Next on the agenda for my Temporal Instructor and me was a trip to the Transit Facilities. Rather than board a shuttle bus to take us there, Sara Jenkins and I chose to take the ten minutes' walk straight across campus from the ITP to the Transit Center.

The Institute's Temporal Transit Facilities extend over an area of more than fifty square kilometers in total. Of course, I had visited them more than once in the course of my studies and seen the large particle accelerator ring, the giant superconducting magnets and the powerful laser systems. Nevertheless, the two young technicians in charge of my transit, Lucian Rowe and Jacqueline McLaine, took Sara and me to an outside viewing platform to show us all the main structures and buildings.

Afterwards, the four of us went to Lucian's office where we discussed the details and specifics of my scheduled transit. Lucian and Jacqueline knew already the space-time coordinates of my destination, but they needed to determine my current weight and height as well the weight and size of any objects I was to take with me to the Remote Space-time Region. There was only one such object, a heavy leather suitcase containing clothes and assorted articles required for a year's stay at a 1960s girls' boarding school. The thing weighed more than myself, and I was glad it had been supplied with a set of small wheels so that I would be able to move it without help. Based on these data, the two technicians conducted a preliminary test to verify the accessibility of the target area and the likelihood of a successful opening of a pair of portals to the RSTR .

As you probably know, while filaments with the potential to form the nucleus of a  Fogg-Williams bridge do connect any given two space-time points – or, to be more precise, any two space-time cells of a 4-volume of about the Planck length cubed times the Planck time – these filaments are, in their ground state, closed loops that cannot be accessed by ordinary matter or light. However, those filaments carry spin. Thus, by applying a strong external field, the spins of a bundle of adjoining filaments can be aligned to open portals at both ends of the filament bundles, thus allowing ordinary matter, and in particular, people to pass through to a remote space-time region. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to open a pair of portals the size of a few square meters even for a brief time like a few seconds.

There are of course always certain space-time routes that turn out to be inaccessible. The most probable reason for this unfortunate state of affairs is that no consistent history exists that would permit the intended temporal transit to occur. Or, as the pioneer of temporal physics, Prof. Peter Dent, so aptly put it, the universe just won't permit it. To see this, imagine a simple type I paradox scenario, such as going back in time to kill yourself when you were still a baby. Clearly, there exists no overall consistent history that would allow for this to happen. Hence, it does not happen/will never happen/has never happened. You get the idea.

Thankfully, in the current case a basic accessibility test conducted by Lucian and Jacqueline worked just fine. To be honest, I had not really expected any other outcome. After all, my temporal assignment required me to act as a mere observer, so there was no obvious risk that any of my actions in the RSTR could result in a temporal paradox.

There remains, of course, the perennial question of the role of free will. What if you intend to merely observe but, after transit to the RSTR, you decide to act in a manner suitable to create a paradox. One possible answer is that perhaps there exists no such thing as free will: according to this point of view, free will is merely an illusion. Other researchers believe that any behavior bound to result in inconsistent histories would cause you to transit to a suitable alternate universe – a one way transit that would permanently cut you off from your own universe. This hypothesis has never been tested, simply because nobody has been willing to be the test subject. However, historically there have been several cases of people that have been lost in transit. When others were sent to search for them, not a trace of those missing people could be found – at least, not in our own universe.

But, enough of this. I promise not to bore you any further with the theory and technology behind Temporal Transit. If you are interested in understanding that stuff on a more technical level, I can recommend the excellent textbook, Gavrey's 'Introduction to General Relativity and Temporal Physics'. On a less technical level, consider 'From Filaments to Portals: the Technology of Time Travel' by Irene Burnett, or even the popular 'Time Travel for Dummies' book. Of course there is also the awesome 'Between Times' 3D-movie on GridClips which among other things features a virtual guided tour through the Temporal Transit Facilities.

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A / N :  Thank you for reading this part about the Transit Facilities. I hope it was not way too technical lol It was fun coming up with those textbook titles, especially the Time Travel for Dummies. I hope that one does not already exist?

As always, please comment and add your thoughts and impression. And no, unfortunately I can not tell you how to acquire all the above-mentioned books :-)