Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.13 Romeo and what's-her-name

Transit control had arranged for Natty and me to arrive at our dorm room at St. Albert's at a point in local time approximately ten minutes after we had left the place.

In principle, it would be possible to transit back to the exact spatiotemporal position from where and when one had departed. But that has never actually been tried by anybody, mainly because there was and still is an ongoing debate about the possible harmful consequences of such an experiment.

To be specific, some theoreticians claim that there is a non-negligible chance that the two flux tubes may merge to form a closed temporal loop, perhaps even trapping the unfortunate temporal explorer inside and forcing them to eternally repeat the same sequence of actions, much like poor Sisyphus. Of course, few people would seriously believe that such a loop could prove to be stable. Rather, a temporal loop like that can be assumed to either collapse into some weird object of non-trivial homotopy type or even to form a naked singularity.

Some physicists have gone so far as to propose that this could trigger a phase transition to the true vacuum state, spreading out at the velocity of light and eventually taking the entire universe with it. While not many experts take the latter scenario seriously, it is generally agreed upon that setting a margin of ten minutes between the points of departure and of arrival may be considered a reasonable precaution.

As it turned out Natty and I were lucky that the techies had not settled for a greater margin of say, twenty minutes or so. Shortly after we had safely arrived in our dorm room, Helen Langden walked in, announcing that she needed to urgently discuss certain last-minute changes for a presentation the three of us were scheduled to give in front of the class a mere two days from now. 

The next morning, our Contemporary English Lit teacher Ms Farrow was positively beaming as she entered our classroom.

"I have got great news for you, girls," she announced. "Guess what we are going do in the coming two months."

This was followed by a moment of heavy silence while each of my classmates contemplated the worst she thought could conceivably happen. In my case, that ranged from a thorough reading and analysis of James Joyce's Ulysses to a comprehensive study of modern English poetry.

"Um, are we talking about a new project here?" Jessica Burns cautiously inquired. "Like reading a new novel?"

"No, even better than that," our teacher gushed. "In fact much, much better. Though we will be considering a work that can by no means be regarded as 'contemporary'." She made an odd little sound that might or might not have been a laugh. "We shall read, study and ultimately perform on stage a drama by William Shakespeare."

"Oh my god," Barbara excitedly squealed. "Not Romeo and ... you know ...what's her name, Julia?"

Ms Farrow raised one eyebrow at that. "I assume that you are talking about Romeo and Juliet, Lane. And yes, we shall indeed perform that particular play."

As for the rest of us, we were looking at Barbara wondering if she had lost her mind.

"But see, that's wonderful," the girl maintained. "I mean, the two of them are secretly in love and everything ... That's like, so romantic."

"Well, yes", Helen Langden admitted. "But they both die a few days after secretly getting married, as I recall."

"What?" Barbara stared at her, aghast. "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes, I am positive," Helen told her.

"I wasn't aware of that." The other girl frowned. "I must say, I rather prefer stories with a happy ending, myself."