Chapter 6

As John got in the car, his mind raced with the memories of all it had taken for him to finally make his mark in the scientific community and, how in the end, he owed it all to Sam. He couldn’t help but think about the irony of how he had ultimately developed his time suppression theory and how through all the chaos, all the failures, and all the other brilliant people who had worked on a way to extend Special Relativity into new and more fundamental domains, just how simple the answer really was.

At PacTech, even as an undergraduate, John had access to some of the greatest minds on the planet. But despite all the intellectually stimulating discussions, it wasn’t until the end of his sophomore year that he found someone who he could really relate to. It was then that he got to know a guy in his dorm by the name of Sam Tobin.

Sam, an incredibly gifted engineer, had remained John’s best friend since those days together at college. But after completing his Master's Degree, Sam left the school and immediately went to work for a defense contractor.

John on the other hand, continued on, finally getting his doctorates at twenty-seven. He then followed the logical career path and became an associate professor, focusing most of his energies on genomics and coming up with some incredibly innovative developments.

John seemed to have achieved everything he could have ever wanted and—for the first few years—he was unstoppable. But slowly, despite the prestige of his position, he was beginning to lose steam. His heart just wasn’t in his work. He felt his life was slipping away.

Ever since he was a child, John had always dreamt that he would be the next Einstein, the man who would pick up where the most famous physicist of all had left off. At the same time however, he knew that most revolutionary discoveries were made by those under thirty; rarely, if ever, would someone rise to greatness if they weren’t already there by then.

John tried and tried, theory after theory, experiment after experiment, but no matter what he did, by the time he was thirty-two there was still no revolutionary development in sight. He was desperate not to let his grandfather down, but the pressure he had been putting on himself was becoming too much to bear. He eventually lost his appetite. He began to grow less sociable. He didn’t seem to care very much about anything. He was about to stop trying. A few months later, he made the most difficult decision of his life—he did stop.

Still, the lingering depression wouldn’t go away and Sam began to worry. John was his best friend and to see the misery eating away at him bothered Sam too much to ignore.

As a result of Sam’s continued insistence, John reluctantly went to see a neurologist and was immediately encouraged to have an MRI. John knew the problem was all in his mind, but he figured there was no harm in getting the test done—at the very least it would get Sam off of his back.

As John was slid into the core of the huge white machine, he began to think about just how interesting the magnetic resonance technology actually was. After all, it enabled doctors to see the complex tissues within a person’s body by measuring how magnetically aligned atoms responded to a series of radio waves. Suddenly intrigued, he tried in vain to tune out the incessant ticking noise and began to think about just what was going on within his body.

Being a physicist, John knew that these radio waves, like any other form of electromagnetic radiation, were simply a propagating oscillation—electrical and magnetic fields alternating millions of times each second, each perpetually regenerating the other as they moved through space. Yet, despite the fact that their behavior had been completely described by James Clerk Maxwell over a hundred years earlier, he still couldn’t help but think about all of their interesting properties—in particular, how they always traveled at the same speed.

 Then John realized a subtle mistake. In point of fact, the speed was not always the same—except in a vacuum. There, as in every other medium, it was determined by two factors—magnetic permeability and electrical permittivity. Yes, in a vacuum these quantities were universal constants, but the beauty of a rainbow or the sparkle of a chandelier made it quite clear that they could be very different in other materials.

Then John had an interesting thought: What if there was a way to change the value of these so-called constants? What if something—like the intense magnetic field he was surrounded by—had some subtle effect on electromagnetic waves that hadn’t yet been detected? Would it be possible, he wondered, for a sufficiently strong magnetic field to alter the characteristics of space itself? If it did, then maybe, just maybe the unalterable speed of light could actually be changed. That in itself would be a revolution in physics.

But John didn’t stop there. He felt that he was on to something and excitedly continued his train of thought. What would it mean if the speed of light were changed? Clearly, if it were slowed down, it would take longer for signals to get from one point to another. And what is it that ties atoms, molecules, and just about everything else in the universe together? Electromagnetism. So if somewhere in the universe, the time it took signals to get from one point to another was suddenly increased, the rate of change of that system would have to be slowed in proportion. Time itself—a measure of the rate of change of a physical system—would have slowed as well.

If John’s premise was correct, not only would he have a completely new and revolutionary theory, but he’d have something that would almost certainly lead to a myriad of revolutionary developments. Among other things, it would be the perfect solution for the problems NASA was facing with regard to the times involved in the manned interplanetary missions it was contemplating.

After nearly two years of believing his dream was shattered, John had new hope. He immediately went to work and recreated a version of the interferometer that Michelson and Morley had used in their famous experiment back in 1887 which had shown the speed of light to be independent of the motion of an observer. But John added a twist. Instead of having both arms of the apparatus extend into the air, he immersed one into the core of the most powerful electromagnet he could find and switched on the power.

At first there was no change in the interference pattern, but as John ramped up the current, there it was right before his eyes—fringes of light and darkness racing into and out of focus as the speed of the beam was altered by the surrounding field.

As a result of the successful experiment, John was over his depression and immediately began to explore ways of implementing this new approach which he called time suppression. During this same time, the company which held the exclusive license to his most significant genomic development completed its IPO from which John personally reaped close to $30 million. In recognition of his accomplishments (and in appreciation of the significant financial return to the school) John was made a tenured professor. He was thirty-five.

Within a year, John had a complete theoretical model of his idea and soon began building the time suppression system. But the endless taunts from his colleagues were a distraction to say the least. It was because of them that John decided to keep his work, and his progress, completely secret until he had irrefutable proof that his theories were sound. Now, at last, he was finally there.