Tag: energy universe

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 9: Hitting The Wall

Image of the building where the Professor lives during a rainy day

I thanked Gina for the help… and rushed out of her office. The first stop was with my creative team. I had to make sure everything regarding the presentation was on track and that, in the process, they hadn’t strayed away from the concept of the Chronologix piece being a time machine. You know, something to help you manage your time better so you can travel better through time. I checked their work, gave them my input, mentioned I was late for a meeting with Cyril Murdock, a former professor from college, and left.

On the way to the Professor’s I decided to stop by my apartment for a raincoat. It had started to sprinkle and the sky had gotten darker. It was only 10:00 AM but it looked like dusk and it sure seemed like I would be needing way more than just an umbrella to face the music.

Before entering the apartment, I noticed the strange bluish glow at the bottom of the doorway I thought I had seen the night of my first encounter with ‘Einstein’. Once inside I found myself standing in front of a wall of blue light floating in the middle of the living room. It looked like a giant computer screen with formulas, pictures and all sorts of information flowing through it at a fast pace. The wall was translucent and I quickly spotted ‘Einstein’ standing on the other side of it.

“Did you do this?” I asked him fascinated by the scene in front of me.

“I didn’t create it, if zat’s vat you mean,” he said, “but I access it constantly.”

“What is it?” I probed further. By this time I was already talking to ‘Einstein’ as if he was a real person and not a hallucination. My sentiments towards him had evolved rather quickly into those akin to a newfound friendship. Even my ears were growing accustomed to his accent; it didn’t sound so heavy anymore.

“Zis is a phyzical reprezentation of the univerze’s informazion field,” he said. “You’ve been unknovingly scratching its zurface for zee past couple of days. Now it’s time to for you to step into it zee vay I uzed to vay back ven.”

“Wow, you mean I can enter it…” was the last thing I said as I walked into the field of blue light. I woke up on the floor four hours later with a bump on my head and a note in my hand that read:

“Doofus! Don’t you know the meaning of a figure of speech? Don’t ever walk into an unknown field of energy like that. Look up the Akashic records and my gedankenexperiments. And go into E=mc2.”

I was signed simply “A.” followed by a symbol I couldn’t recognize. It looked like a weird “Z”.

I stayed on the floor for what seemed like half an hour listening absentmindedly to the rain outside. A pretty loud thunder got me out of my post-shock daze. I looked at my watch and realized I still had time to see Professor Murdock so I called and told him I was on my way.

It was raining cats and dogs and the traffic was hectic. It took me forever to reach the professor’s abode over at the university district. The place was a small apartment in a brick structure with a mansard roof and classic moldings. I rang the intercom bell and the professor let me in. When I reached his apartment he was waiting for me at the door. I was shivering from the cold rain and he was wearing a warm cardigan with Matthew perched on his shoulder.

“Come in, come in. Would you like some tea?”

“Yes please, I would love some. Hey Matthew how are you,” I said to the pet ferret extending my arm to make a bridge between the professor’s shoulder and mine. Matthew crossed over enthusiastically and decided it was time to closely examine my head of hair.

“You must have a lot in your head,” said the professor.

“Why do you say that?”

“Matthew does the same to me when I’m in a state of deep thought,” he said. “My theory is he can detect the energy we radiate when our brain is hard at work.”

“Matthew, you rascal, you’re a little mutant”, I said to the ferret while stroking the neck area under its chin.

“I wouldn’t go that far. Everything around us is energy, and animals are more in tune with that aspect of reality than we humans. Besides, if Matthew were a mutant then that would make me Professor X,” he said with a smile in obvious reference to the X-Men character from the Marvel comics and movies, “or maybe Professor M…”

The professor brought the tea, I took a sip and the blister on my tongue came ablaze. The professor noticed my grimace and asked if the tea was too hot for me.

“No it’s perfect. It’s just that I have this sore on my tongue that’s been pestering me all day,” I said.

We had tea and chitchatted for a while, literally talking about the day’s weather, before getting to business. I then proceeded to tell him everything about my encounters with ‘Einstein’ and the weird Timekeeper dreams.

“What worries me the most about the whole thing,” he said with a concerned look on his face, “is that you may be right about all this being… let’s not say schizophrenic but… an intense experience created by your mind.”

Then I showed him the note…

 

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 10: The Akashic Records

Image illustrating the concept of the Akashic records

Professor Murdock looked at the handwritten note in silence for a couple of minutes, frowned, took a deep breath and finally told me:

“Raymond, I gather you don’t remember anything from the moment you stepped into the light wall until you woke up on the floor several hours later. It is possible that you might have written this note yourself, very probably while in another state of consciousness.”

“Are you kidding? That’s not even my handwriting.”

“It’s not unprecedented for a different handwriting to show up in this kind of process. I understand you might think it’s unlikely, but penning something unconsciously is not unheard of. It’s called ‘automatic writing’ or psychography and it’s mostly discussed in spiritual circles. The activity is not an accepted scientific fact, but the few scientific minds that have tackled the issue believe that it is a result of the subconscious taking over, and hence classify it as a manifestation of the ideomotor effect.”

“Ideomotor effect?” I asked confused by the technical terminology.

“That’s a psychological phenomenon wherein a person’s thought or mental image brings about a seemingly reflexive or automatic muscular reaction,” said the professor.

“Ok, I’m not sure I follow but, for the sake of argument, let’s say I wrote the note and can’t remember doing it,” I said. “What are the Akashic records and Einstein’s gedankenexperiments? And what in the world is that little Z-looking doodle next to the A in the signature?”

“Let’s start with the last question first. The doodle seems strangely familiar, like I’ve seen it before, but I rather not speculate at this time. Let me check my facts and I’ll get back to you on that one. As for the gedankenexperiments that’s just the German term for thought experiments, or in other words, experiments that are carried out in the mind only. Albert Einstein used them to work out complex ideas.”

“And the Akashic records?” I asked.

“I left that one for last on purpose. First of all you must know that there’s no scientific evidence that the Akashic records are real. They are said to exist in a different dimension and supposedly contain all the knowledge in the universe. Those who believe in them claim that one can access its information through somewhat mysterious, or shall we say, mystical means. It’s a concept present in both the Theosophical and Anthroposophical way of thinking. Interestingly enough, supporters of their existence claim that some of Einstein’s public expressions suggest he was able to tap into this invisible field of information.”

“During his thought experiments?” I asked.

“That would be a fair conclusion, yes.”

“How do believers access the Akashic records? What type of mystical means do they use?”

“They believe the records are accessible all the time,” he said. “To access them one has to enter a higher state of consciousness and clear the mind of  all distractions.”

“That sounds easier said than done.”

“Actually, it might be easier than it sounds if you use directed meditation. First you think about that which you want an answer to. Then get comfortable and ease your mind of all distractions. Focus only on your breathing. By doing so you’ll clear your mind of the stream of thoughts that we tend to entertain constantly. While focused on your breathing, feel yourself becoming one with the universe around you. Once you are fully merged you’ll be connected to the universal field of knowledge and the answer to your question will find its way to you.”

“Just like that, huh. Professor, I’m a Creative Director, my mind is an endless stream of ideas. There’s no way I can shut it down for a minute, much less for the time it would take to do all that. I don’t see how I’m ever going to access those Akashic records?”

I felt a little overwhelmed by the information and the blackout episode had drained me for the day. It was close to 7:00 o’clock in the evening so I started to wrap up my consultation. I thanked the professor for all his help and he took a picture of the note to see if he could decipher the doodle next to the ‘A’ in the signature, and then I left.

Later that night he would call me with his findings on the matter claiming that it couldn’t wait till the morning.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 13: A Not So Silent Night

.Image of the night visitor behind the pipe smoke

The smell of the pipe tobacco smoke woke me up and I saw ‘Einstein’ in my room. He had brought with him the blue light wall again and seemed to be pondering something regarding the information flowing on it.

“Vee haffe access to zo little of vat zee unifferze has to offer,” he said. “Can you imagine zee amount of knowledge vee could acquire if efferybody had access to all zee informazion in it?”

“Could you please put out the pipe,” was the first thing that came out of my mouth.

“Oh, I’m zorry, old habit, zey didn’t haffe zee smoking concerns zey haffe now ven I vas young you know.”

“Why are you here? It’s…”, I said while looking unsuccessfully for my iPhone to check what time it was, “…whatever time it is, it’s too early. In some places being up at this time is considered uncivilized.”

“I’m an old man Ray. People mein age don’t sleep much.  Maybe it’s becauze vee are clozer to zee end of our stay in zis dimenzion and unconsciously vant to get zee most out of zee time left. But I digress; I’m here becauze I understand you haffe delved into mein equazion. Vat haffe you found zo far?”

He wasn’t going away so I rubbed my eyes and got up, being careful not to step into the blue light wall again. I opened my laptop and showed ‘Einstein’ what I had done so far.

“I started by envisioning a universe without time,” I said. “No time means that the equation for speed would be a division by zero; an operation that produces and undefined result.”

I shared with him a simple example that I had found on the internet which explained very plainly why a division by zero is considered undefined. He looked at me like I was nuts explaining such simple concepts to him but I asked him to bear with me. I actually told him that I needed to go through all that because, unlike him, I was no Einstein.  A remark he found particularly amusing. Anyway, this is what I showed him:

If  8 ÷ 4 = 2, then 8 = 2 x 4

But if we substitute 4 by zero then we would have:

8 ÷ 0 = what?  and thus 8 = 0 x what?

It’s impossible to have a number that multiplied by 0 would give a result other than 0, so the equation 8 ÷ 0 = what?  has no answer.

“After establishing that, I went to the formula for speed,” I said as I showed him what I had done next:

r = d ÷ t  where r stands for rate of speed, d stands for distance and t is time.

If time doesn’t exist, then t becomes zero and the formula produces an undefined result

r = d ÷ 0 = UNDEF

“This led me to a significant finding about time’s effect on our universe, and here’s where your equation E=mc2 comes into play. If we substitute time in the speed of light by zero,” I said as I showed him the math behind my calculations,*  “we end up with a result like this:

m = (E ÷ 1) x 0

Mass equals the amount of energy multiplied by zero, hence mass equals zero:

m = 0

In the absence of time there is no mass! Or in other words, matter needs time to exist!  That’s what time adds to the other three dimensions.”

“And if we go back to the equation and start with zero mass,” I continued, “we end up with a result that can be interpreted as an infinite amount of energy. A concept with many interesting ramifications both scientifically and philosophically.”

‘Einstein’ looked at me and smiled.

“You might be on to zomething here Ray. I vould haffe to do all zee complex math to be zure, but I like vere you’re going vith zis. It might effen haffe an impact on zee zearch for an explanazion on vy zee graffitazional forces in zee cosmos are zee vay zey are, effen though zere’s not enough phyzical mass to zupport zem.”

His words energized me and somehow I stopped feeling tired.

“I’m going to go now but I’ll leaffe zis here,” he said pointing at the blue light wall of information, “zere’s no better vay to access zee Akashic records. But pleaze don’t step into it.”

He left and I found myself alone with what amounted to the greatest source of information in the universe. I wondered if it had Google…

 

*I didn’t include the full math in this chapter but, if you’re interested, you can check all of it here as part of an essay the author wrote on the subject.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 14: A Day for the Records

Image of the blue light wall through which Ray accesses the Akashic records

I sat on my bed watching the wall of light for what seemed like half an hour. The endless stream of  information was overwhelming, and I had no idea how to use it. My bafflement was interrupted by the iPhone’s wake up alarm. It had fallen on the floor and I was about to pick it up when I noticed the blue light of the wall flickering in unison with the alarm’s rhythm. That jump-started my mind and I began to connect the dots:

“Einstein handwritten note mentioned this wall of light was an energy field. The surge of energy in my iPhone brought up by the alarm had an effect on it. Over at the Professor’s, Matthew the ferret was able to feel the energy radiating from my brain. Crap! I had to go telepathic on this thing…”

The challenge was troublesome but I decided not to throw in the towel. However, before embarking on a crash course on telepathic communication with a very slim chance of success, I thought it would be a good idea to take a leak first. Once relieved I went for a much needed cup of coffee and while waiting for the coffeemaker to finish its thing I connected some additional dots:

“The first time the blue light wall appeared in my apartment, ‘Einstein’ had said he hadn’t created it but that he accessed it constantly. A short while ago he referred to this energy field as the Akashic records, and in his note he had asked me to look up his thought experiments. Professor Murdock had told me that some of Einstein’s public expressions suggest he was able to tap into the Akashic records during those experiments. Because of their nature, thought experiments lead to an increase of brain energy. The wall of blue light reacts to surges of energy in its vicinity. Bingo! No need to go mental! Increasing my brain energy should give me access to the records. Time to go back to the thought experiment approach.”

I moved the most comfortable chair I owned to the room and sat on it. Closed my eyes and drew a picture in my mind of a universe without time.

It was an energy field that extended infinitely in all directions. The energy was completely inert for it had no frequency. This must be what existed before the big bang. The big bang then must have been the moment when time came in contact with the original three-dimensional field of primordial energy. Time allowed movement, thus the energy came alive and matter began to appear.

I felt my brain unlocking. Answers came up fast and effortlessly. I figured that was the result of accessing the Akashic records. It was exhilarating! I couldn’t stop inquiring:

“So if what time does, as the fourth dimension, is add matter to three-dimensional space, then it can no longer be considered a path through which we move into the future. The nature of time is redefined as the dimension that allows the future to materialize. It adds a whole new perspective to phrases like ‘I need time to do this’. Of course you need time! But not the way it’s been thought about before. If you’re traveling from New York to Paris you need every step of the way to materialize in order to reach Paris. The trip becomes a construction process that requires approximately seven hours to be completed. Without time, the moment of you in Paris would not materialize. This would change what we measure as time. But new units of measure are not needed; it’s a matter of using the current ones in a new way. Instead of using them to measure the amount of time, we would use them to measure the length of the materializing process. For example, the materializing process of going from New York to Paris on a plane is seven hours long.”

The way the mind works when in tune with the Akashic records turned out to be intoxicating. I couldn’t stop. I had lost track of time when Bob called around noon.

“Hi Bob,” I said trying to sound as normal as possible.

“Hey buddy, are you OK? You haven’t been at the office for the last two days and we have this big presentation on Monday… I’m starting to get worried. What’s going on?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine,” I said trying my best to sound convincing, “there’s really nothing to worry about. I’ve been in touch with the creative team and everything is where it should be from my creative standpoint. The materials look fantastic; everything will go great on Monday. The time machine concept will blow their minds, you’ll see.”

“The presentation is not what worries me; we have a great team. It’s you bro. I can tell a mile away when you are not well. Talk to me Ray.”

“I’ll tell you, but not now; I wouldn’t be able to give you any details now anyway. Trust me, I’m dealing with something that requires my undivided attention and it doesn’t involve anything illegal nor life-threatening.”

“Listen, whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, I’ll respect you request for privacy, but remember that I’m here for you. Whatever you need…” he said.

“Actually, there’s one thing,” I said, “please cover for me at Monday’s presentation. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. Just tell everybody that I’ve got the flu.”

“Will do buddy,” he said. “Good luck on whatever it is you’re doing and I hope some day you’ll explain to me the whole thing.”

We hung up and a short while later I got a call from Gina.

“Hey Gina, how are you doing?”

“Fine how are you?”

“I’m OK. Have you talked to Bob?” I asked.

“No, I’ve been on meetings out of the office all day and I’m taking the afternoon off to pick up the kids at my sister’s. Why do you ask?”

“Oh nothing. It’s just that I talked to him a short while ago and asked him to tell people I had the flu… which I don’t… Anyway, I thought you were calling because of that,” I babbled.

“Raymond Young, have we met?” she said lightheartedly. “I babysit nieces and nephews, not grownup coworkers. I was calling to check your ETA tomorrow.”

As implausible as it might sound, I had completely forgotten about the BBQ get-together with Gina and her niblings. It took a couple of long seconds of awkward silence for all the forgotten information to come back so I could pull an answer out of thin air.

“I was thinking around 11:30,” I said. “Does that work for you?”

“That would be perfect. Oh and take care of that flu,” she said chuckling.

After hanging up I took a shower and went out to get all I needed for the BBQ. When I got back and saw the blue glow in my room I felt like a junkie in desperate need of a fix.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 15: ‘Twas The Night Before YO! Bowl

The urge of going back to the Akashic records was overwhelming so I decided to set an alarm on my iPhone to avoid losing track of time again. I assigned it a never-used-before ringtone as a mnemonic for my date with Gina the next day. Yes, at that moment my fear of  forgetting the whole shebang again was very real.

I sat once more in front of the blue light field and closed my eyes. This time my mind automatically jumped to the topic of time travel:

“If time is what adds matter to the three-dimensional field of energy defined by the other dimensions, and getting to Paris from New York is a process that requires seven hours of materialization(1), then it is fair to say that we have been traveling in time all our existence. Granted, only in the present time and only in one direction: towards the future, but in time nonetheless. What we really want to accomplish when we colloquially say, “travel in time” is actually to step away from the present and travel outside of time.”

In the previous session I had concluded that only energy could exists in the absence of time. Therefore, traveling outside of time would only be possible if we eliminate all matter. Only pure energy constructs could travel from one point to another in three-dimensional space outside of time. And since there’s no speed because there’s no time, then the ‘trip’ becomes something different from what we are used to in terms of movement. So, how can one ‘move’ when there’s no speed? A voice in my mind urged me to look for something in our material dimension that could resemble the nature of a three-dimensional field of pure energy in a timeless environment. Thanks to the Akashic records the answer came fairly fast.

“The closest we can get to a field of energy devoid of time in our reality is the universe of our mind. It is filled with thoughts, ideas, emotions and memories. Each one of them occupies a position in the energy universe that is our mind. And going from one to another amounts to travelling through a space of pure energy. And how does one do it? By shifting focus. That’s how one goes from point A to point B in an energy environment unaffected by time.”

Then I pictured in my mind an entity of sentient energy traveling outside of time. The interaction with the universe would be quite different from what one experiences in a physical body:

“The energy entity would merge with its surroundings. Once it becomes part of the energy field, going from point A to point B becomes an instantaneous event. One guided simply by a shifting of its focus.”

But how can one consciously navigate that field of energy?

“The answer lies with the existence of our mind’s all-energy universe in our fourth-dimensional world. The transformation into an energy being doesn’t change the fact that within us resides the all-energy universe that is our mind. When transformed into an all-energy being, the only thing that will remain the same is our mind because it already was in the energy state needed. Our mind has been managing our physical body throughout our life and, since it remains the same in the transformation, it will continue to do so with our ‘new’ energy self. The key to moving as an energy being in an energy field is our ever-present mind.”

I don’t remember much more from that night other than the fact that I fell asleep on the chair until the need to empty my bladder woke me up in the middle of the night.  After taking care of business I continued my slumber on the bed. The iPhone alarm woke me up at 8:30 AM. The mnemonic worked and I started to get ready for a day with Gina and her niblings.

I took a long shower and afterwards, while looking at my reflection in the mirror to start shaving, I realized I looked like shit, with dark circles under my eyes and everything. Few hours of sleep will always do the trick. I Googled how to get rid of them fast and went with the cold compresses. They softened the Beetlejuice look but you could still see a remnant of the dark patches. That had to do.

When I got out of the bathroom and saw the blue light field again, the urge to connect came back. I fought it and proceeded to get dressed. The standard uniform for such a special day was my Notre Dame replica football jersey with jeans and tennis shoes. It was still early but Gina lived about an hour away from the city, and I wanted to be on my way with time to spare. So after gathering all the BBQ stuff I had bought the day before, my journey to suburbia got underway.

What I had no idea at the time was that this was not going to be your garden variety YO! Bowl.

 

(1) For all the details read Chapter 14 – A Day for the Records

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 16: Bowl Time Revelations

Dreamlike image of Ray's ecounter with the Timekeeper during the Notre Dame/Stanford game

The drive to Gina’s home was almost uneventful. On the way I realized I had forgotten to buy some beer for the adults to chase down the BBQ food so I stopped at a convenience store and bought a six-pack of one of those fall seasonal craft beers that looked like it could do the job. The checkout lady, who had an uncanny resemblance to one of the alter egos of Melissa McCarthy’s character in the movie ‘Spy’, looked at me funny and said:

“Honey, are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine. But I know I look like crap.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. I mean you being a customer and all, but yeah, you look like you could use some rest… and maybe some chicken soup too.”

“I’ll do just that. Have a good day… oh, and thanks for caring,” I said and the lady’s face beamed with a smile.

I finally made it to Gina’s and as soon as she opened the door the first words that came out of her mouth were: “Ray are you okay? You look like shit.”

“And a good day to you too,” I said.

“Sorry I didn’t mean to… you know, it’s just that I haven’t seen you since Wednesday morning and you look like the rest of the week piled up on you,” she said apologetically.

“Don’t sweat it, my bathroom mirror and the checkout lady at the convenience store agree with you. I just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Still having those weird dreams you told me about?”

“Sort of… but today is all about indoor camping, BBQ and some Notre Dame/Stanford football, not about weird dreams. What do you say we get this tailgating going?”

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “Chris, Mel, come on over. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Christian and Melanie were Gina’s niblings. He was six years old and she was four. I was surprised at how well mannered they were. Gina introduced us and Christian extended his hand to shake mine while saying: “Nice to meet you.” In my mind I questioned whether this kid was for real. Melanie was a little shy so she just said hi while grabbing Gina’s thigh.

Gina led the way to the kitchen and helped me unpack all the goodies. I had brought hamburgers and hotdogs for the kids and some Italian sausage and ribs for the over-21 crowd. The ribs were the unpack-and-heat-up kind; I wasn’t such an accomplished BBQer. As it turned out, the kids had had hot dogs the night before and little Melanie loved ribs so the menu was set at one hamburger for Christian, ribs for everyone else and Italian sausages as appetizers for Gina and me. I added one cheeseburger for me simply because I loved them, although I didn’t know how I would be able to eat all that stuff.

The BBQ in Gina’s backyard was in excellent condition and everything turned out delicious. I hurt my sore tongue with a hot sausage but I solved that with a cold brew. After eating to our heart’s content, Gina and I sat down to watch the game. I recall watching the opening kickoff and not a single down after that. Without warning I found myself in the company of the Timekeeper in the place he called the Anteverse.

“Welcome back to my domain,” said the strange creature over the constant humming that permeated the featureless place(1).

“What is this place… this Anteverse?” I asked.

“It’s the place that exists an instant before your present,” said the Timekeeper. “It exists between the construct of the past and the energy of the future.”

“What do you mean by the construct of the past?”

“As you have discovered, time is the universal materializer, and that means that what you call the past is a solid construct. Something like frames in a movie with each frame being a moment in time. The moments exist forever, unaltered, created by the effect of time on the three-dimensional space of energy, and spilling over into your present. See, you are actually living ‘in the past’. Everything that surrounds you is a remnant of the past; an existing past construct that spills over into your ‘now’. An that ‘now’ is the edge of creation.”

“So, if the past is a physical construct, then it has mass… Can it be visited?” I asked.

“Once materialized, the past stays there for anyone to visit. Like a museum with every instant of existence frozen in an endless stream. Its mass affecting the present from an unseen source.”

The Timekeeper went on talking about how the theoretical dark matter is in actuality the mass of the past, but I was more concerned with the nonstop whirring.

“What’s with the constant humming?” I asked.

“That’s time interacting with the energy of the future,” said the Timekeeper. “What you call the present is a materializing process and the humming you hear is the sound of time creating your immediate future.”

I had many questions and had lost track of time when a distant voice started to warp the Anteverse.

It was Gina pulling me out of the Timekeeper’s domain.

“Ray, Ray wake up. Hey Ray. Earth calling Ray. Come in Ray…”

“What… oh crap I fell asleep. Is it half-time already?” I asked groggily.

“The game’s over Ray, you slept through it. I tried to wake you up earlier but you were sound asleep and snoring like a bear in the middle of winter. I think there’s a video of you sawing wood in YouTube now. Sorry, the kids’ idea, and I thought it was pretty funny.”

“Oh well, I hope it goes viral. Who won anyway?” I asked.

“Not Notre Dame,” said Gina grimacing. “What was your bet with Bob?”

I took a deep breath and started to feel the pain of what was coming to me. “Must go to the office all dressed up in red and every time somebody mentions my name I have to say I went to Notre Dame because I wasn’t good enough for Stanford.”

Gina burst out laughing and said: “I’m going to have so much fun that day.”

 

(1) For more on the strange Timekeeper character go to Chapter 6: The Timekeeper, and Chapter 8: Time Out… Sh*t!

 

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 17: Postgame Jam

Chapter 17 of Serial Blog "Time Matters" at imaginationgate11.com

I was more upset about having fallen asleep at Gina’s than by the game result. She was very gracious about it but still… not the best way to move a relationship forward. Felt like a total loser and apologized beyond what would have been reasonable. Once certain she truly wasn’t upset about it, I got down to telling her about the Timekeeper dream I had while sleeping on her couch.

“What about the energy thing of the previous dream? The one with the Timekeeper shouting ‘time out’,” she asked.(1)

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. After you reminded me that  speed was distance over time, I went over to Professor Murdock’s…”

“Professor Murdock?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, he’s an old college professor of mine.”

“The old man with the bow tie at the office the other day?”

“The one and only. How did you guess?”

“I saw him leaving YO! and asked Tanya. She was the one who told me about him being an old professor of yours.”

“Oh, OK… so anyway, he gave me some additional information and I did the math. Once one takes time out of the Einstein equation it becomes clear that… are you ready for this? Time is the universal materializer.”(2)

“Hold it Ray, this sounds a bit familiar. Oh yes, I think I saw it in an episode of The Big Bang Theory.”

“No you haven’t, and the reason I know that is because I’ve seen every single episode of that series at least twice and that has never been in any of them. But it’s funny that you mention the Big Bang because that’s precisely the moment when time started interacting with the infinite energy field that existed before.”

“I’m a woman with above average intelligence…”

“You’re brilliant,” I interrupted.

“Whatever, but right now I listen to you and I can’t help but feel like Penny listening to Leonard on the show. Did you tell the Professor about this stuff?”

“Not yet, because to be honest, when I went over to his place he got worried about me maybe needing… professional help.”

“Maybe you do Ray. You’ve been working your ass off without a break for quite some time now. That takes its toll on the body and the mind. I hear you talking about recurring dreams with weird characters and, how shall I put this… unusual ideas about time… and I worry about your overall health.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I said deciding to keep the rest of the story to myself.

The conversation was interrupted by a call from Bob regarding the game’s final score and my side of the bet. We agreed that I would pay up the following Friday because I needed time to get me a pair of hipster red pants and red Converse tennis shoes. I was actually buying some time to try and get my life in order. After hanging up, Gina and I chitchatted about other stuff for almost an hour and then it was time for me to go home.

The drive back took a lot longer because of a car pileup on the expressway. Traffic was slow but my mind was spinning way beyond the speed limit. I felt like I was losing it. For the first time I dreaded getting home and facing the blue light wall, so the snail pace was a welcomed circumstance; it allowed me to do a lot of thinking.

Two things kept popping up in my head regarding the latest Timekeeper dream. The past being a physical construct and its potential relationship to the hypothetical dark matter was one – Professor Murdock had mentioned dark energy(3) before; I wondered if the two concepts were related. And the other one was the representation of the present as a materializing or construction process. All of a sudden, the notions of past, present and future, which I had always seen as a set of three mostly homogeneous stages of time, turned into three very different ideas: the past became a physical construct, the present a materializing process, and the future an energy field.

When I added the previous night’s musings on time travel, I came to a standstill. Within that train of thought I had come to the conclusion that one could travel outside of time in energy form(4) only. And that, since one is traveling in a timeless energy field, there’s no speed, and what takes the place of movement is a shift in our mind’s focus. In the dream the Timekeeper said that one could visit the past. But how can one travel to the past if it wasn’t composed of energy. That was a conundrum I needed to explore further.

The signal for a new voice message sounded off on my iPhone. I remember thinking it was odd because no calls had come in. I voice activated the retrieval of the message and almost hit the car in front when I heard an unmistakable electronic voice saying: “Raymond Young, you’re invited to look at my time travel experiment of 2009.”

 

(1) For the details of this dream go to Chapter 8: Time Out… Sh*t!

(2) Ray reached this conclusion in Chapter 13: A Not So Silent Night

(3) The Professor mentions it in Chapter 11: The Professor Calling

(4) Read about these musings in Chapter 15: ‘Twas The Night Before YO! Bowl

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 24: Mind Over Matter

Dreamlike image of man running in the clouds

I opened my eyes to find myself back in the Anteverse.

“You’ve been a pretty busy man,” said a voice behind me.

I turned around and came face to face with the unearthly Timekeeper.

“The materializing process associated with your ideas has been pretty interesting,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Although ideas are immaterial, pure energy constructs if you will, they do produce actions in the material realm.”

“I don’t understand…”

“As you lay in a hospital bed, people are reacting to your ideas and furthering the concepts you’ve brought forth.”

“But how can that be? I haven’t…”

“Your friend the Professor has been making inquiries. And those queries have prompted other minds to question their previous beliefs. Your ideas on time have taken on a life of their own Ray.”

“But ideas are energy, as you said; how do you come in contact with them in the materializing process?”

“Ideas shape the present. Many times in the human experience matter is shaped by the ideas that first envision its form.

“Some people believe that what happens in the mind is not real, but the truth is that everything that transpires in the energy universe residing in your brain is as real as the material world around you. Even the most outlandish ramblings of a mad person are real because they exist in our reality. The only difference between the energy constructs within our mind and the physical ones around us is the presence of matter in the latter. But matter is not what makes something real. If such were the case, then we would have to conclude that feelings like love, pride, and gratefulness don’t exist.

“This is important because it would be erroneous to believe that your interactions with Einstein didn’t happen because they only occurred in your head.”

“But the doctors…” I interrupted.

“The doctors gave you their diagnosis and I ask you: did it say that nothing happened?”

“No of course not, it said that I had some sort of psychotic disorder.”

“That’s right. And that diagnosis certifies that the events, which transpired inside your mind, did in fact occur. As I said before, everything that happens in your mind is real. And by definition, so are dreams like this one. If you take only one thing with you from this experience let it be to keep on dreaming Ray. Dreams define the shape the world takes in the future. Einstein once said that imagination is a preview of life’s coming attractions and if so, then I would say that dreams are the trailers.”

As the Timekeeper talked I felt myself being pulled away from his realm back to the hospital bedroom. It was dark but I could see Gina sitting next to my bed reading something on her iPad. There was a knock on the door and a nurse came in with some pills for me to take.

“What time is it?” I asked Gina as soon as the nurse left.

“Close to midnight,” she said.

“This might be the medications talking, but I could have sworn I saw you leave with the others once visiting hours were over.”

“I did, but just to pick some stuff in my car, and then came back up. Talked to the head nurse about staying with you for the night.”

“I thought you didn’t babysit coworkers,” I said with a smirk.

“Ray, Ray, Ray you can be so dense for some things. Of course I don’t baby sit coworkers,” she said and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

 

EPILOGUE

Commencement day at Princeton University some years later… Gina and I are walking hand in hand through the beautiful campus.

“I really liked the main speaker’s speech,” said Gina.

“Absolutely. I read some of his work on the matter of time and found it fascinating. It’s amazing what brilliant scientific minds can do with science-fiction concepts. They always find a way to make the impossible a reality. He deserved the Nobel,” I said.

“And look at you, with a Princeton degree.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I said kissing her.

“Well, you’re a Tiger now.”

“An Irish Tiger,” I said.

“That sounds German… Irishteiger,” said Gina smiling.

On a bench close by, an old man lowered the newspaper he was reading, looked at me and winked. I could have sworn he looked exactly like Albert Einstein.

 

T  H  E     E  N  D

 

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