Change in(g) Time

Einstein's the way...

"Ohh Einstein, what is this ye hath done" that line turned to a mantra for me, as I read through all I could find on time travel, over and over again. I believe the only reason I survived through that process, was because my mind was more on the dream I had earlier than what I was reading, probably why I missed a very important part.

Well I had just officially wasted my whole break, I thought. I was preparing to leave when my lecturer came. He looked at me with such admiration knowing I was doing his assignment. He looked at the computer on the table and said with an intrigued voice, "time travel?". I said, "well that's what I found".He said "maybe you should just try something else, I mean the twin paradox theory isn't really the smartest of Einstein's theories ", as we spoke a korean foreign exchange student passed by me and while I tried to get over the image he left in my mind, my thoughts of the dream I had of Jeon just grew thicker and became significantly dominant. I was trying to manage thinking of Jeon and concentrating on my lecturers words when suddenly, an idea dawned on me. I looked at him with so much excitement and I asked "sir, could you tell me something? The time frame of a planet, lets say six solar steps from earth is extremely longer than our usual time right?". He looked at me, confused at where I was getting to, "umm... Sure, yeah, it should be about 5 years slower than earth or something". That was it, that was all I needed to hear. I thought I finally had it. I felt it wasn't going to be accurate or true but at least an unarguable theory. It was crazy though, I was so engrossed and fixated on finding a theory to a teleportation based time travel, that I forgot there was actually something called space ships and actual science.

I ran straight to the school library. Everyone was obviously looking at me like "what's wrong with this girl". Sadly, people don't take me seriously enough to have my running start a stampede. When I sat on my seat, I felt so pissed as to why I hadn't realised it all this while. "it was a sign, a vision, I should have known" I thought. It just added up in my head. When my lecturer mentioned the twin paradox theory, I somehow just related it to the dream and realised a theory could come out of the distance of different planets to the sun.

Now I was quite aware this wasn't actually time travel, well at least not the way the world pictured it. There wasn't any teleportation into the past to correct a mistake or warn yourself of prospect danger, nor was there any traveling into the future to know what the next years would be like. All that existed was a change in time for a particular set that didn't apply for another set, which couldn't ever be reversed.

Now I just had to find the perfect and most reasonable "untrue" theory I could derive from it. Well it was definitely no easy task. At first I started off with trying to study earths distance from the sun in relation to other planets. I also studied the distance that could be found within each solar steps. Well here's where the confusion came, the time difference. I came up with so many theories and then counter theories as to wether the times in other solar steps were slower or actually faster than that of the earth. Well I later on was able to prove that the time was actually slower. Well the sad part was when I decided to search on Google and I discovered a lot of people had actually discovered that a reasonable while ago. I wondered why I didn't just make a search from the beginning. Well I had more work to do.

Next, I looked at the conditions of the planets ecosystem. There were different conditions for different solar steps. Don't worry, I searched this time. Some of the solar steps had extreme temperatures with very low oxygen rate, others would probably explode the space ships if they spent more than 24 hours over there. When I finally had a perfect sketch of the solar conditions of at least 9 solar steps, I was ready to move on to the next step, the time frame. I started checking the relationship between the times in the different solar steps and that of the earth and I realised that each solar step was at least one year slower than earth which would mean that if earth was completing 4 years, a planet 4 solar steps away would just be completing a year.

This was a golden discovery. Now I just had to figure out what exactly could come of this. I made several calculations but non of them came through. I was trying to understand the whole concept of the bending of time in relation to earth and other solar steps. Well nothing had come of it yet. Then I decided to just rather move to the next step. I started to calculate how far and how fast Earth's human containing spaceships could go and I realized the highest it could reach was nine solar steps. Well the good part was it could almost travel at the speed of light, which means it could cover many grounds in just seconds. Well I thought that was very cool and started brain storming with what I had.

I woke up and realized it was the next day. I was so tired from the whole brain storming I unconsciously took myself home, took a shower, changed my clothes and then went to bed. Well it was another day to try, only problem is we were supposed to submit today and I had, well, absolutely nothing. I hurried to take my bath and dress up, then I dashed to class.

I got to school so disorganized. The class had already started. Everyone was presenting their own theories and I have to admit it was brilliant. I kind of started wishing I just went for something else, something easier. Well it soon got to my turn. I was already wallowing in shame and embarrassment before I even began. Well I had no choice. I just explained to the lecturer and students everything that had happened and how I was unto something big but I hadn't been able to discover it yet. Everybody began laughing at me and mocking me. Only a few people could even understand the things I had put down. The lecturer was very disappointed and asked me to just go back to my seat. A lot of other people presented and by the end of the class when he was presenting the scores, he announced that I got an f. I was pissed. A lot of people would think I was angry at him for failing me but no. The truth is I was angry at myself for failing because I knew it was my fault and my need to show myself and my brilliance.

The bell for the Break was rung and everybody left to have lunch. I sat in my seat cold as ice and wallowing in my disappointment. I had missed the whole afternoon class yesterday and all for what? all for nothing. I was still sobbing about my failure when suddenly, I understood. I don't know how but I just suddenly understood and was able to put everything I had discovered together and it just made sense but the only problem with it was, it looked real. Too real. Infact, it actually looked possible. I thought to it several times and just wrote the theory down. I realized if we could send a twin in a space ship to circulate the 4th solar step with the time frame of one year by the time he'd be returning just completing a single year, earth would have completed 4 years, meaning his twin would be 4 years older than he'd be. This was golden and much more, there was no criticism or mistake to it. It seemed so perfect and true...

It didn't make sense how no one had thought of it before. How can time travel have been discovered by a little girl on an ordinary science project. It didn't make any sense. I really thought and thought to see if I was making a mistake and didn't notice something but I wasn't. I really did just discover time travel. Through my thinking I realized that other scientist were so crowded discovering the information I put together that they didn't have time to put it together themselves. That's why I got to find it out. I must admit, I was delighted. That was the beginning of my story, well, of my mistake...