The Adventure of Linguistics

During a lot of long-past times, when I used to go to dinner parties, graduation ceremonies, the laundromat, or some random coffee den, I'd get asked to describe myself. Someone would say to me, belligerently if a man or moistly if a woman, "What do you do?" Though I was often tempted to reply with some sarcastic banality, I sometimes came close to giving a description of this sort: "I teach at a school." If they pursued their question, belligerently or moistly, with a second question: "Which one?" I'd reply: "You've never heard of it. It's a family affair."

My elder brother was a philosopher of language. He was up on all the latest research--this was all quite some time ago, never mind how long ago--and, once upon a time, he came to me, in the flesh, with a problem.

I was in my office in our house. Usually, he sent me an email, even though his office was in the next room, but this time he came into my office.

My elder sister once asked me about his attitude--his precise attitude at that moment--when he entered my office. I've told her more than once that his attitude was querulous. I've told her so often, the word 'querulous' has come to take on the appearance of my elder brother. Querulous was five foot eleven, had unkempt brown hair, and wore glasses all the time. Such is the appearance of querulous.

On this occasion, my brother closed my door behind him. I waited for his first statement. I didn't know what to expect. The guy was a genius, capable of coming up with anything at all, anything in the field of linguistics, anyway.

"I've been working on something," he began, "and I think I need some help with it. It's driving me insane."

I leaned back, away from the rods and spheres of my chemical modeller. "That sounds serious. We can't have insane people start living here. It would disrupt everything too much. No, no, we can't have that here, here in this our school."

He sat down in my consultation chair, which was made of wood, with a seat of worn wickerwork, that I'd found discarded in a street nearby. Did he wipe his brow? It seems that might have been the case. Did he let out a heavy sigh? That is also possible. Sometimes many things happen at once, and it's impossible to see them all.

"I'm stuck in time," he said, looking down at my wooden floor. "I want to write about the language of today, but I can't sense it because I'm too busy using ... you know ... it."

"Using what?"

"Using both the present, and the present tense. That's the essence of the problem. I can't use the past tense when speaking of the present tense. It only works one way. How can that be?"

I thought I knew what he was going on about, only because I knew how the thoughts of our school worked.

"You mean: you can't see the present tense because you're stuck right in the middle of it."

"Yes, you're understanding me."

"Why do you want to know about the present tense?"

He got up and walked over to my window, which was a back window looking out on an expanse of trees and bushes and trashcans. It was neglected, but no-one knew why.

"Look at it this way," my brother said. "We know the Victorians, right?"

"Yes, that's commonly known to be the period 1850-1900, roughly speaking."

"So, what are we?"

"Currently? I'm not sure. I suppose we're Carolingians of some sort or another. I think these terms have fallen out of favour since the Edwardian period--"

"You're missing my point."

He went back to sit in the chair to continue.

"We will never know anything about the present period--I'm mostly interested in the linguistics, as you know--until we're in the future, by which time it will be dead simple to understand."

"Like you want to know what the stock market will do tomorrow?"

He thought for a moment. "You know, I guess it's the same thing. Wasn't there a Twilight Zone episode about this?"

"There may well have been, and it may have been written by Rod himself."

"Anyway, regardless of a tv show, I'm more interested in understanding the language of today, and I can't do it from the present tense."

I stopped him there. "Are you talking about building a time machine?"

He stood up quickly. "Yes! Just a little one!"

"But time travel is impossible. You could kill my grandfather!"

"He's my grandfather too, you know. Listen, I don't want to go back in time. I know that problem would inevitably occur, unless I was invisible or something."

I quickly said: "But think of what you will change of the future tense when you're in the future tense? It's been proven that the last, present, and future are delicately influential upon one another. It's called spooky-action-at-a-distance!"

He produced molecules of handwavium, as the term is. "We'll know immediately the effects. I propose we start with a single second ahead of the present. Just one little second! If anything happens, if chairs begin to collapse or pets start to gag, I'll get back to the present presently tense."

I could see where his urge came from. We had always been an intensely intelligent though radically impractical family. How many houses had we had to flee due to this-or-that calamity? I can recall four, though I understand there were other houses fled before my birth. And so I said, quite reasonably: "That would be all well and good, I agree with you, but there's one fundamental problem."

He leaned back skeptically and replied: "And what would that be?"

I stood up to my full height and calmly said: "We don't have a time machine."

He also stood at that point. "And that's precisely why I've come to ask your help!"

Overborne, I sat down with a creak. "I don't know the first thing about building time machines. You know my skills, and building time machines isn't one of them."

"It's not?"

"Certainly not."

"But I was under the impression that anyone who could play the flugelhorn could do anything."

(This was an inside joke, too difficult to explain satisfactorily. The college was full of them, and I'll try to avoid them from now on.)

"That's generally true, but it doesn't apply to necromancy, second sight, or time machines!"

"Very well, very well. Seriously: I thought that all you sub-atomic whizzes were into that thing."

"You're making an error. I'm mostly a computer scientist."

He thought for a moment. "So why am I doing here?"

I helpfully offered: "It's our elder sister who's the particle physicist. You've confused me with her."

"Oh, well, then, let's get her in here!"

"Alright."

I wrote a note saying: "Come up here to the back office. There's something to discuss." Then I turned around in my chair to my fax machine, put it atop the platter, dialed our elder sister's number, and pressed send. You see, our elder sister had a theory about the loss of information involved in most electronic communications. We always argued about it, for I would persist in saying a fax is just as digitized as an email, but she would hear nothing of it. Perhaps it was an excuse because she simply liked handwriting. A minute later, the response came in, and there, on the slippery paper, was the reply: "I'm on my way."

My brother said: "Now we're getting somewhere. I'm certain she can understand my mission, and perhaps she could find some use for a time machine herself."

I said: "Any new technology cannot predict all its uses. However, I do think there's a problem in all this theorizing."

"Which is?"

"How will you communicate with us?"

"I suppose I'll use language. Perhaps nothing else will work."

"If only we knew what to expect, using this hare-brained speculative and impossible apparatus."

"Hare-brained, speculative, and impossible things, I suppose."

The conversation was at a standstill. The whole idea was too wacky to discuss without a qualified particle physicist present, so we simply waited.

After a few minutes, our elder sister came into my office. She was a bit out of breath because her office is in the basement where electromagnetic and gravitational interference is lessened. Plus, the room is soundproof, some kind of a cage, so we don't have to be bombarded with AC/DC 24/7.

She caught her breath. She was in her customary beige overalls and rubber shoes, and her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was quite lovely, even for an elder sister. She asked: "So what's the matter?"

My brother replied: "I want to get a grasp on current linguistics, and in order to do so I must somehow get ahead of the present tense."

"Use the future tense, then."

"No, that won't work. I could show you some diagrams illustrating how that would be useless, but that's not the point of this meeting."

"Ah!" she said, removing the protective goggles I suppose I should have mentioned her wearing four paragraphs ago. "So what's the point of this meeting?"

"I want to get slightly to the future. Just a little bit, at first. Then probably a little more. I want to work on present vocabulary, and I can't do that from the now."

Our elder sister walked to the window to look at the garbage cans. I could see she thought they were full, and overflowing really, and could do with a little TLC.

She said: "This is your lucky day, O elder brother of mine."

Our elder brother and I were stunned. Was the universe about to unfold serendipitously?

She continued: "I've got just the thing down in the basement."

"Great Scott!" cried my brother. "Does it actually work?"

"Theoretically, yes. There is no reason for it to fail. By energizing a field of raw isolated muons, I've discovered they are moving back and forth in time. They aren't decaying at the same rates. Spread across a probability table, they exhibit that a definable fraction of them is ahead of the rest, while a likewise definable fraction of them is behind the rest. That is to say, some kinds of sub-muons are transferring from one to the next, like a crowd with some folks in the middle and some folks on the outskirts, in a balance of energies, a bell curve, in which none of them know what their neighbour is quite doing. It's all theoretically sound, and based on observation."

I said: "So it's the muons who are doing all the work, controlling time."

"Yes. As our father said, and he was right to say it, though I do believe it was based more on courage than conviction: 'Take care of the muons, and the bosons will take care of themselves.'"

I said: "I thought that saying had to do with Mom and us."

"I never thought that."

"Sure. I though: Muon equals Mom; bosons equal bozos; that's to say, us kids."

"Never thought of that, either."

My brother had had enough. He said to our elder sister: "Okay, so you've got a time machine of some sort, is that right?"

She said: "Yes, I do. It's down in my lab."

My brother stood up if he was sitting down or stood up tall if he was already standing. "Can we see it? Can I use it?"

Our elder sister blushed. "I don't have the place tidied up, it's a mess."

"Don't worry about that. I'm sure we can handle it."

"No, really, the place is a sty."

"We don't care. We won't look anywhere. It's not a social visit."

She shrugged. "I guess it'll be okay. C'mon, then, I'll show you to it."

I asked: "Can I come too?"

"I guess so. Okay, come down to my lab, and see what's on the something-that-rhymes-with-lab."

She led the way, my brother followed her, and I followed him. The upstairs hallway seemed unusually narrow, then down the stairs we went, to the ground floor. We passed our younger sister the philosopher's room and got to the kitchen. The kitchen was a mess. (All our hired help would quit after a day or two, at most a week.) A door to the right led down into the cellar where our elder sister's lab was. We descended into a land of fluorescent light. I noticed a new door leading who-knew-where; it seemed elder sister had been at work again, expanding her domain. How she knew where she could dig I've never known, but dig she did, in a basement ever-growing. We went through a steel door, then through another. The atmosphere improved when we got into her central lab, which was wide and long with two great white tables running towards the mauve-curtained windows high on the walls. Counters encircled a central counter, with investigations and gizmos everywhere you'd look. I wondered which gizmo was the famed time machine, but my eye was attracted to a yellow begonia which had instruments of measurement surrounding it. I felt certain the combination had something to do with time. Since our elder sister was something of a vegetarian, plants were instead subjected to torture, in that nether realm no-one but ourselves knew about.

I said to her: "That begonia is significant to your studies of time, correct?"

She said: "You're bang on. The begonia is the centre of the experiment I'm conducting."

We went over to the begonia. It looked a brave and noble begonia, though I can't say I'm an expert on the plant. As I watched, I saw it develop a fresh bud.

"It's growing quickly," stated I the obvious.

"Yes," she said, reaching out for it but not touching it: "Jethro is a fast learner."

"So, what's happening to it?"

"It's one of my tests. It's actually accelerating into the future. What we're seeing here is its reflection in the past. It seems to be here, but it's actually far in the future. What we are seeing is what we are living in its past."

"Jethro. I get it. And you think you can do the same for brother."

I looked over at my brother. He was bouncing up and down on his heels and rubbing his hands. This was my first experience of see someone in heat. He was practically drooling, let me say, and I don't lie.

I asked my elder sister: "Do you think you can put brother into the future? One single second into the future?"

She shrugged. "I guess it's worth a shot."

"Should we be wearing tinted goggles for this?"

"There's no light involved."

"No zolts of lightning-electricity bouncing from big silver balls?"

"Nope, none of that."

"What about our clothes? Got anything in lead?"

"That would be an affectation. This happens entirely sub-atomically."

Reader, I persisted. "We should be wearing hair-nets. What if a strand off my head falls into the vat? Won't it mutate into a fly or something?"

"I'm not using a vat. The rays that are hitting Jethro do all the heavy lifting."

I looked at Jethro again. I couldn't see any rays, purple or otherwise. I persisted. "There are rays?"

"Yes, muon rays, as I told you. Positively-charged muon rays that suck out the negatively-charged ones. I'm using positive and negative in a metaphorical sense."

"I understand."

"No, you don't."

"True, but I thought it was what I was supposed to say."

Ignoring me, she continued: "Actually, what it creates is a differential, an air conditioner pushing warm air outside to make things cooler inside. As the positive muons accelerate Jethro's time, so our time decelerates, but only to the slightest degree, since this plant is rather smaller than the universe."

"Yes, considerably smaller," I feigned amazement.

Our brother said: "Okay, enough with 'The Boneheads.' I don't care how it works. It'll just be Star Trek bafflegab about dilithium crystals. Just get me a single second into the future!"

Our elder sister got together the proper equipment in what seemed like five minutes, as if she'd prepared it aforehand. Soon there was an (I suppose) 'muon-alterator' which looked like a Minolta set up and ready to go. It had a dial, and a switch, and nothing else.

Our elder sister explained (so many explanations!) that the dial was logarithmical, with each notch double the previous notch.

I pointed to the switch. "And what does that do?"

"We call it an on/off switch."

"Excellent."

She had in her hand a notebook of some sort. It turned out to be her operator's manual. She said, looking over the pages: "So, to go forward a single second, I set the notch ... to ... here." She moved the dial slightly. "And that's all there is to it. Oue brother is now one second in the future."

I looked at my brother carefully. Nothing appeared to have changed. Still the same brother.

However, I was wrong. My elder sister said: "There," complete to the full stop. Then, to my brother she said: "You are now living one second in the future. How does it feel?"

At the exact moment my sister said: 'feel', my brother quickly said the 'I don't' of "I don't feel any different." (This is to say, 'feel' and 'I don't' were said at exactly the same time, in case you missed that.)

I said: "I think it worked. I think you're one second a"

/"I may"

\"head."

"be one second ahead. You two seem to be lagging. Oh, but really I don't feel like I've discovered anything interesting linguistically! This machine of yours is going to take more work, really!"

Our elder sister said: "Maybe you're right, but that's not important! What's important is that I've discovered how to really control"

/"Very well"

\"time itself!"

"for you, congrats, quite, but it's done little for me. I'm a second into the future, hurrah! I know what people will speak in your next second, but I want to know much more! Put me more into the future. Try five seconds."

My sister delicately turned the knob. Our brother suddenly jiggled to a different posture, and said: "I didn't feel a thing."

I asked: "Can you tell"

/"I can't sense"

\"you're now five"

/"any much of a"

\"minutes into the"

/"difference really."

\"future?"

We were overlapping to a very noticeable degree. This posed some serious hypothetical problems. I wondered what would happen if I stopped talking, if I unfinished a sentence, what would happen? I came up with a test: I would use the finger-counting method. I would hold up three fingers, but I would not hold up three fingers also.

I said: "Brother, how many"

/"Three."

\"fingers, I didn't hold"

/"Yes, you did, three."

\"up any fingers!"

"I clearly saw you hold up three fingers. Didn't you hold up three fingers?"

"I was going to, but"

/"I don't know how that happened."

\"I stopped myself from doing so."

Our elder sister said: "This is cause for study, I must say! It would appear there's more than one timeline operating. I must tell our younger sister the philosopher about it. Maybe

/"Put me ten seconds into the future."

\"she'll have a ready answer."

Elder sister shrugged, said: "Don't see why not," consulted her notebook, consulted the machinery, and turned the dial. In a flash, elder brother vanished. We both looked around. We saw him running down the corridor.

"Come back, brother!" called my elder sister, but he didn't respond. He was at the stairs, and ascending.

"I'll reset the machine," she said, but when she turned to do just that, the machine wasn't there anymore. Elder brother had absconded with it.

"Oh dear! Has a disaster just occurred?" asked my elder sister of me.

I replied: "It certainly doesn't feel like a disaster."

We hurried after him. We both figured he'd be heading for the front door, so we went right. The door clanged shut before our eyes.

My sister said: "No point in chasing him. He'll always be a minute ahead of us if he decides to turn the Walmart-bought dial on my device slightly to the right."

"Do you mean he's got himself into the future, and any time in the future?"

My elder sister put her face in her hands. "Our elder brother is gone, and I don't have the parts to make another time machine."

I think we were both in what the medics call shock. We were both in possession of the same facts, though the muon science behind it all was quite beyond me. Our elder brother was somewhere in the future, going from time to time as the whimsy struck him. Who knew how many meals he would scrounge off friendly strangers of the future tense?

Since it had to be asked, I asked: "Can he get back to this our present tense?"

Older sister replied: "There's a hidden reset button. I bet he'll hit it sooner or later."

"By chance?"

"By chance."

We were done with it. We had nothing to do but wait. I fried up some bologna and we sat down and when we sat down our younger sister came out of her room and sat down with us and asked: "So, anything interesting to say of this day?"

Years passed, and nothing was heard from our eldest brother. Decades passed, and nothing was heard. The house became a burden, so we rented out half of it. We made fewer and fewer discoveries of note, and soon we gave in to time. Old age and sickness, that about covered our interests. Two deaths happened, and I guess you can figure out whose. And so I was left all alone, alone with my questions about my brother. How far into the future was he, and what was it like there?

I thought I'd live through my days in ignorance, but then, oh happy day, I received a letter, and it was from him. How he'd managed to get a letter back in time, against the flow of entropy, I guess I'll never know, but he managed to do it.

The letter is as follows:

 

Dear Younger Brother:

I write to you and deliver to you at your most significant time, addressed to you in 20--, on this your happy day. The Nobel Prizes! What an honour it must be for you three back there! Too bad you couldn't snag all five, ha-ha! I found out about them on this your day and this your time, and I must say I am impressed.

I am currently in a distant future, 2920 to be exact, in a research lab, and all my co-workers extend their gratitude to you three siblings and to your great discoveries. In fact, none of our present technologies would be available if it weren't for your work.

However, I recognize I am getting old now--older than you, by a couple years, in fact. Our life-extending sciences can only do so much!

Thus, I am making contact, undoubtedly for the last time.

(Sending things back in time is a terrific bother!)

Anyhow, congratulations on your prizes! I love you all, and give my best to the sisters.

Yours truly,

Elder Brother

 

I don't think I ever knew what to believe.