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Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

“What’ll it be, boys? Scotch, or Bourbon?” When that was taken care of he got down

to business. “Now, boys, what do you want to know?”

“Lay it on the line, doe. Have you got something, or haven’t you?”

“Most assuredly I have something, my young friend.”

“Then tell us how it works. That guff you handed the profs won’t get you

anywhere now.”

“Please, my dear fellow. it is my invention. I expect to make some money

with it. Would you have me give it away to the first person who asks for it?”

“See here, doe, you’ve got to give us something if you expect to get a break

in the morning papers. What do you use? A crystal ball?”

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“No, not quite. Would you like to see my apparatus?”

“Sure. Now we are getting somewhere.”

He ushered them into an adjoining room, and waved his hand. “There it is,

boys.” The mass of equipment that met their eyes vaguely resembled a medico’s office

x-ray gear. Beyond the obvious fact that it used electrical power, and that some of

the dials were calibrated in familiar terms, a casual inspection gave no clue to its

actual use.

“What’s the principle, doe?”

Pinero pursed his lips and considered. “No doubt you are all familiar with

the truism that life is electrical in nature? Well, that truism isn’t worth a damn,

but it will help to give you an idea of the principle. You have also been told that

time is a fourth dimension. Maybe you believe it, perhaps not. It has been said so

many times that it has ceased to have any meaning. It is simply a cliché that

windbags use to impress fools. But I want you to try to visualize it now and try to

feel it emotionally.”

He stepped up to one of the reporters. “Suppose we, take you as an example.

Your name is Rogers, is it not? Very well, Rogers, you are a space-time event having

duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty inches

wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches behind you more of this

space-time event reaching to perhaps nineteen-sixteen, of which we see a

cross-section here at right angles to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At

the far end is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its bib.

At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man someplace in the nineteen-eighties.

Imagine this space-time event which we call Rogers as a long pink worm, continuous

through the years, one end at his mother’s womb, the other at the grave. It

stretches past us here and the cross-section we see appears as a single discrete

body. But that is illusion. There is physical continuity to this pink worm, enduring

through the years. As a matter of fact there is physical continuity in, this concept

to the entire race, for these pink worms branch off from other pink worms. In this

fashion the race is like a vine whose branches intertwine and send Out shoots. Only

by taking a cross-section of the vine would we fall into the error of believing that

the shootlets were discrete individuals.”

He paused and looked around at their faces. One of them, a dour hard-bitten

chap, put in a word.

“That’s all very pretty, Pinero; if true, but where does that get you?”

Pinero favored him with an unresentful smile. “Patience, my friend. I asked

you to think of life as electrical. Now think of our long pink worm as a conductor

of electricity. You have heard, perhaps, of the fact that electrical engineers can,

by certain measurements, predict the exact location of a break in a trans-Atlantic

cable without ever leaving the shore. I do the same with our pink worms. By applying

my instruments to the cross-section here in this room I can tell where the break

occurs, that is to say, when death takes place. Or, if you like, I can reverse the

connections and tell you the date of your birth. But that is uninteresting; you

already know it.”

The dour individual sneered. “I’ve caught you, doe. If what you said about

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