EDITOR’S NOTE: Several readers have asked what the heck is this “imaginary physics” stuff. It certainly would help to provide at least a brief overview of the scientific breakthrough that made the colonization of Sirius 4 possible, by reducing the trip to one measured in years to one measured in hours. To provide a handy primer in imaginary physics, here is an excerpt from the novel The Imaginary Bomb, in which (as usually happens) foolish humans decide to explore what kind of bomb might be made using the seemingly limitless power of the imagination.
It goes back to the old days when scientists were trying to develop a way to go faster than the speed of light, seeing as otherwise most of the universe was years and even centuries away.
They tried for years without success until the historic day when someone in R&D at what is now ImagCorp threw up his or her hands and said. “This is nuts. I can’t imagine how we’re going to achieve faster than light speed.” And the proverbial light bulb went off. Imagination was the key!
They reasoned out the first tenet of imaginary physics: The power of the imagination is unlimited. Therefore, an engine powered by the imagination theoretically could travel at unlimited speeds. The trick was developing a computer with an imagination to power the engine, but once that was accomplished, the galaxy opened up.
“ID 1.97” refers to the setting on the ImagDrive that enabled the Betsy Ross to travel at 1.97 times the speed of imagination. I know, I know, if the power of imagination is unlimited, how can you go twice as fast? Wouldn’t that be infinity times two? Well, yes and no. Imaginary engines, in theory, could get you somewhere in the blink of an eye. The problem with moving at an unlimited speed is that old devil, friction. Once you exceed lightspeed, those slow-pokey little light particles pull against your vehicle just like air does; the early ImagDrive ships came close to burning up the same way satellites burn up in the atmosphere. So “ID 1.00” isn’t really the speed of imagination — it’s the safest maximum speed of the first ships equipped with the ImagDrive. Nowadays, of course, technology has advanced, so Bob and Pete’s ship can go at ID 1.97, and actually a little faster than that.
As for the Betsy Ross itself, remember those silly-looking rocket ships that Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers would use to cruise around in the old movie serials? Who would have thought that those low-budget specials would perfectly approximate the shape you need to slice efficiently through the milky atmosphere of lightspeed-plus? Fortunately for everyone’s nerves, however, they don’t resemble the movie versions to the point where they buzz like a mosquito on steroids or emit sparks and smoke out the exhaust pipe. They just rush through space at twice the speed of imagination, looking pretty peculiar but doing the job, quietly and without fanfare.
As long as this is a story about the power of imagination, I’m letting you decide what color Bob and Pete’s hair and eyes are, or how tall they are, or the shape of their chins. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for the movie — and even then it’ll be the casting director’s opinion of what these guys should look like.
Now, about tenets 2 and 3 of imaginary physics. When they tried to make machines that created food and other stuff using imaginary power, they discovered they couldn’t do it unless they first provided the device with some raw materials. They couldn’t just “imagine” food out of nothing; hence tenet number 2: “Matter still can’t be created or destroyed.” Newton had things pretty much figured out.
Einstein, on the other hand, was a little off with his idea that time slows down if you travel faster than light. The first people who traveled using the ImagDrive expected to come home after a 30-day trip to a changed world years and years into the future; what they really came home to was parents angry and hurt because they hadn’t called for a month. Nor could you travel backwards in time; hence tenet number 3: “What’s done is done.”
Entry 20. Breaking the cycle
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