Free Steam City Pirates by Jim Musgrave Page A

Friedrich Hegel, believed the only truth is in the whole and that whenever we oppose each other we can overcome our differences only through a process of synthesis, which keeps the best parts of both sides and leads to a more complete solution.”
    “Seth is quite right. The Hegelian Dialectic is well known in German thought. Go on, my boy,” Doctor Adler said.
    “The point is, when I chose to become part of your group, my dialectical opposite became part of this other group. In the world of the mazikeen , there can only be one other oppositional entity. However, for example, if my father were to return and decide to become part of our group, then his opposite side would immediately join with the opposing forces. Is that clear?” Seth asked.
    “Yes. I think I understand,” I said. “You mean there can only be one opposing or evil mazikeen for every good mazikeen who joins our group.”
    “Correct. Although I must point out, Detective O’Malley, that even though you may look upon your adversaries as enemies, I must take a more Hegelian position and look upon them as the necessary antithesis on the road to wholeness,” said Seth, a bit too smugly.
    “I beg your pardon, Prince Don Carlos. When your antithesis has a sword to your throat, it becomes quite difficult to see the bigger picture,” I said.
    “There! You do understand the logic. The historical Don Carlos had his literary antithesis in Mister Schiller’s creation,” Seth said. He then turned around to face his mother. “Mother, may I send Detective O’Malley into the future?”
    I was dumbstruck. I certainly wanted to know how we could use this machine to our advantage, but I never believed I would be the person chosen to see if it worked. “Seth, are you certain you know how this device works?” I asked, and my voice caught in my throat.
    “Of course. Let me explain it to you the way the inventor explained it to the assembled scientists. You must imagine a spoon stirring inside a pot. The light is the spoon rotating around the inner rim of the pot. The space is the liquid being swirled by the spoon. As the space twists, it will coil the normally linear passage of time with it, spiraling the past, present and future together into one continuous loop. It is this twisting of space and time that will make time travel possible,” said Seth, as he included hand gestures with the presentation.
    “So, it works because time-space is not flat but curved. Therefore, past, present and future are combined,” I said, trying to picture myself being twisted inside this kind of whirlpool.
    “By trapping light inside a photonic crystal between the two accelerators, we can cause it to circulate. The energy of the circulating light will cause the space inside the circle to twist, causing a gravitational force. We shall be inserting polarized neutrons, which are neutrons that spin in only one direction, into the center of the circulating light. When we see the change in their spin we will know that space is being twisted inside the crystal. This is when you travel in the capsule, Mister O’Malley,” said Seth, smiling.
    “How do you know how far ahead I will go in time? It seems rather dangerous. What if I should change something in the future that causes a disaster back here in 1868? Or, if I went into the past and killed my grandfather, what then? Would I not disappear?” My mind was working on the problem as I sat there.
    “No, you see, the future physicists discovered that there are many universes, not just one. They are parallel and separate. Thus, with every decision we make on the time-space continuum, another version of us makes the opposite decision and splits off into another parallel universe. In fact, all decisions are theoretically possible because the numbers of parallel universes are infinite. The time traveler was born in the universe where he did not kill his grandfather,” Seth explained.
    “You did not answer my question,” I said. “How do