The Great Phone Directory of the Earth and neighbouring planets: Chapter 21
Chapter 21
- You are telling me you could have stopped time any moment during this conversation, but you didn’t?
- Of course I did.
- I mean that you could have stopped time before making me run about like a lunatic to get you that teapot.
- Believe me: if I knew I would have ended up laying my hands on this rather inelegant teapot I think I would have opted to move to another dimension and follow a different space-time continuum.
- Very funny. Now tell me why you made me believe I was running against time?
- Because you were actually running against time. Time did stop, but only for me.
- I don’t know if it’s me who doesn’t really get it, or it’s you doing this on purpose.
- I’ll make it easy peasy just for you: time only stops for those who decide to stop it. Everything that surrounds them (or even distant things, in your case) stops. If I decided to do it right now, you would keep as still as a statue and I would be the only one to perceive the flowing of time. If I restarted time again, it would be as if nothing happened for you.
- So, just to make things clear: if you had stopped time before I gave you the coordinates, we wouldn’t be here speaking on the phone, because the call would have ended. Right?
- Over-simplifying, yes, that’s right.
- I thought that playing games with time was forbidden, in general.
- Stopping the normal sequence of events is not a game at all: the Joint Time Police allows it, but you must be authorized.
- And you are authorized to do it, I guess.
- I own a provisional time-stopping licence.
- You can get into trouble for doing what you did a few moments ago?
- I successfully passed the theory exam and I only have to do the practical test: I can stop time upon two conditions.
- Which ones?
- The first one is that I must put everything back where it belonged before I stopped it.
- What do you mean?
- It is essential that people around don’t realize anything: if I stopped time right now, for instance, hung up the handset, went out of the phone booth and then restarted time, those looking at me would see me disappear, and the handset go back in its place by itself.
- As if somebody had cut a scene off.
- Exactly. It is a rule that was introduced following a regrettable occurrence that had taken place precisely on your planet.
- On the Earth?
- Yes, a lot of you had gathered inside this big oval building to observe some of your fellow-terrestrials contending for a spherical worthless object.
- I’m not following you.
- It was easy to guess it was worthless because they kept kicking it around.
- Hang on a second: you are referring to a football match, maybe?
- Football, yes, exactly: I think it was called that way. It also seemed a rather important event, judging by your huge quantity and, most of all, by your over-excited cheering.
- I see: just an ordinary football match.
- No, listen, it wasn’t ordinary at all: towards the end, a terrestrial wearing black whistled into a quite noisy metallic object and indicated with a peremptory gesture a point on the ground. Then, everybody withdrew, leaving two other terrestrials wearing different clothes to fight a duel.
- Quite possibly that was only a simple penalty.
- You could be right, because the one who kicked the spherical object missed his opponent, yet he looked as happy as if he had hit him squarely.
- That‘s because what you have to do is precisely to miss the goalkeeper and kick the ball into the net.
- Well, the one you call “goalkeeper” started protesting loudly and without rest. He said he had never seen a shot like that in his whole life, that he was sure he had seen the spherical object disappear for a second as it was in the air, to reappear in a different position.
- So the match was suspended?
- Absolutely not. The Joint Time Police investigated in all secrecy without involving any terrestrial, and a few weeks later found out that the goalkeeper was right: his opponent had stopped time after kicking the spherical object, modifying its trajectory as it was still in the air and, before restarting it, he had returned to his place as fresh as a daisy. We never understood the reason why that huge crowd considered that particular event so noteworthy, but the whole Universe saw the discouragement depicted on the goalkeeper’s face, and on the faces of those who had to be his fellow-soldiers, as they were all wearing the same uniform. All of a sudden we realized that a great injustice had been committed on the Earth that day.
- A fixed match on the Earth was the reason why they introduced the law that regulated time-stopping?
- Exactly.
- And, listen, you really cannot remember the names of the teams involved, or maybe the date of the match?
- I guess you are asking me because it hasn’t been played yet and you have this betting thing on your mind: this is precisely one of the reasons why I am not allowed to reveal this kind of information.
- Does the Prime Directive also provide for frauds carried out on bookmakers?
- It clearly does. Or, at least, this is what I should tell you if only I knew what a bookmaker is.
- I am deliberately not going into this, or you will forget to tell me the other condition you are subject to in order to be allowed the possibility of stopping time…
- You are right. It is quite simple: I must make my “learner” condition well visible wearing a t-shirt with a big “L” on all the time.
- But you omitted all these details when you told me about the toaster, the sunscreen, time-travelling: it’s easy to imagine that if you are forbidden to travel in time back and forth, you are also prohibited to keep still.
- You are wrong again, see? Only travelling in the past is totally banned. It is possible to stop time, as I have demonstrated, under certain conditions and subject to authorization. On the other hand, it is allowed to travel forward: but only at a 1x speed and for a limited period of time.
- What does it mean?
- Right now, you are travelling in time at a 1x speed : day in, day out, just living your life.
- And this, I guess, accounts for the limited period of time.
- Exactly: you are allowed to travel forward for a period that goes from now to your expiry date.
- Do I have an expiry date?
- Everybody has one.
- In what sense?
- In the sense that, like everybody else, one day you will die.
- You are reminding me should I come up with the bizarre idea that I am eternal?
- I am not the one to remind you: there is a specially-made, fool-proof publication on the subject.
- That is to say?
- I am obviously referring to The Great Telephone Directory of the Earth and neighbouring planets (Jupiter not included), that indicates, among other things, also your expected life span.
- You want to me to believe that this… Great Telephone Directory of the Earth tells that…
- … and neighbouring planets (Jupiter not included).
- Jupiter not included, of course, whatever…
- No, it’s important.
- I was saying: you want to me to believe the day I will die is written in there?
- The day of your death, and of the death of everybody else in the universe.
- Do you have a copy of the directory with you?
- We carried a copy with us, sure.
- Well, so now tell me when did George Washington die.
- Hold on a second… Here it is… George Washington, died on 110101110111101101000111.
- Come on, I could do that too.
- What’s the matter?
- That is not a date: you only called out a casual series of ones and zeros.
- You are right, you employ the other system! You start counting from the birthday of that guy that maybe was the son of God for real or maybe not, nobody knows. In this case, therefore, the date of the death of George Washington is 14 December 1799.
- Correct, but that was easy.
- Give me another name.
- Lady Di.
- The directory has: “real name Lady Diana Spencer, died on 13 August 1997".
- Kurt Vonnegut.
- 11 April 2007.
- James Stewart.
- 2 July 1997.
- Jim Morrison.
- Still alive.
- Ha-ha!
- Ha-ha… what?
- The directory is wrong: Jim Morrison died in the bathtub of an apartment in Paris on 3 July 1971. He was 27.
- I really don’t think so.
- I really can assure you.
- That’s what you think. The directory has: “James Douglas Morrison, also known as Jim, born in Melbourne, Florida, on 8 December 1943. Applied for sidereal passport on 20 October 1984 under the name of Mr Mojo Risin’. Fined for non-renewal of revenue stamp on 20 December 1997. He will die on 15 August 2011 on Jupiter, and will turn into a magnificent begonia”.
- Come on, you are making all it up! Jim Morrison a Jovial? And not that urban legend of the anagrammed name again…
- He was not a Jovial: he just migrated to Jupiter and decided to stay. It is all true, I can assure you. Or it will be, at least.
- So, let’s suppose I wanted to know on what day I will die …
- What is your name?
- One moment. I didn’t say I want to know it: I just asked if, as a rule, it is possible…
- What is your name?
- Chance.
- And your last name?
- Last. Chance Last.
- One moment… here… Last, Chance, born in Cambridge, England, on…
- Stop! I don’t want to know! I definitely don’t want to know! Don’t even tr…
- Oh!
- What is this “Oh!” now?
- Nothing.
- No, you said “Oh!”, as if to say…
- No, not at all: it was an ordinary “Oh!”
- Well I’m telling you that, no, it wasn’t, and also that, if I’m allowed, this is one of those typical situations in which it is of the utmost importance not to let slip utterances like “Oh!”. You don’t “Oh!” someone just like that!
- …
- …
- …
- Will it be very soon?
- Let’s put it this way: in consideration of the number of small metallic cylinders I still have at my disposal, at a rough guess I would say…
- When?
- …Before the end of this phone call.
- Of course I did.
- I mean that you could have stopped time before making me run about like a lunatic to get you that teapot.
- Believe me: if I knew I would have ended up laying my hands on this rather inelegant teapot I think I would have opted to move to another dimension and follow a different space-time continuum.
- Very funny. Now tell me why you made me believe I was running against time?
- Because you were actually running against time. Time did stop, but only for me.
- I don’t know if it’s me who doesn’t really get it, or it’s you doing this on purpose.
- I’ll make it easy peasy just for you: time only stops for those who decide to stop it. Everything that surrounds them (or even distant things, in your case) stops. If I decided to do it right now, you would keep as still as a statue and I would be the only one to perceive the flowing of time. If I restarted time again, it would be as if nothing happened for you.
- So, just to make things clear: if you had stopped time before I gave you the coordinates, we wouldn’t be here speaking on the phone, because the call would have ended. Right?
- Over-simplifying, yes, that’s right.
- I thought that playing games with time was forbidden, in general.
- Stopping the normal sequence of events is not a game at all: the Joint Time Police allows it, but you must be authorized.
- And you are authorized to do it, I guess.
- I own a provisional time-stopping licence.
- You can get into trouble for doing what you did a few moments ago?
- I successfully passed the theory exam and I only have to do the practical test: I can stop time upon two conditions.
- Which ones?
- The first one is that I must put everything back where it belonged before I stopped it.
- What do you mean?
- It is essential that people around don’t realize anything: if I stopped time right now, for instance, hung up the handset, went out of the phone booth and then restarted time, those looking at me would see me disappear, and the handset go back in its place by itself.
- As if somebody had cut a scene off.
- Exactly. It is a rule that was introduced following a regrettable occurrence that had taken place precisely on your planet.
- On the Earth?
- Yes, a lot of you had gathered inside this big oval building to observe some of your fellow-terrestrials contending for a spherical worthless object.
- I’m not following you.
- It was easy to guess it was worthless because they kept kicking it around.
- Hang on a second: you are referring to a football match, maybe?
- Football, yes, exactly: I think it was called that way. It also seemed a rather important event, judging by your huge quantity and, most of all, by your over-excited cheering.
- I see: just an ordinary football match.
- No, listen, it wasn’t ordinary at all: towards the end, a terrestrial wearing black whistled into a quite noisy metallic object and indicated with a peremptory gesture a point on the ground. Then, everybody withdrew, leaving two other terrestrials wearing different clothes to fight a duel.
- Quite possibly that was only a simple penalty.
- You could be right, because the one who kicked the spherical object missed his opponent, yet he looked as happy as if he had hit him squarely.
- That‘s because what you have to do is precisely to miss the goalkeeper and kick the ball into the net.
- Well, the one you call “goalkeeper” started protesting loudly and without rest. He said he had never seen a shot like that in his whole life, that he was sure he had seen the spherical object disappear for a second as it was in the air, to reappear in a different position.
- So the match was suspended?
- Absolutely not. The Joint Time Police investigated in all secrecy without involving any terrestrial, and a few weeks later found out that the goalkeeper was right: his opponent had stopped time after kicking the spherical object, modifying its trajectory as it was still in the air and, before restarting it, he had returned to his place as fresh as a daisy. We never understood the reason why that huge crowd considered that particular event so noteworthy, but the whole Universe saw the discouragement depicted on the goalkeeper’s face, and on the faces of those who had to be his fellow-soldiers, as they were all wearing the same uniform. All of a sudden we realized that a great injustice had been committed on the Earth that day.
- A fixed match on the Earth was the reason why they introduced the law that regulated time-stopping?
- Exactly.
- And, listen, you really cannot remember the names of the teams involved, or maybe the date of the match?
- I guess you are asking me because it hasn’t been played yet and you have this betting thing on your mind: this is precisely one of the reasons why I am not allowed to reveal this kind of information.
- Does the Prime Directive also provide for frauds carried out on bookmakers?
- It clearly does. Or, at least, this is what I should tell you if only I knew what a bookmaker is.
- I am deliberately not going into this, or you will forget to tell me the other condition you are subject to in order to be allowed the possibility of stopping time…
- You are right. It is quite simple: I must make my “learner” condition well visible wearing a t-shirt with a big “L” on all the time.
- But you omitted all these details when you told me about the toaster, the sunscreen, time-travelling: it’s easy to imagine that if you are forbidden to travel in time back and forth, you are also prohibited to keep still.
- You are wrong again, see? Only travelling in the past is totally banned. It is possible to stop time, as I have demonstrated, under certain conditions and subject to authorization. On the other hand, it is allowed to travel forward: but only at a 1x speed and for a limited period of time.
- What does it mean?
- Right now, you are travelling in time at a 1x speed : day in, day out, just living your life.
- And this, I guess, accounts for the limited period of time.
- Exactly: you are allowed to travel forward for a period that goes from now to your expiry date.
- Do I have an expiry date?
- Everybody has one.
- In what sense?
- In the sense that, like everybody else, one day you will die.
- You are reminding me should I come up with the bizarre idea that I am eternal?
- I am not the one to remind you: there is a specially-made, fool-proof publication on the subject.
- That is to say?
- I am obviously referring to The Great Telephone Directory of the Earth and neighbouring planets (Jupiter not included), that indicates, among other things, also your expected life span.
- You want to me to believe that this… Great Telephone Directory of the Earth tells that…
- … and neighbouring planets (Jupiter not included).
- Jupiter not included, of course, whatever…
- No, it’s important.
- I was saying: you want to me to believe the day I will die is written in there?
- The day of your death, and of the death of everybody else in the universe.
- Do you have a copy of the directory with you?
- We carried a copy with us, sure.
- Well, so now tell me when did George Washington die.
- Hold on a second… Here it is… George Washington, died on 110101110111101101000111.
- Come on, I could do that too.
- What’s the matter?
- That is not a date: you only called out a casual series of ones and zeros.
- You are right, you employ the other system! You start counting from the birthday of that guy that maybe was the son of God for real or maybe not, nobody knows. In this case, therefore, the date of the death of George Washington is 14 December 1799.
- Correct, but that was easy.
- Give me another name.
- Lady Di.
- The directory has: “real name Lady Diana Spencer, died on 13 August 1997".
- Kurt Vonnegut.
- 11 April 2007.
- James Stewart.
- 2 July 1997.
- Jim Morrison.
- Still alive.
- Ha-ha!
- Ha-ha… what?
- The directory is wrong: Jim Morrison died in the bathtub of an apartment in Paris on 3 July 1971. He was 27.
- I really don’t think so.
- I really can assure you.
- That’s what you think. The directory has: “James Douglas Morrison, also known as Jim, born in Melbourne, Florida, on 8 December 1943. Applied for sidereal passport on 20 October 1984 under the name of Mr Mojo Risin’. Fined for non-renewal of revenue stamp on 20 December 1997. He will die on 15 August 2011 on Jupiter, and will turn into a magnificent begonia”.
- Come on, you are making all it up! Jim Morrison a Jovial? And not that urban legend of the anagrammed name again…
- He was not a Jovial: he just migrated to Jupiter and decided to stay. It is all true, I can assure you. Or it will be, at least.
- So, let’s suppose I wanted to know on what day I will die …
- What is your name?
- One moment. I didn’t say I want to know it: I just asked if, as a rule, it is possible…
- What is your name?
- Chance.
- And your last name?
- Last. Chance Last.
- One moment… here… Last, Chance, born in Cambridge, England, on…
- Stop! I don’t want to know! I definitely don’t want to know! Don’t even tr…
- Oh!
- What is this “Oh!” now?
- Nothing.
- No, you said “Oh!”, as if to say…
- No, not at all: it was an ordinary “Oh!”
- Well I’m telling you that, no, it wasn’t, and also that, if I’m allowed, this is one of those typical situations in which it is of the utmost importance not to let slip utterances like “Oh!”. You don’t “Oh!” someone just like that!
- …
- …
- …
- Will it be very soon?
- Let’s put it this way: in consideration of the number of small metallic cylinders I still have at my disposal, at a rough guess I would say…
- When?
- …Before the end of this phone call.
English translation by Paola Corazza
© 2009 Gianluca Neri - All Rights Reserved