Places'.
The world of physics has few places more prestigious than the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, New Jersey. This man, Jove, was based there, working on a new model of the cosmos, dimensionality of hyperspace, ghost universes symmetrical with ours. He was the future.
I said 'You are the future.'
He said 'Does time wear a watch?'
Jove was lecturing on Time Travel. Every morning he had to explain to elderly gentlemen why they would not be able to regain their hairline by stepping into a time machine. No one was interested in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and its impact on what we call time. Everyone wanted to know when they would be able to extend their lives indefinitely by living them backwards. Theoretically it is possible to slow down the effects of ageing by altering the rate of time. Travelling at speeds close to those of light (186,000 miles per second), time's flow trickles. If we break the light barrier, time seems to go backwards, that is, we need no longer move forwards.
'They want me to tell them how to find Reverse,' said Jove, 'when most of them have spent sixty years wondering how to shift out of Automatic into First.'
I did not believe in fate but it can be a useful excuse.
How strange that I should be working my passage to New York, bags in the hold, my body harbouring a new start.
How strange that I should have won two years of research funding at Princeton.
How strange that I would be seeing this man every day.
As the rest of the audience shuffled away to their favourite binary opposition, gin/tonic, a woman came forward and asked Jove, 'If we were to travel back in time would it be advisable to don the costume of that period before we set off or to buy it when we get there?'
What a fashion opportunity. While the physics fraternity are just beginning to wrestle with the implications of time travel, the travellers are worrying about what to wear. The world is ready for Ralph Lauren Mediaeval.
'I'll leave you ladies to discuss it,' said Jove.
'Wait,' I said. 'You are the one in the Armani,' and I walked away.
He caught up with me later, part furious, part beaten.
'You should meet my wife.'
'How will I know which bathroom to use?'
I said there was a love affair. In fact there are two. Male and female God created them and I fell in love with them both.
If you want to know how a mistress marriage works, ask a triangle. In Euclidean geometry the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees and parallel Unes never meet. Everyone knows the score, and the women are held in tension, away from one another. The shape is beguiling and it could be understood as a new geometry of family life.
Unfortunately, Euclidean theorems work only if space is flat.
In curved space, the angles over-add themselves and parallel lines always meet.
His wife, his mistress, met.
Perhaps if this story had happened before 1856 I should not be telling it to you at all.
In the nineteenth century, most people knew their place, even if they did not know the mathematics that predicated it. In a strictly three-dimensional world, where the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the comings and goings of sexual intrigue could be measured with a reassuring accuracy. On a flat sea the boat hardly rocks. What happens when the sea itself plunges away?
1856. A poor obscure tubercular German called Reimann delivered a lecture calculating that Euclid is valid only in terms of flat surfaces. If the surface were to turn out not to be flat then two thousand years of mathematical smugness might not be smiling.
Sixty years later, a poor obscure German called Einstein realised that light beams bend under gravity. Therefore, the shortest distance between two points is a curve.
If light travelled in a curved line it would mean that space itself is curved.
(Pitch of her body under me.)
'Alice?'
I could see him standing behind me. He wrapped himself rug-like round my
The world of physics has few places more prestigious than the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, New Jersey. This man, Jove, was based there, working on a new model of the cosmos, dimensionality of hyperspace, ghost universes symmetrical with ours. He was the future.
I said 'You are the future.'
He said 'Does time wear a watch?'
Jove was lecturing on Time Travel. Every morning he had to explain to elderly gentlemen why they would not be able to regain their hairline by stepping into a time machine. No one was interested in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and its impact on what we call time. Everyone wanted to know when they would be able to extend their lives indefinitely by living them backwards. Theoretically it is possible to slow down the effects of ageing by altering the rate of time. Travelling at speeds close to those of light (186,000 miles per second), time's flow trickles. If we break the light barrier, time seems to go backwards, that is, we need no longer move forwards.
'They want me to tell them how to find Reverse,' said Jove, 'when most of them have spent sixty years wondering how to shift out of Automatic into First.'
I did not believe in fate but it can be a useful excuse.
How strange that I should be working my passage to New York, bags in the hold, my body harbouring a new start.
How strange that I should have won two years of research funding at Princeton.
How strange that I would be seeing this man every day.
As the rest of the audience shuffled away to their favourite binary opposition, gin/tonic, a woman came forward and asked Jove, 'If we were to travel back in time would it be advisable to don the costume of that period before we set off or to buy it when we get there?'
What a fashion opportunity. While the physics fraternity are just beginning to wrestle with the implications of time travel, the travellers are worrying about what to wear. The world is ready for Ralph Lauren Mediaeval.
'I'll leave you ladies to discuss it,' said Jove.
'Wait,' I said. 'You are the one in the Armani,' and I walked away.
He caught up with me later, part furious, part beaten.
'You should meet my wife.'
'How will I know which bathroom to use?'
I said there was a love affair. In fact there are two. Male and female God created them and I fell in love with them both.
If you want to know how a mistress marriage works, ask a triangle. In Euclidean geometry the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees and parallel Unes never meet. Everyone knows the score, and the women are held in tension, away from one another. The shape is beguiling and it could be understood as a new geometry of family life.
Unfortunately, Euclidean theorems work only if space is flat.
In curved space, the angles over-add themselves and parallel lines always meet.
His wife, his mistress, met.
Perhaps if this story had happened before 1856 I should not be telling it to you at all.
In the nineteenth century, most people knew their place, even if they did not know the mathematics that predicated it. In a strictly three-dimensional world, where the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the comings and goings of sexual intrigue could be measured with a reassuring accuracy. On a flat sea the boat hardly rocks. What happens when the sea itself plunges away?
1856. A poor obscure tubercular German called Reimann delivered a lecture calculating that Euclid is valid only in terms of flat surfaces. If the surface were to turn out not to be flat then two thousand years of mathematical smugness might not be smiling.
Sixty years later, a poor obscure German called Einstein realised that light beams bend under gravity. Therefore, the shortest distance between two points is a curve.
If light travelled in a curved line it would mean that space itself is curved.
(Pitch of her body under me.)
'Alice?'
I could see him standing behind me. He wrapped himself rug-like round my
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