The Möbius Trip

The Möbius Trip

He knew he was right. It was just a throwaway theory, a joke at first, but the more he worked things out, his calculations led him to a staggering conclusion. He could not believe it himself, it was madness, it made no sense whatsoever, but his paper left him in no doubt.

He went over the pages again and again. There was no fault in his conclusions, but he was petrified of showing this to others, but he knew that he needed peer review to validate his findings. The problem is that no one wanted anything that challenged the natural order of things too much.

This would challenge so many areas of science that the likelihood was that he would be thrown out of every society he was a member of. Today's scientists were likely to treat him like religion treated scientists in the Middle Ages. It was unlikely he would be tortured or burned at the stake, he might be subjected to modern equivalents.

Eventually he prepared his papers and arranged for their presentation to the National Scientific Society. He was sick with anxiety about how his theory would be taken. He contested that what we saw was not the reality but our minds took what they saw and then made it acceptable to ourselves.

They saw the premise of the paper and burst out laughing. This was incredulous, even more outlandish than the flat Earth or hollow Earth theories.

His premise was that the Earth was not spherical ( and this may apply to other heavenly bodies as well), but a tubular Möbius strip form. This seemed ludicrous, but as they looked into it and the argument as to why we saw the Earth as a sphere, it became clearer and clearer that his paper had merit and made sense.

The laughter and guffaws calmed down, and he started to believe that his work may be accepted. He knew it would be challenged but that is the lot of a scientist, everything is right until it is proved wrong or superseded by improved knowledge and reasoning.

More importantly, this affected all forms of science and going forward would cause multiple issues and problems if this were ever to become public. Wheels were put in motion to suppress this work.

He was arrested and it was decided he should be remanded in protective custody for the rest of his life with no contact with the outside world. He would not be executed, they were not murderers and this was not the dark ages.

Straitjacketed and silenced he was locked away for life in a padded room.

The Awakening

He woke. He was still in a straitjacket in the padded cell. He was condemned to spending the rest of his life here. They had judged him to be dangerous and mad.

His work was burned, but he was spared immolation, but wondered if this life was worse than what the witches in the dark ages had suffered.