Free Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

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• I NTERLUDE
    Einstein and Besso sit in a small fishing boat at anchor in the river. Besso is eating a cheese sandwich while Einstein puffs on his pipe and slowly reels in a lure.
    “Do you usually catch anything here, smack in the middle of the Aare?” asks Besso, who has never been fishing with Einstein before.
    “Never,” answers Einstein, who continues to cast.
    “Maybe we should move closer to the shore, by those reeds.”
    “We could,” says Einstein. “Never caught anything there, either. You got another sandwich in that bag?”
    Besso hands Einstein a sandwich and a beer. He feels slightly guilty for asking his friend to take him along on this Sunday afternoon. Einstein was planning to go fishing alone, in order to think.
    “Eat,” says Besso. “You need a break from pulling in all those fish.”
    Einstein lowers his lure into Besso’s lap and starts eating. For a while, the two friends are silent. A small red skiff passes by, making waves, and the fishing boat bobs up and down.
    After lunch, Einstein and Besso remove the seats in the boat and lie on their backs, looking up at the sky. For today, Einstein has given up fishing.
    “What shapes do you see in the clouds, Michele?” asks Einstein.
    “I see a goat chasing a man who is frowning.”
    “You are a practical man, Michele.” Einstein gazes at the clouds but is thinking of his project. He wants to tell Besso about his dreams, but he cannot bring himself to do it.
    “I think you will succeed with your theory of time,” saysBesso. “And when you do, we will go fishing and you will explain it to me. When you become famous, you’ll remember that you told me first, here in this boat.”
    Einstein laughs, and the clouds rock back and forth with his laughter.

• 18 June 1905
    Emanating from a cathedral in the center of Rome, a line of ten thousand people stretches radially outward, like the hand of a giant clock, out to the edge of the city, and beyond. Yet these patient pilgrims are directed inward, not out. They are waiting their turn to enter the Temple of Time. They are waiting to bow to the Great Clock. They have traveled long distances, even from other countries, to visit this shrine. Now they stand quietly as the line creeps forward through immaculate streets. Some read from their prayer books. Some hold children. Someeat figs or drink water. And as they wait, they seem oblivious to the passage of time. They do not glance at their watches, for they do not own watches. They do not listen for chimes from a clock tower, for clock towers do not exist. Watches and clocks are forbidden, except for the Great Clock in the Temple of Time.
    Inside the temple, twelve pilgrims stand in a circle around the Great Clock, one pilgrim for each hour mark on the huge configuration of metal and glass. Inside their circle, a massive bronze pendulum swings from a height of twelve meters, glints in the candlelight. The pilgrims chant with each period of the pendulum, chant with each measured increment of time. The pilgrims chant with each minute subtracted from their lives. This is their sacrifice.
    After an hour by the Great Clock, the pilgrims depart and another twelve file through the tall portals. This procession continued for centuries.
    Long ago, before the Great Clock, time was measured by changes in heavenly bodies: the slow sweep of stars across the night sky, the arc of the sun and variation in light, the waxing and waning of the moon, tides, seasons. Time was measured also by heartbeats, the rhythms of drowsiness and sleep, therecurrence of hunger, the menstrual cycles of women, the duration of loneliness. Then, in a small town in Italy, the first mechanical clock was built. People were spellbound. Later they were horrified. Here was a human invention that quantified the passage of time, that laid ruler and compass to the span of desire, that measured out exactly the moments of a life. It was magical, it was unbearable, it was outside natural