After the first few days of the Bazaar, I stopped going along with Ash everyday to check out all of the various merchants. The prices were lowering as I’d suspected, but there still wasn’t anything that particularly interested me, and the prices were still way too high for me to actually consider buying anything. I still went out to spend time with Ash and explore a little bit, but I alternated between that and staying in the subspace with Duke to work on our various projects.
Rather than working in the shed as we normally did, today the pair of us were working in the living room, and with us was Sophia. The reason she was here was that I was practicing a certain idea I’d had to fix one of my problems with the radar detection. The problem in question was the fact that when my one second cycle radar enchantment activated, it would send out an infinitesimal fraction of a second’s worth of light once every second rather than send out a constant beam of light for a whole second. This makes it so that when the radio waves return, it’ll be extremely difficult for me to notice it. However, I had an idea for how to make the beam last longer, making it far more noticeable. The idea? Time magic.
Basically, what I was trying to do is speed up time in one small area, that way I could basically create a field around my radar enchanted stick where time passed 50 or 60 times faster than it did outside. Then, I would keep the enchantment operational for one second on the outside, making it go off 50-60 times inside the field, which, once that gets reflected back, will basically turn the moon into a lightbulb for one second from my perspective, almost impossible to miss. The only problem with this, is that I am not faster than the speed of light. This means that for this to actually work correctly, I’d have to have the time distortion field up before I activate the enchantment. Then, when I activate the enchantment, I’ll have to send only a part of my mind into the field where time is moving significantly faster, causing pretty heavy disorientation in my mind.
So, basically, what I’m doing now is playing around with time magic, trying to get used to it. Sophia is here in the hopes that she’ll be able to fix any big problems I may accidentally cause while playing around with a dangerous concept like time. Due to my current preoccupation with the concept of time, today I was teaching Sophia and Duke about the theory of relativity, and the connection between space, time, and gravity. I used a sheet of my Aspect Manifestation Cloth in my example to represent the fabric of Spacetime, and different household items to represent celestial bodies. I then gave them almost the same explanation that I gave Ash a long time ago, that she just couldn’t wrap her head around, about gravity being the curvature of space and time, and the effects of celestial bodies being attracted to each other is them being affected by this curvature in the fabric of reality.
“Okay, so let’s assume that all of this is right, that space and time really do make a kind of ‘fabric’ that stretches out for eternity in three dimensions. What I don’t understand is how that actually moves planets and moons and stuff?”
I tilted my head in confusion, then repeated the demonstration of a ball rolling down the curved sheet towards the indentation where I’d placed a heavier chess board, but Duke just shook his head, then used mana to telekinetically move the ball. “What I’m saying is, even if space itself is curving like this, in your example isn’t gravity on this world, or I guess, the gravity that Sophia’s mimicking inside of this subspace through magic bullshit, the actual force moving the ball? Hold on, I’m not explaining my question well.” Duke thought for a moment before holding the ball right on the edge of the curved sheet, not letting it roll down, and continued, “Out in space, there wouldn’t be any sort of force pulling or pushing on this ball, right? So if gravity really is just the curvature of space like this sheet, then wouldn’t the ball just stay right here? What’s actually pushing it to roll down the sheet?”
And finally I understood the question. Actually, that is truly a great question. Where does the actual force behind movement come from? Does the curvature of Space end up squeezing the object, pushing down on all directions, while leaving an opening towards the greater mass, like holding a seed between your fingers and gently squeezing to shoot it out? But if that’s the case, then how do orbits work? After all, wouldn’t everything just move in a straight line towards the object with the highest mass? Wouldn’t the curvature of spacetime prevent orbiting mass from moving in any sort of perpendicular direction?
To help myself visualize better, I telekinetically lifted the various household items I’d used in my demonstration, picturing the large chessboard as the sun, and the smaller pieces as the planets orbiting it. I then moved the chessboard to the left slowly, with all of the other pieces spiraling after it in a beautiful helical pattern, and realized that no, it could still make sense if the curvature of spacetime were pressing down on the various planets in order to generate movement, as it would generally work as a kind of centripetal force, where motion may be circular, but the direction of the force is still pointed firmly towards the sun.
The only thing that I didn’t understand was how did the planets experience this pressure from space and time literally pressing down on them, pushing them towards the Sun? After all, wasn’t Jupiter composed almost entirely of gas? Sure, the core of Jupiter is so heavy that it keeps all of the gas contained, but shouldn’t there be at least a little bit of distortion based on wherever it was in its orbit? Kind of like a partially deflated tire, if space is pressing down on Jupiter, a celestial body made almost entirely of gas, wouldn’t that cause it to lose its spherical shape? Or is that why days on Jupiter are so short? After all, Jupiter’s days are only about 10 hours, meaning it’s spinning over twice as fast as earth. Is the less stable structure of Jupiter literally ‘catching’ the pressure of space and being forced to rotate faster, whereas Earth can kind of slide across it a little bit as a result of it being mostly solid?
And how does time come into play? After all, if we consider the rotational speed and the orbital speed of the planets to be a result of space pressing down differently on each of the planets, then shouldn’t there also be a noticeable difference in time between the different planets? As far as I’m aware, despite all of the rovers and informational gathering tools that we’ve placed both on the moon and on mars, there have been no clear signs of time being perceived differently. Sure there’s a little bit of lag from the control stations to the various rovers, but as far as I’ve heard, that lag is perfectly accounted for by the massive distances between us and them, and the amount of time it takes information to travel. But as for the machine itself, I haven’t heard of any sort of lag brought about by the very concept of time itself interacting with the planet differently.
We know that space, time, and gravity are connected in some way, due to experiments that were conducted a while back by NASA’s gravity probe, which had four gyroscopes that were pointed towards a certain star, and they observed a certain kind of lag, demonstrating a clear relationship between mass, gravity, space, and time. However, does that mean that they one hundred percent proved that Space and Time are woven into a kind of ‘fabric’ and that gravity is the curvature of that fabric? No, they only proved a connection between the concepts.
But what if this connection, this relationship, is different from how we’ve imagined it up to this point? I took a look at Duke, who was looking at my representation of the solar system with an interested expression, and responded, “I have two theories. The first one has to do with the fact that all of the celestial bodies in space are constantly moving, which is causing the fabric of spacetime to squeeze down and move along with them, creating a moving curvature which pushes everything else towards the Largest Amount of Mass. This can be visualized by the demonstration here.” I said, pointing towards the slowly moving helix.
“The second theory is that we’ve made a false assumption somewhere. We know that the concepts of Space, Time, Mass, and Gravity are all related to each other, and all interact with each other, but the common assumption is that the relationships are specifically ‘Space and Time’ and ‘Mass and Gravity’, which are constantly interacting with each other. But what if it’s more like ‘Space and Gravity’ and ‘Mass and Time’?” Both Duke and Sophia raised their eyebrows and tilted their heads. Textbook signs of confusion. I tried to explain myself a little better.
“A common expression in my old world is that ‘time goes slower for things moving faster’. This means that the faster something is moving, the less time it happens to experience. An example of this would be…if we happened to be moving at the speed of light for one day, then when we stopped, we’d look around and see that while we only experienced one day, years have actually passed, similar to this field that I’ve made, only backwards.” I said, pointing towards what I was practicing. “However, what if it’s not speed that determines how time is perceived, and it’s actually mass? After all, for the most part, the bigger something is, the slower it’s moving, meanwhile the smaller something is, the faster it’s moving. What if Time is a sort of fourth dimensional energy that we have no way to perceive, that’s being emitted by every single physical particle in existence? The fewer particles there are, the less Time that object has. Light, as one of, if not the smallest particle in existence, would then both be the fastest particle as well as the one that possesses the least amount of Time.”
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As I explained the idea that I had, I used light magic to create various sized dots in the air, surrounded by proportional amounts of a haze to represent how much Time they would have if my theory was in fact correct.
“Then, if this is correct, and Mass and Time are the ones that are connected, this leaves us with Space and Gravity. This alternate theory, which, I have to make sure you understand, is something I literally just came up with, so there is literally no math or science of any kind to back this up, and I wouldn’t even know how to start conducting experiments to try to prove it right. Anyway, this alternate theory of mine, would operate under the assumption that Mass doesn’t displace Space as it does in the example that I showed you with the sheet and the random objects. Instead, in my theory, Space goes through Mass, but Mass kind of acts like a pin in it. Space that’s going through Mass would become…more rigid. The more Mass that there is in one spot, the more rigid space would grow in response, because the tighter it’s being pinned.
“The key to this theory being actually possible in any way is then Gravity. Rather than being the Curvature of Space, in this new theory of mine, Gravity would be some kind of quality that Space has, kind of like…Elasticity. Yeah, Gravity would be the Elasticity of Space.” I gently pulled on my sheet, so they could watch as it stretched out and became more tense, more rigid, depending on how I pulled.
“In this theory, Gravity would be represented as the tension between two pinned areas of Space, with the smaller Mass being more likely to move in response to this tension than the Larger Mass. And as this Mass is being interacted with by Space and Gravity, Time, as a function of Mass, would then be interfered with as a result.” I used light magic to show different stretched out threads between the sun and the planets of my helical demonstration, effectively changing the interactions between Mass and Space from a pushing force to a pulling one.
“This could also explain how the Universe is constantly expanding despite being theoretically infinite. Rather than growing, it’s simply stretching out farther, as far as the Elasticity of Space, in other words, Gravity, will allow it to go. This also means that rather than the theoretical end of the universe being a heat death where all of mass is just too far apart, it would instead be something like when Gravity is pushed to its absolute limit, and the Space of the universe simply can’t stretch out any farther, and, like any other elastic substance.” I let go of the cloth so that it could pull back to its former size, “Everything snaps back towards the middle, and all of the Mass and Energy that composes the universe collides, creating a Big Bang event, causing space to stretch outwards again, making our universe an eternal cycle of stretching out and collapsing inwards.”
Sophia and Duke remained silent as I hypothesized about the theoretical end of everything. “Ironically, if we assume my theory to be correct about Mass and Time being connected, this state of having all Mass and Energy in one point during the Big Bang event would theoretically cause this moment to last for an eternity, while simultaneously being instantaneous. After all, it would be a collision of literally Everything in Creation, meaning that it would all bounce away the moment of the crash, however, all of the Mass in Reality would be in one point, meaning that one point contains literally all of the Time in the universe.
“Of course, this theory does have a few small scale problems. For example, if the bonds between two celestial bodies are defined by Elasticity, then wouldn’t the space between them constantly be shifting, bouncing around? Of course, Elasticity may not be a perfect allegory, or it could be that the fact that everything’s moving keeps Space in its most stretched out, highest tension state. Also, how would everything constantly be moving throughout Space if Mass is acting as a pin? Or is pin just too harsh a word, and it’s more like pressure on the concept of Space?
“Basically, there’s no way for us to truly know what the answer is, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter for us. It’s fun to think about, but all in all it doesn’t actually interfere with our day to day lives in any way. The only reason that I mentioned all of this to you is to demonstrate that in the field of science, you need to be able to at least consider the possibility that the very way that you think about the world is wrong, and you need to be able to question every assumption that you’ve made. After all, a thousand years ago the whole world ‘knew’ that the Earth was flat, and that the Sun revolved around the Earth, before someone came along and questioned those assumptions, eventually proving them all wrong.”
I finished my lecture, looking at the pair of them in front of me. Duke still seemed to be highly confused, and Sophia…well, let’s just say that rather than theoretical physics, the particular field of science on her mind was more like Human Anatomy. Eventually, Duke broke the silence by stating, “Yeah, you definitely lost me there. Though I get what you mean about questioning everything you think you know, at the end of the day, I prefer to work with things that I do somewhat understand. Got any random projects lying around that you haven’t worked on? I kinda wanna take a break from all of this ‘structure of the universe’ stuff.”
I laughed and said, “Yeah, fair. To be honest, not a lot of people got really interested in it in my old world either. There’s nothing wrong with simplicity, with just focusing on the things in your life that you actually can physically interact with. But yeah, let’s take a break from universe stuff, I actually do have one project that I kinda forgot about.” I walked out to my shed, bringing something back with me. Some long, hard wood if you know what I’m saying, and showed it off to Sophia and Duke.
“Is that a broom? Like, for sweeping the ground?” He asked. I nodded my head. Yes, between Project Horizon and the Moon project, I had completely forgotten about my idea for a witch’s broom.
“Yeah, basically, I want to turn this into a vehicle that makes long distance travel super fast. I already have some ideas for the motion itself, but there are two inherent problems. One, whenever I sit on it and try to fly, because it’s literally just a thin stick of wood, my body tends to destabilize and fall to one side. Two, it is literally a pain in the ass to ride. This means that I’ll need two different enchantments on it. One to try to define ‘me and the broom’ as one single object, so that my relative position stays the same no matter how I turn, and one for comfort, so that I can ride it until my mana gives out without experiencing unnecessary pain.”
Rather than questioning why the hell I chose a broomstick of all things to take the place of my vehicle, Duke seemed to just accept the problem as it was, and the two of us started theorizing different ways to make the enchantments work out. He asked, “Okay, what are all the possible words in the English language that could mean ‘fix relative positions’?”
I thought about it for a moment, then listed out, “Afix, set, stabilize, secure, anchor, attach…” I stopped. I’m fucking Stupid!!! “ANCHOR!” I shouted out, startling Duke.
“What!?” He asked.
“Anchors are a thing in my old world, they kept ships from moving, and they have a very distinctive symbol for them, so it’ll be easy enough to enchant.” I explained.
Duke seemed confused, “But wouldn’t putting that on your broom just make it so that it doesn’t move then? How would that help you out?”
“Well, I could try putting an anchor both on my pants and the broom, making it so that the two of them don’t move in relation to each other!” I said, excited that I had something that I could finally try.
“But is that how anchors work? Do they interact with each other like that?” He pushed, and my heart sank in response.
“No, which means that my understanding of anchors would make it so that the enchantment doesn’t work how I want it to. Although I’ll definitely need to make sure to write down an anchor enchantment, making something stay perfectly still could definitely be useful.” I muttered dejectedly.
Duke thought for a moment before asking, “Well, the idea of a set of enchantments that work on both your pants and your broom is interesting. Is there some sort of device or symbol for two things that connect and stick together like that that you know of?”
“Oh shit, yeah! Magnets!” With this new idea, I got to work, engraving the experimental design onto a pair of sticks, and testing out their attractive properties. Due to how magnets worked, it turned out a little unpredictable, where sometimes the two sticks would become stuck together, and sometimes they would fly apart, but I managed to fix that by adding + and - signs to the ends of the old school U shaped magnets. This way, I could control which side of the stick was positively charged and which part was negatively charged.
With this in mind, I carved a magnet into the broomstick, putting a positive charge on the left, and a negative charge on the right. Then, due to the fact that Duke was a dude and Sophia was my wife who’s already seen everything several times, I had no hesitation in pulling my pants off and using my golden thread to sew in a large magnet in the back, putting a negative charge on the left leg and a positive charge on the right leg. This process took a few hours, but by the time I was done, I was finally able to stay on top of my broom without sliding to one side, effectively turning us into one singular object.
The only two problems now were that the one solid object was top heavy, so instead of sliding, I would just end up flipping upside down, but I was able to fix that with a set of enchantments on the sides that were an underlined arrow, the symbol for ‘This Side Up’. This gave me a little less maneuverability, but seeing as how this project was supposed to be for long distance travel rather than intricate flight, that wasn’t too much of a concern. The last problem was the fact that it was still a Pain in the Ass to fly.
Learning from the previous example, me and Duke tried to think of every word that we knew that was synonymous with comfort, but unfortunately, none of them had a specific symbol attached, and all of them had various connotations to them. For example, the word Comfort is generally used to refer to things that are soft and delicate. This is a good quality for a sheet to have, but not so much for an already thin stick that I’ll be flying at potentially hundreds of miles per hour, making it difficult to hold on to. Cozy generally is used to refer to things that are fluffy and warm, which might improve my grip a little bit, but I don’t think it would actually do anything to prevent the feeling that I’m sitting on a hard thin stick.
“Okay, if specific words don’t work, then how about commonly used analogies or idioms? Is there anything that people in your world use to represent the concept of comfort?” Sophia asked. And all at once the answer came to me.
I grabbed another stick, and started carving a cloud into it. Of course, why hadn’t I thought of this? Whenever you sit, stand, or lay down on anything comfortable, regardless of how stable it is, what do you think/say? This is as soft as a cloud. Once I finished the engraving, I showed it to Duke, explaining my thought process, and then…I activated it.