Time Rifts

A terrestrial astronomer may reckon that the outburst on Nova Persei occurred a century before the great fire of London, but an astronomer on the Nova may reckon with equal accuracy that the great fire occurred a century before the outburst on the Nova.

They stand about, little misshapen men with huge heads. But their heads contain only brains. They had machines that could think—but somebody turned them off a long time ago, and no one knew how to start them again. That was the trouble with them. They had wonderful brains. Far better than yours or mine. But it must have been millions of years ago when they were turned off, too, and they just hadn’t thought since then. Kindly little people.

Time’s all mixed up. It’s as if the universe were the rim of a great wheel, whirling through Time. As if, somehow, we have left that rim, shot inward along different spokes whose outer ends are different years, far apart, and reached the wheel’s axis where all the year-spokes join. The center point of the hub, that doesn’t move at all through Time, because it is the center. Where there is no Time. Where the past and the present and the future are all one. A land, in some weird other dimension, where Time stands still.

But this is the seventeenth time one of these birds has turned up. What’s the secret?

“My subject,” he began, “is the science of astronomy. I am going to be frank. In my land and time . . . uh . . . that is—” Guy frowned. He had warned him against any mention of that insane delusion of his about having been catapulted back from a future age. But Cambray recovered himself. “What I meant is that there are far greater masters of this science where I come from. I am familiar only with the skirts of this knowledge. Yet what I have to say will be novel to you, and will doubtless upset many of your present concepts.”

“Great Snell!” he gasped. “So that was it! I ran into a temporal snag!”

“Who are you talking about?”

“My husbands.” She shook her head dolefully. “To find five more difficult men would be positively Martian.”

Got himself killed is right. Eleven-fifteen at night in Times Square—the theaters letting out, busiest time and place in the world—and this guy shows up in the middle of the street, gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he'd never seen them before.

Research has to be along practical lines! The trustees demand it!

Motor trouble! Must go down! According to my reckoning I must be close to my ancestral home in West Croyden . . .

— Zaraz — odparł wolno, nawet nie ruszając palcem. — Dzisiaj jest wtorek. Jeżeli ty jesteś środowy i do tej chwili we środę jeszcze nie są naprawione stery, to z tego wynika, że coś przeszkodzi nam w ich naprawieniu, ponieważ w przeciwnym razie, ty, we środę, nie nakłaniałbyś już mnie do tego, abym ja, we wtorek, wspólnie je z tobą naprawiał. Więc może lepiej nie ryzykować wyjścia na zewnątrz?

translate

“Just a minute,” I replied, remaining on the floor. ”Today is Tuesday. Now if you are the Wednesday me, and if by that time on Wednesday the rudder still hasn’t been fixed, then it follows that something will prevent us from fixing it, since otherwise you, on Wednesday, would not now, on Tuesday, be asking me to help you fix it. Wouldn’t it be best, then, for us to not risk going outside?”

Because the communists are realists. They never risk a war that would hurt them, even if they could win. So they won’t risk one they can’t win.

Well, isn’t it obvious, Manning? The war did happen. We didn’t get back with our warning.

Given the power to alter the future, have we the right to use it?

Steve, you know what this is, don’t cha? It’s a time-space warp.

Today is December 7, 1941. I’m sure we are all aware of the significance of this date in this place in history. We are going to fight a battle that was lost before most of you were born. This time, with God’s help, it’s going to be different. . . . Good Luck.

Is it all ready? Right. Come on then. Back to creation. We mustn’t waste any more time. They’ll think I’ve lost control again and put it all down to evolution.

Navy owes me 40 years back pay.

‘Honeymoon in time,’ indeed. Why? Is it that your woman is jealous of your time trips? Don’t be an idiot, Tasco. You know that ship’s not built for two.

Think how much power you’d need for all that!

Zero pollution, maximum ozone shield: Something tells me we’re not in New Los Angeles any more.

Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.

Well, my first thought is this assassin, from the past. He stumbles through a tear in the space-time continuum . . .

He discovered that Einstein’s quantum theory was essentially correct and that he could stabilize a traversable wormhole through space-time using exotic matter with negative energy density.

At 11.15pm, Forrest was passing through Times Square, New York City, heading for his apartment on West 51st Street during Times Square’s busiest time, theatre letting out time. Carving through the crowds, wishing he’d gone a different way, Forrest noticed a man in his thirties standing in the middle of the road.

My best guess is that it was some sort of vortex or a wormhole.

Smoke billows into a bright blue sky scarred by a rip in the heavens—what we’ll come to know as . . . The Rift

And that, fellow members of St. Paul’s, is how our Fellowship Hall got sucked through time and space and why today’s potluck will be held in the basement instead.

When your dad was younger, he had a best friend, a boy called Red. Red disappeared down that well.

Alise: You died ten years ago.
Darius: I was born ten years ago.

All five Machines had limitations, but the hardest to surmount was what travelers call the Long Four Years. Wormholes only opened for people who remained within twenty kilometers of a Machine for at least 1,680 days.

You were right—the photograph, it was me, it . . . It will be. I don’t know how, but it will.

Sir, I know it’s a doorway and all, and we gotta send everything back there, but in training they did not really tell us what happens if we don’t.

Plus, if you shut down the time machine and never came into the future, you would never do all the great things you have already done in your life. We wouldn’t be standing her right now if you went back in time and convinced your parents to dismantle the project.

When you change your destiny, you can never change it back.

We need you to fight beside us if we stand a chance at winning this war. You are our last hope.

Luister, jongedame: De mensen denken al eeuwen dat ze leven in het einde der tijden. Het zou handig ziln als je jezelf ietsje minderbelangrijk maakt.

translate

Listen, young lady: People have thought for centuries that the end of time is drawing near. It would help everyone if you showed just a little less . . . self-importance.

The egg yolk path glistens in my periphery and my fingertips tingle. Once the rift closes, we go back. Back to before the rift ruptured. Back to when Joseph first moved in and before we . . .

Helena: Well, for starters, you’d have changed the course of history.
Indy: That supposed to be a bad thing?