Chapter 7 — Boo
Rufus describes how time travel has arrived to this podcast.
Followed by Chapter 7 —— Boo, in which Saskia returns to Mica who is none too happy.
Listen to full episode :
Hello Friends,
It’s happening! Our first form of time travel is hitting this website. For those of you who only experience these dispatches as newsletters or podcasts, and those of you whose first encounter with www.writtenbyrufus.com happens sometime after this post, you would be quite likely to sail on by, blissfully oblivious. But the historical record is being doctored, and I’m drawing your attention to it, here and now.
After all, The Curve of Time is about time travel, and that’s what motivated this whole journey in the first place, so it feels right to highlight what is happening, right now——at least for me, as I write this.
So, what am I alluding to? Put simply: the episodes tab and newsletter tab on the website will henceforth be merged. “Alright”, I hear you sigh. “Rufus is a little dimmer than I realized for not realizing this was possible.”
Not such a big change? Well, let me contextualize a little, because I think it is a wonderful example of a much more general phenomenon, and one that mathematicians feel very acutely.
Notational change can feel subtle, and sometimes, when first encountered, it can feel like vacuous pomp and ceremony. Take the switch from Roman numerals to decimal notation. Sure, it allowed for a more manageable way of presenting numbers big and small (how would you write the national debt in Roman numerals), but how big of a deal was it really? Well, pretty big. For one thing, it made calculations like addition, and, even more so, multiplication much easier. For another, it lays an abstract foundation, that later makes polynomial calculations feel natural (if you were never shown this I encourage you to take a mathematical excursion into James Tanton’s Exploding Dots). Indeed, many classes of numbers——integers, aka whole numbers, rational numbers, aka fractions, and real numbers, pretty much any number you can think of before you encounter imaginary numbers, and even imaginary numbers, in case you have encountered them——all these classes of numbers, and polynomials are all subsumed within the more abstract conceptual framework of rings (but, unfortunately, we don’t have room here for that beautiful digression).
Perhaps a more visual example of a notational advance would be illuminating. You’ve all seen various graphs. For example: growth curves of the stock market or population, or graphs of temperature compared to the day of the year. It’s hard to fathom if you’ve existed within today’s world (and let’s face it, if you’re reading this, unless you’re a time traveler, that means you) but there was a time when people considered functions as collections of pairs of numbers without considering graphs that connected the input with the output. And without the wonderful visuals of graphs it’s a lot harder to see the annual cycles in which the weather comes. Cartesian coordinates also paved the way for calculus, without which we would not have modern machine learning … which means no Chat GPT, no AI image generation, no self-driving cars. In short, no Written By Rufus! So really, we’ve got quite a bit to thank Descartes for!
But what has all of this to do with the time travel I highlighted at the beginning of this missive?
Well, merging the episodes and newsletter tabs was only possible when I realized that beyond a form-factor, they really were the same thing. This presentational overhaul brings a seering clarity to that idea. Indeed, perhaps you, like me, were always a little bothered by the distinction on the website. All I can say is that those who look back may be baffled by my incompetence at separating them in the first place (though since I’ve now altered the record, they would never know were it not for this acknowledgement).
In my defense, I would like to submit that it wasn’t all a consequence of my lack of understanding that the underlying essences are the same. In point of fact, the design error was in no small part due to my technical incompetence when it comes to website design. Happily, as you can see, I’ve grown, and that specific incompetence is now in the past. All we have left is this post describing a reality before the timeline was doctored.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
And now, without further ado, let’s find out how Saskia’s disappearance last week felt to Mica.
— 7 —
Boo
Once the race finished, Saskia’s eyes lit up. She grabbed Mica by the hand and pulled her back towards the betting ring. Only this time, Mica hadn’t needed to let herself be led. In fact, Mica couldn’t have resisted had she wanted to. The further Saskia pulled her, the more definitive her pull was.
Saskia’s captivating squeeze bordered on painful. And then it did hurt. No longer the pliable, willing parent, Mica was the young woman being abducted.
Until, she wasn’t. Abruptly, Saskia was gone. Disappeared. It was a magic trick par excellence.
Mica searched left and right. Rubbing her smarting hand as she cast about. “Saskia?” she called. “Saskia?!”
It made no sense. There was nowhere for Saskia to have disappeared. Sure there was a throng of spectators, but …
Mica turned back to the finish line, from where they had just come. She searched. But nothing. Then, as she turned back towards the betting window——
“Boo!” Saskia suddenly reappeared.
Mica wasn’t sure if she ought to be impressed or angry. She held up her throbbing hand. “That hurt.” It was part accusation, part confused explication of her disposition.
“I’m sorry.” Saskia reached out towards Mica’s hand.
But Mica pulled away. It was an involuntary response. “Why’d you . . . ” She hadn’t been sure how to finish her sentence, and instead she switched to her other, competing questions: “Where’d you go? How’d you do that?”
“Back in time,” Saskia responded, her face an apparently open book.
“You disappeared.” Mica’s voice was laced with indictment, but her heart was more confused. “Why would you do that? How——?”
“To show you,” Saskia started. “To place our bets.” The evidence of which she held up, two tickets: Out Of Time for the win, and Out Of Time followed by Red Empress for the double.
The reality of time travel was too much for Mica to process, especially in the face of the pain in her hand. “Why would you do that to me?” Mica charged again, again holding her hand out in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” Saskia apologized.
They both paused to take stock. Mica no more believed that Saskia had deliberately hurt her, than Saskia could understand just how she had. Still, Mica described what it felt like on her end, concluding that, “And then you were gone. All of a sudden. Like a magic trick.”
“Not magic,” Saskia protested. “All science looks like magic until it’s understood. Imagine a cavewoman watching a plane flying overhead. Even a car roaring by would seem incredible.”
Mica wanted to believe Saskia, but it was all too implausible.
If Saskia could know the lottery numbers before they dropped, was it really any more surprising that she had an inside track at the races? Mica had been led down the garden path before, on a story that turned out to be a bust …but even if this was such a case, she’d just witnessed a pretty amazing magic trick.
∞
“So you just told yourself the lottery numbers?” Mica asked, returning to the crux of Saskia’s narrative.
“No. Not exactly.” Saskia shook her head. “I waited for the results on my phone, and once they came in, I went back in time and bought the ticket. Just as we——well I——did just now for Out Of Time.”
“And then you waited for the redraw?”
“I didn’t really have to wait; I launched forward to the present again.” Taken at face value, it was the epitome of the kind of story that had drawn Mica to reporting. It was the opportunity that only drops in your lap once in a lifetime and she couldn’t ignore it. Saskia’s was a tale that had the potential to put her on the map.
That’s it for chapter 7, hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing you all next week. In the meantime, if you’ve got a moment I’d be eternally grateful for a podcast review on your favorite platform.
Until next week, cheerio.
