Aryan ATiming Tuning II

Timing Tuning II

Aryan Ashraf, 2021

The Panel (1), Aryan Ashraf, 2021

When I walked up to the deck, I saw Captain Hosseini. He was seated in front of the control panel that contained soft blinking red and blue lights, rolling a large glass orb between his hands. He was facing the large oblique window at the front of the ship, revealing the mass of the pure, almost milky black that surrounded us like a wispy jacket, spotted with glittery pearls.

The maintenance screen of the ship gleamed beside him. The camera shifted from views of the nose, the hull, and the thrusters of the ship, each accompanied with a screen filled with diagnostic results. My eyes were steady, staring at the shifting screens, breathing in and out with every change. I noticed details I never noticed before, especially within the thrusters, for an odd, forked apparatus could be seen protruding from within the central one. I never saw how out of place this was before.

Nonetheless, I broke my stare, held my breath, and approached quietly. The ship was on its night setting, so the halls and rooms were dimmed (if not darkened completely) and completely silent, for Yilmaz, Cordova, and Kramer were all asleep. I got closer to the captain with every quiet step, and he soon noticed me coming towards him out of the corner of his eye. He turned his chair and faced me, his expression soft and weathered with time and experience.

“Leslie,” he began, “it’s surprising to see you up.”

I nodded and headed over to the right-most chair of the room. “I left my journal here.”

Hosseini chuckled. “Ah yes, I forgot how much of a ‘scholar’ you are,” he said with a playful, biting tone. “Were you planning on writing some beautiful, insightful poetry on how vast and meaningless everything is?”

I paused. “Did you go through my journal?”

“Of course I did. I opened the journal and read every single page.”

I scoffed at him, standing indignantly in front of him in the darkness of the quiet, sleeping ship. “You know, I don’t find things like that funny. I don’t know why you find it necessary to make fun of me all the time. Like, I know I’m inexperienced with these interstellar explorations, but that doesn’t make it okay for you to make fun of everything I do, like-”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Hosseini interjected. “I’m only joking around! You newbies are always so self-conscious of everything — it’s actually kind of hilarious! Chill out! I didn’t go through your journal, I promise.”

“There you go again, telling me to ‘chill out,’” I emphasized with air quotes. “This is serious to me! What I write in that journal, what I say to my people back home… What were you even doing here?! Criticizing me for my poetry when you’re up and sitting here in the dark like a creep, rolling around a glass ball!”

Hosseini laughed for a little bit but failed to say anything in response. He may have muttered something to himself, but it was not loud enough for me to notice or comprehend. I found myself staring at Hosseini in the dark, holding the same indignant expression, and feeling more like a fool with every passing second because of it. And, as much as I hated to admit, the silence that Hosseini brought upon the room was sobering, and I found my irritation sinking into a lull. Hence, I sighed and sat in the chair my journal was left on. I looked over at Hosseini once more, who had nothing more than a blank expression staring out the window, continuously rolling that glass ball in his hands, passively examining the vast and meaningless everything outside. I decided to do the same, and we shared the quiet in solidarity. Then, it was broken.

“So,” Hosseini began, “I suppose I’ve been pushing your buttons a bit too hard. Sorry about that. That’s really inconsiderate of me.”

“No,” I replied. Then, I put my head in my hands. “It’s fine, really. It’s not really a big deal. I’ve just been thinking about earlier today. I guess I’m still a bit irritable because of it. Sorry for lashing at you.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry, it’s my fault to begin with. Besides, HQ is really being pushy, anyway. Anyone would feel irritated.”

“Right?” I exclaimed passionately. “I don’t get it! We’re going to be out here for YEARS. The LEAST they can do is allow us to be able to contact Earth and our friends and family at any time, but no. ‘Budget cuts.’ You guys are in control of the budget, you dimwits!”

Hosseini nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it’s unfair. You should feel angry!” He took a moment to think. “But, if it’s any comfort to you, just know that it will pass and come back again. I’ve been in this position a bit too many times where they told us they didn’t have the resources to allow us to contact our family and friends. But, then, after some time, they boot it back up again. Ebb and flow. Like the tide.”

I started this time. “Was it the same with you?”

Hosseini perked up. “Hm?” “You couldn’t sleep either?” “... Yes.”

I looked over at him with an amused expression. “That was a long pause.”

“...And?”

“Now, I don’t want to be crass. But that usually insinuates that you’re lying.”

“Heh. Am I not allowed to process my thoughts?”

“Honesty is more important to me.”

Hosseini scoffed, followed by a light chuckle. “No, it does NOT!” he said incredulously.

“Yes, it does! Now, what are you really here for?”

Hosseini grew quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure if I should tell you.”

“Oh, please! Don’t start with me now! I’m tired of you, always mentioning things and then never expanding upon them —”

“Okay, okay! I get it! To be more completely transparent, there’s nothing technically stopping me from telling you. It’s just that it’s prohibited. Between captains and their subordinates. Especially between captains and newcomers.”

“... How serious is this?”

Hosseini scrunched up his face and gave an unsure shrug. “Meh… Eh… I don’t know. Like… ‘if this gets out, it could lead to the death of the universe as we know it today’-type serious?”

I stared incredulously at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Well…” Hosseini took a moment to think before exclaiming. Then, a feeling of pure determination washed over his face. “You know what? Who cares about HQ and their rules? Follow me.”

Hosseini silently went towards his section of the control panel, front and center in front of the window. His hand went underneath the panel, moving towards the wall extending from the bottom of the flat panel and down to the floor of the deck. His index finger danced swiftly across the wall before stopping somewhere in the top left sector and pushing into the wall. A square button revealed itself as Hosseini pushed it into the wall, causing it to glow a deep baby blue. Lines stretching all across the wall also began to glow the same color, eventually leading to the release of a small, rectangular door, forcing it slightly ajar with a puff of air. Hosseini grabbed the edge of this door, took a deep breath, and pulled it aside.

I was not sure what I was looking at. Behind the door was an iron sheet clasped into the ship with screws, adorned with a large dial with a range from 0 to 99.9 beside a small digital display of the number the dial was turned to, along with a separate pair of up and down buttons. At the moment, the display only showed “0000.0” in the same baby blue light as the rest of the panel.

“This,” Hosseini began, “is the closest humanity will get to controlling the inevitable, invariant, and indomitable forces of nature. This is the closest humanity will get to controlling the inevitable, invariant, and indomitable force of time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, you know Einstein’s theories about time, right? And relativity?”

“Yeah. Time moves slower as gravity increases and as velocity increases and vice versa. I know them.”

“Exactly. And, because people can experience different amounts of gravity and travel at different velocities, one en

The Panel (2), Aryan Ashraf, 2021 The Panel (2), Aryan Ashraf, 2021

tity in one part of the universe could be traveling a distance within an hour, while it takes another entity in another part of the universe ten days to travel the same distance, though they may be moving in similar ways.”

My eyes widened with realization. “So, you’re telling me that this panel is… is…”

“Yes. This panel, by manipulating the forces of gravity and velocity regarding this ship, can allow us to dilate time at our will.”

“How?” I asked, dumbfoundedly.

“Well, relative velocity time dilation was pretty easy to accomplish. Ever since those neckbeard, obsessive chemists, squirreled away in their laboratories, managed to find those last few elements needed to turn the periodic table into a perfect rectangle, sustainable and almost limitless fuel has been invented and produced from a mixture of these chemicals and their reactions. Now, dilating time in terms of velocity is simply a matter of how fast or how slow we go, with no worries about fuel.”

“But, in terms of gravity…”

“Yes, somehow compounding that with gravitational time dilation was the difficult part. But, gravitational time dilation is only possible due to curves in spacetime, curves in the fabric of space-time. Much like that of ripples in water. Much like that of sound waves in the air.”

With that statement, Hosseini pointed at the maintenance screen of the ship. The screen was set to a view of the thrusters, to that forked apparatus. When I analyzed the apparatus more closely, I realized that it looked like a tuning fork.

“We tune space-time?!” I exclaimed.

“Kind of. Once again, because of reactions between those weird elements those neckbeard chemists found, we were able to produce various gravitational waves of various intensities and frequencies, ones that could bend space-time the same way stars, planets, and such can.”

“So, you’re telling me… that by turning this dial and pressing these buttons, I can manipulate the velocity at which our ship travels, along with the gravity around it, in order to slow or speed up time… within the ship?”

Hosseini nodded.

My mouth was agape. “This, this, this is incredible!” I stuttered. “I don’t even know where to begin. We could make it seem as though supply vessels that took ten years to get here took only a minute! This is incredible! This is amazing! Why… Why doesn’t the public know? Does Yilmaz, Cordov, and Kramer… Do they know? I didn’t know this technology existed until now.”

To this, Hosseini laughed. “Because it’s dangerous! The power to control time? It takes just one rogue genius in Slovakia to take this and, I don’t know, somehow make it possible to go back in time! Then, we’ll wake up the next day and, suddenly, see we’re living in Nazi World or something like that! They just tell these things in secret to captains hoping they keep it under wraps,” he pointed at himself, “like me!” His expression shifted to confusion when he realized the irony of the situation.

I stood looking at the panel with wonder and curiosity. Would that really happen? What if it was not some nut-job in Slovakia but a witty renegade in an Atlanta physics lab? Hosseini stood staring at me like this for a moment before bursting into that mocking laugh of his.

“What?” I asked, irritated. “You gonna call me a nerd or something?”

“Of course not. You know, Leslie… you remind me a lot of myself.”

I scoffed. “Am I like the before picture in your before-and-after?”

“Heh. Maybe. But, actually though. When I went on my first voyage, like you right now, I was so serious about everything. I got so insecure about my inexperience. I would get defensive when I made mistakes. I was surrounded by experienced officials, and I felt so, so, so small.”

I was silent. “Don’t you feel that way?” he asked.

“A little.” “Yeah… you know what made me feel better? One of my supervisors would joke around with me. Just make a complete fool of me and him and everyone with us and everything that was happening to us. I felt less small. I felt more like a person.”

“I see.”

“I don’t mean to hurt you or belittle you. But I did, and that’s on me. I just want you to know what my intentions were. I was trying to pull you more into your own humanity the only way I knew how in these circumstances. It was my way of grabbing you and shaking you and saying ‘You have nothing to prove.’ You’re already here. That’s enough proof. Being out here is taxing. Let yourself go every now and then.”

“... Why did you show me this?”

Hosseini smiled. “I had a reason. Now I think that reason was just to tell you this. I don’t want to talk about that thing any more than I already did. Allah knows, I’ve tried so many times to tell you this already.”

He then got up, patted me on the back, and left to go back into the ship.

I looked back at the panel.

Perhaps… it was not a rogue scientist in Slovakia or a witty renegade in an Atlanta physics lab after all.

I picked up the journal and flipped through the pages. Nestled in between two pages somewhere in the middle between two pages, I found torn scrap of paper with hurried writing.

From what I could make out, it said:

I’ve never seen Leslie so upset… It has affected all of us… I can go back… HQ lets us contact our family two months or so after they tell us we can’t… I can go back… go forward… and this won’t happen.