Story Pt. II: Relativity 101.

Picking up where I left off...since I really have nothing else to write about, and since Gummy has been demanding to see what the future is like, and to prevent war from breaking out, *coughGUMMYcough*, I've written a little more for my story.

I deliberately didn't set any specific publishing timelines (ie "every friday!" or "every saturday!") because I know I can never meet them anyways, but I'll try to keep this coming regularly if you guys like it.

And, if you remember the "experiment" portion of it, feel free to pitch in with a couple paragraphs at any time! *coughKEVINcough* who promised to write "ONE paragraph." :D

And I'll need some buddies that we can meet deep in the future, so if you wouldn't mind being
included as a character in the story, go ahead and sign up in the comments. :)


Well, here we go again...

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Contrary to popular belief, it was not dark and stormy outside, even though Skys stood hidden deep in his underground laboratory, tinkering with the final circuits of his time machine. It was actually a bright and sunny spring afternoon, the sky was clear, the breeze refreshing, the flowers blooming, the air clear. Skys hid underground not because he was a mad scientist, but because he is allergic to pollen from the blooming flowers. :D

Skys poked a few numbers into his calculator and smiled. "Okay. According to my calculations, this looks good! It should work as soon as I connect this." Skys glanced to the desk next to him, where a glass case held a strange glowing cylindrical tube not unlike the vapor lamps he had used in chemistry classes.

Suddenly, he whirled around as he heard a voice behind him.

"Hey, what's up? Why weren't you at school today?"

It was his friend, Gummy. "Don't SCARE me like that!!! How'd you get in here?"

"Haha, I figured you'd be hiding down here. Your little contraption is going so well that you skipped school today?"

"Yeah," Skys replied. "Within 10 minutes, school's not gonna matter at all anymore," he smirked.

"So, you finally are getting that thing to work after all these years, huh?"

"Yup! I'll show ya. As soon as I connect that electroneutronplasmaenergyvapor lamp to the flash circuit, tinker with the settings a little, and charge the power up, we can be travelling along the fourth dimension! You wanna come with me?"

Gummy thought about it for a second. "Sure."






"Is there anything I need?" Gummy started pacing in nervousness.

"You will need some clothes, food and water... actually anything you neeed to survive. We don't know what the future will be like."

"I'll be back in an hour then." Gummy turns around and walks out the door.

Skys turns back around and keeps fiddling with his electroneutronplasmaenergyvapor lamp. Pretty soon, everything he had ever worked for would be completed.




An hour later, Gummy came back down the stairs into the underground lab. Skys was putting around, cleaning the place up.

“Might as well clean the place up, since since we probably won’t be coming back,” he said.

“Wait, what? You’re saying this trip might be dangerous?” Gummy gasped. Skys always ignored obvious questions. “Gimme a couple more minutes here, then we can set up and get ready to go,” he said.

Gummy turned to marvel at the time machine, an old, modified DeLorean now painted silver and encased in new mechanical components and wiring. “So how does this work, do we just type in when we want to go to and drive up to 88 miles per hour?” she smirked.

“Oh no, you’re not thinking of that cheesy totally unscientific movie again, are you? I told dad to buy the Range Rover, not the DeLorean, just so you people wouldn’t think like that! But whatever, no, it takes WAY more than 88 miles per hour. We’re doing this scientifically. What do you think the rocket engines on the car is for?”

“Wait, rocket engines?” Gummy went to take a closer look. “Just how fast do we need to go then?”

“Oh, somewhere around 299,792,457 meters per second,” Skys replied.

“Wait, WHAT?”

“Approaching the speed of light.”

“THE SPEED OF LIGHT?”

“Yes, the speed of light. Here, Gummy, come here. You should know this anyways before we go. Here’s how time travel works.” Skys pulled out an Expo marker from his pocket and walked up to the whiteboard hanging on the wall, covered with awesometastic calculus equations that Skys totally can do.

“Relativity 101: One of Einstein’s big breakthroughs in scientific knowledge is his idea of the theory of relativity. We like to think of time as being constant, unchanging, and always the same, but really, that’s not how it works. The only constant in the universe is the speed of light. Time, however, can be bent, which is known as time dilation. Basically, how we’re doing it, is with speed. The concept? The faster you go, the slower time becomes. Strange, but yes. Normally here on earth, we never notice it because our speeds are so small. But as we begin to approach the speed of light, time begins to slow based on our reference frame. Meaning for us, time will pass slower than for everyone else on earth. If we are traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light, by the time one minute passes for us, years would have passed here on earth. We use this concept to our advantage, because it basically speeds up time for us as we travel, so we can reach, say, 2050, in not 40 years, but in 30 seconds. Does that sort of make sense?”

“Um, sure, ok, I guess. And those rockets can get us up to the speed of light?” Gummy asked.

“Mm hmm.”

“And, um, where do you intend to find enough space to drive a car at, *pulls out calculator* 186,000 miles PER SECOND?”

“Outer space, where else?” Skys smirked.

“OUTER SPACE? ARE YOU FRIKIN CRAZY? Is that why you say we might never come back?”

“No, it’s not the danger, its another one of the annoying laws of physics that prohibit us from coming back. Should I explain?”

“Sure.”

“You notice when I was talking earlier, I always said “approaching the speed of light.” It’s a mathematical limit. Theoretically, we can get up to 99.9999999999999999% of the speed of light, but it is impossible to reach 100% the speed of light because doing so will require an infinite amount of energy, which we clearly do not have.”

“Time slows as we approach the speed of light. At the speed of light, time stops. And if we go beyond the speed of light, time runs backwards. But since it is impossible to go at or beyond the speed of light, there is no physical way, that I can work with, for us to be able to travel back in time. Are you sure you still want to come?”

Gummy thought about it for a second. “Yeah, of course. Otherwise, the story can’t continue.”

Skys couldn’t resist a smile.