Sunday 20 February 2022

Some Details Of Time Travel

There Will Be Time, VI.

In Jerusalem on the day of the Crucifixion, Eyrie agents recruit half a dozen time travelers, including Jack Havig and an infiltrator from a rival group that Havig has not founded yet. One of the Eyrie men:

"led the way, first to the stop after Pentecost, which yielded naught, then to the twenty-first century." (p. 64)

How does he lead the way through time, especially through that much time? Are time travelers visible to each other while time traveling? Yes, as we learn in Chapter XII when Havig is captured and held as his captors and he move through time. Why does Wells' Time Traveler not see himself returning as he moves forward through time, then seen see his future-bound self as he returns? The same rules do not necessarily apply to Havig as to the Time Traveler. The latter can breathe as he time travels whereas Havig and his fellow mutants must pause to breathe or carry miniature oxygen bottles.

For the Eyrie men and their recruits, arrival in the twenty-first century has been facilitated:

"Return was easier, because they'd erected a kind of big billboard in the ruins, on which an indicator was set daily to the correct date." (ibid.)

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And that billboard was probably an indirect inspiration for Havig's later efforts at finding means of more accurately moving thru time.

Ad astra! Sean