Time and Tide

.... MARCH

Relationships... as far as I can tell, the best ones are between people who are, well, not exactly opposites, but different enough that they're not twins. Take me and Sue Ellen. I get up early, she stays up late. She's a scientist, theoretical physicist. I'm a high school music teacher. She loves sci-fi and conspiracy theories (that's quite a heady mix for a physicist). I'm more of a facts-and-history guy. Thing is, I would be bored to tears living with a carbon copy of myself, and she is anything but. Sometimes she wakes me up late at night to tell me something she's excited about. This night was quite a trip...

"Mitch, wake up! I need your help!"

I was groggy. "Are you sick? Are you hurt?"

"No, I need your help with something I'm working on."

"Oh... what time is it?" I groaned sleepily.

"Never mind that, just pay attention and tell me what you think."

"Okay, just a sec..." I opened the fridge door. Jackpot! Leftover pasta. Just the fortification I neeeded. "Okay, shoot."

"All right, work with me," she began. "What's the biggest problem with traveling back in time to fix the world?"

I thought for a minute. "I dunno, maybe the biggest problem is that time travel's impossible?"

A bit of impatience: "Of course it's possible--relativity--the theory of relativity--you just travel in space real fast and come back younger."

"Right. I suppose the Russians are doing it already."

"Very funny, Mitch. Why did I wake you up?"

"I dunno. I'm waiting to find out."

"Okay let me put it this way. You've watched sci-fi movies and shows with me."

"Course. They're your favorite."

"What goes wrong when people go back in time to fix the present?"

"Well in Star Trek they sometimes miss their target. They do some kind of crazy slingshot around the sun and don't get it right. Also, generally, things get changed. When they get back to the present it's all different. One of them has a beard or something."

"And why is that?"

"It's the little things they're not thinking about. They alter one thing and it changes another."

"Exactly. See Mitch, you do understand sci-fi and it is worthwhile."

I had no useful comeback for that one. She pressed on.

"What about grandfathered time?"

I remembered something about that. "That was in a different show. Grandfathered time means that in the future you're going to go back and change time, and we're already living in the changed time, so when you're changing the past now, you're just re-enacting what you already were going to do in the future, so it's all right, because it doesn't alter the time line because you were going to do it anyway and you're already living the effects of what you are going to do." I looked at her hopefully.

She frowned. "More or less that's the idea." I thought I was doing pretty well at the time of night and that, despite what she hopes, I am not really a sci-fi fan. She continued, unstoppable. "So what makes grandfathered time impractical?"

The pasta was starting to wake me up. It was good! "I suppose there are a couple of things," I mused. "For one thing, if you're going to do time travel in the future, you'll just have to wait until you do, won't you? I mean, putting an extra trip in now might not be grandfathered, and then you are messing with circumstances. Also, how would you know if you're going to travel back in the future and when you're going to do it? You might not."

She was encouraged. "I knew you would get it!" she said. "You get it!"

I felt like one of my students who had just gotten a tricky test question right. At the same time I found it just a little bit unsettling that a published, lecturing theoretical physicist was talking like this. Just a bit. "Okay," she drew a breath and I braced for what was sure to be the complicated part. "Suppose you could go back and change the past without compromising the present... suppose you could decide to do that tomorrow, improve one thing, and preserve the rest, whether it were grandfathered or not?"

"Not possible," I said between mouthfuls.

She smiled triumphantly. "Mitch and the scientific community, I give you grandmothered time!"

I had the good sense to keep quiet. Safer to keep eating that to say what I was thinking at that revelation.

"Suppose that, outside of the sphere of physical action, you could have a conversation with a time actor and persuade them to change course."

"A time actor. Outside of the arena of physical action..." I repeated to show I was listening. "How would that be?"

"What about dreams?" she asked.

"Well," I thought, "dreams are outside the realm of physical action. Do you mean that you would have a conversation in a dream with someone from the past and persuade them to change direction?"

"Exactly!" she clapped her hands. "I knew I could count on you to understand."

I mulled it over. "But you don't just need to dream about someone from the past. You need to be actively and consciously inside a dream IN the past." As soon as the words came out I couldn't believe I'd said them. She kissed me on the lips. She's very persuasive when she does that. Oh, now, I'm not on my guard and she's going to get me to agree to something crazy, I thought, too late, though.

"So the question is where are past dreams kept?"

"I dunno. No idea," I said, a little worried.

"In water," she said, as if that was reasonable.

"In water?" I asked. "H2O?"

"No, not regular water," she corrected. "Special water, a different kind of water."

Well that was certainly possible, I thought, in so far as I could trust my thoughts in this outlandish conversation in the middle of the night and with the adrenaline rush of that kiss. Actually The Times had just featured an article on a different kind of water, and there was also Ice-9 in a book by Vonnegut I liked. He is funny. I took a stab at sounding interested but rational, though it was not really possible in this conversation. "In that case, the dreams would have to inhabit a special water that has been around for tens of thousands of years. If you want a dream of Alexander the Great, your special water must be very old." Did I really say that?

It was like pouring kerosene on a fire. "Oh you are so hot! You are wrong to get up early. You are on fire at this time of night! And Alexander the Great is not bad, but you can do better."

"Let's go to bed and play with that thought," I suggested.

"Not yet, Romeo, there's more theory to come."

Of course there was.

She narrowed her gaze to my eyes, penetrating my mind. "You told me once about the Tethys Ocean."

In fact I had. "The paleo-Tethys Ocean and the neo-Tethys Ocean were caught between two ancient continents when the geological plates came together. That water was old, for sure, dating back to long before human existence.

"Where did the water end up?" she continued easily, having me now on her runaway train of thought, and that train was not going to stop.

"Theoretically, supposedly, in three present-day bodies of water," I answered. "The Aral Sea, which has dried up, the Black Sea, which is dead below a certain depth," and Lake Mansarover, at the base of Mount Kailash."

"Lake Mansarover," she smiled, as if the conclusion was obvious.

"You think," I ventured, "that long-past dreams are preserved in the ancient water of Lake Mansarover?"

She nodded. "Look at this video."

I squinted to see her phone. A bearded yogi had taken some of his followers to the lake. The mountain was visible in the background. He said a few words about the Tethys Ocean, and had three volunteers go into the water, bring back a bowl full, recline, and put the bowl near their heads. "The water is ice cold," he remarked. He showed the volunteers asleep. The water in the bowls started to boil.

Sue Ellen switched the video off. "Why did the water boil?" she demanded.

Before I could stop myself, I answered, "Because they were dreaming the dreams in the lake?"

"I love you," she said. "Now we can have sex. Oh wait, there's one more thing you have to tell me first."

A tiny note of caution inside my head, clamoring to be heard over the hormones, made me hesitate. "You don't mean you want to go Mount Kailash, in Tibet?"

"Oh we're going," she exclaimed. "So far this is only a theory. It has to be tested. But there's also the question of choosing the past event."

Chemicals coursing through my brain, I said, "Choose it? How do we do that?"

She explained, "it's what you said about the tiny events around the main event. Any measurable turning point in history is going to be a constellation."

My faculty of reasoning had just about given out. "You mean like The Big Dipper?"

"No silly," she drew her finger up my back, as if that would drag me back to reason. Of course it took me in the other direction. "A constellation, several things together at the same time. And to change time through a dream conversation I will need a tight constellation."

"The Big Dipper's kinda loose," I said, fully under her spell.

"Now concentrate," she commanded, pointing her lovely finger. "What's an event that could be changed with measurable positive impact that has a tight timeline and few outside influences, I would say the minimum of those?"

Somehow, motivated by the thought of what could come, my mind found another pathway to a kind of bizarre logic. "The Roswell incident," I offered. "An isolated event. Few people involved, short time timeline, and, if we had reacted to the aliens in some other way, I don't know--worked with their technology or just done things differently..."

"I knew you would come to the same conclusion. I knew you would realize and be supportive. Think if I could reverse it. This is just, just Perfect!" she shouted.

She said she was testing a theory but no, she was aiming for a big change. No wonder she was excited. No wonder she had woken me up. Indeed, think if she could reverse it! That faint hope was worth all the risks. I scooped her up.

... MAY [Mitch]

Of course we both knew well not to say anything to anyone about Sue Ellen's research and specific plans. There was no mystery about what the authorities would have done if they heard even a whisper of it. When we applied for the visas I simply wrote that it was a pilgrimage to a Hindu sacred site. Ganesha, the deity known as the Overcomer of Obstacles, is said to reside there. I bought two small jade Ganeshas for us to pack, to lend credibility to our cover story if needed, and because, well, there certainly were obstacles to be overcome. It can't hurt, my father would have said.

I made some firm conditions, of course, all of them about her safety. We went to a lot of workshops on dream travel, some online. I insisted no drugs, no chemicals, nothing that could affect her mind, nothing that could slow her waking. Sue Ellen agreed. As for techniques, she seemed to favor the self-hypnosis types. I was all for the techniques that did not use a trance state or only the very lightest trance. I pointed out that she was intending to explore this area in full consciousness, even, if it could happen, converse with someone. I didn't see how this could be done in a hypnotic state. I also insisted on practice. I said practice on our dreams. What she would be doing would be even more difficult. Sue Ellen saw the sense in that.

One night I said let's agree to meet in the dream state at our favorite beach on Cape Cod. The first try we both awoke with a vague impression. The second night we saw each other on the beach. She was excited.

Sue Ellen accused me of inflating the budget for the trip. I countered that I wanted us to be well. The lake is at an elevation of over fifteen thousand feet. I booked us for four nights into a palace converted into a hotel just three miles from the lake. She called it extravagant. I said how would she perform this special new time travel with altitude sickness? She said what altitude sickness? I said well this will be a thousand feet higher than the highest point of Rocky Mountain National Park and we couldn't make the last 50 feet to the top there and then we giggled all the way back down. Add in the jet lag and there would be an adjustment needed. She said, "Oh yeah, I forgot." I also reserved a shirpa to take us to the lake with some equipment, especially a tent and an air mattress. So what if she thought she was being clever and frugal when she said I was being a fuss-budget? These were my conditions and I held firm.

MAY 31 [Sue Ellen]

I have to record these impressions before I forget them. Already some of them are fading...

My techniques have worked! I got out of my body, left it on shore in care of Mitch, and I projected into the water. The consistency is strange, somehow thicker and stickier than other water. I don't sense anything in particular near the surface, so I'm going out farther and down deeper. There's a song. Judy Garland, I think. I sure hope the dream I need is here and not in the dried-up Aral Sea.

A lot of shadows here, some figures, but I can't make them out. Declare my goal, my target, that's what I've learned. Roswell military team, 1947... I repeat that 3 times... now much deeper, the water darker, thicker, and now a room, some kind of meeting room, or command center.

I wonder whose dream I am in. Black and white at first, then blue uniforms. An officer near the head of a table. A photographer. Someone--who?--waves the photographer out of the room. Hushed voices. I still don't know who this dream belongs to.

Worried voices, opinions, a quiet argument. Colors coming clearer. I am seeing things from the perspective of the head of the table. Oh! Jackpot! This is the commander's dream! This is his chair! Now I see him. I whisper slowly in his left ear, "Clear the room." He issues the command. The men in the dream are puzzled, but they get up, leaving their folders on the table. It's his dream, after all.

Now I need to materialize in this dream so he can see me. Quick Sue Ellen, be present--name five things in this room. Table, chairs, walls with no windows, the commander, folders.

"Who are you?" he could see me all right.

"I'm visiting your dream and it's very important you listen to me." This is what one of the workshops suggested. Bypass all the dreamer's objections but don't be specific. I explained he was at a turning point in history. He already understood that. I told him what the future would be if he did one thing or another. Just like they said in the workshops, in dreams, we are all more receptive, we don't resist ideas in the way we do when we're awake.

He asked what he had to do. I kept it simple, just a few short instructions. Then I touched his temple, and said, "When you awaken, you will not remember this dream, but you will remember exactly what you must do, and you will do it.

I must have maxed out. The scene faded, I felt I was floating to the surface, more old songs on the way, then I was on the shore again, awake, with a pounding headache. I made this voice record. "The water was boiling," Mitch said, worried. He rushed over to me with a bottle of cold Gatorade. A new flavor. I drank it gladly. I felt disoriented. The shoreline and the path didn't look right. Mitch lifted me into a motorized cart of some kind. Did we bring a motorized cart? He and the shirpa climbed in and we drove to the hotel.

Mitch didn't press me to talk. I was grateful for that. At the hotel, which seemed bigger than it had been, he took me straight to our room and tucked me in bed. A paisley comforter. I didn't remember the paisley, but then that was yesterday, I thought. Did they change the comforter every day? Too tired to think about it. I fell asleep and I dreamt.

Memories of the water, and that room. Could I have stayed just five minutes longer? If I had, would I have seen him wake up? No, because that was not part of his dream. But did he get the message? Did he act on it? When I started this plan I said it was all about testing my theory, but of course we both knew it was about the result, the changes to the time line. Had I made a difference?

I awoke groggily. Mitch was watching me, and he asked how I felt. I said okay, still tired, hungry. He handed me the TV remote, said he would order breakfast for us from room service. I nodded, turned it on, and checked the weather. Cool. Well yes, at fifteen thousand feet, I thought. There was a Bollywood channel. I like Bollywood. All those dance numbers, like the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 40s before the budget cuts.

I flipped the channel. Cricket. I don't know much about cricket, can't follow it. I flipped again, and found a news channel. Excellent. What's up with the world? Trouble in Pakistan. Pakistan? Must be a local name. Looks serious. Crisis in the American financial market, nothing new there. President to address the nation at noon. Hmmn. A company president presuming to address the whole U.S. nation? That CEO was getting big ideas, too big for his britches if you ask me.

Mitch put the phone down. "Breakfast will be here in a few minutes. How are you feeling? I want to ask about the experiment, but if you need time..."

"I'm coming around, and I want you to know you were right about all of your precautions. The hotel, the shirpa, and especially the dream workshop preparation."

"Good," he said. "And your theory--is it right? Did the test work?"

"Oh yes," I smiled. At least I got to the dream. You said the water boiled?"

"Yes," he said. "I was astonished. So you could see those dreams?"

"Yes," I answered. "The water was sticky, then I saw shadows, then..."

We were interrupted by the arrival of room service. The staffer put a tray on the table, then a silver coffee service. "Silver!" I exclaimed.

"Yes of course, ma'am," the waiter said. Mitch tipped him.

"Mitch, mind the money," I said. "I'm safe now. No need to go overboard."

"It's not going overboard. You're a star physics prof. And you know the Texas academic union rules. One faculty member has to be paid a dollar more than the football coach. That's you, you're the star. So I guess you know how much the football coach is paid."

I laughed, but it wasn't Mitch's style of humor. I was a lecturer at Amherst. He continued. "I listened to your voice diary. You did it. You'll win a physics prize for this, maybe the Nobel!"

"Yes, I did do it, didn't I?" I mused. What did he mean the 'No Bell'? "I met a man from the past inside his dream and talked to him. I was right about the water."

"Brilliant!" Mitch said. "I'll admit I had my doubts, but you proved your theory! Ace work!"

Yes, but something was off. Maybe a little bit off, maybe way off. And now the urgency returned. What had the commander done with the alteration I made to his dream? "Mitch, where is Pakistan?" I said the name awkwardly.

"Adjacent to India. You know that. Are you all right?"

"I'm not sure. That point about Texas?"

"You deserve it. I always said you are the best. You earned that chair."

Curiouser and curiouser.... "I'll start with some coffee." Mitch poured from the silver pot into the cup (luxury), then added a bit of cream and stirred it. "Just the way I like it," I remarked. "I'm coming around. Just disoriented from the experience, I guess."

"And no wonder," he agreed. "Strange type of water, containing all sorts of past dreams, out of body travel. No wonder you feel a little bit odd coming out of it. How many fingers?" he asked, and held up two.

"Six," I laughed, "same as all the aliens!" And we both laughed.

"Speaking of which," I said, "I haven't seen any since coming back from the lake."

"Well thank God you didn't bring one back with you!" he exclaimed, and we laughed again.

But, I thought, in all seriousness, where are the aliens? None near the lake, none in the lobby, and so far none on the TV.

"Mitch," I asked, who's addressing the nation this afternoon about the financial crisis?"

"The president," he answered.

"Which president?" I asked.

Mitch looked a bit worried again. "The president of the United States of America, Joseph Biden," he said.

"When," I asked, "did the aliens let one of us call himself president? We haven't had a president since 1947."

Mitch was in shock now. "Never mind," I said, just hand me your phone. I need to look something up." He gave me his smart phone. I looked for the Roswell incident on the internet. The Wiki article would do. I read quickly... many people believe that an alien craft landed in Roswell New Mexico in 1947... testimony that a ship had crashed, alien casualties, allegations of a government cover-up... nothing about an invasion, no mention of the takeover of our governments... no aliens at all... I read the whole article in amazement.

"So Mitch, we have no aliens?"

He still looked concerned. "None that I'm aware of."

One pivotal event with a tight constellation around it. One hugely positive, transformative change without major collateral damage to the timeline... A few smaller changes maybe, a new country, maybe two or three, a better job for me. Nothing I can't live with. "Mitch," I said, "no need to worry--it's all right, but don't tell a soul. I don't want anyone to use this to change anything else. Things are just fine as they are. And I think it's too far fetched for anyone to dream it up, anybody but us. I want to know what a president does. And by the way we should have a child. Get your clothes off!"