Theorizing that one could time travel within their own lifetime, Doctor Sham Breakit stepped into the Quantum Loop accelerator… and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mere images that were not his own, and driven by unknown source code to arrange history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Hal, an observer at run-time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sham can see and hear. And so Dr. Breakit finds himself looping through life after life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next loop… will be the loop Home.
As the blue glow faded, Sham found himself in a corridor. He wondered where and when. At least there didn’t seem to be anything going on, so he might as well look around. Sham proceeded down the hall, only to find that it dead-ended in a doorway. He backtracked and took another passage. But a few doors later he discovered the same problem.
Sham stopped. Time to think logically. He looked up and started following the Exit signs. He turned down a couple more corridors, glanced behind himself and saw another exit sign pointing in the opposite direction in which he was heading. Sham frowned - wherever he was, it seemed to defy all logic. So maybe he had a map?
Sham turned out the pockets of the suit he was wearing and started looking over the contents. He was interrupted by the appearance of a white door in the middle of nowhere. Hal, decked out in a green jacket and pink tie, stepped through. “Sham! You’ll never guess where you are!”
“In an experiment gone wrong?”
“Close, it’s the sixth floor of the Mathematics and Computer Science Building at the University of Mizuloo. You know, I think my fourth wife graduated from here… or maybe it was the third…"
“Hal…"
“Right, sorry. Your name is --“
“Professor Cal Q. Late, and it’s around Friday, May 15th, 1998 according to this speeding ticket I found. Hal, just skip to why I’m here.”
“I’m sorry, Sham. I can’t do that,” Hal intoned.
“You know, you’re about as funny as a statistics class.”
“Well, we had trouble signing and cosigning the new parts for your parallel hybrid computer, BigE. Had to seek out our csc head who was tanning on a cot.”
“Sounds like you have all the angles covered,” Sham said, arcing an eyebrow.
“A cute line, Sham. But one thing we do know is that your main duty right now is to tea.”
“Pardon?”
“Errr…" Hal slapped the TI-85 calculator in his hand. “Oh, teaching. Your class was supposed to start five minutes ago.”
“What? Where?”
“Two floors down.” Hal glanced around. “You know, it would be a lot easier to get out of here if you could walk through walls…"
“What subject am I teaching?”
“Beats me,” Hal shrugged. “But with all your degrees I’m sure you can come up with something.”
Sham sighed reflexively - Hal was being obtuse again. He hoped that his mission for this loop wouldn’t fall flat, and that whatever he did would be right. “Maybe I’ll give a talk about perfect numbers,” Sham proposed.
“Perfect numbers?” Hal mused. “What are those?”
What are perfect numbers? What is Sham doing in Mizuloo? Look for an answer next issue…
--Greg “hologrami” Taylor
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[This column originally appeared in the University of Waterloo's mathNEWS publication, Volume 77, issue 1, from 1998 - Sham gives an accurate date. Also in that issue by me were “Cynic’s Corner” and “Everything One Needs to Know in Life Can be Learned by Reading mathNEWS”.]
