THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS

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Still, as he passed the main gateway to the north of the city, there was the old blue sign with its white pointing arrow: to baikonur, still proclaiming that ancient deceptive name. And still, here at the empty heart of Asia, Russian engineers built spaceships and fired them into the sky. Instant-access WormCam technology or not, it was going to take a long time before the news-watching public was weaned off the interpretative presence of a reporter interposing herself before some breaking news story.

The scale exploded again. Kate found herself flying into the glassy onion-shell interior of one of the carbon atoms. There was a hard, shining lump at its very center, a cluster of misshapen spheres. Was it the nucleus?—and were those inner spheres protons and neutrons? But gadgets do, you know! Once it was the wheel, agriculture, ironmaking—inventions that took thousands of years to spread around the planet. But now it takes a generation or less. Think about the car, the television. When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards. Now we all spend half our lives plugged into SoftScreens. And my gadget is going to top them all.…Well. You'll have to decide for yourself." He studied Kate. "Enjoy tonight. If this young waster hasn't invited you already, come to dinner, and we'll show you more, as much as you want to see. I mean it. Talk to one of the drones. Now, do excuse me.…" Hiram squeezed her shoulders briefly, then began to make his way through the crowd, smiling and waving and glad-handing as he went.And nor did they care much for what was about to happen here. All their gossip was of events far away: of Hiram Patterson and his wormholes, his promise to make the Earth itself as transparent as glass.

Intangible Time Travel: The physics of wormholes only allows energy to travel one way: from the past to the present. People can view the past all they want, and eventually in such detail that they can create virtual reality reconstructions of the past, but it's impossible to affect the past in any way. A wormhole mouth is a sphere, floating freely in space. A three-dimensional excision. If we succeed with the expansion, for the first time we’ll be able to see our wormhole mouth—with a hand lens” We calculate that the probability of finding a wormhole connecting Seattle to Brisbane, to acceptable accuracy, is one in ten million. So it will take us some ten million attempts to locate the wormhole we want. But this is atomic machinery and it works bloody fast; even a hundred million attempts should take less than a second.…And the beauty of it is, down at the quantum level, links to any place we want already exist: all we have to do is find them." She gravitated toward one of the larger knots of people nearby, trying to see who, or what, was the center of attention. She made out a slim young man with dark hair, a walrus mustache and round glasses, wearing a rather absurd pantomime-soldier uniform of bright lime green with scarlet piping. He seemed to be holding a brass musical instrument, perhaps a euphonium. She recognized him, of course, and as soon as she did so she lost interest. Just a virtual. She began to survey the crowd around him, observing their childlike fascination with this simulacrum of a long-dead, saintly celebrity.

As the nucleus flew at her she heard people cry out. Still clutching Bobby's arm, she tried not to flinch as she hurtled into one of the nucleons.

I loved the Jesus scene and the explanation of why the day darkened-- it's classic. Also, the search for answers that leads our hero to the extreme past (while most people become voyeurs) gives us the hope that even though history has and will repeat itself, life goes on, even if it's not how we might expect.

Transcription

This is a crystal of diamond. The white points you see are carbon atoms. The links are the valence forces that join them. I want to emphasize that what you are going to see, though enhanced, is not a simulation. With modern technology—scanning tunneling microscopes, for instance—we can build up images of matter even at this most fundamental of levels. Everything you see is real. Now—come further." Still, Kate knew, he was only one of a number of powerful players in a crowded and competitive market. She was here tonight because—so went the buzz, and as he had just hinted—Hiram was to reveal something new, something that would change all that. Creative Sterility: It's mentioned a few times that neuroscience has advanced to the point where neural reprogramming has become commonplace for people with mental illnesses (including addictions and compulsive behavior), as well as people convicted of crimes. Kate points out that this reprogramming is killing human creativity, and artistic achievement is rapidly vanishing. This, however, is apparently a minority opinion. In the opening lines of the poem, the narrator describes how frequently, in the still of the night, he lies down in bed and is overcome with both happy and sad memories of the past. Before he drifts off to sleep, he reminisces about the past and the times that are no longer with us. At first, the speaker is filled with fleeting happiness as he recalls happy times from his past, complete with laughter, tears, and boundless enthusiasm from his younger years. But the speaker’s overwhelming sense of loneliness soon turns those “fond memories” bitter. This is the point at which the poet realises that his youth, his friends, and the time and energy he spent sharing his love with those who have passed on are all in the past. And then, all at once, the “fond memories” turn tragic.

Our Wormholes Are Different: The basic plot of the novel depends on the ability to find, stabilize and look through wormholes into the past, on demand. A drone hovered outside the car. It was another Earth globe, slowly spinning, and when it spoke its voice was smooth, utterly synthetic, devoid of emotion. "This way, Ms. Manzoni."She came out fighting. "Well, you startled me. Anyhow I know who you are." This was Bobby Patterson, Hiram's only son and heir—and a notorious sexual predator. She wondered how many other unaccompanied women this man had targeted tonight. Light of Other Days" is a science fiction short story by Bob Shaw. It was originally published in August 1966 in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. [1] The story uses the idea of "slow glass": glass through which light takes years to pass. Bob Shaw used this idea again in later stories. [1] Kate was surprised to find she had grabbed on to Bobby's arm. She could feel a knot of muscle there. He had covered her hand with his, apparently without calculation. Chronoscope: The central technology of the novel, called Wormcam by its marketers. Significantly, it can view anywhere, at any time in the past or present (though not the future). The implications of this technology being freely available is fully explored. A time hole is opened to the beginning of life on Earth, and it is discovered that all existing life is descended from a biological sample placed by intelligent beings (labeled Sisyphans) who inhabited the Earth over three billion years ago, trying to preserve genetic samples when geological and climatic changes and a large bolide threatened an extinction level event.