Dr Filius Apry had realised years ago, something that no-one else had: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows time travel. Well... sort of. To avoid bothering you with the maths, the principle can be written like this
(uncertainty in time) x (uncertainty in energy) = a constant.
That means that if the uncertainty in energy decreases then the uncertainty in time has to go up, and that means you can see into the future and the past. After realising this he had made contact with the crypto millionaire Bo Zanden who was willing to fund it, and at his university he had built a cryostat, a tough glass sphere in which there was a near vacuum cooled very close to absolute zero. You see, the only way to make sure that the uncertainty in energy is tiny, and to dilate time, is to make sure that the energy is tiny as well, i.e. freeze it down to close to absolute temperature, and that he did.
It was three years later, with Bo pestering him about the imminent deadline, that he finally switched it on. It was a little earlier than he would have liked so health and safety had not been confirmed, and he looked into the void he had created, a few pico-Kelvins from absolute zero. Before he had even pressed the switch to release a ball from a grip at the top of the cavity, the ball appeared to be falling, but only a transparent version of itself, spread out as a stream, like a ghostly column. When he actually pressed the switch the ball fell in full intensity and for a while after it had hit the bottom of the glass sphere, the ghostly stream of balls lingered. Inside the void he had just seen the past, present and future all mashed up together. He quickly looked around to check that no-one was watching, and then did the dance he usually did when he had a major breakthrough.
He looked again at the void, and moved a little closer this time. There was his face in there, but all mashed up! It was only a very indistinct image, ghostly, but unmistakably him.
"It must be a reflection," he said, unconvinced.
It only then became clear to him that something was pulling him towards the void, an inexorable force, remarkably strong. He had moved too close. He grabbed the desk, but the void was pulling him in, and he could not resist any more than we can resist the downwards force of gravity. He had helpfully placed the off switch too far away. As he realised he was going to die, he coolly worked out what was happening. A dilation of time was also a feature of relativity, of gravity. He had effectively created a gravitational source. But, why was the image of himself not of full intensity? That meant it was not inevitable that it would occur. There was a way out! But how? Then the image of himself faded, and few seconds later just as the glass shell was about to break around the vacuum a fuse blew and saved his life.
Shaken and back at his desk, he collapsed with a sign of relief and sent a quick email to Bo Zanden. "It works, in more ways than one, but it came down to the wire!" Being on the cutting edge is certainly exciting, if you can survive it.
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