Killing Time

A Curious Device

It all started with a simple announcement: a small notice in the local paper that most people would have skimmed right past. “Come see the Time-Killing Machine! Skip the waiting. Skip the boredom. Jump into your future today!”

It was the kind of ad that might have been placed next to palm readers and fortune tellers. But the name on the ad wasn’t some mystic or charlatan. It was Dr. Jonathan Carrick, a well-known physicist who had published papers on quantum mechanics and time dilation.

This wasn’t a hoax, at least not one people could dismiss outright.

No one knew much about Dr. Carrick’s latest invention, but the promise was too tantalizing to ignore. The idea that you could skip over the mundane moments in life, jump right past them, straight to the good stuff, was seductive.

It wasn’t that people hated their daily routines, but the thought of bypassing the drudgery for something more exciting? That was irresistible.

The buzz grew as the days passed. The town was alive with gossip, and everyone wanted to be present at the unveiling. Rumor had it that Carrick had already tested the machine on himself, and the results were undeniable.

No one could quite explain how it worked, but that was the point. They didn’t need to understand. They just needed to see it.

The Three Watchers

Three people were chosen to witness the first public demonstration. It was an exclusive event, and only the town’s most curious minds were invited.

Among them were Dr. Harris, a former colleague of Carrick’s, who had once tried to prove that time travel was mathematically possible. He had grown cynical over the years, his theories having been rejected by the scientific community.

Then there was Sarah Green, a young journalist, eager to break the story that might finally make her name. Lastly, there was Michael Page, an inventor in his own right, known for creating elaborate machines that were more spectacle than function.

Each had their reasons for wanting to be there, but beneath their excitement, there was something else: a gnawing unease.

As they arrived at Carrick’s modest laboratory on the outskirts of town, they were greeted by the hum of machinery. Carrick stood in front of his contraption, a strange amalgamation of gears, dials, and flashing lights, the likes of which no one had seen before.

The machine had an otherworldly quality to it, as though it didn’t belong in this time or place. Carrick, ever the showman, gave them a warm welcome and gestured to the machine.

“You’re here because you understand the importance of time,” he said. “We all wish we could save it, don’t we? Well, what if we could do more than that? What if we could kill it? What if, with the turn of a dial, we could erase those meaningless hours, and be at the moment we’ve been waiting for?”

The Mechanics of Time

Carrick’s explanation was simple, yet elegant. “This machine,” he said, “doesn’t move you forward in time. It doesn’t freeze time either. It simply eliminates the bits you don’t want to live through. Think of it as jumping from one island of experience to the next, without having to swim through the ocean in between.”

He turned to the machine and began adjusting the dials. It made a low, mechanical whirr, and small lights flickered on the surface. The three spectators leaned in, their eyes wide. There were levers and buttons, a control panel filled with numbers that looked more like calculations than measurements.

The main dial, however, was the heart of it all. It was large, with increments that could be moved backward and forward, indicating the amount of time one wished to “kill.”

Carrick explained how time, in a physical sense, was not as straightforward as everyone believed. “Time is relative,” he said. “We experience it in a linear fashion, but in truth, it’s far more malleable. The machine taps into this flexibility. By altering the experience of time for an individual, we can make it seem like hours, days, even weeks pass in an instant.”

Dr. Harris, intrigued despite his skepticism, couldn’t help but ask, “But what about the continuity of events? You can’t just erase moments without causing ripples in everything that follows.”

Carrick smiled. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. The machine is precise. It doesn’t remove events; it only removes your perception of them. The world goes on as usual, unaffected.”

An Insect’s Perspective

Sarah, who had been scribbling furiously in her notepad, paused. She had noticed something odd during Carrick’s speech. A fly had landed on the machine’s control panel, drawn to the warmth of the humming device. It walked lazily across the buttons, unfazed by the motion around it.

Carrick, noticing her distraction, said, “Insects live in a different perception of time than we do due to their small size. Signals travel to their brains faster as they have a shorter path than ours. Remember… It’s all relative.” he said, the right corner of his mouth turning up ever so slightly in an almost smile. He seemed quite pleased with himself.

“A day to them can seem like a lifetime. But with this machine, we become like them, able to bend our perception to our will.”

He stepped aside, ready to demonstrate. “I will set the dial for one hour. When I press this button, I’ll experience the next hour in an instant. You’ll watch the clock. To you, time will pass normally. To me, it will be as though it never happened.”

He pressed the button.

The Jump

For the next hour, the three observers waited. Dr. Harris kept his eyes on Carrick, watching for any sign that something had gone wrong. Sarah glanced back and forth between the machine and Carrick’s expressionless face, her pen at the ready. Michael, the inventor, paced nervously.

As the seconds ticked by, nothing seemed out of place. The clock on the wall continued its rhythmic ticking, the low hum of the machine persisted, and yet there was a tension in the air. An insect, a small beetle, crawled across the floor, unnoticed by the others, moving faster than she believed possible.

Exactly one hour later, Carrick blinked. He looked around the room, as though waking from a dream. “There. One hour gone. To me, it was instantaneous.”

The others checked the time. He was right. The machine had worked. But something about the room had changed. It was subtle, but undeniable.

The Fear of Time

As Carrick reset the machine for another demonstration, Michael couldn’t help but voice his concern. “Is this safe? What happens if we kill too much time?”

Carrick waved him off. “There’s no such thing. Time is infinite. We’re merely trimming the fat.”

Dr. Harris, however, was growing more apprehensive. He had spent his life studying time, and something about this felt wrong. He approached Carrick cautiously.

“What if this machine is doing more than just speeding things up for you? What if it’s affecting time itself? Not just your perception of it, but the fabric of it?” asked Harris.

Carrick laughed, a sharp, hollow sound. “That’s absurd. Time is immutable.”

But Dr. Harris couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. He looked again at the beetle, now circling the machine. It moved in strange, jerky patterns, as though time itself was distorting around it.

The Final Test

Carrick prepared for one last demonstration, this time setting the dial for twelve hours. “This will be the longest jump yet,” he said, his hands shaking slightly as he adjusted the controls.

“When I press this button, I will skip half a day. To you, it will feel like nothing has changed.”

He pressed the button.

But something went wrong. The machine let out a piercing whine, and the lights flickered violently. The room seemed to warp, the air growing thicker, more oppressive. Now flies swarmed the machine, their tiny bodies thrumming with the energy of the device.

Suddenly, the room was silent.

Carrick stood there, staring at the clock, which had stopped ticking. His face was pale, his hands trembling. “What what happened?” he whispered.

Dr. Harris looked at him with growing horror. “You didn’t just kill time for yourself. You’ve destroyed it. Completely.”

The realization hit them all at once. The machine hadn’t just skipped time; it had obliterated it. Without time, nothing could move, nothing could change. Everyone they could see out the window was frozen in place, a stark reminder of what had happened. Time itself had been annihilated, and with it, the very fabric of existence.

The End

As the three of them stood in the silence of the broken universe, they realized the horrifying truth. Carrick had not merely bent time to his will, he had shattered it. In trying to kill time, he had killed everything.

They were trapped, suspended in a void where time no longer flowed, where nothing could ever happen again. And in that stillness, they understood the full weight of what had been lost.

The universe had ended, not with a bang, but with the quiet hum of a machine.

Time is one of the most fundamental and elusive concepts in both science and philosophy. Understanding how time works involves looking at it from different perspectives, particularly through the lenses of physics, biology, and human perception. Let’s break it down:

1. Time in Physics

In physics, time is considered a dimension, much like space. Together, time and space form what’s called spacetime, the four-dimensional fabric of the universe. There are a few key principles that help explain how time works in physics:

Newtonian Time (Classical Physics):

In classical physics, as developed by Isaac Newton, time is seen as absolute and universal. This means that time flows at the same rate everywhere, and it’s independent of any events or the observer. Whether you’re in space or on Earth, time moves forward consistently, and it’s often visualized as a straight, unbroken line.

Relativity (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity):

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity dramatically changed how we understand time. His theory introduces two key ideas:

Special Relativity: Time is not absolute. It can vary depending on the speed at which an object is moving relative to the speed of light. This means that time moves more slowly for an object moving close to the speed of light. This effect is called time dilation. For example, astronauts traveling at near-light speeds would age more slowly than people on Earth.
General Relativity: Time is affected by gravity. Massive objects like stars or planets can warp spacetime, creating what’s known as gravitational time dilation. This means time moves more slowly in strong gravitational fields. A clock near a massive object (like a black hole) would tick slower compared to a clock far away from it.

In relativity, time is seen as part of the fabric of the universe, not as something that ticks forward independently. Both time and space can bend and warp.

The Arrow of Time (Thermodynamics):

Another aspect of time comes from the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (disorder) of a closed system tends to increase over time. This gives time an “arrow,” a direction. In our everyday lives, we experience this as time always moving forward, never backward. You see this in things like eggs breaking but never un-breaking or milk spilling but never un-spilling.

2. Biological Time

From a biological perspective, living organisms experience time based on internal biological clocks, primarily regulated by circadian rhythms (roughly a 24-hour cycle). These rhythms are influenced by external cues like sunlight, temperature, and social activities, which help organisms synchronize their activities with the environment.

For humans, biological time is also experienced through aging. As we grow older, our perception of time changes, often feeling like time moves faster as we age. This could be due to the way our brains process new information, when we’re young, everything is new, and our brains devote more time to processing it, making time feel longer. As we age and experience more familiar events, we process them more efficiently, making time feel like it’s moving faster.

3. Psychological Time (Perception of Time)

How we perceive time is subjective and influenced by many factors:

Attention: When we are highly focused or absorbed in an activity (like playing a game or working on a creative project), time can seem to pass quickly. Conversely, when we’re bored or waiting for something, time can seem to drag.
Memory: Our memory of events influences how we perceive the passage of time. More memorable or emotionally charged events tend to stretch our perception of time. Similarly, in retrospect, periods of intense activity or novelty feel like they lasted longer than they actually did.
Age: Studies show that as we age, we often perceive time as passing more quickly. This might be because the brain compresses repetitive or familiar experiences, making them seem shorter.

4. Philosophical Perspectives on Time

There are many philosophical debates about the nature of time:

Presentism vs. Eternalism: Presentism holds that only the present moment is real, while the past and future don’t exist. Eternalism, on the other hand, suggests that all moments, past, present, and future, exist simultaneously, much like all the locations on a map exist regardless of whether you’re currently standing there.
The Nature of the Future: Some philosophers and scientists debate whether the future is fixed and unchangeable or whether it is open and full of possibilities. Quantum mechanics, for instance, suggests that at the smallest scales, there is a certain degree of unpredictability, but how this relates to time is still debated.

5. Quantum Mechanics and Time

In the world of quantum mechanics, time behaves even more strangely. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that time may not flow in the straightforward way we perceive it:

Quantum entanglement: In quantum mechanics, two particles can become entangled so that their states are linked, regardless of the distance between them. This linkage appears to happen instantaneously, which challenges the traditional view of time because it suggests that information can be transmitted faster than light, possibly outside of time.
Time as an Emergent Property: Some physicists speculate that time might not be a fundamental feature of the universe, but rather an emergent property that arises from more basic physical laws, similar to how temperature emerges from the motion of molecules.

6. Conclusion: What is Time?

Time is a multifaceted concept that can be understood differently depending on the perspective:

In physics, it’s a dimension that is influenced by speed and gravity.
In biology, it governs life cycles and behavior through internal clocks.
In psychology, it’s a subjective experience that varies with attention, memory, and age.
In philosophy, it raises questions about existence, reality, and change.

While we experience time as a constant flow, science reveals it to be far more complex, shaped by forces both familiar and strange. At the heart of it all, time remains a profound mystery that continues to challenge our understanding of the universe.