[Sticks]

Chapter 3

As if it were yesterday

It was all coming back to him now as he stood and stared at the remains of the building. He was supposed to have been killed along with his friends. He had risen to heights of fame and had sunk to the depths of infamy. He had been the legendary Steve Gryson.

He had originally arrived at RGIT by accident in the early days, through clearing. A serious illness during the run up to his English 'A' Levels had caused him to fail to get the grades he should have got. This had put paid to his hopes of getting in to the University of Edinburgh. Thanks to the understanding of the Scottish Higher Education system he had been given the unconditional offer at RGIT.

Diligently he got to grips with the work, concentrating on making up for what he perceived was his failure to get a place at his first choice university. His practical work excelled and he gained very high marks on the theoretical work. His work on the computers was also of a high calibre.

Socially, he always felt an outcast. Whilst his class mates went off boozing, he had to stick to alcohol free drinks as he was very allergic to alcohol. This was why he hadn't done so well at 'A' Levels, he had been to a wedding of a member of the family, and someone had spiked his orange juice for a joke. Some Joke, three weeks in Hospital with a severe reaction. This had always rankled him and he had never spoken to that person again. He got on well with the student union staff, at least he always he thought he did.

While looking for an event where he did not feel left out by sticking to the lemonades and the colas, he attended an Ice Cream party run by the Christian union. He remembered how he had had some rudiments of the Christian faith. He was invited to church by one of the female students, so he attended a house church meeting with the other students. He fitted in here, so he continued to attend. After two months he had been baptized by total immersion and had become a committed Christian. Like his academic studies, he excelled at Bible study and over the months of his first year at college his spiritual life had improved considerably.

There was a sermon about seeking the lost and Jesus visiting with publicans. Steve had taken this as an instruction to try and talk about the Bible in the local student union. This of course did not go down well at all. He remembered how he had gained a reputation of being a religious fruitcake by some of his classmates. The other student members of the house church saw him as a useful member of their evangelical wing. Some of the members of the Christian Union hardly ever set foot in the building, as it was seen as a den of vice.

He had also got involved in student politics; there was at one time in Steve's honours year, a corrupt deputy president. The deputy had managed to overthrow the president using an unknown procedural device. This guy would have been a rat if that was not an insult to rats. Steve had come in as the Executive Finance officer. He had then met Patricia Nealson, a pharmacy student, she was the president of the Parachute and paracending society and at the time was also the Executive member for the General Council for clubs and societies. She had been a very popular member of the executive, helping a lot with the clubs and societies. Steve had had to work with her to organise an extra general meeting to get rid of the corrupt sabbatical. When they ran for office for the next year, they were returned unopposed

As he had managed to gain first class honours in his first degree, he had been given the chance to go for the Phd. There was no question about the grant from the British Science and Engineering Research Council. Steve had had some other adventure with the next sabbaticals, but after that he concentrated more on gaining his PhD

It was also through his involvement in the student union that he met Neal Maclean, a life member. They first met while arguing about a point on religion, twenty five years on Steve could not remember what it was about. He discovered that they had a common interest in photography, computers and trivia. Neal had been a drop out from his electronic engineering course, and like Steve was considered a bit of an odd ball, he even spelled his name oddly, N E E L. They became best of friends and Neel even helped out with programming projects in between a number of odd jobs that he did. In time Neel had introduced him to a set of regular life members, most had an interest in computers in common. In conversations with another life member, this group of life members were described as The End-of-The-Bar-Gang, because they would hang around at the end of the bar in the main student union and have a quiet drink along side the current students.

There was Mike Waterston, who had once been a student at the same time as Neel Maclean, but he had managed to stay on his physics course longer and achieved a pass degree. He had ended up at a distribution company. NEEL and Mike always collaborated on computer and electronics projects, this was why they had become involved in Steve's PhD research more than the others.

There was also Sam Urqhart, he had done the chemistry course, and had a penchant for manufacturing his own fireworks, mostly for charity events and the occasional private party. He also had a good working knowledge on how to make various explosives and where to get the ingredients. Although he had never seen them, Sam's fireworks had quite a reputation. Steve had never found out what Sam did for a living, it wasn't important now, his firework displays had been silenced forever, by more powerful explosives than Sam had ever made.

He had also been introduced to Trevor Turner, the resident history expert, whose special subject was the history of the local public houses. Trevor had been a member once of the local branch of Campaign for Real Ale. This made him useful to the group as he knew where the best watering holes were. Sadly most of those establishments had been closed down for years. If Trevor was alive today, it would break his heart

Steve remembered being introduced to David Smith, an honours graduate from RGIT and his wife Priscilla a graduate in botany from Dundee university. They had met on a postgraduate course in management several years before Steve had ever heard of RGIT. David had worked for one of the major oil companies while Priscilla was bringing up their son at home. Their son Philip must be twenty five now, Steve thought as he put the bicycle chain in his saddle bag. He wondered if Priscilla and Philip had ever forgiven him for David's death in that building. Perhaps not, anyway there was no way of knowing, Steve was not supposed to have survived, the bombing of St Andrew Street either.

Steve got on his bicycle again and cycled back over to the library. He had to go to the library to check the microfilm files of the local papers as he had done two months ago with the national papers of the time. As he went across, the clouds were beginning to darken again.
"How very appropriate" he said to him self.
At last he reached the library, it was still open, but for how long was anyone else’s guess. The carpets were worn with holes, the air was musty. he could see only pensioners who had probably come to keep warm rather than pay exorbitant heating bills. He made his way up the stairs to the reference section.

He reached the reception desk, an old women was on duty
"Can I help you sir" she asked in a thick Aberdonian dialect
"I came to have a look at some twenty year old microfilm files of the Press and Journal and the Evening Express"
The librarian gave him a hard stare; Steve's English accent had obviously caused offence, in these times that was understandable.
"If you go and sit at the reader I'll bring them out" the librarian answered pointing in the general direction of the microfilm viewer.
Steve went across and sat down and continued to reflect on the events leading up to the bombing of RGIT St Andrew Street premises

For his PhD thesis his tutor had given him a list of possible subjects to do, but Steve had come up with one of his own. Steve's interest was in the collision reactions between cosmic radiation particles and other fundamental particles that constituted cosmic radiation and which held a neutral charge. His interest was particularly in the meason group and neutrinos. His tutor was some what sceptical of this research, as it appeared to have little practical application and it seemed to require a large particle accelerator, which RGIT did not have.

When Steve mentioned this to Neel and Mike, the three of them worked out the principal of developing a mini-accelerator, which utilised the reactions given off in Beta decay and an alternating magnetic field. Steve couldn't remember who came up with the original idea, but all three agreed to share any patent that might be stem from this work. For three weeks they worked on this device and managed to set up the small accelerator to generate the required mesons. It was of a size that could fit onto a laboratory table. The majority of its size was taken up by components that dealt with the beta emitter and the charge storage to assist in the particle generation, which in this day and age had been miniaturised to fit into the size of a standard coffee mug.

He remembered he was doing his research project with the small particle reactor and he had just finished taking results from the pi-naught meson and neutrino collisions, there were no results out of the ordinary. It was when he started investigating the neutrino effect on long lived K-zero mesons, things became interesting. With these mesons he started to get strange results. Certain particle decay tracks on the detectors were nonexistent, and certain tracks appeared from nowhere. The solution seemed obvious to Steve, so he spent one whole week picking over the software with a fine toothcomb, looking without success, for a program bug. His tutor was also baffled as to where the tracks were going to and coming from.

It seemed like his thesis would be in jeopardy. However while discussing the results with the members of the End-of-the-bar gang one Saturday in the student union bar, the consensus of opinion among them was that the results were true. Something else in the results was lurking, hidden away on the edge of the energy levels. The track from nowhere seemed to be appearing just before the time when other track had vanished. It seemed from the mathematical analysis that the two tracks were the result of one particle. The trajectory of the discontinuous result meant that only a particle, travelling past the speed of light could be the culprit. In normal physics, this should have been an impossibility, but no error in the equipment could be found and yet these were the results. There was only one solution, if Steve and the End-of-the-Bar gang were correct. Tachyons, the only particles that could travel faster than the speed of light were hypothetically discovered. If they were right, then this was possibly of Nobel Prize level.

Over the Christmas holidays Steve had decided to stay in Aberdeen to work on modifying the equipment and the software. The aim was to generate more tachyons to test the hypothesis and hopefully vindicate what some people were beginning to say was a flawed experiment. His lecturers were dubious of this, but the experiment was allowed. For the first test Steve had invited Neel along. If they were right, then at the target end would be a unique bluish glow of Cerenkov radiation. This expected light would indicate that a particle was travelling through a medium, faster than the speed of light for that medium. The target end was to be in a total vacuum.

As the mini accelerator warmed up Steve, Neel and the tutor watched with baited breath. The tutor half expected this experiment to fail, the tachyon was just a hypothetical particle. For the particle to travel faster than the speed of light, and satisfy the special theory of relativity, it would have to have either real rest mass and imaginary energy and momentum or imaginary rest mass and real energy. Officially no tachyon had ever been discovered before. But sure enough in the evacuated target area a characteristic blue glow appeared. This was the tell tale signs of Cerenkov radiation. The subatomic particle that travelled faster than the speed of light had been discovered.

Immediately Steve's tutor got him to send a letter off to the scientific magazine "Nature" to make sure he got the credit for the discovery, just in case anyone else was working on this. Within days a leaked copy of Steve's letter fell into the hands of the tabloid press. The media descended on them like a ton of bricks.

Steve and the End-of-the-bar gang became famous over night, as headlines screamed about the discovery of the century. Many of the End-of-the-Bar gang were pestered by journalists with open cheque books. Steve hid himself in the laboratory to wait for the story to die down. As well as the press they were showered with some praise from the scientific community, there was talk of honorary fellow status being confirmed by the Royal Society. They were even considered worthy of acceptance to the Gentleman's Club at Spaulding. How they kept together Steve never knew.

Very soon news broke of a private consortium planning to set up a moon base, so the rat pack moved on. Steve got back to his research. Then the other discovery occurred. A short half-life radioactive isotope in front of the target, by chance was found to have reversed the process of radioactive decay when the mini-accelerator was working. When Steve changed the polarity of the equipment, the tachyons were still produced, but the radioactive decay was accelerated. As he experimented further, with the equipment polarity reset and a better Beta decay isotope, the tachyon production was stepped up considerably. Now the phenomenon was more pronounced. Watches and anything used for marking out time would run backwards when the tachyons were produced. With reversed polarity, watches and other chronometers used, were speeded up.

His tutor suggested that he concentrate on this effect. For one of the few times since he had set up his PhD research, Steve agreed with his tutor. This was the far cutting edge of pure science. Subsequent research proved that the tachyons, on decaying caused minor infractions on the space time continuum and, the production of The hypothetical particles of time, the chronons and anti-chronons. The polarity seemed to affect the ratios severely. In conversations with Neel, Mike, Steve and David, about the imbalance in the ratios, they came to the conclusion that the missing chronons or anti-chronons must be being sent backwards in time. This meant it could not be observed normally as human perception of time was always forwards. A further test was needed.

An accurate clock was placed in the area that was affected whilst the machine was on. The equipment was set on automatic, the polarity in reverse. Moments before the equipment started up, the clock started to run backwards. The accelerator started up, the clock stopped and then started going forwards at a faster rate, as the accelerator produced its load of tachyons. By the end of the experiment the clock was reading the same time as another clock, used as a control, but was kept outside the room. Steve had developed his first law of conservation of time.

Before Steve could proceed any further, his tutor had sent a letter off to Nature. The press had another field day at Steve's and the End-of-the-Bar gang's expense.
"Time Machine invented by student" came one tabloid headline.
Steve was having to send out letters to editors, denying that such a device was possible. That was fatal, he had forgotten the old maxim, "never believe anything unless it is officially defined" and he had denied it.

As Steve looked up from the microfilm reader, he looked for the librarian to come back with the files. She was taking along time. He had more time to continue reflecting on the events twenty years ago. The weather outside was raining again. It was the media that had caused the problems. The scientific community would never have acted the way the tabloid press did. As he gazed back at the microfilm reader his mind went back again to rake over the ashes of the past.

In the media it seemed as though time travel was suddenly becoming a chilling reality. Letters came in warning of meddling with nature. Some feared that if a time machine were invented, then great leaders and events of history could be changed. Many were concerned about the possibility of the grandfather paradox becoming true. This was where a man invents a time machine, goes back and kills he grandfather before he ever meets his grandmother. If the inventors grandfather is killed then the inventor could not have been born, so he could not have invented the time machine, so he could not have gone back and killed his grandfather. His grandfather would not have been killed so he would have been born, so he would have invented the time machine, so he would have gone back, and so the loop of logical contradiction would continue tying up the universe in a never ending time loop.

A Russian team that was on an arms inspection tour heard of the experiments. Without inspecting them they considered that such research had obvious uses for the military, and because it had not been declared it was in violation of an arms treaty. The principal of RGIT and the Tutor fiercely contested this. Their class one research student had no intention of building a time machine; as such a device was not possible. As East West relations at the time were shaky, some people on the far left considered that Steve was going too far. A lot of Hysteria was being manipulated somewhere against the experiments. Steve could not work out why, as he had not even considered building any time machine. Even so the Russians demanded that experiments be shut down because of the obvious military implications as they saw it. There were also rumblings of discontent from the Americans accusing Steve of being provocative, especially in a time of international tension.

Although Steve had discounted the whole idea of time travel the End-of-the-bar gang wanted to see if a time machine was possible. The consensus was that it wasn't, there was still a lot of theoretical problems. Neel however did not agree, he was certain that the device could be modified to send an object through time, backwards or forwards by causing a chronon stable region and flooding the universe with excited chronons or anti-chronons. Steve was not convinced, plus the principal had cornered him about the nature of his research, and there was the fact that the Science and Engineering Research Council had come under pressure from somewhere to cut his grant. The SERC never said who it was, but they still continued to fund Steve's work.

Steve got down to writing up his thesis and hoped the furore would die away But one night Neel turned up, claiming that he had worked out on his PC, how to project a field to send an object the mass of a small ping pong ball, ten minutes into the future and move it a limited amount in space. Steve examined the final printout, it seemed to work, and only the equipment used to project the ping pong ball would not travel with it. If they were going to try this, then they would do it on the Saturday afternoon when Steve would have the lab to himself. Steve then informed the Janitors and his tutor that he was inviting some friends to see the mini accelerator before it was altered to make way for other things, those things being equipment to generate the Eta particle so he could finish up the thesis on "Interaction of cosmic particles". He did not tell the tutor about the nature of the experiment.

Then on that fateful day, when Steve had invited Neel to look at the apparatus in the St Andrew street building, they met in the student union bar.
"Patricia is looking for you" The temporary porter had told him
"Why?" Steve had asked
"She wants you to do some photography of the parachute club charity jump" the porter replied
Steve had remembered that he was going to do it, so he left a note for her to come across to the lab if they weren't still in the bar when she came around again.

In the bar was Priscilla and David Smith with baby Philip, Trevor Turner, Sam Urqhart and Mike Waterston. As Neel and Steve discussed the proposed experiment to send a ping pong ball ten minutes into the future, Mike suggested sending a watch forward in time, rather like in the film "Back to the Future". Over their lunch time drink it was suggested that all of them come across and have a look at the equipment. Priscilla declined as she was taking Philip to see his aunt in Portsoy, and this sort of thing did not interest her. It was thus so that David, Trevor, Mike, Sam and Neel became caught up in what was to follow.

"Here you are sir" came a voice out of the ether. It was the librarian with the microfilms. "You do know how to use this thing do you?" she asked
"Yes" Steve replied as he took the film. He started to thread the first of the strips into the microfilm viewer.
The librarian went back to the reception desk.

Steve started to look through the back copies of the Press and Journal, the first paper he saw was for the day before. As he skimmed through the pages he kept thinking of the one innocent party, Patricia Nealson. Patricia was virtually a soul mate of Steve, and he had caused her death. He stopped skimming and rubbed he eyes, he thought he heard her behind him. He turned around. It was an old man shuffling in. Steve turned back to the microfilm viewer. He tried to remember how he last saw her alive.

They were entering the laboratory in the St Andrew Street building when Patricia arrived back at the student union. The porter gave her the message to meet him at the laboratory; she went over immediately to the building. It was a nice sunny day.
"if it is like this tomorrow afternoon then the jump will be quite successful " she had told her self.
Patricia had caught up with them whilst they were setting up the mini accelerator. She knocked on the door. Steve opened it as he was just going off to the lavatory. She told Steve that she had come by to ask if Steve could do the photographic work for her parachute jump. Steve had told her that he was booked that weekend. Neel offered his services as a photographer. Patricia said that would be an ok arrangement. While Steve went to answer the call of nature he left his friend Neel to discuss with her the details of the jump. That was the last he saw of all of them.

He went down and used the toilet block on the east side, on the ground floor. As he left, he vaguely remembered seeing a shadowy figure approaching him. Then every thing had gone blank.

Outside apparently, just minutes after that, a black helicopter from the United States Airforce came hovering into range of the RGIT St Andrew Street building. After hovering for a few seconds it released its load of death at the building. St Andrew street was virtually demolished. What the missiles didn't destroy, the fire afterwards completed. The janitors had some how survived. The End-of-the-bar gang and Patricia Nealson never made it. The fire was apparently so bad that no recognisable bodies could be recovered from the ruins. Steve had survived, coming to in the other male ground floor toilets. He had spotted the helicopter through the shattered window, as it flew over the inferno. It was an American Apache helicopter. If they knew that he had survived then his life would be in danger. So Steve had decided to play dead. He became Farrow Smyth and for twenty years he had been living this lie.

He finally found the front page of the next Press and Journal on the microfilm. The Headline read "US Airforce saves the universe by bombing mad scientists". It contained a picture of the building in a total blaze. Steve was amazed at how he could of escaped unseen. Steve Stared back at the viewer. This was the first picture in years he had seen of the building after it had been bombed, the whole of the east side of the building had been demolished; the upper level of the south side of the building, where he had his laboratory was in rubble as well.

As he continued to stare, something about the photograph of the rubble of the recently bombed building did not ring true, but Steve could not place it. He would have to continue looking through the files. His resentment grew as he did so; his mind still kept wandering to how lie was heaped upon lie. The bombing of the building was not the end of the story. Not by a long chalk.