It is my most happy day. We have traveled for 20 hours to get here but at last we are in the jungle, going on expedition to search for the biggest spider in the world. Joe says that if we are lucky enough, we can find a spider bigger than a common cat. Wow! I’m willing to see it!
Everything is very interesting. I’m a city man and I work in an office everyday. I was reading my daily newspaper when I saw this advertisement “Are you tired of your boring life? Join our expedition to the jungle and become and adventurer for fifteen days.” So I joined the expedition on my holidays to break the monotony in my life. There were not many requirements but being healthy enough to walk yourself though the jungle. That was not a problem for me. I’m a city guy but walking though the jungle is something I always wanted to do and I think I’m ready to do it and it seems I am, because I’m the only qualified for the trip or nobody else called for the expedition. Joe told me that this expedition was in a rush because a previous one found a huge cobweb but were having problems with their radio, so we were carrying a new equipment.
At the airport there was a Jeep prepared for us. We jumped in and drove during two hours until Joe got the signal on his GPS. The signal was from a beacon that the previous expedition set up, next to the cobweb, a few days before our arrival.
We were unable to continue by car so we had to walk for 20 minutes to the beacon and here it is. The giant cobweb! It is pretty big but it seems abandoned. I’m very excited! We are going to have a look in the cave to see if the spider is still in there.
Joe goes first and I follow him. We have to clear the entrance of loose rocks and other debris. Joe knows a lot about spiders. He is entomologist, so he goes direct to the spiders nest but he finds it completely empty. Meanwhile I’m looking amazed at this fabulous structure. It is like a silk made tent everywhere there are fantastic glitterings; walls, ceiling, floor… While I’m looking, a big sound disturbs me. It sounded like a falling rock. Suddenly something hits my back, I fall down and faint.
After some time (don’t know how much), I wake up but I can’t move. I’m trapped, probably by this falling rocks. I can’t see anything. Everything is dark but Wait! I can see some light though my left eye. I can see Joe crouched with his hands on his head. “Hey Joe! Right here! Did you hurt your head?”.
It was very early in the morning and there she was! A newborn drop from the morning dew. She was hanging stuck at the edge of a grass leave. The leave was bent due to the weight of the drop. She didn’t weight too much but a few grams (this is the usual weight for a newborn drop) The grass leave was swung gently by the wind which created a very slight whistling sound while been cut by the grass leaves.
Everything was quiet when the drop opened her eyes. She started looking around but saw nothing. It was a little bit dark already. She looked from left to right, then right to left when discovered a small shivering light and started wondering what could it be. Her curiosity lead her to jump off the leave. This was her first sensation on this world. The sensation of flying! It was a mixture between security and fright, a strong sensation for a young drop but necessary for her natural flow. While in air she saw the light coming next to her. It was a nightingale! “What a different drop” she thought. It emitted a strange sound too, a kind of buzz. This was the first buzzing sound from a flying creature that the drop heard on this world.
The nightingale landed on a leave and the drop continued falling down while swinging uncontrolledly in the air when it suddenly reached another leave. She splashed onto the leave but she didn’t break because drops are very, very flexible. This gave the drop a little bit of self-confidence. The short travel from the first leave to the second one had been for the drop the longest and first travel she ever did. As the sun was rising and there was a little bit more light, the drop looked down and saw that there was something bigger than the usual leaves. Something that was not green and looked quite new for her, so she jumped again without fear, to meet this unknown new thing.”Weeeee!!” shouted the drop while she was falling. Slowly, the drop began controlling the fall and after a while falling, she landed on the ground.
On the ground it wasn’t as windy as on leaves. Without the whistle of the wind or any other creatures buzzing she could hear a far murmur. Without doubting it even for a second and lead again by curiosity, she started walking towards the new sound. She walked and walked and walked, but the murmur seemed as far as at the first step. While on her way, she saw a hill with a hole on its top. The drop wondered what could it be and climbed the hill to have a look. An enormous black creature came out of the hole that was on the top of the hill. When she reached the top a full horizont opened in front of her eyes. On the other side of the hill there were hundreds of this black creatures walking one after another. The drop amazed, forgot for a while about the murmur while she was staring at this big black creatures. The black creatures happened to be ants! This was the first time that our little drop met the ants. When she woke up of her amazeness, the drop heard the murmur coming again from the left of the hill and she continued walking towards it. After a while walking the sun had risen up in the sky and the drop could see in the distance the source of the murmur. It was a stream of water! Thousands of drops like her were sliding and jumping in a channel on the ground. She got close enough to say hello to one of the stream drops . “Hello” she said. And the stream drop said “Hi little drop! What’s your name?” The drop shrug her shoulders and said “I don’t know” and the stream drop said “hmmm… I got it! We will call you Droppy! Come here and join us!” the drop was happy about having a new name. She smiled, jumped into the stream with her new brothers and sisters and had a lot of fun with them during the whole day. At the end of the day, the stream calmed down and it was very difficult for Droppy to keep her eyes opened. The day was over but filled with a lot of new sensations. Droppy said tonight to everyone, closed her eyes and slept the whole night long as what she was: “A newborn baby happy drop”.
Time Traveling is not as easy as we think. We always see in films that anyone can travel on Earth as many years as they want (forward or backwards) But as someone said: “It isn’t like dusting crops, boy“.
The basic idea is that you are somewhere and then you “time travel” and appear a the same exact location but some hours/years/seconds after or before your initial “time/Date” but there are some issues we should take in consideration.
If for example you were traveling by plane, and you “time traveled” you would appear at a location without plane, so you would fall down to the ground and die (unless you have a parachute, of course
Someone could say “oh, no, you are wrong, if you are inside the plane, you would appear inside the plane again”. Ok, let’s say that this could happen like this and let’s analyze it. If you are traveling in a plane that goes at a speed of 800km/h and you travel to one hour after (let’s say that it takes you one second to travel this hour) you should also travel a distance of 800 km, that in one second would be an acceleration of 800 km/s. And when arrived to the destination you should from 2,880,000 km/h to 800 km/h Your body wouldn’t be able to stand this force and you would probably die. Also you would need to see the future to point to the exact position where the plane would be one hour later and introduce it in the time machine.
Do you think this plane idea is complicated? Should we discard time traveling while we are traveling by plane? Well, let’s do it Is it safer to travel while we are with out feet on Earth? Definitely not. Earth is also traveling though space at a speed of 30,000 km/second, so what would happen if you try to travel when standing at your home? Depending on the time you travel to and the direction of the earth with respect to you, the results could be: you in the middle of the space, you in the middle of the the air falling down again or even in the core of the Earth.
Is it getting tricky? Well. Maybe the best way for Time Traveling is with a spaceship in the middle of the space. But have in mind that planets and stars are always in motion (Sun moves at an approximated speed of 220 km/second) so we should calculate very well their trajectory before traveling, and of course, galaxies also move…
Have in mind that for this issues we are always traveling forward and never backwards (forward is possibly the only time traveling option)
If we want to stay within the same place where we start our trip, we should be there every millisecond in between the starting date and the ending date, so we can be affected by all the accelerations and movements that our container do. So we would be affected for whatever could happen during our trip and everybody would be able to see us.
So… the only way to time travel forward and not getting older during the process, would be to slow down your physics (as in slow motion) or to pause them, and the only known method for doing this is by freezing matter, the best would be to get it to the absolute zero. This is what is called cryogenization and it is not a very safe way to time travel, because you are very vulnerable unless you are in a bunker buried very deep and you will always need the “time machine” systems to work for you during your trip because they will get older and would need to be maintained.
At our community we have a swimming pool, and as it is compulsory to have a lifeguard, we of course!, have one. We really have a contracted company that changes the lifeguard whenever there is need to. Lifeguards look pretty young, but as long as they do their work we have no problem with this.
The thing is that one morning, one of the lifeguards mixed chlorine with something else (some king of acid) in the water purifier room, she closed the door and went home. Without knowing it, she created a toxic cloud that started spreading out of the room.
The water purifier room is at the same level than the garage and there were three workers making some repairs there. When the spreading cloud reached them, their lungs were affected and someone called an ambulance to hospitalize them.
This day I arrived home at 16:00 hours and found the garage doors opened and, at the end of the tunnel, the emergency exit was also opened. I came in with the windows of my car completely down. I didn’t see any warning notices at all. Nobody was there to prevent us from entering the garage, so I drove to the end of the tunnel, closed the windows of my car and entered my home. I didn’t notice any strange smell (a neighbor told me that he came at 17:00 and there was like a strange smell to chlorine)
Fifteen days have passed since then, and sometimes I feel like bubbles in my lungs when I breathe… I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or it could have something to do with this toxic cloud… I hope it is just a “strange” cold I got by the strange summer we are having at Europe.
This morning, my alarm clock didn’t ring. It was unusual, but as my wife has hers set 5 minutes after mine, I could wake up as everyday, had my shower, dressed up and everything looked normal. Just one strange thing happened… All crickets stopped singing at the same time. It looked very strange to me. “May there be someone in the garden?” I looked through the window but nobody was there. I told my wife “The crickets stopped singing. It is as if they have felt a strange presence”. But my wife said “Oh, don’t worry, crickets always stop singing in the morning”. And I thought “Yes, but the sun has not risen yet… Anyway. Who cares? It is just the crickets stopped singing. They may have a reason.”
We went downstairs and I found there was just half ration of my usual breakfast plum-cake. This was normal because I didn’t go to the supermarket to buy more :), but was not the usual…
Then we went downstairs to the basement. Our garage is a communitarian garage but we can access it from our basement. We opened the door and saw that the emergency lights were on. So this means that there is no energy at all in the garage and the doors would not open eventually. I told my wife but as she is very optimistic, she said again “Don’t worry”, so I didn’t :). Just closed the door and got in the car. But the thing is that when we arrived to the doors they were dead. I pressed the button of the remote five times, but nothing happened the usual sound of the door opening wasn’t there.
Last time this happened we found a neighbor that stopped us on the way to the door and told us the door didn’t open and asked us if we knew how to open it. We didn’t know how to do it but while we where having a look to figure out how to open the door, we heard someone coming out from his home who started walking toward us. We were going to tell him that the door wasn’t working when we realized that he was carrying a monkey wrench. He got to the door, crouched and started removing a bolt. A woman came after him (it was his mother I think) and one more neighbor appeared there. This guy could remove the bolt, we opened the door, walked to the second door and tried to open it. There were not many options but a small nut… So I said “There is a nut here. Probably if we remove it the door will open”. The last neighbor that had a small monkey wrench removed the nut and we achieved to open the door.
This time nobody was there. “Did we wake up too soon today? Probably someone will be coming right now to open the door like the last time”. Meanwhile, I opened the car’s butt to get a wrench to remove the bolt. I took the biggest one, tried, but the wrench wasn’t big enough.
As we had nothing better to do than opening the door, we went back home to get a monkey wrench and I remembered that while I was closing our home door the first time before getting into the car, when we saw the emergency lights on, I thought it would be a good idea to carry the monkey wrench in the car, just in case we needed it again to open the door. So that was the situation right now.
When I came into the house I saw the light on. There was nothing wrong. Just we forgot to switch it off. This things can happen, it was a strange morning anyway.
I took the wrench, switched off the light, closed the door and jumped in the car again. Drove to the door and found that there was nobody still there, no neighbors, nobody coming out their homes (this was not the usual)
With the monkey wrench I removed the bolt in less than one minute. We went to the other door and found that the small nut was almost removed, so I removed it easily with my hand and opened the door. My wife took the car out and we left the door opened so our neighbors (if any) could get out without any problem.
My wife drove to the subway and a few meters before the before last roundabout, a car switched on its emergency lights and stopped on the edge of the roundabout (this looked to me also unusual) the rest of the way was very normal. The same man with the dog as everyday, the same cars in the subway parking, the same people waiting at the station, everything was the same. The train arrived and took us to the next station. At this station is where I say good bye to my wife, because she takes a train and I take another subway line.
There were not many people waiting at my subway line, so I could manage to sit down. As the train was going to start moving, a strange bumping mechanical sound started hitting under my seat, but as subway trains work with pressure, this sound could be a loose compressor making his job.
At the fourth station, I was kind of sleepy and very comfortable when I realized that people outside the wagon was kind of “running” to the left side of the platform while they were staring to the right side. I heard surprised people saying things and some others asking something like “what’s happening?”. Everyone at my wagon started exiting, so the prudence told me to do the same. When I got out, I looked to the right and saw a lot of smoke coming out from the wagon on the right. This smoke is a little bit disgusting, because it smells to burnt plastic mixed with oil, so I went to the most left side of the platform to breathe clean air. We were there for about ten minutes, the smoking train left through the tunnel and another more modern train arrived. Everybody got into the new train, but this time I could not find a spare seat.
So, if anytime you notice the crickets stop singing, open up your eyes and pay as much attention as you can, because you could be witnessing a lot of unusual things.
