Time Turtles?

 

They aren’t really turtles you know. 

It’s like this; a Time Turtle is the physical embodiment of a fallacy!

Say, for the sake of a party game or something like a baby shower game, that we imagine the Multi-verse as something like an endless mass of suds. Bubbles in a word. Each bubble is near the next, but separate. Of course, each bubble is very “large.” But each is not large in the same way. Some are large in way that would look very small to us here in this one. Some would seem so woefully huge that it might cause bleeding to try to conceptualize their size. You can see that it would require some fancy physicswork in traveling from bubble to bubble. I mean, if you could!

As it happens, in this party game, truth-tellers can sometimes hop from bubble to bubble. This is very special. It must be done correctly!

To work this correctly some clever fellows from MIT or somewhere, made what could be called Timelocks. These are a contained sort of transition zone, for making adjustments in size and time scale for just a perfect, special moment between two bubbles.

It requires some mental tuning. First the traveler must enter an intangible state and contemplate terribly small, then terribly huge, back and forth until small and huge become one. Then he may enter the Timelock.

Many times, the Timelock is used for mere time travel. The traveler pops into a nearby bubble just long enough to turn around and come back, at some other time. My mind boggles at how they know where and when they are going.

They say that a high enough level of technical wizardry would look like magic. I have to admit that this is true. For this Timelock and all looks a lot like hocus-pocus.

Anyhow, back to time turtles. Sometimes there has been a problem with the translation. Say someone like Ramona, as an example, and a fine example she is, was preparing her mind for the Timelock. She’s had a lot of practice, and it doesn’t take her long. Suppose that in her hurry she doesn’t notice the mouse on her shoulder. Now, this mouse is not prepared to make the hop to the next bubble. His presence in the Timelock will create a size/time anomaly!

Let me see if I can explain this in a way that makes some kind of sense in our native bubble.

OK. A remedy was devised for just this sort of thing. It’s only a partial remedy though. We still need a hero. More on that in a moment.

The mouse will harden into a kind of lozenge of time/space/size potentiality. This will spare any disruption between bubbles, but as a so-called Time Turtle it will block the Timelock open, perhaps like elevator doors with a suitcase lodged in the opening. This is not good. Someone needs to come and get this turtle and take it back where it came from before these two bubbles merge!

Often, Ralph has to do this chore, because it’s his wife who gets into the Timelock without checking for hitchhikers about her person. I mean, as an example…in this party game.

When he comes back with this little turtle thing, he just lays it out on the grass where the sunlight can hit it. Gradually the lozenge disintegrates, frees the mouse, or whatever, who is usually just fine, if dazed.

Then he goes home, well nearly home, to his pondering log. He finds that taking the time to have a quiet cigar keeps him from mentioning any of this to Ramona.