O hello, sorry to interrupt. May I sit in this seat? Thank
you. Well, that feels very pleasant. Especially, since I haven’t
sat in a seat for quite some time. I must say the standard
of comfort in trains has gone up significantly since…
Ah, don’t you just love how the landscape whizzes by
when you’re in a train? You know that is basically how
Einstein conceived of the theory of relativity; just thought
what the world would look like if you travelled on a light
beam. Me? A physicist, no. I used to be…well, it is
a bit of a weird tale and I somehow don’t think you
will believe it but, since this is a long journey by any standard,
I might as well tell you my story.
I was born, let’s say, a long time ago. I know, I know,
I don’t look old at all but I’ll get to that.
I was a normal boy, played with my wooden toys and wanted
to become a warrior like my Dad when I grew up. One day while
playing by the river, I was surprised by a shabby-looking
old man. He tried to hug and kiss me. I screamed and kicked
him and then, suddenly, something remarkable happened. Without
knowing how, I had stepped outside the normal flow of time.
Everything around me was frozen; it was like one second in
your time was drawn out into eternity. As I was lying on the
ground in shock, I stared at the grimly smiling face of the
old man. I could still smell his stale sweat but he was frozen
in movement with his mad eyes focused on me. I crawled away
from him and then looked around in bewilderment. Nothing moved
except me. I waved my arm in front of me, took a deep breath
and whistled. Yes, I was still alive but you can imagine how
eerie this felt to me. Nothing moved, no water, no wind, no
animal, no tree. I remember vividly the sight of some insects
frozen in midair. That first time is ingrained in my memory
like nothing else even though I was only a young boy probably
not 10 summers old. After what seemed to be a long time I
got up and started walking around. I walked home and still
nothing else around me appeared to be stirring. There was
actually a hawk soaring high in the sky, not moving! Once
I got closer to my village, I saw people working in their
fields, all of them frozen in whatever activities they were
engaged in.
By the way, you are a very polite young person. You think
me a fool as I can gather from the smirk on your face, but
you continue to listen. Entertaining? Yes, I suppose it is
an entertaining story and, yes, thank you, I will continue
with my tale. I walked through the village until I reached
our hut. That’s when I got scared and broke into tears.
I wanted to return to the normal world. Inside our hut, I
saw my mother kneeling on the floor and grinding grain in
a mill. I hugged her and just sobbed. Eventually, I curled
up in the corner of the hut and fell asleep. When I woke up
it was morning and my mother was sitting next to me looking
at me questioningly. I was so happy that during my sleep I
had entered the normal flow of time again and screamed with
joy and relief. I gave my mother a big hug. She told me that
she had been grinding grain the afternoon before, when she
suddenly realised that I was sleeping on the ground. She had
not seen me entering the room but, inexplicably, she had felt
a sudden surge of longing for me. That must have been when
I was hugging her. It is because of this sudden feeling that
she actually believed my story, when I told her what had happened
to me the day before. She made me promise her though to not
tell anybody else, including my father.
The years passed and I learned by trial and error to control
my gift. It is not easy to explain but by mentally focusing
on time, I can step outside the flow of time you perceive
as normal. I can move into different levels of time-flow,
as I call it. I can watch the world go by in slow motion,
much like a movie picture being shown at a very slow speed.
I can completely remove myself from it, which I have often
done to think over the ages.
Lately, I have spent longer and longer periods of people-time
at different levels of time-flow. What I am doing there? As
I have said before, I think. I suppose you could say I try
to probe the mind of God. I have never met anybody else moving
outside people-time but I don’t miss the company of
other people anyway. Since my family died thousands of years
ago, I have been very comfortable alone. You see, maybe I
have a completely unique perspective on the nature of time;
almost like I am being able to watch creation unfold. Yes,
wait, I am being serious and I will explain what I mean by
that. It is something that only occurred to me lately, by
your standards anyway. The universe came into being in what
was recently termed a ‘Big Bang’ and, as part
of the make up, time flows forward. That is why you age and
will die in the future. However, I can completely remove myself
from the flow of time and in that reality past, present and
future are all one. I don’t age there; I don’t
become hungry, thirsty or tired. I am part of something outside
time, space, matter, energy and mind. You see, creation is
not something that happened with the ‘Big Bang’
and that was it. No, the universe is rather an evolving process
and the imperceptively slow movement of time is the moment
of creation. I have been given the chance to stick around
to see what it leads to. God? I don’t know whether there
is a God. However, I do believe that there is an awesome secret
behind all this and I might have the unique opportunity to
be there at the end of time, when the purpose might be revealed.
This brings me to why I am here. This will be my final visit
to people-time. I have had this urge to talk to somebody and,
however weird this may seem, I want to ask you to please think
about our meeting. I believe you are the right person for
it. I want there to be a record and I believe I can trust
you. I also believe that this meeting will prove to be very
stimulating to you. Anyway, this brings me to the end of our
conversation, Mr Hawking. Best of luck with your thesis by
the way. I shall now disappear and wait for the end of time.
Maybe we will meet again there and then. Bye, my friend.
