Tau Ceti f Time

by Brian William Moore

“There’s no such thing as time travel.”

Tom and Billy, father and son, were hiking along a steaming river, shaded under a canopy of palm-like trees.

Palm-like trees, Tom thought. We’re so lame; my fellow settlers, so overwhelmed by our new home’s dissonant morphology, named our alien paradise with their safe familiar earth-centric lexicon. The midday humidity draped over them like a damp bedsheet.

“But it’s twelve years later on Earth than here on Tau Ceti f,” Billy said, taking his father’s hand. They strolled down the red mud trail, discussing such serious issues as time travel.

They soaked in a towering waterfall’s view; negative ions — electric in the air — calmed him. Tom smiled; fluid dynamics are universal.

“Time dilation, not time travel,” Tom shouted over the roaring rapids.

“What’s the difference?” Billy squatted to inspect a pale red rock.

“Time dilation is the difference in elapsed time between two observers; in our case, the velocity difference relative to Earth and us, results in a twelve-year variance.” He smiled down at the boy. “And there’s no such thing as time travel.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You will, when you’re older. It’s pretty advanced math.”

“I like math.”

“I like you, buddy.” Tom reached to ruffle the mop atop his son, but the boy ducked away, running ahead.

Tom daydreamed a memory: little older than Billy, lying on the brown shag rug propped up on a cool cream-colored pillow in the off-limits living room, watching an episode of Nova. He could almost smell buttered popcorn.

Carl Sagan’s soothing voice explained Einstein’s special theory of relativity “Time, as measured by the speeding space traveler, slows down compared to time as measured by a friend left home on Earth... The ‘twin paradox’: when the space-traveling twin returns home, he or she has aged only a little, while the twin who has remained at home has aged at the regular pace.”

The trail rose before them. Tom huffed shortened breaths like a tired old steam engine. The forest canopy thinned. He shielded his eyes from the summer sun. He wiped a sheet of sweat from his brow. The sticky sweet smell of stewed fruit hung in the thick afternoon, reminding Tom of his grandma baking rhubarb cherry pie.

“Out of shape, bud.”

“Come on, I can see the melon-trees.”

“Your mother had better appreciate this,” Tom thought. “It’s way too hot to be out at midday. We should have left earlier. Suck it up, it’s the only safe time to let Billy out of the settlement. The lion-bears are all having their siestas. Unless we stumble upon a den, we won’t even hear one.

“I should have brought water. I wish we could just drink out of the river. Stupid. Lament the nearly boiling river? We choose this settlement for the geothermal potential, a spot of rainforest growing on the side of an ice cube. ‘You gotta dance with the girl what brung you.’ Thanks for that old nugget of wisdom, Dad.”

He put one heavy foot in front of the other. Coming to the rise, he saw the expanse of trees with melons dangling like red nerf footballs thrown carelessly into scraggly pines shaped like giant mushrooms.

Billy ran around the thick white stalk, smooth save for a series of grey nodules about half a meter apart. “Boost me, boost me, boost me,” he chanted.

“Okay, okay, okay. Enough. Jeez.”

He hoisted Billy up into the tree.

“Not too high.” Tom shrugged his knapsack. “Come on, not so high. Just grab the first one.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“It’s not fun for me when I miss the melon and it splats all over me.” They laughed at their practiced repartee.

“This one looks good.”

“Finally.” Tom looked up waiting. The red fruit shot out of the trees foliage. He jogged forward looking over his shoulder, his muscles repeating a thousand childhood games. He heard his father’s voice deep in his subconscious: “It’s an egg; treat it like an egg. Soft hands. Soft hands.” He watched the melon float into his hands, catching it smoothly.

He tripped on a root but balanced himself, cradling the melon.

“Oh yeah! Nice one, dude,” Billy called from his perch. He shimmied down. Tom stuffed the fruit — more like a giant red pea pod, leathery to the touch and crammed with a hundred little pink berry-peas — into his pack.

“Who are you calling ‘dude’?”

“Mom will be happy that’s a big one.” Billy ran towards the forest.

The thirty-meter tall palm trees’ cool shade swallowed them. Tom saw a small green-gray squirrel dart along the four-meter long palms. He pointed out the critter, “See the squirrel?”

“Where?”

“Up there.”

“Oh. He’s cute.”

“He’s a scavenger. Kind of like this world’s rat.”

“What’s a rat?”

“Earth vermin.”

“What’s vermin?”

“You’re killin’ me. Vermin, mice and rats, small mammals who historically got into human food stocks.”

“Like the squirrels do sometimes.”

“Exactly.”

Billy took his father’s hand. “Tell me about Earth.”

“I have.”

“Tell me again; tell me something else.”

“There are oceans just like here, but they aren’t frozen. Mommy and I lived in the Pacific before we became colonists. We built the first giant floating city on the ocean.”

“How many people are there?”

“Billions.”

“Are they coming here?”

“Some, maybe.”

“We don’t know, because it takes twelve years for FRBs from earth.”

“No, the FRB goes through the worm hole, so it arrives instantly like us.”

“But it’s twelve years later already.”

“Huh?”

“Because of the time dilation.”

Tom shook his head. “Buddy, twelve years passed on Earth during our trip, which seemed like only a moment to us. If Earth had sent a Fast Radio Burst right after we entered the wormhole, in theory, we would have heard it when we arrived.”

The squirrels’ chittering chant echoed through the still forest. “We sent a signal as soon as we got the equipment set up. It went through the wormhole instantly. The response from Earth should’ve been instantaneous, but from an Earth where twelve years had passed. We never heard back. A lot can happen in twelve years. A lot.”

“I can’t wait to hear back.”

“Why’s that, bud?”

“They’ll send new books, right? I think I’ve read all the ones we have here. The ones appropriate for my age, of course.”

“I hope so.”

“We’ve got it good here,” Tom thought. “I hope they keep their problems to themselves. But I imagine eventually more will come. I hope they’re settlers and not refugees. It’s been a year. Where are they? Maybe war, maybe they blew themselves up for good this time. There’s a reason, that’s for sure. Perhaps the Yellowstone caldera—”

“Daddy? Daddy.”

“Yeah, bud.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Just looking forward to that melon ice cream.”

Father and son, hand-in-hand, hiked home; they passed the waterfall. They strolled, discussing such serious issues as ice cream.