Tuesday, November 13, 2012

No Small Feet

These were sturdy boots, a pair of functional work-shoes that had had that functionality tested. These boots had seen water, mud and sand, had been plunged into Arctic snow and burning coals and survived to tell the tale.
  These were the boots of a man who would take no crap.
  "Hey," said a voice, from above.

Dirk "Rock" Hardy is generally portrayed as a mountain of a man. To be fair, the original tales do not dwell overly on specifics. They use emotive adjectives, such as "powerful," and "mighty." We're told his hair is dark, his eyes are blue, but beyond that the man's physicality is unexplored. It's understandable that the mind's eye builds up an image of a tower of strength, a colossus bestriding the world with tree-trunk legs, arms like sacks of boulders, and a chest that would put paving slabs to shame. Naturally, in his film and television outings he has been cast as body-builders, strongmen, athletes. Not one of the actors to play the part has been below six feet tall.
  The man I looked up at now was of below-average height, even for the period, being around five-six in his bare feet. The sleeves of his dirty brown leather jacket did not strain to bursting with bulging biceps. His shoulders were broad, but not huge. His eyes, while blue, did not fix my gaze with an steely glare that shook me to my very bones. It's hardly surprising that I didn't recognise him.
  "Can you stand?" he asked, holding out a hand to help me up.
  "Ufff," I replied, flapping a limb in his approximate direction, neurons still re-establishing a functional network. It's a miracle I remember any of this.
  "Never mind," he nodded, "Let's get you out of here." Reaching down, he wrapped one arm around my waist, did the same to Professor Ng, and lifted both of us onto a shoulder.
  Now that I was in intimate contact with the man's arms, his strength became apparent. Quite aside from the way he moved us both with ease - though the professor is hardly a large man, I'm well over six foot myself - his muscles felt like literal rocks. It's not that they were particularly massive, any moreso than a man of his age, height and build who engages in moderate physical exercise, but when set to a task they simply would not give, would not bend. It was like straddling a dry-stone wall.
  As he lifted us I was briefly able to see more of the room we were in; brief impressions only, before all I could see was his back (and feel, against my face; again, it had all the comforting softness of a cliff face). The room was dark, lit by flashing red lights. Some sort of technology, all consoles and pipes. Hazard-strips of yellow and black paint. In the distance, a warning klaxon.
  And then we were away.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

And, Suddenly:

It's hard to describe what happened next, not least because I was at the time largely unaware of it.
  This is not to say that it happened with any degree of subtlety; from what I have been told, there was a substantial amount of ruckus, alarm and general calamity. Rather, I was unaware for the simple reason that I was aware of very little in general.
  It was a sensation not unlike passing out due to oxygen deprivation; a dizziness which encompasses the whole body, a lack of connection to one's self and the universe. A loss of consciousness in the truest sense, which leaves one unsure whether one has properly fainted and slept for hours, or whether one's mind has merely fluttered for a moment. It lasted forever and no time at all; without points of reference it is impossible to gauge a period during which one did not, as far as one is aware, exist.
  Either way, one finds oneself on the floor, heartbeat pounding in the ear and vision slowly clearing as blood flows back into the sensory organs.
  And, in this case, staring at a leather boot.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Exposition

"Damn, damn, damn," swore Professor Ng.  He was slouched in one of the lab's office chairs, glaring at the screen which had apparently offended his sensibilities.
  "Problem?" I asked, largely out of sheer boredom.
  The professor hesitated, then replied, "No offence, but I really don't think you'd understand."
  "Well, I find it helps to explain a problem to someone who doesn't understand," I pointed out.  "It forces you to break it down and work out what it is you're really trying to do."
  There was another pause.
  "What are you trying to do?" I asked.
  "It's a tachyon event visualiser."  The professor threw the phrase at me with an air of bored superiority, like I'd asked for a bullet and he was passing it to me down the barrel of a gun just to amuse himself.
  "Oh, I hope that's what it sounds like," I replied sincerely.  This clearly caught the professor somewhat off guard.
  "Why, what does it sound like?" he asked.
  "Well, as a lay person," I replied, "It sounds like something that would use time particles to produce an image of some event in ... the past?  Well, that's what I'm hoping.  You could be using some other, more technical meaning of the word 'event.' Like, how a tachyon forms, or ..."
  "No, no, you're ... pretty close," Ng interjected. "I mean, that's functionally what we're doing.  Tachyons aren't exactly ... but sure.  Visualising past events.  How did -? I mean..."
  "I've watched enough Star Trek to know what a tachyon is," I explained. "And the other words ... are, well, are English."
  "Hmm," grunted Ng.  It was a fairly upbeat grunt.  Despite himself, he seemed a little impressed - or amused at himself, for forgetting that most of his secret magic phrase was perfectly explicable.
  "So, what's the problem?" I continued.
  "Now, that is technical," he said, warmly.  "Broadly speaking, it's a question of noise.  We have superluminal particles - let's call them tachyons - arriving in our collector from all points in local space-time, pretty much constantly, with no way of filtering it down to a single moment.  Look, we can even work out the points of origin for some of the particles, Harv knocked up a Feinberg interpreter," he added, waking up one of the monitors.  Sure enough, one of the windows was scrolling a list of dates and places.  October 9, 1322.  April 7, 1804.  June 23, 1243.
  "It's pretty crude," Ng admitted, "But it shows the thing's working."  Both of us were now idly watching the dates slide past.
  January 6, 1666.
  "So it's like a radio tuned into all the channels at once?" I asked.
  September 14, 1586.
  "...Basically," the professor agreed, hesitantly.  He looked like he wanted to correct me, but was holding back out of politeness.
  November 16, 1977.
  "What we need is some way to ... boost," he continued, apparently forcing himself to use my analogy, "... one of the ... signals..."
  December 25, 1946.
  And, suddenly...

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Previously...

You are, of course, wondering how I came to be in 1946.

In fact, the mechanics are as much a mystery to me.  During a period of my life which I am equally likely to describe as "freelancing" or "unemployed," I was taken into a short-term deskside support contract with a research company near Runcorn.  The firm was, as I understand it, engaged in a wide variety of disciplines, none of which were ultimately my concern.  My responsibilities extended no further than rolling out the latest operating system to a number of desktop units and occasionally turning a server off and on again.
  It may date this tale somewhat to note that this "latest operating system" involved the number 2000.
  It happened that on a particular Tuesday I and my team leader entered a particular laboratory and were met with a particular amount of hubbub. Professor Ng was shouting something incomprehensible - I actually don't know if he was using Chinese or technical terms - when he noticed us.  "No," he declared, "No no, not a good time, come back later!"
  "It's Tuesday," explained Leigh, my supervisor.  "We're scheduled to upgrade the-"
  "No, I don't care," Ng interrupted, "All of these computers are busy.  It'll have to wait."
  "Well," began Leigh, "How long-"
  "Not sure," Ng interjected, before breaking off to issue a stream of instructions to his lab techs.  Leigh shrugged to me and checked his watch.
  Slowly, the hubbub became a simmer, and then a gentle calm.  Ng looked greatly relieved as he dismissed his crew for a break.
  "Right," said Leigh, "Let's get started, then..."
  "Oh no you don't," said the Professor.  "These workstations are still in use."
  "Still?"
  "They're crunching numbers.  It's a thing.  You wouldn't understand."
  "Fine," decided Leigh, checking his watch again.  "My colleague here will wait until they're free. Andy, I'm sorry, but I've really got to go.  Can you handle...?"
  "Sure," I replied.  "No problem."

I'd like to say that I added, "What's the worst that could happen?"  But that is most likely an embellishment on the part of my memory, as it is not the sort of thing that really happens outside the realms of fiction.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

First Contact

I first met the inimitable "Rock" Hardy in nineteen forty-six, thirty-one years before I was born.

I was, of course, aware of the man long before we met, though thankfully this has nothing to do with the awkward asynchronous interaction that we are assured could result from a journey into the past. Rather, I had read of his adventures in serialized novella form, published during the thirties and forties.  As I had assumed - like so many before me - that these adventures were pure fiction, and the "based on a true story" preamble a mere affectation or narrative fancy, I was naturally startled to find myself face to face with the formidable gentleman who inspired those tales.

Almost as startled as I was to find myself in 1946 to begin with.

But I get ahead of myself.