Special-Fried Relativity

All day and all night, throughout the universe, time proceeds at its own leisurely pace. A little faster here, a little slower there. That's something to do with the speed of light, which is a constant. Nobody knows why or even what that really means. Einstein made it up, and he's dead now, so we can't ask him. We just have to accept it as a brute fact, like cornflakes or Manchester. Anyway, if you want to know about it, you should ask a licenced psychiatrist. As I understand it, though, it works like this.

            If you are on a train looking at your watch, it will be half past four and your relative... It has to be a relative for some reason. That's Einstein again who is still dead, despite his having invented time travel. Anyway, more of that later or earlier. Who knows? We shouldn't get into it right now because time travel just complicates things. For the purposes of our experiment, time only goes one way. Although it can swirl around sometimes and disappear down a big black hole. Anyway, I must stop it! Not time, just this rambling...

            You were on a train, remember? And you're looking at your watch, which says half past four. Meanwhile, your uncle gets onto the replacement bus service, and it's half past four for him too. Where are you going? I don't know and to be honest, if you're on a train, why is there also a replacement bus service? Einstein left many things unanswered, like Fermat’s last theorem and why Stevenage exists. We can't ask him about any of it. In this case it's probably because he lived in Switzerland and he'd never seen a replacement bus service. That's why this is called a thought experiment. He couldn't do it in real life, because all the trains in Switzerland run on time and as far as I know he didn't even have an uncle. I'm sure we would have heard about it if he did.

            Anyway, stop rambling. You're on the train. Your uncle is on the bus and for the sake of argument, let's say you're going to Cheltenham Spa*. It is four thirty... probably four thirty-one by now, but still, both of you have working watches. Yours is a Timex, probably bought for you by your uncle, and his is, I imagine, a gold pocket watch on a chain. But that doesn't really matter. I'm just trying to bring the thing to life.

            Off you go, then. You on the train going at a made-up speed, which has something to do with the speed of light. Now, as far as you're concerned, everything on the train is normal. The buffet car is closed and there's a businessman shouting into his phone in the quiet carriage. That's satire, by the way, and nothing to do with this story. Anyway, you take out your torch. Yes, you've got a torch. Hang on, I think your watch doubles up as a torch. Dann that Einstein. So many unanswered questions. Anyway, you turn on your torch, and the light streams out of it like... err... well, like a normal torch. Or so you think, because what you don't know is that I'm watching the whole thing from the platform (yes, yes, I'm in it too), and all I can see is a kind of slug made out of light, like that time I did acid but in this case, it isn't talking or anything like that, it's just bouncing around the train.

            So all of that's happening on the train, and time is going really fast because it's a fucking light show on a train, and there's a talking slug made out of light, and you're really happy about your new Timex watch, which has a torch function on it which you've just found out about, and it's all really exciting. Meanwhile, your uncle is stuck on the bus, and he's having to stop at road works, and there are traffic jams, and there's an irritating child that smells of poo and a crying baby and a woman who talks too loud, and the windows haven't been cleaned so he can't even see out very well. To make matters worse, he forgot to bring a book to read and he hasn't got an iPod or anything because he's just not that kind of uncle. And so, for obvious reasons, he's just getting older and older.

            By the time you both arrive in Cheltenham, he's like ninety or something and wearing a raincoat, and his hair's gone all grey as if someone has covered him with talcum powder, but that's what everybody looks like in Cheltenham, so no one notices. You, though? You're an astronaut by now because it's the future already (remember, time has been passing at the speed of light all the time this has been going on), except that you've turned into a baby for some reason, like the bloke in that film that seemed to go on forever. I mean, it started OK, with the monkeys and stuff, and you thought it was going to be about monkeys in space, but then an obelix, which is a French word for a big black thing, fell on them, and it all went boring for about three hours.

            Anyway I'm rambling again, but that's relativity. General or special, you can take your pick. But if you can get your head around it, you will become kind of a superhero because you can get to Mars or some other planet more or less yesterday and you can make atom bombs come out of your fingers. Not that Einstein mentioned the fingers thing because he died in the fifties, long before Stan Lee invented half of the stuff we know about today, so he didn't know about that yet. Again, despite having invented time travel.

            Anyway, that's what I wrote on my A-level psychiatry exam. I'm still awaiting the result, but I am already able to practice due to NHS funding cuts. Good old Einstein.

A spa is a kind of drinking fountain invented by the Romans, who lived in Georgian times, not a corner shop. There are no corner shops in Cheltenham because everyone there is white, even the Asians. Something to do with the water.*

** Excuse the footnote, but I didn't want to interrupt the flow again. If you've broken off to read this, I can only apologise. Please get back to it. I think I was talking about your uncle or something.