Page 153 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Breaking the Grapefruit Connection
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we have the illusion of a present moment stretching out into space,
the truth is that both time and space are different at every point in the
spacetime continuum. I can imagine you and I are sharing the present
moment, but in actuality every bit of information I get comes from
the past. Of course, since much of it arrives at the speed of light, and
you and I are close together, we can act as if the events we jointly
perceive are occurring at the same time. Unfortunately, there is no
‘same time,’ any more than there is a ‘same space.’”
“But what did Pamplemousse do? Where and when are we?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you, but it’s incredible. As you know, the PKU has
been pushing back the frontiers of the Known Universe by means of
the hyperdrive engine in our spaceships, which permits us to cross
vast volumes of spacetime very rapidly, though always within the
limitations of the light wave boundary. Now, let me add a point
outside that boundary on our diagram. No way to get to it, right? Well,
Pamplemousse found the secret of teleportation, and that’s where we
are: outside our own physical possibilities.”
“Teleportation! That’s impossible! An old magician’s trick, isn’t it?
Make things disappear and all that hocus pocus?”
“That’s what I thought, until I saw you teleported out of the
Philosophers Club and a sack of grapefruit appear in your place. I
remembered where you were staying and I called the Abbott. I saw
some apparatus on his table which made me reconsider: a metronome
and a neo-Jungian mandala generator. Jung, you may recall, had a
theory about the present, that everything in it is connected. That idea,
‘synchronicity’ as it was known, came out just after Einstein’s theory
rejected absolute time, so Jung’s semi-mystical hypothesis wasn’t
taken very seriously. Yet things do happen which seem to violate the
spacetime boundaries we now accept as absolute—precognition and
clairvoyance being the most inexplicable.’’
“I tried tracing both the grapefruit and Pamplemousse: neither had
any origin I could identify. If Pamplemousse ever strayed from the
sanctuary of his phony monastery, he’d have a lot of trouble
explaining his presence on Radnelac III. Anyway, it seemed to me
that he was no scientist, but a superior magician who had stumbled
onto a technically feasible method of teleportation.”
“But how?”
“Two things are at work here. First, the conservation of mass-
energy. Whatever leaves one region of spacetime has to be completely
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