BETWEST - Unexpected Journey Unravelling the Advancement in Physics and Travelling

 BETWEST

Unexpected Journey Unravelling the Advancement in Physics and Travelling

They started to go the floor above when they saw the new service elevator that was installed the week before and Tresie suggested they should give it a try instead of walking up the stairs as they were feeling rather tired.

And so, they went upstairs and went out to the corridor to reach for their room. “Am I going blind or the lights of this corridor really were a lot less white and dimmer than this? It’s a little too bright this way. Isn’t it?” Tresie, a tall young woman with long straight dark hair, in her early twenties, dressed in a brown leather jacket, a yellow shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and a pair of brown boots, asked with a slight uncertainty and surprise. To this, Irvin, a taller, but similarly aged young man with equally dark hair, a black coat, a blue shirt, a pair of black trousers, and a pair of charcoal boots, nodded, and added “I don’t for once think that you’re entirely wrong. I do sense a little change in the colours of the lights in this place. I guess they just changed it. What’s bothering me regarding the change, however, is that they changed the entire corridor’s lighting so quickly! We were here not more than an hour ago.”.

“Anyway, let’s just get to the room and get our wallets and go back to the restaurant. Markson and his date are waiting for us back there.”, Irvin said. They walked to the room door and Irvin took out the key card to tap on the knob to enter. It didn’t work, instead indicated that the key was not meant for that particular door lock. “I think we should walk around. Who wants a room anyway?”, Irvin said. “What’s wrong? Why isn’t the key working?” Tresie asked in wonder. “Pffft … No one works on Sundays.”, Irvin remarked. “Let’s go to the reception and ask them what this is about.” Tresie suggested. And so, they started to leave, when Irvin said “don’t you think we should attend to Markson and his date down at the restaurant, get that done with, and then take care of this? I’ll ask Markson to pay now and I can pay him back later if that’s all this is about. We should spend time with them before they leave. We can look after this once we have sent them off. No problem.”, to which Tresie concurred, and they started walking back.

This time, they were in a hurry. So, they walked down the stairs. As they arrived at the floor where the restaurant was, they noticed that their friends were gone. And not just that, there was something different about the seating arrangements of the place. “Markson is gone. And so is his date. Also, is this how the chairs and tables were arranged before, because I remember them being a little different. Wasn’t our table next to a painting beside that wall third next to the door?”, Tresie noticed. “I can still somehow believe that if they suddenly decided and then seriously worked hard enough with strong enough and quick enough people, the tables and chairs could be rearranged in these few minutes. But I can’t for once fathom that the wall could be repainted in this minuscule amount of time.”, Irvin added. “There really is something, a little uncharacteristic of hotels, happening around here. And as our friends have left anyway, let’s just go to the reception and ask about the key and just go to our room.”.

They went to the reception and “why do you think the door of room 265 divorced its key? Could you help us out here, please?” Irvin asked. The receptionist checked her computer and said “Mr. Treaveol, I presume? Let me just check what the problem might be. Could you hand me the key card please?”. “As much as I completely empathise with someone who could be named ‘Trivial’, my name actually is ‘Irvin’. Anyway, here’s the key.”, Irvin replied while handing over the key to the receptionist. As soon as the receptionist both saw and heard the key card and the name, she abruptly mentioned “Sir, I see there’s probably been a mistake. Because, two things: - one, the room 265 is booked and currently occupied by someone named ‘Treaveol’, and two, this key card, this doesn’t belong here. The name of the hotel is right, I agree. But our cards don’t look like this, the design is different. Here, please have a look at this one. This is how our cards look.”.

Looking at that, Tresie jumped in and asked “Oh no, it’s okay. There can’t be any mistake. It just seems like a little misunderstanding. We don’t know who ‘Treaveol’ is and we can’t speak for him, but we have been staying at this hotel and in that very room since yesterday evening and we are booked until the day after tomorrow morning. Just check our names in your list if you can, once. And also, it’s alright. I do recognise this card design. You must be new here and probably don’t recognise all the old and new card designs just yet. It used to be this earlier until last year. We have been here earlier as well. Actually, it was roughly this time of last year. Well, maybe a few days here and there but more or less this time of the year”.

The receptionist said “Well, I’m not that new. I’ve been here for like a year now. And we’re all trained anyway. And I did check the list and the room 265 is actually occupied by 'Mr. Treaveol’, and even if you’d have mentioned the room number incorrectly, your names should be there somewhere, in the row of another room number at least. But they really weren’t on the list at all. I’m really sorry. I do not in any way mean for any of this inconvenience to happen to you. But it is what it is. And this has really never happened before in the entire year that I’ve been working here”. “Well, that must have been a pretty good year for you, then. But what do we do? Who else can we speak to, if nothing further can be accomplished from our back and forth? I mean, we have our luggage in the room. We can’t just leave everything and get going. Is there a manager or someone you might have known in your successfully spent last year? Someone that we can talk to and actually sort this thing out?” Tresie enquired. “Yeah, Okay Ma’am. I’ll call the manager; he’ll be here as soon as possible. Could you wait out here on the couch?”, she replied.

Irvin, in the meanwhile, started looking around and began to notice that it was not just the dining arrangements in the restaurant, but several other objects in the hotel’s lobby that seemed all arranged differently. The fiddly feature of this situation was that the arrangement looked different but not unique as in it wasn’t actually with an absolute zero sense of familiarity. Once he got the time to grasp everything, coupled with all the talk about the last year, it struck him that the arrangement was like the way the hotel was last year when they were around.

And so, Irvin dragged Tresie out to a corner and asked her if it is just him or if she thinks the same. Tresie took a glance at her surroundings a little more carefully and noticed it too. “Oh! Yeah, you’re right. But, so what? I don’t really see where you’re getting at, with this.”, she said. “I don’t know either, I just pointed it out because honestly, it is outlandish. I mean, to rearrange everything within minutes alone, and on top of it, to get it exactly as it was the last time.”, Irvin replied. “What do we care? Let them do whatever they want with the arrangements of things around this place. Let’s just talk to the manager and go to our room. I think we should get some rest anyway.”, she said.

“Hello sir, hello ma’am. I’m the manager. What exactly seems to be the problem here, and how may I have the pleasure to assist you today?” came in a voice followed by a smiling gentleman in a suit. “Oh, Hel …” Tresie began to speak but stopped for a second with a shock to notice that the manager was the person whose picture was framed up on the wall declared dead a few years ago, at the reception when they were checking in the day before, a picture which isn’t there now. “Erm … Hello. Yeah, could you just give us a tiny little moment here, please?” she asked. She turned to Irvin and told him what she saw and everything regarding it. “That can’t be right. You must be mistaken. This man probably just looks very similar to that dead person in the photo. And in any case, let’s just talk to him regarding our rooms now. He seems like a nice person. Maybe he could help us with something.”. Irvin replied. “Well, I don’t know. But, okay yeah, maybe I’m mistaken. And maybe you’re right. Let’s just talk to him about the room and get this thing done with.”, she said, trying to calm herself down to focus on the problem at hand.

So, she went and explained to him this misunderstanding that seemed to have been going on and asked what it was that could be done to resolve it and basically, how everyone can get to go back to where they needed to be. The manager listened to everything carefully and replied “I completely understand your situation and I empathise with you as well. You’re right. I would actually be much more frustrated, compared to how calmly you’re dealing with it, I must add. Let me recheck the system once again. Actually, about that, you can come along and have a look as well if you like. We believe in honest transparency while interacting with our guests regarding our facilities and issues.”.

They agreed and went up to the computer and everyone found out what the receptionist was saying to be true after all. Shocked, Tresie exclaimed, “how on earth is that even possible?”. “I’m sorry, how what? Anyway, it’s okay. I understand you’re angry. But as you can see, we can’t really do anything for you in this regard anymore. You can book a new room, though. But I hope you understand. We just showed you that there isn’t any room booked by your name and neither do we recognise that card you’re holding. I’m really sorry I’m having to suggest this as I can notice you are very sensible people otherwise, but this might have been a mistake and there must be another hotel with the same name and you basically may be at the wrong address right now.”, the manager said.

“That, dear gentleman, is the least likely scenario among the number of things that could explain what’s happening here. But I can see where you’re coming from with your computer and the list and the key card and everything. So, we’re not going to raise our voices or argue with you or shame the hotel or anything of that sort. But we might have one little favour to ask you and if you could do that for us, we won’t disturb you and will really consider the unlikely scenario in which the both of us lost our memories simultaneously all of a sudden after already staying at a very similar hotel for a night and wandered off looking for a hotel that has the same name as we, despite losing our memories, remember the name of. Could you help us this one last time, though?”, Irvin asked. “Sure, Sir. Thanks for understanding. And yes, what can I do for you?”, the manager eagerly asked. “I know it’s probably a difficult thing to ask for as it will certainly be awkward for both you and the supposed guests staying in the room, but would it be possible for you to could come with us to room 265 and knock on the door if there are people currently there or open the door with the master key if the door is locked from the outside, just once for us to have a look? It’s so we’d be able to believe that it isn’t our room and more importantly our luggage isn’t there as well.”, Irvin politely requested. The manager looked here and there and discussed with the receptionists if they happen to know whether the guests are currently in the room but no one knew that for sure. After a few minutes, he came along with one of the receptionists and agreed to both of them accompanying Irvin and Tresie to the room.

And, so they went on to the room. What followed next, dazed Irvin and Tresie even further to undergoing utter disbelief in what they were experiencing with an obvious element of intense disappointment. The manager broke the rule for them and opened the door with the master key as no one responded to the initial knocking for a few minutes. What everyone saw was that the room was indeed reserved by someone who wasn’t there at the moment, but had obviously been staying there. The manager made sure no one touches anything and Irvin and Tresie were civil enough not to interfere once they recognised the fact that the luggage in the room wasn’t theirs. They came out of the room and thanked the manager for his help and left the hotel premises.

Literally not knowing what to do next in such an impractically unfair and confusingly unpleasant scenario, they walked down to a park they saw across the street and took a breather sitting on the bench. Recalling what they just experienced, they for once, stopped fighting it and started to think about where it all went wrong. They knew they weren’t clinically out of their sane minds. Yet it was seeming to them that they probably were.

They began from the point they were at the table with their friends. “So, we were at this dinner with Markson and his date. Everything was fine until then, wasn’t it? Food! What did we order? What did they order? Speaking of which, do you think there was something in the food that is interfering with our memories somehow? Which again puts the hotel and the staff in the bad. They seemed nice, though. I don’t really want to blame them. Wait, were we allergic to something in the food? What did we order?!””, Tresie shrieked in a state of exasperation. “There was nothing wrong with the food. Calm down. We ordered the usual stuff. A couple of pizzas along with garlic slices of bread and salad. They ordered noodles and gravy. And we all ordered ice creams. Everyone ordered the exact same one. And even the drinks, we all had a lemonade each. It just can’t get more ‘usual’ and ‘common’ than that. So, we weren’t allergic to anything. Also, if the hotel people would’ve put something in our food, Markson and his date would have had similar problems as we did. Also, where are they, anyway? Wait, let me just call Markson once again.”, Irvin replied, and carried on with his plan of action as he took his mobile phone out to call his friend. His phone, however, did not cooperate. It didn’t show on the network. “Now, this actually is annoying. Why won’t the cell phone work?””, Irvin yelled.

“This question never gets old, my mate, still valid in 2144.”, an old, averagely tall, and thin man with grey hair wearing an old-fashioned suit who was walking by, said with a gentle smile on his face, approaching them. “Here, you can use my phone if you’d like to make a call.”, he took his phone and offered Irvin. Both Irvin and Tresie looked at each other once and then back at the man, and Irvin asked “Thanks a lot for helping us. You seem like a nice gentleman with courtesy. Although I’m so sorry, I couldn’t get you there completely. What were you saying just before offering me the phone? Something ‘question was still valid in …’ what, exactly?”. “HaHa! Nothing serious, I was just saying that this act of people being frustrated with their cell phones not working still happens so much all the time even today. I mean, how advanced did people in the 2100s and 2110s estimate we would get by the 2140s and 2150s. And yet, here we are, cell phones not catching signals properly even in 2144. I mean, these mobiles have been around for like around three decades now. They should be better by now, don’t you think?”, the man replied. Being taken aback for a moment, Irvin replied “Well, yeah. You’re right. Anyway, thanks for the help, I’ll try calling my friend. Or, is your phone alright, Tresie? I think yours should be fine, isn’t it? If yours is fine, we could just use that. Yours is fine, isn’t it? Is your phone alright? Can we call using that?.”, Irvin said turning towards Tresie with an expression that summarised that they had to talk about something in private. Obviously, Tresie understood and chimed in. “Oh yeah, here it goes. My phone works. Mine works just fine; we’ll use this one. Although, thanks a lot, sir. You’re a good man.”, she added. “Well, that’s great. All the best, you two.”, the man replied and slowly walked away.

“Okay, what exactly just happened? 2144? 21…44?! It’s 2144? Or is that man just not in a decent mental condition? What is happening?”, Tresie asked in distress. “I’d prefer to think it is the latter.”, Irvin replied, “But, for the sake of all the sci-fi movies I’ve watched all these years, I’d like to find out if we have actually travelled in time to 2144, 19 years into the future. Do you see a shop that’s selling something like newspapers or calendars or something of that sort nearby?” “Yeah, there is one,”, Tresie pointed out to a shop across the street just outside the park.

So, they walked up to the shop and asked “Hey! May I have one of today’s newspapers?”. The young shopkeeper replied, “Sure. That’d be 2 buttocks.”. “Excuse me?”, Irvin giggled. The shopkeeper repeated, “Oh, I said that it’d be 2 buttocks.”. “I’m sorry, but that seems a little strange. Don’t you think? I mean, why would you ask for someone’s buttocks in exchange for newspapers? We’d pay you money if you’d just tell us what it costs?”, Tresie somehow made her way through their giggles and spoke. The shopkeeper looked at them for a moment and replied “I am telling you what it costs. It’d be a couple of buttocks. I’m sorry, do you not have spare change? There’s an MIE machine, a Money-Insertion-Extraction machine, at the corner of the street where you can withdraw some buttocks and peters”. “Oh, dear God!”, Irvin started laughing out loud. “I’m so sorry, am I not being clear enough? And also, may I ask what exactly is the funny part? I’d like to have a good laugh too, sir.”, the poor boy verbalized his confusion. Tresie finally spoke up, “I’m so sorry on behalf of both of us but we don’t have the money and our bank cards as we’ve locked ourselves out our hotel room, and the locksmith is on his way to examine the lock and make a duplicate key. So, we thought we’d wait in the park reading a newspaper. Pardon the laughter, this laughing at random moments is sort of a problem he has. I hope you don’t mind.”. The shopkeeper offered them the newspaper on hearing this saying “The what? Well, okay. I guess I can lend you a single newspaper for free since you poor guys have been locked out. Here you go with the newspaper.” So, they took the newspaper and walked out of the shop thanking the shopkeeper for his generosity.

They went back to the bench and looked at the newspaper for the date and other headlines regarding the place where they were at. And they saw what they speculated they probably might. The year on the date read '2144'. After staring at the newspaper for a minute in silence with numbness, “So, it’s true. We really are in the future. We are in 2144.”, Tresie finally spoke up. “Hmmm”, Irvin added. “Seriously? How could this be? I don’t understand. We were just fine about an hour or so ago when we were at dinner with these people at the hotel. What exactly happened? And more importantly, when and HOW did it happen?”, Tresie cried. “And it’s not just that, something doesn’t add up.”, Irvin added. “Yeah. ‘Something doesn’t add up’. I was looking for a good captioning comment because it wasn’t really that obvious. I mean, all we accidentally did was a little time travel 19 years into the future.”, Tresie remarked. Irvin replied “No, I mean even that. Look around. Does this place look …?” when he was interrupted by a young man in an ice-cream truck passing by shouting “best ice cream in Buttasia, starting from just 3 buttocks and 20 peters.”

“See, this. This as well. What is it with this?”, Irvin began chuckling again, and somehow calmed himself down looking at Tresie’s resentment, and continued on a serious note, “deducing from the contexts of both this ice cream person and the newspaper shopkeeper, these ‘buttocks’ and ‘peters’ are apparently the currency denominations of this place. Really? When have you heard of a currency with that name, anywhere in the world, in any country? And speaking of country, the name of the country as well is ‘Buttasia’. Seriously? ‘Buttasia’? Have you ever heard of any country with this name?”. To which, Tresie replied “We are 19 years into the future. Countries and states keep forming and collapsing every few years in so many places around the world. Maybe something like that happened and this country was formed a few years after the time we came from, so we don’t know about it. And the currency would’ve followed the state formation, clearly into the nomenclature of it as well.” “Ahh, I don’t know, Tresie.”, Irvin added in doubt.

“Stop with this, now. And help me recapping what happened and eventually figuring out where everything went wrong.”, Tresie said, “We were at the dinner table and the food was alright as you said.”, she recapped, and continued saying “And then, as we had forgotten our wallets in the room, we went up to the room. And the key card didn’t work. So, we came down and went to the restaurant area only to find out that Markson and his date weren’t there anymore and then we went to talk to the hotel reception. And then, well, to here. I don’t get it. Where did we manage to time travel in the middle of this?”.

“Yeah, I know all of that. But before that, there is something else I don’t understand. Please listen to what I’m about to tell you and try to think carefully and answer what I’m about to ask you.”, Irvin said. He continued, “Look around. LOOK AROUND! Except for the currency and the place’s name, look at the general atmosphere and objects and items being used and all those sorts of things. Does it look 19 years into the future to you? Doesn’t it look pretty much exactly the same in fact? I know I’d be impractically optimistic to assume that there’d be some flying cars or personal spaceships. But at least things like that man’s cell phone or the television at the newspaper shop. And not to mention the obvious, but a Newspaper? It all looks exactly like it would in ‘Our Time’. And speaking of which, back at the hotel, the seating arrangements that we thought were a little different. I thought about it and I think you would recognise it too if I tell you that the arrangement was different yet familiar. It’s familiar because we have seen it. It’s …”. “Last year, when we came to the hotel.”, Tresie chimed in. “Right!”, Irvin exclaimed. “So, what’s your point? Didn’t we confirm that we’re 19 years into the future? Maybe things just haven’t changed as much as we thought they would.”, Tresie replied. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem believable.”, Irvin added.

“You’re right.”, a somewhat familiar voice entered the conversation. “It isn’t believable. And that’d be because it’s not true.”, he added. “Wait, aren’t you the …”, they recognised him. “… The man with the helpful cell phone?”, he said, “Yes.”. “What do you mean by that? Do you even know what we’re talking about?”, she asked. “Only I know what you’re talking about.”, he said. “Come with me.”, he started walking towards the hotel and gestured towards them to follow him. As there was nothing they could do anyway, and the man looked peaceful, and, well, outnumbered, they followed him.

He did begin to walk towards the hotel but then he turned towards the street beside it and they saw in the street what looked like a puzzlingly unusual little house just by one of the walls of the hotel campus. They followed him as he entered the room and discovered this room was a tad more spacious than it seemed from the outside, but still really clustered. It was in any case an ordinarily maintained house full of papers with a lot of scientific formulae written on them lying all over the place along with a blackboard that followed the same pattern.

“We trusted you and followed you into your house. So, it’d be greatly appreciated if you returned us the courtesy by not using us for one of your experiments, Mr, Scientist.”, Irvin broke the ice. “HaHa, you’re a little too late to wish not to be involved, don’t you think?”, he replied, “And the name is Dr. Eldrin. And I’m a physicist.”, he added. “I get what you mean, but could you tell us what exactly is going on and where and when we are and how we can get back or anything? You seem to know what’s going on and I believe you. Just tell us what it is and how we can go back.”, Tresie said.

“Okay, so let me start from the beginning.”, Dr. Eldrin began explaining. “Practically carrying out Time travel isn’t necessarily as linear or even cyclic as it seems in the movies, at least not by the method we use. General Relativity allows for objects called ‘Wormholes’ or ‘Einstein-Rosen Bridges’ to exist that connect two points in spacetime. I had begun working on wormhole-based time travel many years ago. Don’t ask me how I got to it, but the only method I came up with that could actually be used to achieve voluntary and calculable time travel to the past was by somehow accelerating an end of a wormhole to nearly light speed and bringing it back to the origin point just before entering it to exit the other end in the past. Because even if ironically, that’s how we came here in the first place, actually taking one end of the wormhole to someplace where the gravity itself is higher than at the other end when the other end is a planet is obviously difficult, leave alone the fact that even if we attempt that, the precision takes a hit as you have to depend upon a naturally found gravitational field, or appropriately curved spacetime fabric if you will.”, Irvin interrupted him, “Obviously, Sure. But could you hold on before you tell us something as obvious to us as the last thing, what do you mean by ‘could actually be used to’? You’re making a wormhole sound like a common market ingredient that you can just go buy/borrow to use. It’s obvious that one could travel long distances in spacetime if they could use a wormhole. But, that’s the issue, there are no wormholes here or anywhere observed yet and no one even knows how to create one as far as I know, as technology isn’t as advanced yet. How did you make a Wormhole here?”, Irvin asked the physicist.

The old man smiled and said, “Oh, Sorry. I forgot to mention. I didn’t have to make one from scratch. We do have wormholes. It’s just that they’re at the quantum stage when it comes to sizes. You must have at least read somewhere that in quantum mechanics, particles can suddenly disappear and appear in different places. I worked on that kind of behaviour and later found out that it was due to possible wormholes at quantum sizes. Neat, isn’t it? Whenever you think of reconciling General Relativistic Gravity with Quantum Mechanics, conventionally, you always approach it from the other end. I tried to approach testing theoretical GR implications in Quantum Mechanics and there you have it. Anyway, as revolutionary as it was, I guess the general public is yet to be informed that we have long ago discovered that wormholes exist in the quantum sizes and can be amplified and used for roughly seven millionth of a second at once. And that’s not just because they’re extremely and unpredictably volatile and hence, difficult to do that for long anyway. It’s because they’re objects with spacetime warping abilities by definition and these planets or even stars cannot handle being in such an immense gravitational density as it might lead to the formation of a black hole if things go a little incalculably out of hand. Fortunately, it’s tremendously complicated as well as really expensive trying to amplify them anyway as it requires what we like to call ‘exotic matter’ which basically are particles that have 'negative mass'. The common word out there is that particles that can possess such property as 'negative energy' can just be hypothetical, so, I understand why you think that might not be possible. But as we learned that Casimir Effect in Quantum Physics allows such a thing, we started working on how they can exist and where to find them. But, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you where and how we found them as that specific piece of information is severely confidential so no idiot with either just the money or just the equipment access can do this. I am a government-funded scientist/astronaut. Actually, right now, I’m especially funded to study you, people, in a way.”.

“I don’t think I particularly fancy the implications whenever you say ‘you people’. Are you … an alien?”, Tresie asked. “No, I’m a citizen here now. Technically, you both are the aliens. I’m home.”, the physicist smiled, “I’ve always wanted to say that. Jokes apart, yes and no. I am a human and from Earth, but not anymore. We had to give up Earth citizenship and sign the contract to spend the rest of our lives here. Let me explain, when we discovered the ‘Wormhole Amplification and Usability Technique’ or ‘WAUT’ in short, we explored all over the Milky Way to search for a place with suitable life-sustaining conditions by sending nanoprobes into them that send information in the form of gamma-ray Morse code via any other wormhole found nearby as well as radio waves normally back to observatories, for back up. But we didn’t find any planet in the Milky Way, so we started searching in the Andromeda galaxy, still nothing. Finally, in the Triangulum galaxy, we found this planet. We named it ‘Bearth’, as in ‘Backup for the Earth’. And so, we came here and colonised this place and started living here ever since. And we’re now much better in technology than Earth is right now when you’re coming from.”.

“So, we’re on 'Bearth' right now?”, Tresie asked. The old man nodded in agreement. “And when are we? I don’t know if it’s grammatically right to frame the question that way, but I no longer care about that.”. The physicist smiled again and said “Well, it’s tricky to answer that question. You are in the year 2144 on Bearth as you got to know earlier. But corresponding to Earth years, you’d be at the time if you were in 2124 on earth. This is because the years on Bearth are numbered 20 years ahead of the Earth as when we initially came here, we didn’t know that we had travelled to the past, so we didn’t account for it and it was hectic to change it later once we found out. And you are in this particularly peculiar position because you’ve travelled in time as well as in space. In space, you have travelled around 2.73 million light-years to another planet near another star in another galaxy, and in time, you’ve travelled a year in the past. Hence, coming from 2125 Earth to 2144 Bearth.”

“Okay. Well, wait a minute. I don’t think I properly understand what exactly happened with the process of colonising Bearth, though. You said humans from Earth colonised Bearth. And you also say that you are ahead in technology? And another thing, you said you’re being funded to observe us? Why would you people, who yourselves are humans essentially from Earth, observe us? If anything, we should be observing you. Isn’t it? I … this whole thing doesn’t exactly make much sense. Or I’m getting it wrong. Or are we missing something?”, asked a confused Irvin.

The scientist then said “Okay, I’ll go a little deeper. But mind this, what I’m about to disclose is strictly confidential. However, I guess as you’re too involved and you need to know, you might deserve to learn all or at least some of this. Although, I would appreciate it if you keep this to yourselves.” “Yeah, Sure. You can trust us.”, Tresie assured him.

The old man then started explaining “We had already discovered the wormhole utilising technique in general about 30 years before what your time is right now. But this was at a smaller scale just enough to send nanoprobes and that too randomly and not in a properly controlled and voluntary way with just 26% of attempts succeeding. And so, by those nanoprobes, we started looking for other planets or basically life-sustaining places around the universe. A year or two later, we found Bearth through observations. And after another 7 years, roughly more than 20 years before when you’re from, we finally developed a technique to execute the wormhole amplification safely in a portable particle collider carried in a space station far from the Earth and the entire solar system to a place with enough free space to carry that out. This was to initially send bigger probes to study Bearth and then astronauts to Bearth with enough supply to colonise it and support the growth of a variety of species as however similar to Earth the conditions of Bearth were, it was risky to just bring a singular cell and hope for evolution to happen just exactly as it did on Earth, especially with us humans around this time. Anyway, we finally started to plan our voyage to Bearth around 15 years after when you’re from. And we came here successfully alright. However, what we failed to account for was that when we were entering our end of the wormhole, the station itself was accelerating towards a nearby neutron star due to a jettisoning malfunction ending up in a close orbit around it and hence, at the moment when we entered into the wormhole, our end was considerably near a neutron and its gravitational reach, which was obviously a seriously large gravitational field compared to a simple planet like Bearth here which was the other end of the wormhole. So, as a result of that, we time travelled along with space travel through the wormhole as when the two ends of a wormhole are in significantly different varying gravitational fields, the one travelling from the heavier end travels back in time into the lighter one as time itself was slowed down for the end of the wormhole which is at the heavier gravitational field. The effect was so much so that we reached Bearth at a time which, corresponding to Earth, would count as travelling around 35 years into the past, which was like 20 years from when you’re from, or basically when the time machine itself was first created using WAUT. And then, we basically colonised the planet. We didn’t just come and started staying here ourselves and procreate, but we also brought a big set of diverse species to breed.”

“So, you’ve just been on this planet for 20 years? It doesn’t look like that around here. It looks like a properly developed city on a planet inhabited for at least 40 to 50 years.”, Irvin said. To which, the physicist replied “Bearth’s atmosphere isn’t 21% oxygen but 25% and nitrogen is 72% instead of 78% and the rest of them are in that remaining 3%. And the gravity is 97.4% Earth’s and the Pressure is 0.9573681 Bar. This place is near the equator of this planet, so the days and nights are more or less equal throughout the year, which is 13 hours each as an entire day here is 26 hours. The temperatures are fine, too. Not too hot, not too cold, as even if it’s the equator, the planet’s distance from the star is a little large and the axis tilt is 21̊ instead of 23.5̊ like Earth’s. So, it is because of the higher oxygen, slightly lesser gravity and pressure, moderate temperatures and better bunlight, which means the light from the closest star which we call ‘Bun’, you know, like Earth’s ‘Sun’, I know that our creativity has taken a hit but we felt excused and forgiven for it as we were the humans that discovered WAUT as well as Bearth. And along with that, the fact that evolution didn’t actually need to happen like on Earth as humans already brought several varieties of species of so many different categories, it took us just 20 years to reach this stage. As you can see, we have created this wonderful little city called ‘Buttasia’ (again, I know) with the help of the latest robotic arms that are sturdy enough to be used in actual building construction with precision, their programming to input the layout is a little similar to what’s used in 3D printing, actually. And also other personnel from various fields was brought here year after year to help out and set up as well as run all these hotels, restaurants, etc. The unfortunate part about that, however, was that they had to sign contracts that they let people on Earth know that all these people were dead because this whole thing is not known to the general public on Earth, as you now know. Anyway, I take it as a compliment that you believe this progress should’ve taken much more than what we took, but this beautiful development only extends to this city which is around 400 square kilometres. There are a few villages in the outskirts but they’re mostly just huts and farms.”.

“Okay. I forgot to ask another important thing, by the way. How did you know who we are and where and when we’re from?”, Tresie suddenly realised. The scientist answered “I overheard you talking at the park and I doubted if the inevitable ultimate trespassing has really happened. As Irvin here yelled with the phone, I understood you’re from Earth, no one uses mobile phones to talk to distant people here, we use Bluetooth chips with sim cards attached to our heads and the device has no interface, it runs on simple voice commands. Handsets do exist, but not to call. Look at the irony, by the way, the primary purpose of a mobile phone is separated from it now. And then, as soon as I saw your cell phone model, I recognised that you’re from around 2120s Earth. Finally, I tested you by mentioning the 2100s and 2110s to see if you correct me with the fact that we’ve only been here 20 years. But you didn’t. So, I further confirmed the fact that you weren’t from around here and that you don’t know anything about the wormholes or the intergalactic and intertemporal travels and planet colonising. And for a moment, I understood that you needed some time to confirm things on your own. So, I left you two for a while and came back. I did have my eye on you, though. Anyway, we are right now roughly in the time you two are from Earth-wise, just the years are numbered 20 years ahead and I’d say it’s good in a way because it is a fresh start with a far better and much more advanced foundation of knowledge and technology, we can assume that people further born and brought up here are going to be at least 20 years ahead in both technology and understanding of the universe. When we came here, we brought all the basic information of human understanding on various topics and basic technological blueprints including the WAUT papers. And we actually improved on it as we have now built an actual sci-fi movie fashioned ‘Time Machine’ as we like to call it. Well, it technically isn’t really travelling in time itself, it is actually like a path through time for us to travel in. Also, speaking of movies, we have brought all the movies and shows made on earth until 2150. How what we built is much cooler, easy, more efficient, and useful is that we need not take it into space far away to have an actual microgravitational field of space, we can replicate that in a smaller volume by using a technique that combines multidirectional magnetic levitation combined with gravitational wave riding. I’m sorry I can’t reveal how we achieved that as well. But doing that helped us create this kind of Time Machine that can be used right here within a chamber in a lab and without any safety space suit as the interior of the machine has Bearth’s standard atmospheric conditions which are a little similar to Earth’s as well anyway. So, much more user-friendly now. And coming to the other thing, we obviously monitor Earth. What did you expect, we just leave it? It’s still where we came from. I mean, if we didn’t have the technology to do so, we might not have. But as we do, we create smaller wormholes just to view some places by passing nanodrones on a day-to-day basis to check on things and keep as many things as identical to those corresponding things back on Earth as possible, so we don’t forget our basic cultures from food to architecture, like the main hotel you came from and this area of the city, completely identical to the one on Earth. There are other hotels here as well, by the way.”

“I think I sort of understand it all or at least the gist of it if not all the details.”, Tresie remarked, and continued, “But the most vital questions are yet to be answered. How did this happen and how can we go back home? By ‘how’ in the first question here, I mean to ask ‘where’s the time machine and when did we use it?’”.

“What? We’ve always thought subtlety wasn’t its strong suit. Did you really not notice the obvious absurdity in the el…?”, the old man interrupted himself, “Oh, I totally forgot. There’s a drugged gas in it that releases when you use it that erases your short-term memory of the past few minutes. It’s so that if someone who isn’t supposed to use it, uses it, they won’t remember it and its location and most importantly the technology behind it. Speaking of which, you’re not supposed to learn all this latter part and I wasn’t supposed to tell you. I guess I got a little carried away. Ah, What have I done? This was extremely irresponsible of me.”

“Well, we told you. You can trust us.”, Tresie spoke up amid the scientist’s epiphany, and continued, “And as what happened has happened anyway, could you at least help us go back? We promise we won’t ask any more questions except what we need for going back.”. “Okay, I’ll help you get back. We need to go back to the hotel for something a little more important, first.”, he replied.

All three of them went into the hotel. The staff recognised the physicist as well as his current companions. The old man waved at the manager and said “They’re with me. Could you get me a cup of tea and a couple of drinks for the youngsters?”. “Sure, Sir. Got it.”, he replied. “I don’t think that’s necessary, sir.”, Tresie said. “Oh, it’s alright. It’s on me. You’re probably the first ones to involuntarily travel 2.73 million light-years in space and a year in time to come and meet me.”, the scientist smiled and replied. So, they went to the restaurant section and had their drinks. And as soon as they were about to finish their drinks, they started feeling a little dizzy and unsteady. And then the old man finally revealed “It’s called a ‘Travelling in a Wormhole Elevator through Space and Time’ or ‘TWEST’, or in this specific case, ‘Bearth-Earth - TWEST’ or ‘BETWEST’ because ‘Time Machine’ is theoretically speaking, contextually incorrect and well, also cliché. The prefix changes with every other such interplanetary link. Yes, this is not the only one. I hope you travel to the others as well. I know you will. There are so many other planets set in so many different Earth times for you to visit. But you will eventually settle right here. It was a pleasure meeting you. This is Dr. Eldrin Treaveol. A day well spent, I must say. Oh, I love how handsome I was when I was younger.” which they could hardly grasp in the state of mind they were in, and they ended up dozing off.

They woke up lying on the floor of the corridor on the ground floor. “What just happened? Where are we? Why are we on the floor like this? Where’s the scientist?”, Tresie started getting worried realising the situation again seems a bit confusing and the one person they found that they could trust and who actually knew what was going on, wasn’t in sight. “I suspected this when he offered us drinks with that sly gesture to the manager just after he realised that we shouldn’t learn anything about the time machine and confirmed it when I started feeling light-headed after the drink, but I just didn’t want to confront or object him either way, as I trusted he would send us back, just at the cost of not knowing more about the time machine, which honestly wasn’t as important as coming back. So, I drank it and let you drink it as well. They basically drugged us and transported us back here.” Irvin said. “What are you two up to, really? It’s been around an hour since I’m looking for you. You said you were going to your room to get your wallet. You didn’t even go up to the floor yet?”, a voice they were dying to listen to at the beginning of their travel, was finally heard. “It’s Markson! We’re back! We’re here!”, Tresie exclaimed in joy. “I never thought I’d be this happy just to see your stupid face and listen to your eerie voice, Markson.”, Irvin added. “You two have seriously lost your mind. Anyway, I sent my date off and paid for everything at the restaurant down below. You two have kind of embarrassed me and I’m out of money now. Go get your wallets and pay me back right now or I’ll never pay for you again. I’ll be near the reception area having another lemonade. Don’t you two get lost again.”, their friend stated.

“Okay, we’re headed there right away. And when we come back, we have an unbelievable, unimaginable, and incredible story to tell you. You will just be flabbergasted when you listen to what we just experienced.”, Irvin enthusiastically screamed to Markson as they were walking away from each other.

They started to go the floor above when they saw the new service elevator that was apparently installed the week before and Tresie suggested they should give it a try instead of walking up the stairs as they were feeling rather tired.

The elevator was noticeably big enough for a service lift, but it was quite uncommonly fancy for being an elevator that would technically be meant just for labour tasks such as carrying furniture. The doors were Cobalt made and yet with handles made of Platinum with almost real diamond-looking gems used as decorations on them. It was lit with one roof-centred white light bulb and then several gold-coloured light strips along its silver-coated walls and crystal roof. The walls were all iron. The flooring on the other hand was Nickel and was remarkably polished and strong. It had various features of its own including a digital display with a touch screen interface of a set of several buttons that looked complex enough to make a layman believe it resembled some sort of an aircraft cockpit. However, when it came to the manual control of the primary function of travelling up and down among the floors, it had a long red lever instead of a set of buttons for the floor numbers. The lever however seemed to have more than just an axis of rotation and a handle to rotate and keep it at a floor number to reach there. It had another ability to even be pulled or pushed to some extent with nothing but just merely felt clicks defining the measure of the push or pull. It had an overall atmosphere of a blend of antiquity and technological advancement.

After spending about a minute or two admiring the beauty of the elevator’s interiors, Tresie realised it was time they use it for the reason they came into it and go to the floor above. So, she held the lever and rotated it to one measure up to assign the elevator to the floor above, doing which she accidentally pulled the lever a little towards herself too. “Ah, I pulled it a bit too! I hope it doesn’t get us into something troublesome!”, Tresie exclaimed. “Yeah, as if we will ever manage to land somewhere stranger than where we just went.”, Irvin remarked. The push-pull facility of the lever did not actually make any sense at the moment as there is only so much a normal service elevator can do no matter how many controls you install in it, it can only be added to its luxury. So, it didn’t at all seem like anything of concern.

A few seconds after the doors closed, the elevator began moving upwards at a ridiculously slow pace. “I guess we should’ve just walked up the stairs after we just came and saw the interiors of this thing. I guess that’s all this school bus of a machine is worth.”, Irvin added. Just as he completed saying that all the lights started flickering and the strips of the lights rolling all over the walls, each alternate strip in the opposite direction. “And there’s the light show.”, he further commented. “There is something really idiotic and immature about this thing. I can only imagine how much all of this would cost. I mean, yes, it’s a fancy hotel but even then, this is a service lift. I don’t see why they spent this much money as well as time and effort on something that’s rather unseen to many people as guests don’t really use a service elevator.”, Tresie said. “Yeah, all that and no lending machine refrigerator to get a can of cold drink. These people really need to get to know what’s more important in life.”, Irvin added, “But yeah okay, I’m sorry I get what you mean. It’s true, something about this is a bit unnatural. And there’s a little smoke coming out as well, hope this thing is alright and stays alright at least until we get out”. And within a few more seconds, the lights all went out at once and there was a sudden thrust to the left side. And then it instantly converted into an extremely quiet place when all of this stopped abruptly and the lights just came on and the doors opened, it was all over and they were on the floor above.

“Alright, we’re here. Let’s just head out and never return to this thing again. We can walk on the way back down.”, Tresie called. “What do you mean? It was fun. I want to do that again. We’re definitely doing this on our way back down., Irvin replied. “Okay whatever, we’ll see. Let’s go now. We’ve already wasted quite a lot of time.”, she said.

And so, they stepped out to the corridor to reach for their room. “Am I going blind or the lights of this corridor really were a lot less white and dimmer than this? It’s a little too bright this way. Isn’t it?” Tresie asked. “Wait a minute.”, they looked at each other as they realised what had just happened, again.

-        M. P. Raghav