Chapter 63: February 17, 1983

I’ve begun collecting all the research that I’m going to build off of to make my machine, although much of it will be published over the next fifteen years. There are several that have already been published, and so I’ve set my sights on getting those, so I can start to expand off of them.

Without the internet, gathering the sources is going to be difficult, and in order to not attract too much attention, I’m going to multiple libraries, and having Judy, Elliot, and Melanie request some of the libraries help locate them. I’m feeling paranoid but with the amount of things that have already played out differently than I expected, I don’t want to find out that some government agency is monitoring this kind of activity.

Elliot refuses to confirm or deny any of my causes for anxiety, which I suspect means he doesn’t actually know. I can’t afford to have someone deliberately interfere, or raise any other suspicions when my incredible gambling luck, or stock purchases prove to be great decisions.

I sent Judy to the Boston Public Library to request the American Journal of Physics volume 30, for an article entitled “‘Meta’ Relativity”, as well as Physics Today issue 22 for an article called “Particles beyond the Light Barrier.” as well as a few other Physics publications including articles about tachyons. I also gave her a small list of physics publications without those kinds of articles, and told her to grab a couple of physics book at random.

Melanie went to the MIT library, and copied everything that she could regarding the astrophysics of the Earth’s rotation and revolutions, the expansion of the universe, and the trajectories of all the moving parts. Here isn’t here a minute later, and never truly will be again, and so when we’re accounting for thirty years of expansion and revolution and rotation, a calculation to the billionth decimal off could mean a time traveller leaves from Framingham Massachusetts and ends up freezing to death instantly in the vacuum of space billions of miles away.

Luckily, from our experiments before I went back in time, as well as my own safe existence here in 1983, I know it’s doable. But now I have to figure out how, and actually do it.

Elliot went down to the Harvard library, and asked about a few publications regarding the philosophy and theory, which would help me to establish some the concepts around how to navigate time travel theory. 

This is where it gets a little loopy for me. Because I have already traveled, I should have an idea of exactly the model of time travel we’re dealing with. Is it a new timeline, was I always here, has everything I’ve done always been the case? Or is it technically impossible for me to change anything? I have some ideas, between my own existence, and Sam having come back to see me, and Elliot being here. But there are still large holes in all of it for me. It’s entirely possible Sam is from a second timeline that I’m currently creating, which isn’t the exact one that I grew up in. It’s possible that Elliot is from a third.

I don’t need to answer all of these questions, it’s not necessary for my purposes, but just ignoring them whole cloth seems wildly irresponsible as well. So, instead I will read and learn as much as I can to try to figure all of that out.