A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 115: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ak ML ae One THE SCIENCE OF TIME-TRAVEL 115 imagine the almost infinite number and variety of events which have occurred in the little space which I am at the moment occupying ; and what will happen here, at other moments still to come. A million happenings in this crowded space, with only “time” to keep them separate! Looking back over time-travel stories which I have written, I recall that often I advanced scientific explanations of how my very scientific hero accomplished his time-travelling. All these theories to the best of my knowledge were original with me. And now I[ have been asked to gather them into one connected exposition. The science of time-travel!’ Not an easy subject, even for an imaginative writer! The human mind feally encom- passes new ideas of matter and space, but somehow, it balks at time. I think Albert Einstein made some remarks about that —something to the effect that nature has so placed ts, so endowed us if you will, that our whole conception of time is of necessity false. The laws of matter and space and time certainly are imperfectly understood, The truth about the material universe certainly is very different from what our five senses tell us of it. But our minds may go be- yond that. So I would have you conceive that the basis is energy. This “energy” may with equal validity be called by another name—‘‘change.” The static does not exist insofar as we have been able to discover. The Universe changes; no smallest particle of it is the same from one instant to the next. The living cell expands, divides to reproduce itself, runs its course, dies and decays. But it is not lost, merely it changes— turns to other forms, liquid and gas. Its existence goes on, reconverted. Rocks once were gas, then liquid, then solid. Eroded by ‘water and wind they break powder, wash away, blow away. But still they exist returning again in other forms of other things: All nothing but change—nothing but energy. The atoms, the very electrons, protons, neutrons, of all matter in the material universe are building up or breaking down. Never are they inett. Changing always—nothing but manifesta- tions of energy. And matter itself? Agitated molecules, atoms and all those other infinitely tiny things to which we have given names— in their essence they are nothing but energy! There is no inass of actuality as our senses seeit to perceive it. Nothing is solid. Already physicists have dis- covered that when we probe to the very ultimate smallest particle of matter, it proves to be nothing but a vortex, a whirl- pool. Of what? Of nothingness! Or if you like, a whirlpool of what we are pleased to call electrical energy. Of such unsubstantial stuff our universe is built! And our senses trick us to call it solid. A whirling blade tricks our sight—it looks like a solid disc if it whirls fast enough. A stream of water coming out of a pipe tricks our sense of touch into thinking it is solid, as solid as a bar of steel—if that water moves fast enough. All nothing but movement. Nothing but energy! S° MUCH for matter, as we conceive it to exist in space. I would have you conceive now what I might call the physi- cal aspect of time. Think of it, for in- stance, as an all-pervading etheric fluid filling what we call “space.” Picture it strewn in a line, from the Beginning to the End. By the limitations of the human mind, instinctively we conceive ‘everything in terms of tangibility. So, to make it easier for tis, we picture tims now as a fluid, shaped so that it could lie in some monstrous. pipe, perfectly straight, of in- conceivable length. The Beginning and the End bound it. This time-fluid I con- . ceive to be at rest—the one thing of all things which does not move nor change, Imagine then, that the time-fluid is progressively of different physical charac- ter along all its length from the Beginning to the End. A different pressure, or vibratory rate; or température. Anything you like, Let us say hot at the Beginning, cold at the End—with every gradation in between. Into this, at the Beginning, the catalyst—the Divine Thought if you like—is plunged. It is hot, to match the time-fluid. Because of that, let us say, it can remain there. But it cannot spread as it is, for time, there at the Beginni will not tolerate anything cooler. It will not permit any change at all. Nothing can happen at any single point in time. And so the catalyst cools infinitesimally (Please continue om page 129)