Time-slips

The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

Jenny Randles' book Time Storms: The Amazing Evidence of Time Warps, Space Rifts and Time Travel (London: Piatkus, 2001) includes, on its back cover blurb, the following set of enticements:

In this well-researched and authoritative book you will discover:

• Why scientists believe time travel will soon be possible
• How a time machine would actually work
• The truth about experiments already carried out to develop a time machine
• First-hand reports of people who were transported hours or days across time and space
• Whether UFOs may in fact be time travellers visiting us from our own future

As she remarks on p.66: "Forget the silly media hype - consider only the verifiable facts." So what are those facts?

1. Q: Do scientists believe time travel will soon be possible?
   A: No, they don't. What she's referring to is just that tired old business about travelling faster than the speed of light through wormholes in space - about as "scientific" as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ...


2. Q: Could a time machine actually work?
   A: Insofar as one can ever be sure of anything, one can feel fairly sure about this: No, it couldn't.


3. Q: What is the truth about experiments already carried out to develop a time machine?
   A: There haven't been any worthy of the name. All that stuff about the (so-called) "Philadelphia experiment" has roughly the same credibility as film footage of alien autopsies ...


4. Q: Are there first-hand reports of people who were transported hours or days across time and space?
   A: Here's where the story gets a bit interesting. There really are such stories, and some of them are indeed exceedingly strange ...


5. Q: Might UFOs in fact be time travellers visiting us from our own future?
   A: There's little reason to suppose so. By the same token, since we don't what - if anything - they are, there's no real way of ruling it out categorically.

I don't suppose the subject would really interest me all that much if it weren't for that time in Featherston - not the experience in the old curiosity shop (weird thought that undoubtedly was), but the stuff that happened after that.

It's not that I'm really sure anymore just what it was I saw that night, but it didn't seem to be of this earth. The one that I used to live in, at any rate. It's not that I don't want to write down what I saw, but it's hard to find the words - any words - for it ...

I suppose that the easiest thing is just to suppose that I'm cracked in the head: like the hero of that Nigel Cox novel Skylark Lounge, the one who sees UFOs and ends up burying himself in the side of a mountain on the volcanic plateau. If only it were that simple.

Hint, hint, hint ... Why not just come out with it and say that I saw myself. I saw myself but it wasn't me. And I didn't really like what I saw that much, either. And nor did Cathy (she was with me, too, which is the main reason that I can't just write it off as an hallucination) ...

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