All Done For The Day

You would, in that first second, of reverse time travel, be 460 metres away (in a direction relative to the equator) from where you were, and then, you would also be 18.6 kilometres away (relative to the sun), and, an estimated 136.1 kilometres away (relative to the centre of the galaxy). So adding that up, and deliberately not including ‘relative to the expanding universe’ concept, you are in that one second of reverse time travel, approximately one hundred and fifty five point one six kilometres away from the previous seconds place in space. So if you wanted to go back just five minutes in time, you would need to move the entire galaxy (we didn’t count the universe movement) approximately 46,548 kilometres back. That would take some doing. Of course every major investigation tries to speed up the process and complexities, by suggesting ‘folding space’ and using a ‘worm hole’ to connect the two points. Lets face it, most people can’t even fold a dish cloth, or a sheet. How would they expect to fold space?

The amazing thing about space and time is to measure it you have to make it relative to something. Where you are, to where you had been. So I realised, many, many years ago, sometime after the Mr Walsh incident, that time travel and space were crucial to consider. I wrote a short story of a man achieving time travel and failing to carry a small decimal point in his calculations and ended up materialising in the very middle of a newly constructed wall. Dead centre of it, you could say. I also understood, you couldn’t time travel in a direction opposite to the motion and rotation of the earth, otherwise you would very well end up inside it at some point. Getting confusing isn’t it?

But, sitting in Mr Walsh’s class and waiting for the afternoon to come to an end, to learn my real fate (at the hands of my father no doubt), time was certainly relative, just to the ‘space’ I was sitting in. I was feeling seriously stressed, the other students must have known something had happened, and I was sure they were focusing their glances and thoughts at me. Two hours dragged by soooo slowly. Then it was finished. The final bell rang for the day and the class continued writing the last part of the chalked text from the blackboard. Mr Walsh encouraged us to ensure we had written down the actual required homework, which he always left in the lower right hand side of the blackboard till the following day. Just to prove that what he had expected to be done should have been. Very effective method that (we even tried rubbing it out one day, when we cleaned the board, only to find it back when we came into school that next morning. He wasn’t going to fall for that). He then asked all the students to put away their books, pencils and rulers and clear up the desk tops. As the students complied, Mr Walsh then stated, ‘Mr Dwyer, you may clean the blackboard.” And continued to the rest of the class, “Good afternoon everybody” The students then replied “Good Afternoon Mr Walsh”, before standing and filing out to their bags (It used to be like that. Polite students acting appropriately). I approached the blackboard to clean it.

(Continued tomorrow)