Chapter 76 — Into The Woods
The Curve of Time, Chapter 76 —— Into The Woods, in which knocks on a stranger’s door.
Followed by reflections on the joys of mathematical framing.
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— 76 —
Into The Woods
Sycamore was a leafy community just south of Issaquah, and Saskia parked her rental car at on the south end of the city, where it bordered a state park, right at the end of a cul-de-sac. It had been only a forty minute drive from Seattle, as fast as she could realistically have hoped.
She proceeded on foot down the driveway, struck by the verdant foliage on the tall trees that surrounded the house, and the moss under foot. A squirrel scurried up a large evergreen. In all, it was a thicker green tangle than the front yards of her richest neighbors in Pasadena, and without the need for unrepentant irrigation.
She checked the number on the door against that on the slip of paper on which she’d scribbled Gary Holcomb’s address in the two minutes Mica had to redirect her legwork in the field. It was the right house, and she knocked.
There was no answer.
Saskia put her ear to the door. Footsteps belied whoever was retreating deeper inside.
She noticed a doorbell, partially obscured by ivy. The black button resembled a Go stone and she reached to press it, glancing about to see what else she might have missed. Above her, was a security camera.
“Mr. Holcomb,” Saskia shouted at the door, straining for a reassuring voice. “It’s not too late. You don’t have to run.”
But Gary Holcomb had seen the newspaper that morning. Molly was dead. Add that to the fact that Charles had won the lottery yesterday: shit was going down. That said, he had a sure fire way to flee without being chased. Buy himself time. He could figure it all out first. Figure out who the woman on his doorstep was. The same woman who’d called half an hour ago? Then he could decide if he wanted to talk to her.
He’d done it earlier that morning for the first time. It was time to do it again now. He took three deep breaths, just as he’d learnt at the retreat. Centered himself.
Steadily, he walked around the house, putting a go-bag together, slowing time as he advanced. Quietly, he exited the back door. Then he stopped time altogether. Before he reached the side corner of the house, and a view of the front door, he was traveling back through time. Slipping through it like a sluice of water down the gullies in the hills that surrounded his house——on those rare days when the rain really dumped——weaving through the trees.
He crept closer. He’d sight the woman at his front door and follow her back from where she came.
∞
Saskia stood at the stoop, unsure what to do next. Someone was inside, that was for certain, but they weren’t coming to the door. They weren’t even answering on the intercom.
She was about to press the buzzer again when a bird exploded from the trees to her right. It was an explosion in fright, and it shot her with a jolt of adrenaline. She turned to see it flying away, even as her eyes anchored on another motion. A motion accompanied by the sound of a stick cracking from where the bird had alighted. A man was running backwards, towards a small clearing in front of the bird’s former roosting spot. He stopped on a dime and crouched to face her. There was terror in his eyes.
It struck Saskia as odd that the bird had taken flight before the stick broke. Had it heard something else? Of course it had; it had heard him——Gary——racing backwards towards it.
In a flash, Saskia realized what had happened.
As she slowed time, Gary’s eyes relaxed. He was crouching lock still, craning through the trees, eyes searching for her. Then, just before she brought time to a halt altogether he crept backwards and disappeared around the side of the house.
∞
It was unfortunate that Gary Holcomb didn’t recall seeing Saskia (or more accurately, her double) at the Santa Cruz retreat, or he might have stopped to hear her out. Saskia did look familiar to him, but she was not his type and that little fact was enough for him to fail to place her. Whatever might have happened in the parallel universe that formed from the arbitrary branching points theory of space-time was moot.
∞
There was an elongated moment in time, no different to anything you or I might experience, in which Saskia realized that Gary wasn’t waiting around for her. He was fleeing into the past, and Saskia launched after him, rolling time backwards as she did.
She heard the sound of the stick un-cracking under Gary’s foot as he launched away from her and off into the surrounding forrest.
The bird alighted, and Saskia chased Mr. Holcomb right past it.
She chased him down the hillside that sloped away from the house, though she instinctively understood that it was too late to talk sense into him.
Speeding time up was the worst say to escape a pursuer——it rendered your relative actions slow, and easy to follow——but it was the most natural initial response. Slowing time down, on the other hand, sped your movement up, relative to an ordinary observer stuck in the traditional flow of time. It left your interlocutor bamboozled by the curious juxtaposition of high-speed walking, so exaggerated that it was impossible to keep up with.
That Gary had chosen instead to reverse time altogether indicated to Saskia that he had not only reflected on his newfound abilities, but had had time to master the about face of moving through the universe contrary to its natural flow. And he was moving fast, backwards through time. Were she still in the ordinary flow it would have been a Michael Jackson moonwalk and in ultra-slow motion.
But Saskia was also moving back through time, and it was all she could do to keep up with his reversal. Besides, Gary was a bigger man than Saskia——there was no way she could restrain him with a tackle to the ground. Her only real hope was the age old human hunting technique of wearing the prey down; follow behind and wait for him to stop.
Well, that was chapter 76, Friends, I hope you enjoyed it!
There is something in the reciprocal nature of slowing time down which renders as speeding motion up that appeals to me. Moreover, I appreciate the extra joy that is wrung out of intellectually parsing such understanding. Mathematics offers an abundance of such examples, and I’d like to reflect briefly today on how comprehending the mathematical framing of such paradigms brings a profound joy to our experience more generally. Understanding what infinity really means, for instance, and how that is connected to the dual notion of the infinitesimal.
For those less versed in the mathematical mindset, a “mathematical dual” is a kind of complementary concept implied by the principle under consideration. In the instance of the previous paragraph: dividing a finite chunk into infinitely many smaller and smaller chunks implies the idea of an “infinitesimally small” chunk, that is an arbitrarily small chunk that is nonetheless bigger than zero. Obviously not a practical thing in the real world as anyone who has repeatedly tried subdividing a slice of cake can attest, but an idea that is at the foundation of Zeno’s paradox about the Tortoise and the Hare, or equivalently that we can still make it to the far side of a room if we always step half the distance left again and again (the trick being that we’ll need to make those steps faster and faster).
In any event, I mention all of this because a couple of months ago, I was struck by another example from the physical world: the harvest moon——the reddish hued full moon that graces the night sky when the earth’s shadow falls across it. At first, when looking at it, I glibly noted to my wife that it didn’t look that different to the moon on a slightly overcast night. Sure, there was the hint of warmth to its hue, but the soft light was otherwise pretty well mimicked by a cloud half-heartedly passing in front of it; like a 60% opacity on a Photoshop layer. Then it dawned on me: intellectually we knew what it meant, that the sun, earth and moon, for a couple of hours lay on a single line cutting through the vastness of space.
To fully appreciate this axial alignment you have to acknowledge how unlikely it is that the line through the moon and the earth also skewers the sun. I mean, imagine sticking a needle through a pea and a mustard seed, and extending that needle out across a football field and somehow managing to hit a basketball.
My point is that: it is understanding how unlikely the co-linear alignment of the earth, the sun and the moon is that makes the eclipse so special. So, the next time someone looks at you skeptically about how special mathematics is, maybe share this thought with them; I’m sure it’s something that they innately understand, and having them acknowledge it might just soften their attitude.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
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