THE CURSE OF A SCIENCE FICTION WRITER

The king of Sarniya was a tyrant and a sadist. He had no end of fun torturing anyone who dared raise even the tiniest of voice against him. His dungeons were vast and filled with state-of-the-art torturing devices, many of them invented by the king himself.

One day, the king’s soldiers brought a science fiction writer before the king. He had written some stories about an imaginary land that was ruled by a good king. This was, of course, subversion of the highest order.

“You are a science fiction writer, are you?” the king smiled. “I love science,” he said. “Let us a try an experiment, shall we. Let us see how long it takes for a man to live without water.” He turned to his guards. “Take him to the dungeons. Feed him as much as he wants but do not give him water or any other liquid.”

The science fiction writer searched in his mind for the most potent curse he could think of: "May God punish you by putting you into a time loop," he said as the guards dragged him away.

A few days later, the king of Sarniya was sitting in the garden when, out of nowhere, a long black pole made of plastic swung through the air and hit him on the head and vanished. The blow on the head jarred the neurons of the king's brains, and for a few seconds, the synapses went whacko and the neurons started sending wild signals to each other. Suddenly, out of these random signals, a pattern emerged and the pattern gave birth to an idea in the king's brain, an idea about faster than light motion.

According to Einstein (thought the king), nothing can travel faster than light. Well, that's true in case of linear motion, but what about angular motion? Suppose there is a pole that can move with one end as its pivot. When I move this pole, the linear velocity of a point on the pole near the pivot is much lesser than the linear velocity of the other end of the pole. Now, suppose I build a very long pole, such that a small impetus at the pivot would result in faster than light motion at the other end? Is this possible? And if this were possible, would the nether part of the pole (the part that was moving faster than light) really travel back in time as some scientists suggest?

The king ordered his engineers to build just such a pole. It took two months to build it. On an auspicious day, the king provided the impetus by pushing on the pole near its pivot.

The pole moved.

The linear velocity at the far end of the pole surpassed the velocity of light, and the far end of the pole traveled backward in time, and hit the king on his head while he was sitting in his garden two months ago. The blow on the head jarred the neurons of the king's brains, and for a few seconds, the neurons started sending wild signals to each other. Suddenly, out of these random signals, a pattern emerged and the pattern gave birth to an idea in the king's brain, an idea about faster than light motion.

The king of Sarniya went mad thinking through the resultant chain of causes and effects.