TIME AERIALS: A Time Travel Diversion
A dying man's life flashes past as science fiction stories created by his panicked brain. Trying to make sense of its imminent demise, the brain spins tales of monster flies, and time machines, and weird factories, and a library of unreachable books.
A time machine stands like a Christmas tree in a small terraced house. Death pulses, driven by evolution, create a super mind. An exploding universe resets. Future assassins hunt a time-machine detective. Time-leaking horror flies wreak havoc in a species-ending apocalypse. The Mind Library opens its doors. A time virus barrels into the past and loops. Books mutate and words run like ants. The Numerology Machine stresses reality as it ties names to destinies. And finally, zombies stumble outside your window. And you know that zombies can't be real... Philosophical science fiction that rips your world apart.
A time machine stands like a Christmas tree in a small terraced house. Death pulses, driven by evolution, create a super mind. An exploding universe resets. Future assassins hunt a time-machine detective. Time-leaking horror flies wreak havoc in a species-ending apocalypse. The Mind Library opens its doors. A time virus barrels into the past and loops. Books mutate and words run like ants. The Numerology Machine stresses reality as it ties names to destinies. And finally, zombies stumble outside your window. And you know that zombies can't be real... Philosophical science fiction that rips your world apart.
TIME AERIALS (the start of the novel)
The giant time grinder juddered into orbit around the blue planet. The scene looked peaceful, but space had roughened, and nature was misbehaving.
An Extirpator robot watched, waiting for the right moment. It gave the grinder a nudge, and the mass of porous rock accelerated into the atmosphere. The grinder’s vast blunt head burned orange, and a tail of blue streamed behind. The juggernaut of oil-drenched stone screamed into the sea like a flying island, punching out clouds of steam. It struck the seabed, and mineral fragments, water, a mist of blue oil, and pulverised life-forms exploded out.
The ashes of the instantly dead scattered across the sky, creating a looming memorial. And the grinder powder, blown in the high winds, cleansed reality. Earthquakes rocked the land and sea, and tsunamis flattened jungles. Huge outgassings wrecked the climate, and terrible plagues spread. The roiling oceans lost their shining monsters, and the blasted plains lost their running birds. And the dusty sky lost its giant bats. And the cities lay smashed, and insects swarmed in the predator-free air.
The battered blue planet recovered, and after millions of years, it again spawned highly sentient creatures. They spread across the continents and grew civilisations. They wrote symphonies, fought wars, built factories, and launched space probes. And the world became interesting again.
In the cramped front room of a small terraced house, a man stared at a time machine.
The murmuring time field tugged at Harry’s thoughts, making his skin tingle, and his heart pound, and his soul ache. The last of the blue oil smoked from the Keystone’s surface, and the murmuring became a scream. The sixty smaller aerials, dotted throughout his home like glass bonsai, cried out as the array aimed at seventy-five years ago, when the place was empty, just before his grandfather had bought it.
Harry tapped the pocket of his suit and felt the flask. He held back a tear, grabbed the arms of his chair, and leant forward. His head crossed the focal point, just in front of the tree-like Keystone, and the time field seized his brain. He fought back, teeth bared and eyes scrunched. He sucked in crackling air from the unstable now, and then he sighed. His left arm fell limp as he released an imagined handbrake on an imagined hill, and he shot forward, tobogganing down the years, until the past struck, like a half-buried rock, flinging him into the Keystone.
Harry stood still and blinked. The ghostly Keystone’s lower branches penetrated his belly and tingled red like Christmas morning. Its upper twigs brushed his face like a lover’s lips, impossibly light and teasing. “Welcome,” the aerial whispered, “this is all you’ve ever wanted.”
Harry twisted his head to the left. His wooden chair had gone, and the old-fashioned settee looked new. The large oil painting of highland cattle shone in its golden frame, and the animals peered up at Harry as if he had just disturbed them as they drank at the river. And for a moment, just a moment, the water seemed to flow and burble. Harry stared ahead, past the aerial, at the other wall. The two woodland scenes gained depth and glowed and smelt of autumn. He twisted to the right. The delicate figurines on the mantlepiece, frozen in eternal courtship, looked polished and bright and formal.
Harry frowned and shook his head. He breathed in coal dust and his mind cleared. The house, he realised, should be empty...
continue reading TIME AERIALS
The giant time grinder juddered into orbit around the blue planet. The scene looked peaceful, but space had roughened, and nature was misbehaving.
An Extirpator robot watched, waiting for the right moment. It gave the grinder a nudge, and the mass of porous rock accelerated into the atmosphere. The grinder’s vast blunt head burned orange, and a tail of blue streamed behind. The juggernaut of oil-drenched stone screamed into the sea like a flying island, punching out clouds of steam. It struck the seabed, and mineral fragments, water, a mist of blue oil, and pulverised life-forms exploded out.
The ashes of the instantly dead scattered across the sky, creating a looming memorial. And the grinder powder, blown in the high winds, cleansed reality. Earthquakes rocked the land and sea, and tsunamis flattened jungles. Huge outgassings wrecked the climate, and terrible plagues spread. The roiling oceans lost their shining monsters, and the blasted plains lost their running birds. And the dusty sky lost its giant bats. And the cities lay smashed, and insects swarmed in the predator-free air.
The battered blue planet recovered, and after millions of years, it again spawned highly sentient creatures. They spread across the continents and grew civilisations. They wrote symphonies, fought wars, built factories, and launched space probes. And the world became interesting again.
In the cramped front room of a small terraced house, a man stared at a time machine.
The murmuring time field tugged at Harry’s thoughts, making his skin tingle, and his heart pound, and his soul ache. The last of the blue oil smoked from the Keystone’s surface, and the murmuring became a scream. The sixty smaller aerials, dotted throughout his home like glass bonsai, cried out as the array aimed at seventy-five years ago, when the place was empty, just before his grandfather had bought it.
Harry tapped the pocket of his suit and felt the flask. He held back a tear, grabbed the arms of his chair, and leant forward. His head crossed the focal point, just in front of the tree-like Keystone, and the time field seized his brain. He fought back, teeth bared and eyes scrunched. He sucked in crackling air from the unstable now, and then he sighed. His left arm fell limp as he released an imagined handbrake on an imagined hill, and he shot forward, tobogganing down the years, until the past struck, like a half-buried rock, flinging him into the Keystone.
Harry stood still and blinked. The ghostly Keystone’s lower branches penetrated his belly and tingled red like Christmas morning. Its upper twigs brushed his face like a lover’s lips, impossibly light and teasing. “Welcome,” the aerial whispered, “this is all you’ve ever wanted.”
Harry twisted his head to the left. His wooden chair had gone, and the old-fashioned settee looked new. The large oil painting of highland cattle shone in its golden frame, and the animals peered up at Harry as if he had just disturbed them as they drank at the river. And for a moment, just a moment, the water seemed to flow and burble. Harry stared ahead, past the aerial, at the other wall. The two woodland scenes gained depth and glowed and smelt of autumn. He twisted to the right. The delicate figurines on the mantlepiece, frozen in eternal courtship, looked polished and bright and formal.
Harry frowned and shook his head. He breathed in coal dust and his mind cleared. The house, he realised, should be empty...
continue reading TIME AERIALS
TIME AERIALS: insights and spoilers
The time aerials are metaphorical neurons (brain cells or nerve cells). Neurons in the brain branch with their dendrites (Greek, dendron tree, SOED) contacting other neurons, making the connections that (somehow) give rise to consciousness (we think). No one really knows the nature of consciousness, and it's one of the abiding problems in philosophy. The hard problem, according to David Chalmers in the philosophy of consciousness is accounting for awareness arising from the material world. In the book, the main character's brain cells are externalised as potted bonsai-like time machines, distributed through the old, terraced house that belonged to his grandfather (grandfather chosen as a nod to the Grandfather Paradox). The various shapes of the aerials echo the different morphologies of real brain cells. They also look like wild-growing TV aerials, capturing invisible signals from the atmosphere (some people think that the brain receives consciousness, like a radio receives talk and music).
The Grandfather Paradox is revisited in The Time Machine Detective and is resolved (at least in fictional logic) by the lag between the action of the killer and the killers removal (in the altered history, the killer is never born). This allows the killer (the grandchild in the Grandfather Paradox) to live long enough to kill his grandfather before snuffing out of existence. The detective is investigating mysterious happenings caused by such short-lived, virtual assassins from the future. You can guess his fate...
The book moves on, tackling common themes in science fiction. But at the end, it hints that everything is a terminal review (life flashing past a dying brain). It's never made explicit, but it does tie everything together. And the aerials are reaching back in time trying to hold on to those last, precious moments of that dementing brain's life.
TIME AERIALS
The time aerials are metaphorical neurons (brain cells or nerve cells). Neurons in the brain branch with their dendrites (Greek, dendron tree, SOED) contacting other neurons, making the connections that (somehow) give rise to consciousness (we think). No one really knows the nature of consciousness, and it's one of the abiding problems in philosophy. The hard problem, according to David Chalmers in the philosophy of consciousness is accounting for awareness arising from the material world. In the book, the main character's brain cells are externalised as potted bonsai-like time machines, distributed through the old, terraced house that belonged to his grandfather (grandfather chosen as a nod to the Grandfather Paradox). The various shapes of the aerials echo the different morphologies of real brain cells. They also look like wild-growing TV aerials, capturing invisible signals from the atmosphere (some people think that the brain receives consciousness, like a radio receives talk and music).
The Grandfather Paradox is revisited in The Time Machine Detective and is resolved (at least in fictional logic) by the lag between the action of the killer and the killers removal (in the altered history, the killer is never born). This allows the killer (the grandchild in the Grandfather Paradox) to live long enough to kill his grandfather before snuffing out of existence. The detective is investigating mysterious happenings caused by such short-lived, virtual assassins from the future. You can guess his fate...
The book moves on, tackling common themes in science fiction. But at the end, it hints that everything is a terminal review (life flashing past a dying brain). It's never made explicit, but it does tie everything together. And the aerials are reaching back in time trying to hold on to those last, precious moments of that dementing brain's life.
TIME AERIALS