Time Dilation
posted March 4, 2009
Christopher Bromden stood at the bus stop, facing his apartment building. He smelled the bus’s blunt odor and heard it accelerate away, the sound rising quickly and then falling slowly due to the Doppler effect. He stood and tried to remember his bus ride. He saw his hands wave goodbye to Valeria in front of the bar; he saw Valeria’s reddish jacket recede along the sidewalk. He saw his feet climb two rubber steps onto the empty bus and he saw his hands release six quarters. But then he saw his feet again, stepping onto concrete. His memory of the bus ride itself was gone—if it had ever existed in the first place. Christopher had hundreds, maybe thousands, of indistinguishable memories of the same bus ride from downtown to his apartment, but the loss was poignant anyway, and he mourned it.
Christopher moved through the bright cone from a street lamp toward the door to his apartment building. He remembered other recent forgettings: yesterday’s laundry, Tuesday’s breakfast. Christopher comforted himself by proving that his memory itself was in perfect shape: he could remember nearly anything he had focused on, like Valeria’s earrings or the price of one gin and tonic with tax (small glass beads, $2.71). His problem, he knew, was distraction. Recently, he could spend an entire bus ride inside his own thoughts and emerge as if waking up. Christopher remembered being able to multitask, thinking and watching at the same time. He worried a little that he was becoming more distractible with time, maybe losing his mind, but he was mostly confident that he was being paranoid, that the phase would pass.
Christopher Bromden found himself inside his apartment. His door closed loudly behind him.
It was Friday. Christopher Bromden awoke into this Friday assuming that it was a Thursday. He stayed in bed. Eventually, he obtained a famous novel by Gabriel García Márquez from a bedside table. He read until a mysterious time in the early afternoon, when his cell phone melodically announced a call from Valeria.
“Good morning, Chris! Did I wake you up?”
Christopher straightened up in bed and leaned his back against the wall. He retrieved his glasses from the bedside table and put them on. Christopher’s instincts wanted him to look presentable to Valeria, even on the phone.
“Oh, no. No, I was awake. Actually, is it morning? I've been reading.”
“Solitude, still? Well, it’s very long. Listen, I had fun hanging out last night—do you want to have dinner or something tomorrow tonight?”
“Yes. I mean, absolutely. Yes, that would be perfect.”
More affirmations were made, in restrained but excited tones, by both parties. Time arrangements were made. Place was left undecided. The call ended and Christopher Bromden was suddenly back in his apartment, sitting in his bed, a silent telephone pressed to his ear, and a sloppy, unrestrained grin painted on his face. He returned the phone to the bedside table and stood.
Christopher worked from home. He was a graphic designer for an indie record label. Specifically, his job was to churn out tacky MySpace pages for ridiculous metal bands with names like 3Thrash and Dan the Trash Can Man. He enjoyed hearing bands' artistic visions (“the serpent emerging from the eye of the human skull must be devouring a poisoned pomegranate”) but hated dealing with their disappointment and changing expectations. Christopher loved the job because he made his own hours. He could go for a week without touching his computer and finish all his work in one bizarre night. This freedom, however, came with an unfortunate side effect. Christopher found himself losing track of the connection between the time he worked and the money he made at the end of each month. He knew, of course, that a wage multiplied his hourly rate to calculate his paycheck. But no matter how much he compressed or drew out his work, his weekly hours always seemed to add to nearly the same number. He had begun to believe that, no matter how diligently or lazily he worked, his paycheck was a universal, physical constant.
The prospect of a date with Valeria charged Christopher with vibrating energy. He sat at his computer and vowed to finish his work for the week immediately. He opened the week’s six design requests and laid them out jauntily on his second screen. Christopher Bromden opened Photoshop and began drawing. He ate cereal for brunch; he had pizza delivered for dinner. By committing to work continuously, Christopher had created an opportunity to completely forget about time. He did not notice when it became night, then midnight. He finally glanced at his clock when it read 2:17. He looked again at 4:41, and then fell asleep with his forehead on his keyboard. He dreamed that his clock said 3:14, then 1:10, giving him the impression of traveling backward in time. When he awoke again at 6:33, the impression did not entirely dissipate. He spent ten minutes staring past his computer screen, trying to decide whether he really could be a time traveler. Unable to come to a conclusion, he finally tabled the issue in order to continue working.
Christopher Bromden finished his work for the week and fell asleep again, this time leaning back in his desk chair. When he awoke at a mysterious time in the early afternoon, he was convinced that his relationship with time was deteriorating. He didn’t understand time as well as he used to; it left Christopher behind now as often as it remembered to bring him along.
Christopher felt his eyelids threaten to collapse. He was dangerously sleepy and struggled to pay attention: the deteriorating teal vinyl on the seats of the bus; the vertical dark bars separating the windows. He changed position in order to stay awake and focused on the hand-painted sign—“SANDWICHES”—across from him. Christopher gripped the bus ride tightly; this one would not slip away.
Valeria had suggested a new Vietnamese restaurant downtown. As the restaurant slid into view in front of the bus, Christopher suddenly became nervous. He hoped that the bus would take more time to traverse the last block than it had taken during the rest of the trip. He tried to remember how special relativity worked. He knew that time dilation is given by the Lorenz factor, which is the reciprocal root of unity less the squared ratio of the speed of the object to that of light. Christopher visualized:
Looking at the equation in his mind, Christopher thought of it in other ways. The root of reciprocated unity; the ratio of Valeria to Christopher.
Christopher Bromden reemerged from his thoughts into his seat on the bus. He awoke in time to see the bus’s doors close and the Vietnamese restaurant’s reddish sign begin to accelerate away. For a moment, Christopher wanted to stay on the bus and find out where it would take him. Instead, he lifted himself from the seat, ran to the back of the bus and released the two latches on the emergency exit window. It swung up easily; without thinking, Christopher jumped and turned his shoulder to the ground. He entered a perfect roll and was on his feet again. His elbows and knees complained, but he was intact. He ran toward the restaurant. Valeria now stood under the restaurant’s sign, her blueish coat illuminated by a street lamp.