Catalyst: Index
This is the index to 'Catalyst', first published on G+ a couple of years ago. A new piece of the story will be published here every couple of days.
Copyright Dark Aelf, 2021
Invocation & In the Beginning
Part One: Labrinth
Part Two: Chas
Interlude
Part Six: A New Earth
Personae
- Catalyst: A young boy projected into the future in 1975.
- Labrinth: (Stephanie Fenner Childs, b.16 February 1947) A weapons expert and former diplomat at the Australian South Vietnam embassy, presently seconded to Deep Space Station 41 on the shores of Island Lagoon in South Australia. In 1975 she is projected into the future (2015) to recover Catalyst.
- David: Son of Chas and Dawn. Lives in a converted boat shed on his parent's beach front property near Nowra on the East coast of Australia. Found and employed by Labrinth.
- Patroclus: David's cat.
- Mission Controller Benson: In charge of Deep Space Station 41 during disastrous time travel tests at the Australian Temporal Research Facility.
- Cannonball (Chas): Second in charge of Deep Space Station 41.
- Dawn: Chas's wife.
- Mary: David's wife. In some time lines they are divorced or separated. She has brothers in all the time lines.
- Shalaye: Guardian
- Adria: the Guardian's daughter
- Bavole: the Guardian's companion, sometimes described as a cat.
Background essays and Acknowledgements
App1: Heartlines
This story is about a couple of
things, including heart-lines - but not the heartlines of popular culture icon.
In popular culture, a heart-line is
one of the creases on your upturned palm. Lines vary from person to person.
Although fixed at birth they only change through misadventure or the ravages of
time. The lines are studied like tea leaves, stars and the entrails of small
animals. Some think that they can be a guide to past and present love. Such
readings go hand in hand with concepts of immutable fate and time.
Love in popular culture is often reduced to the romantic love of one person for another, generally a woman for a man. But the concept has a far broader scope, including the love of a mother for her child, or for the faithful for their god. When we stretch the idea, some who get to this point conclude that love is just an illusion. Or perhaps it is just a pale jewel, some bauble for the young to chase. Some ask “Does it make any sense?” And then it starts again, lightly brushing against another’s mind.
There can be little question that
the subject of love is often quietly put into a basket. Perhaps the same bucket
we put all complicated things or those that with no scientific explanation.
Maybe the same basket we placed the love of a mother for her child, or for the
faithful for their god a moment ago. But in times of personal crisis, when we
reach in and take it out and hold it to the light to seek real understanding,
how then can we tally it with a reading of a heart line at odds with our
circumstances. Our heartline might be trouble free, while all around are awry
finances, crying dependents, and broken washing machines.
Akin to all manner of
pre-scientific lore, the subject of heart-lines is full of chaff and hardly
warrants serious consideration. If it adds a layer of anxiety and distress, it
is worse than useless.
Still, some practitioners have
skills that defy explanation. Sensitive to the person they sit with, they
sometimes adapt folk wisdom hidden within the dross to challenge the present.
Here the reading can mobilize those stuck in the morass of indecision or by the
collapse of trust.
It is then that a heart-line
becomes real and starts to burn: a catalyst for future action.
App2: Time Travel
We are all time travelers.
We are all equipped with basic
navigational facilities: the ability to experience the passage of time and to
anticipate coming events. We are not good at predicting coming events, and we
do not learn particularly well from past events, even though we could with a
bit more practice, perhaps be better at both.
Given our practical experience in
time travel, it comes as a bit of a surprise that the discussion of time travel
itself is relegated to the stuff of pure fantasy. At one level this is entirely
understandable, those lost in imaginings about what might have been or what
might be can become lost and unproductive. Still, there is a proper side to
imagining alternative futures, and we value those who can set out strategies to
accomplish or avoid certain future events. Less appreciated is that advice that
traces alternative past events.
Bertram Chandler’s novel Kelly
Country (1981) was such an attempt, tracing an imagined timeline from a
successful Kelly outcome at Glenrowan into a modern day history that, while
mere fiction, illuminates realities and possibilities that we sometimes find
inconvenient.
Here, I have approached the subject
from a different perspective. I have assumed that time has some of the normal
characteristics we find in n-space, such as velocity and acceleration. I
imagine two things flow from this concept: temporal velocity and time quakes.
Time travel into a realm of future possibilities becomes a straightforward
matter of giving a person temporal velocity. I imagine that the velocity is
relativistic between observers and observed, both continue to experience time
as an ordinary rate although the observed move away from the observers at a
different temporal velocity.
In such a world time paradoxes do
not occur. Instead, events happening in real time (with the observer) are
merely promulgated through time into the possible future. Changes are
manifested by time quakes. Time quakes can occur as a result of the actions of
the observed in real-time or the cloud.
It works like this. A person sends
an observer into the future. The observer in the possible future transmits the
results of a lottery draw back into the past. The receipt of the information
changes lots of things that send a shock into the temporal probability cloud,
the time quake impacting on the observer.
A general theory of events
Intuitively we know that there are
pivot events - where the actions of a few can have a dramatic down-stream
effect. Some of these were waiting to happen and would have occurred sooner or
later (the gradual increase in wealth outside wartime, the development of new
technology under the influence of competition). Others are unique, in the hands
of a few and could not capable of replication (examples here might be the 1975
Australian Dismissal or, less apparent, the successful development of scramjet
technology, or the Indonesian military reaction to Australian entry into East
Timor).
In the short term, maybe individual
events are unlikely to impact on individuals, the same people would meet, fall
in love and have/have not kids. But over time, enough variability would be
added to lead to different outcomes: nice Mrs. Brown down the street won the
lottery and moved out, and new noisy neighbors moved in, bringing forward your
plans to move interstate.
We are often told of the dire
consequences of not doing stuff. Some of these are real problems, but we seldom
go back and test these, instead, sensibly, concentrating on the future.
So, in this story, I have tested
changing two pivot events, both real, and imagined the down-stream consequences
of the change.
Time Line One
In the first timeline, I have
imagined what would have happened if the Whitlam Government had not been
dismissed in December 1975. This is an old event, tortured to death by partisan
Australian commentators in histories and telemovies. Time has shaped the
downstream consequences in interesting ways. The recent death of Malcolm
Fraser, often portrayed (perhaps correctly) as the villain in this drama, was
lauded recently (again, maybe rightly) by his political opponents as a man of
insight and compassion.
The dismissal was well in hand at
the time this novel starts; only a catastrophe could have precluded the events
unfolding as they did. The calamity is supplied in the story with the further
chaos created by the cat Patroclus distracting the power crew from dealing with
a power surge. In turn, the surge initiated the accidental launch of a weapon
carrying missile on Northern Perth. The novel hints at the abandonment of Perth
and the re-establishment of the western capital in NW West Australia near Derby
or Kununurra.
If the dismissal had not occurred,
it is most unlikely that world economic imperatives would have been impacted.
International events would have continued to unfold as there have, the Global
Financial Crisis would have followed the Asian financial crisis. However, the
political cycle in Australia would have been disrupted leaving the Labor party
in power for many more years, changing the balance of social and private
outcomes in ways that are exciting subjects of speculation. I have assumed the
emergence of centralized health and education, a movement into the non-aligned
group of nations, the development of regional and disappearance of state
governments, a partial union with New Zealand, the establishment of a republic
encompassing Australasia and Pacific island nations. I have imagined that this
has come at the cost of burgeoning debt. I have imagined this led to a return
to conservative parties (Howard) in 1995 and a precipitous intervention in
south Indonesia by the new conservatives leading to a short war with that
country. The need for escalating defense spending coupled with disruption to
mining export channels leads to the retention of industry protection policies
and the protection of failing industries (the Australian airline Ansett, which
collapsed with the withdrawal of Government support in real time in 2001). A
return to Labor government in the wash-up of war (Beasley) sees Australia
exposed to significant GFC impacts and the need to engage in fiscal austerity
policies by 2010 (otherwise avoided by strong trade links with China in real
time). So the Australia of 2015 in this alternative timeline is a sizeable
centrist state, bedeviled by defense considerations, massive government debt
but whose people enjoy significant social support.
None of the events I have imagined
here were beyond contemplation at any time and, except for war with Indonesia,
all remain on the table.
Time Line Two
In the second timeline, I have
imagined what would have happened had early testing with scramjet technology in
Australia been pursued, at the time.
In timeline 2, initiated by the
return of Benson’s crew, I imagined specific world-wide ramifications,
involving rapid technological innovation. The novel identifies a series of
outcomes, including the reforestation of the central Australian deserts and the
development of new agricultural areas, the creation of a vibrant space industry
and the development of militarized digital industrial base. Important in the
plot is the creation of a Base AI, which actively utilizes time technology to
develop and protect itself.
Unlike the first timeline, these
developments all have international ramifications. I imagine that the cooling
of the Australian deserts would tip the world climate into a minor glacial
period and that the intensive farming of the desert area releases a toxic mix
of viral agents. Both possibilities have, in the past, been suggested in the
scientific literature as vulnerabilities. They have known risks that cannot be
ruled out, but for which it is impossible to give a meaningful assessment.
The militarization of digital
technology and the subsequent failure to develop a civil base for this
technology is a common and known problem.
In the novel it is reflected in two
ways: the failure to develop civil digital technology (sorry no Apple computers
and Windows 10 is not going to happen) and the inability to advance the
development of technology within the confines of a culture of secrecy (even the
military will not have iPhones). The civil choice remains between vinyl and
cassette tapes. Defense is still using micro-dots and Chinese restaurants.
App3: Currendelella - the Elven path
I once retold the first people
story of how some dry seeds, blown before a tempest, provides a way to the
stars, Currendelella. When your time comes to leave for the stars, do not waste
time arguing among yourself about who should lead the journey (which might end
in peril in the Magellan Clouds or the Unseen River). Instead, trust in the
path made by the seeds when the wind blows.
‘Elven path’ conjures an image of a
shimmering, almost unreal, path. Those who come upon an elven path may be or
become lost. But not all that wander them do so accidentally.
Overthinking some descriptions can
strip them of magic. ‘Elven path’ is one of those. So my intention here is not
to define the term nor seek to explain it. Instead, I wanted to bring together
my thinking about paths and remember how I tripped over the notion, one cold
day, in Massachusetts.
I was writing a letter to my
parents.
“At the bottom of the hill, a little
distance from the old farmhouse runs the road. Washington and the continental
army marched past the farm along the road before Cook ‘discovered’ Australia
and named the great south land “New South Wales.”
From the farmhouse, I can sit and
watch the community roll past along the road - an amazing variety of American
vehicles (jeeps, Toyotas, Chevy’s, Pontiacs, hummers) at a bewildering array of
speeds. As a bonus, because the town police station is not far distant, the
faster passers-by often travel in the company of a black and white town police
car, its lights flashing and sirens blaring.
In the best of Tolkienian style,
the road is called Main Street. Unlike the main streets that dot Europe, all
the main streets in Massachusetts lead to Boston rather than Rome. The habit of
calling the main street of a town ‘Main Street’ is an ancient practice observed
throughout Europe and New England. Initially, only significant roads leaving a
capital city were gifted with a different name. The ancient Appian Way (Via
Appia) led from Rome to the heel of the Italian peninsula in 312BC while the
Via Aurelia from Rome to France in 241BC. Even so, the Via Appia was known
merely as Main Street in Brundisium. The modern practice of gifting the more
complex pattern of roads within a town or city with fictive names probably
dates to the method in the Republic of naming streets after the Censor who
constructed the way, or repaired it.
In Boston, the Main Street that
passes the farmhouse is known as Massachusetts Avenue. At one stage, this was
the road that led through the state and beyond, to New York and the other New
England cities. But today, it has become a bit of a backwater, overshadowed by
the massive Massachusetts Turn Pike, the haunt of the state police.
The Pike cuts through the forest to
the south, far distant from this sleepy town. Today, those who travel on the
Main Street seldom go far from home. A historian started his history of Spencer
(written in the 1890’s) with the warning that nothing of any importance had ever
happened here - even going so far as to apologize for the lack of witches and
slaves. But this was false praise based on the humor of the time and the dream
of splendid isolation. For in the earliest days of the district, during English
rule, witch prickers included Spencer in the spring hunt and slavery was not
uncommon. Far from being devoid of history, the town was replete with small
factories (shoemakers and wire drawers), was the home of the Howe family (the
inventors of the sewing machine and spring beds) and any number of people slain
through love or lack of it. But even so, long-distance travel was as uncommon
then as now.”
Starting from the modern, the
tangible, I was struck by the contemporary need to construct and then name our
roads. Almost as an afterthought, I stumbled over Tolkien’s descriptions of
trails and paths in Middle Earth, reminding me that paths were initially
established by usage and geography rather than a bulldozer. While the shadow of
the modern world may drown some of the ways in darkness, traces may still be
seen everywhere.
I was particularly taken by
Tolkien’s descriptions of the elven path through the dark forest of the
Mirkwood (The Hobbit, Queer Lodgings). I remember getting on a bike one day,
and leaving the safety of the Main Street and starting to explore the
underlying paths and passages all around me. Near the old farmhouse in
Massachusetts are the forests which have now reclaimed the flat farmland once
attached to it. Through the swampy northern forests are the old paths. Back in
Australia, near my farmhouse in Palerang, is part of an ancient trace, one the
young blacksmith Alexander Ross followed to his tragic death a century ago.
Having, started to write about the modern road, I found myself enjoying the
passages of the old ways, a fascination that led to the Natchez Trace and one
of the Australian equivalents, the Yuin Trace.
There is magic in those paths. In
fall or autumn, as the season turns and the forests lose life hue, the places
can become surreal, beyond beautiful. It is then that the old paths start to
shimmer. Walking or running along them can lift you out of yourself, briefly
settling into the footprints of those who went before. But, because the paths
are organic, representing sensible passages, traveling along the tracks can
tell you things that might not otherwise be obvious.
I had learned about and followed
the paths of the first people when scouting for firefighting. Two images still
reoccur to me. The first, in turning through the high bush and coming upon a
mountain-side vista untouched by the modern world. I stood, suddenly realizing
that here I could see exactly what those who had come before had seen: a
hundred years ago, or twenty thousand. The second, a day or so before the
Canberra firestorm, when in following one of the shimmering paths, with the
bushfire to my back, I came to a cliff edge and saw the city of Canberra below
me, close in arrant disregard of the danger.
More recently, in briefly touching
on the life of a settler who once lived nearby, I was able to revisit some of
the old paths, sometimes on a borrowed stock horse or, just as often, on foot.
“The First People created permanent
walk-ways, the Yuin Trace, through the forests bordering on the high plains
from the mountains to the West, the Brindabellas and Tidbinbillas, through to
the Eastern coastal areas. For tens of thousands of years, the paths making up
the Trace were protected by Law, remembered in Dreamings, described in maps
drawn on rock and sand, and kept clear through regular burning and use.
The paths were later recorded on
the silks used by early European surveyors to draw their little maps, along
with the names of waterways and other features, including vegetation and
mountains. Much of the Trace was early designated as a road reserve, and with
some exceptions, remain out of private ownership.
Early European settlers used the
Trace for travel. Through the mountains, it was often the only viable path. The
Trace bisects rivers and streams at fords, reasonably safe for crossing save
when flooding rains fed the waterway flooding rains fed the waterways.
Eventually, gravel and tarred
roadways were constructed on the ancient path. Today, we travel these paths,
seeing many of the same vistas as all those who came before us, for tens of
thousands of years.
Some of the more wealthy graziers
attempted to restrict public use of these new public roads across their
holdings. Some corruptly exerted political pressure to install many public
gates along the way (requiring users to dismount to open and close the gates)
and then providing alternative roadways with no gates over land with little
farming value (land frequently flooded or across hilltops). Others persuaded
authorities to build new roads that benefitted private interests rather than
those championed by more practical men, like Mick O’Connell.
In the late 1880’s, public anger
was spurred on when the wealthy owners of Foxlow Station installed five gates
across the public road through the property. When the gates were declared
public gates, a petition with 200 names on it protested the change. A local
correspondent to the Queanbeyan Age complained: “A daily mail will run shortly,
and the mailman has to get down every time, which should not be; besides, it is
extremely awkward for those who have spirited horses, as there is now, and
likely to be, great traffic from Bungendore to the Flat.” Public indignation
did not secure a better outcome - the public road was so inconvenient to use,
it was eventually shut, and an alternative (but more difficult and longer)
track provided up into the hills to the East.
Large landholders, who provided
most taxation revenue for public works, also resisted funding improvements to
roads, and especially bridges, which were very expensive and were prone to being
washed away.”
In writing about the remarkable
collaboration between Sub-Inspector Wright and the aboriginal policeman and
tracker Sir Watkin Wynne I traveled one of the more difficult stretches of the
path.
“He paused, remembering the sheer
rocky cliffs, the silven cascades of the mountain streams, the cool mountain
air. He remembered being there with Sir Watkin Wynne, retracing that venture a
couple of years later, the old man teaching him the names of the birds, the
plants, and the cascades. He could still point to traces of the passage of the
bushrangers, made years before.”
Finally, in reviewing the old
Eddas, I have looked at the notion of the two great constructed paths - the
Bifrost and the Gjallarbru. The Bifrost is a work of high technology, shimmering
and beautiful, like a rainbow, burning in the sky. But it can fail, and does,
under the weight of the horde from lower of the nine worlds in the final days.
The Gjallarbru is less known, a covered or woven bridge glittering with gold,
to travel on it you must survive a challenge of the maiden Modgud.
So, my conception of a shimmering
path started to firm as something that was hidden and yet could be stumbled
upon or accessed by those who knew - fey, dangerous and fragile, a shortcut to
great benefit.
This meaning fits my idea of a
pathway nicely into the future or the past.
App4: Your very own time machine in ten minutes Theory crafting
We all watched with wonder, the
pictures of Pluto from the NASA New Horizons probe.
The probe was unique for lots of
reasons, but perhaps one of its less well-known characteristics is that it has
been propelled at such velocity as a result of the slingshot from Jupiter, that
(as predicted by the theory of relativity) it is now in the future. We are in
its past. So, those photos of Pluto have come to us from the future.
It is not far into the future (the
probe would need to get close to light speed to achieve that), but New Horizons
is enough in the future so that telemetry and communications depend on
observers taking the slight time shift into account.
All well and done, but what
practical application does this have?
The probe is heading away from us,
but let us consider two different cases:
1. Assume that the probe, at some time in the
future, is retrieved and returned. While now motionless on the floor in front
of us, it remains in the future. What we have in front of us is it, as it was,
in the past.
2. Assume that the probe slows dramatically
and makes a loop back to Earth. As it flies close to the Earth, for reasons of
safety, NASA destroys it at time T in location XYZ. Note that just before
destruction the probe has survived time T and left location XYZ without a
problem.
Now, the probe is a pretty unique
case because it has a lot of velocity packed into it, but it has also pushed it
outside the parameters of the wave that determine ‘the present’ within our time
frame.
When we look a little broader than
ordinary physical objects, iron steel and wood, we find some subatomic
particles that can be given velocity far more than the New Horizons probe. Some
theorists suggest that here lies the possibility of time travel. Others suggest
that instead of velocity, we might deploy the force of gravity. By such theory,
some have started to design elaborate machines with injectors, linear
accelerators, and black holes. Which are all a bit outside our budget and time
today?
Uncertain of the Certainty?
Before going any further, let us do
a quick environment scan.
Why do we want to go into the
future, anyway?
There are heaps of excellent
reasons. It is fun knowing what new music is going to come out next week, who
will win the tennis or what numbers are going to drop for the lottery. It
sounds more than fun; it could be profitable.
But what if the future is uncertain?
What if the future we might
experience never happens? Let us go back to case 2 above. There is no certainty
that the future that might be observed will eventuate. The only certainty is
what happens as the current time wave fixes the present into the historical, unalterable
past.
So, while it might look and feel
real, the future is merely a temporal probability cloud, always being capable
of being collapsed or altered in the present. More than that, and one might be
forgiven for thinking this a subtle point, but there is only one temporal
probability cloud. One reality and one temporal probability cloud: although the
probability cloud might be being stretched in all sorts of directions.
Still, there may be lots of good
reasons to peak into the future, although fun and profit might no longer be
primary motivations. We try to create the future and spend a lot of time
designing increasingly sophisticated models of the future. Some of the models
are very accurate; others are junk. Weather forecasts fall into the latter category.
So you want to play with Magic?
Not fazed by uncertainty? You still
want to go into the future, and you are tapping your feet and reminding me that
the ten minutes is almost up and we have yet to put a single nail into the
first piece of wood.
Consider the first case above. Each
of us has been made from the stuff of stars: some bits incredibly old, already
pre-stressed with incredible forces at the center of gravity wells or
accelerated by the death throes of our old home. Through velocity or gravity,
bits of us are already embedded far into the future. Bits of the temporal
probability cloud are all around us.
You are already your time machine.
Ok, they did not give me a manual
either, and I have never been sure what purpose the red button serves. We all
have to work it out as we go along.
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