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FEBRUARY, 1945
Roosevelt Aviation School
Roosevelt Field, Naval Air Facility
“Using just one word,” Bill swept the room of classmates with his eyes then continued, “please describe the following: A limited stretch or space of continued existence.” He paused looking directly at each of the seventeen men in the room.
“No one?” Bill looked around hoping that someone would say something. When no one did, he said, “Okay, then. What if I added this...the interval between two successive events?”
A student in the back of the room wearing a grease covered sweater shuffled his feet, looking as though he was about to answer, when he caught a stern glance from another student. He looked away from Bill, finding interest instead in a spot on the floor.
“Come on now, gentlemen. Someone must have some idea?”
Blank faces and empty stares were their responses.
Bill glanced around a room filled with mechanics and engineers who couldn’t shut up in the dining room or out on the tarmac, yet here, not one of them was willing to speak out. “Let me help you along here.” Bill turned to the black chalkboard behind him and wrote one word on it.
Time.
He turned back to the classroom and waited for some response. There was, again, none. “The two definitions I just gave you...describe time.” Bill looked around the room once again and realized, by more blank looks and condescending glares, that this crowd was not buying into anything a nineteen-year old kid was selling. And he hadn’t even said anything! The thought caused him to let out a long sigh.
“I understand that you’re supposed to be some kind of a whiz kid, a genius, I guess, but we don’t have time for this.” An older mechanic sitting in the front row spoke up.
“My point exactly,” Bill said, happy just to have someone speak up. He walked over to the mechanic and stood by his side. “We don’t have time.”
“If that is your point, you’re making no point,” the same student said with a Texas twang. “My men and I have more important issues at hand.”
“Yeah. Football and girls,” another shouted out to rowdy applause and laughter.
“Let’s not waste any more of our time,” the older mechanic said, punching up the ‘time,’ “and end this.”
The others responded to the pun with raucous enthusiasm.
“What if I could make you travel through time?” Bill asked. “What if you already had?”
“Yeah. Okay,” shouted a scrappy little guy from the back row.
“How so?” the grease stained sweater wearing mechanic, who was reluctant to speak earlier, asked with genuine interest.
“Just like this.”
The class settled down
“What’s your name?” Bill called out to the reluctant student.
“Jonathan. Jonathan Kim.”
“Well, Jon, do you have a watch?”
“Sure.” Jon held up his left arm, displaying the inexpensive timepiece.
“Nice,” the older mechanic stated. “Cracker Jack prize?”
“No. Christmas gift.” Jon’s tone was serious.
“That’s great, Jon.” Bill brought the short attention span of the group back to him.
“When I ask you to, Jon, would you please stand up and walk over to me?” Bill moved to the center of the room as close to the chalkboard as he could get.
“Okay, I can do that.” Jon said, glancing around the room.
“Jon, what time is it?”
“One thirteen,” Jon said, then added, “and twenty seven seconds.”
“Perfect. When the second hand is at forty five seconds, I want you to walk over to me.”
“Got it.” Jon stood up. His lips moved as he silently counted out the seconds. “Forty five,” he said out loud, and walked directly to Bill, avoiding a stray leg that shot out to trip him.
He came up beside Bill and stopped.
“What time is it now?” Bill asked.
“It’s a...one thirteen and fifty three seconds.”
“Congratulations, Jon,” Bill said, slapping him on the back. “You’ve just traveled through time.
“Aw, this is stupid,” the older mechanic shouted.
“Look,” Bill turned to the older man, “I have a question for you. Are you game?”
The older mechanic looked to the others in the room, most of whom only offered a shrug.
“Go for it Captain,” a tall slim man at the window side of the room shouted.
“Yeah, all right then. I’m game,” the older mechanic said.
Bill paused for a moment and looking directly at the older mechanic asked, “Do you believe in God?”
“Sure I do.”
“Would you mind standing up, please?”
The older mechanic stood, pushing the chipped wooden chair aside. “Okay?”
“Captain. I can call you Captain?”
“Well, I’m not really a Captain anymore, but sure, go ahead.”
“Are you standing still at this moment or are you moving?”
“I’m standing still,” Captain said, with a sarcastic grin forming on his face.
“And you believe that?”
“Yes, completely. I know when my feet are moving and I can assure you, son that they are not moving.” He glanced down at his feet as if to make sure that his statement was correct.
“Would you say that you have a strong belief in God, Captain?
“Yes, I do.”
“Would say that you believe in God as much as you believe that you are not moving?”
“Yes.” Captain raised an eyebrow. “I’m not moving. I haven’t moved my feet an inch since you asked me to stand up. And I still believe in God, whatever that has to do with this?” Captain’s tone grew agitated.
“Then I might suggest to the rest of us here, that you have a false belief in God.” Bill hesitated a moment as the others in the class grew restless. “You see, Captain, you believe that you are standing still, that you are not moving. And you...well really I...equated that same belief to your faith in God. You, Captain, are moving. We are all moving. And we are traveling through space and time at this very moment.”
“What kind of talk is this?” Captain said. “You’re no genius. You’re just nuts.”
“That may be so, Captain. And someday I’m sure that we will find out. But for the moment, I am the only one here who understands that this Earth we are standing on is moving through time and space at more than one thousand miles per hour. And that means that you, Captain, are not standing still at all. You are spinning through space and time at more than a thousand miles an hour.” Bill starred into Captain’s eyes, waiting.
Captain sat down without saying another word.
“You see, we all have beliefs and perceptions based on what we think we know to be, true, just like Captain’s faith. He believed that he was not moving. He had faith in his own perception. But as you have seen, we cannot believe in our perceptions.” Bill turned to the chalkboard and picked up a piece of chalk. “Maybe Mister Shakespeare said it best.” Bill wrote on the board. To Be or Not To Be. “So if we all believe that we are standing still, even though the Earth is spinning at a thousand miles per hour, does it make it so?”
“I guess not,” Captain said.
“My feet are firmly planted below me and yet I know that I’m not standing still. I understand that my perceptions of movement are clouded by my understanding of movement. The same is true about time. You are trapped by your perceptions of time and therefore cannot see that we travel through time every day.”
“Wait,” Jon said. “How can we travel through time every day?”
“When you wake up it’s one time. Then you go to work, and then you go back home. Each of those events takes place ‘through time.’ None of us has problems with the fact that every day we travel forward in time, yet not one of you wants to believe that we can also travel backwards in time. Why? When did we all agree that time only moves in one direction?”
“Because when we’re dead, time is up and no one ever comes back,” Captain’s matter-of-fact tone added to his sarcasm.
“Is that so, Captain?” Bill turned to the man. “What about Jesus?”
Momentarily caught off guard, Captain hesitated, then shouted out, “That’s because he’s God. He can do that.”
“Or maybe he was just a man, a man who died and returned because he didn’t buy into your beliefs. He wasn’t restricted by them, like you are.” Bill glanced at the men in the room. They were young and old, mostly first generation Americans. They were thinking about getting home, and dinner, and their kids. They were certainly not thinking about time travel. “There were others who thought like you. Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society said in 1895 that heavier than air flying machines were impossible. Look out that window, gentlemen. I see an airfield with thirty or more of the machines that Kelvin said were impossible.” Bill paused letting that bit of trivia sink into the room filled with airplane mechanics.
“Now what if you had bought into Lord Kelvin’s beliefs?”