The Last of Linear Time Confinement for Lance Clarke
linear adj. Arranged in or extending along a straight line.
time noun The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.
Lance Clarke was, simply put, overwhelmed by having to endure decades of mono-directional linear time, which holds this universe’s laws of physics of all manners (most notably the temporal) in its unrelenting grip. In a nutshell, such an order of mono-directional linear time forced every pleasurable moment or event, without exception, to end sooner or later—though way too much sooner, as far as Lance’s half-empty glass was concerned: “While the negatives seem to go on and on and on,” he’d cynically, bleakly claim, “the positives I experience are way too finite!”
In Lance’s layman’s perspective, ‘Time’ is actually representative of matter and energy in motion. This universe exists while confined in a ‘present’ with relatively very limited access to the past (i.e. basically only knowledge of most of its occurrences and physical content). ‘Time’ can, in some manner, be perceived as a means (perhaps the only means) of comparison or of relating to matter and energy in motion. And time, in our limited existential plane, can only occur in a mono-directionally linear state.
Thus, soon enough, Lance realized that a sense of sentient timelessness, even if only subconscious sentience as is attainable while one’s dreaming during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep; or that while one’s temporarily clinically dead and ensconced in a “near-death experience,” or that when one experiences permanent, physical death before experiencing a fully-sentient, extra-dimensional “afterlife”—during which, he faithfully believed, genuine timelessness is experienced to the fullest extent possible: the past, present and future are all literally experienced simultaneously, however mind-boggling such a concept may likely be.
The closest that Lance ever came to albeit-inadvertently manipulating his own sense of consistent, orderly mono-directional linear time was when his mental faculties were sufficiently stimulated—typically through his consumption of caffeine—resulting in an increase in the flow of his adrenalin and especially his thoughts. He noticed that, more often than not, when he’d suddenly and totally unexpectedly look at the seconds arm on his watch, it appeared to him to be dead still for about 2 - 2.25 seconds, “before it then appeared to just start moving at the ‘normal’ rate, as though the wind-up spring stopped and then began functioning again” (to him quite an amazing experience to which he has yet to hear/meet even one other person able to relate).
The concept of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity had some relevancy to this strange effect, Lance decided, although it did not involve “relativity” in the typical sense of very-extreme, physical-motion speed; rather, it was solely “relativity” in regards to the ‘speed of thought’: “One’s perception of how quickly, or how slowly, time is passing can be relative to or dependent on how fast or how slow (via adrenalin flow most likely and thus thought rate) one’s mind is proceeding,” Lance postulated, regardless of the total absence of any physics-instruction course-credit, post-secondary schooling on his resume.
What Lance failed to note, however, is the apparent contradiction between his “strange experience” with time as measured through his observation of and perception of his watch’s seconds arm, and Einstein’s theory involving relativity. Einstein postulated that the faster a person travels, say, away from Earth as fast as Einstein claimed is theoretically possible (just short of that of all electromagnetic radiation, including light, approximately 185,000 miles per second), the slower time passes for the traveler, relative to that for us back on Earth; thus, while only four years will have passed for the traveler, 50 years will have passed for those of us back on Earth.
Meanwhile, some folk well-known to Lance theorized on their own: Does it not make more sense that time back on Earth, relative to the traveler, actually would have passed by at a lesser rate, perhaps even very much less so, than did time for him as he travelled so incredibly fast at just below par with light speed?
Actually, Lance retorted, “No. My time, with me in my ‘bubble’ (if I may use that analogy) travelling just below par with light’s speed, relative to time back on Earth, actually should and would slow down to about only one-thirteenth of that on Earth. So I’d say, from that perspective, Einstein is likely quite correct.”
Perhaps the most conspicuous ‘contradiction’ involving Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Lance continued in closing the discussion, is Einstein’s (apparently mathematically based) postulation that one would require an infinite amount of energy to travel at the speed of light (and, of course, that beyond)—which is officially approximated to be the very finite velocity, especially from a universal or even a galactic perspective, of 185,000 miles per second—because light, Einstein insisted, travels at an infinite speed. As far as Lance was concerned, it all clearly sounded like double-speak. “A truly infinite speed,” Lance maintained, “should, by most thinkers I’d at least imagine, enable a person or spacecraft with exactly just that—the potential to travel at a literally infinite speed, in the very sense that one might imagine: To get to any one point in the universe from any other one point, literally instantly. As simple as that. As quick as a spontaneous thought—a timeless trip.”
After a great deal of thought, Lance decided that he’d, in a sense, “cheat time” by being placed into a computer-controlled coma. This was something he found that he did not fear; if his close, med-student friend, Peter Czervicek, performed his monitoring and maintenance competently, Lance could be given the precise amount and purity of a new, though still not government approved, coma-inducing drug while hooked up to a high-tech, computerized electro-encephalogram (e.e.g.)—all of which would allow Lance to remain in an indefinite REM-sleep, comatose state, via a neural frequency and electric-signal or “brainwave pulse feedback” precisely controlled and regulated by computerized e.e.g. And when he’d dream during the entire 24/7 that he’d be in the coma, which was virtually a certainty, Lance was more than confident that he could rely upon his uncompromising positive/optimist nature to keep his timeless coma-dream-state an existence very much for which worth paying big bucks.
“I really cannot remember the last time I had anything other than a pleasant dream—in fact, very often great dreams—during my REM sleep. So keep me under the [coma-inducing] drugs for as long as my money lasts,” Lance emphatically urged Peter. “It’s an amount that should last about three decades, at our agreed-upon rate.”
Peter agreed upon the very reasonable rate of pay from his generous pal, for not only managing the technical aspects of support but also to remove and re-insert used and new total parenteral nutrition (TPN intravenous) feed, catheter and colostomy bags. Also a part of the deal was for Peter to ensure a healthy, quite willing and readily available substitute just in case Peter was suddenly, unexpectedly removed from the scene.
While comatose, Lance would be kept alive at a very low metabolism, breathing and heart rate; indeed, his entire body was to be hooked-up to various tubes, machines and computer wires in one of many abandoned warehouses located within a formerly active industrial area of the city.
Not surprising, on the day Lance was placed into the controlled coma, after full calculations involving all aspects of the procedure and maintenance were finalized of course, he couldn’t stop thinking about the movie The Green Mile, in particular the scene in which an understandably despondent aboriginal-American death-row inmate talks to the head-guard as the inmate is having the hair shaved off of the very top of his head so that the electrocution scheduled for that night should occur routinely. The inmate asks the head-guard, a very descent and atypically compassionate person (especially for a death-row functionary), if he thought that perhaps if a man redeems his soul by being sincerely remorseful for his crime(s) before he was executed, that his spirit may be allowed to return to the most pleasant and joyous time of his entire life and experience that most special time for eternity (presumably without any possibility of becoming bored). The head-guard, well-played by sympathetic actor Tom Hanks, sensitively replies to the inmate that as far as he knows, the hereafter may just be the very kind of timeless, euphoric, spiritually-conscious existence for and about which the inmate rather sadly, nervously hoped and mused.
Frank G. Sterle, Jr.
White Rock, B.C., Canada