lethal allergy to. Like Lauren. “No,” I said. “I’m OK, now, really. I don’t need them.” I put the pills on the table, and swung my legs out of bed.
“I don’t believe this,” Johnson said. “It’s true—you doctors make the worst god-awful patients. You just stay put now—hear me?” She gave me a look of exasperation and stalked out the door, likely to get the resident on duty, or, who knew, security.
I looked around for my clothes. They were on a chair, a dried out crumpled mess. They stank of oil and saltwater. At least my wallet was still inside my jacket pocket, money damp but intact. Good to see there was still some honesty left in this town.
I dressed quickly and opened the door. The corridor was clear. Goddamn it, I could leave if I wanted to. I was a patient, not a prisoner.
At least insofar as the hospital was concerned. As for the larger realm of being, I couldn’t say any more.
I took a cab straight home.
The most important new piece of evidence—to this whole case, as well as to me personally—was that I was alive. This meant that my assessment of the Universe’s vindictiveness was missing something. Or maybe the Universe was just a less effective assassin of forensic scientists than quantum physicists and their knowing wives.