By A. O. Wallat

Bath Time Thoughts #1 – The Pathfinder’s Map of Time. Original Audioplay first appeared on http://www.holtandwallt.com.

I have always wondered about the mapping of time and whether time really exists. Now before you say the heat has cooked my brain or I’ve drunk too much bath water, which let’s face it – I have, let me make up a story to illustrate where I’m coming from.

Imagine that you are a Pathfinder of the olden days, long before map and compass. Imagine that on your travels you see the rocky edge of the coast, a precipice beneath and the wide ocean stretching out in front of you, in all directions. You come across a narrow path, steep steps guide you down th e cliff-edge and following the treacherous gulley, you reach the water’s edge.

As you look up a V appears in the sky and sure enough you can make out flapping wings and bird-call can be heard, barely, above the crashing waves. Half a year ago you saw them flying westward, inland. Now they are heading east, across the great blue before you, beyond the horizon, toward the unknown where no eyes can see. And you endeavour to follow.

You cross the ocean in a skiff and after many miles of differing shades of grey and blue, and some harrowing memories of the voyage – large swells the size of continents, which seemed insurmountable, which threatened to swallow you whole – begin to fade. Soon sounds of clashing rock and water return once more. You sigh deeply relieved. Landfall.

Your spirits bandy as you drag your skiff ashore and immediately, on some flimsy parchment, you begin to draw your map. It is simple – land to the east labelled ‘there’, ocean and waves in the centre, and land to the west, labelled ‘here’. A clear line connects them all, showing the path you have travelled.

That path is of a certain distance between there and here. Though at some points along the journey you doubted its existence, now that you are here, you rightly surmise that this locale with its craggy shore and pebbled beach though different to your expectations, much different, has always existed on the map – it did not ‘pop’ into existence merely because you alone encountered it, anyone could have reached it, it was always on the map, always ‘here’.

Now this is true of nature, true of maps, true of the spacial dimensions which stretch out indefinitely in all directions. All points on the globe and even in the night skies, even if never travelled to, those places not yet encountered, must exist then if we adhere to the laws of nature and of course maps. But what of the fourth dimension, t, the lonely cousin of x,y,z? Time. This too, as far we can tell, on one axis stretches out in two directions, indefinitely.

As pathfinder you travelled the ocean venturing into the unknown, measuring the distance, surmising that the locales ahead exist already. Yet what if you measure the voyage not in miles but in time. Would you so quickly and automatically surmise that the locale you are headed to exists already? Or would you hesitate to say then that the future already exists, even if it has never been travelled to? And in this way, if we follow the same thinking, does it mean that all points in time exist too? That the past, like some westward cliff, the future, like an east lying shore and the in-between cannot but exist together, simultaneously, just like the map?

Does this then suggest that the future is destined since your travel along time, from your point of view, is constant and moves in one direction only? Is there then no free will with no way to chart a different course? Perhaps, perhaps…

Perhaps you think differently, that if time were a map, we ought to take the analogy further. That is has more directions than simply forwards and backwards but also north, south, and even altitudes too. That any path through time can be plotted in any direction. That free will exists and following your internal compass one can bring themselves to some previously unknown place and narrowly escape the clutches of pre-destiny? Perhaps, perhaps…

But let me remind you that it is understood that the laws of nature and of course maps permit 11 dimensions, 3 of which are spacial, 7 of which we shall not get into here, and only one of which is time.

Be that as it may, I must warn you, I play word games here. This is just an analogy and should be treated with suspicion, what is written is often written with intent. A design of some sort. Designed specifically to sink an idea into the imagination. There is danger then that this story may slip past your defences and come to be believed as factual. In fact, it is not. I made it all up, more specifically, my imagination made it up (I had no hand in its writing) and I am sure that these ideas have been floated before me.

Nevertheless, despite my own warning I have the sneaking suspicion that the story of the Pathfinder is true and that when I see a flock of birds in a V, a distant horizon, or an insurmountable swell, that there exists a place beyond. Whether it exists, I do not doubt, but whether I make it there I can never be fully sure.