"About three years ago, a prawn trawler in the
Gulf of Papua came up with his net filled to the brim with lobsters. He discovered the
lobsters were in a long narrow band marching along the bottom towards the Papua Coast. The
trawler hauled back and forth along the line, scooping them up. When the boat returned to
Port Moresby it was practically sinking with its load of lobsters. " "Fisheries found out about it and started a big research project, using
the prawn trawler as its research ship. They discovered, over the next two years of
research, the adult lobsters migrated each year across the Gulf from a small island in the
Torres Straits. When the lobsters reached the Papua coast they spawned. The larvae floated
back towards Torres Straits and in three years the adults walked the Gulf to spawn and
complete the cycle."
"Each year, for three years, the Fisheries research team went
out there in the prawn trawler and harvested the narrow file of migrating lobsters as they
walked along the Gulf bottom. By their profitable trawling, they demarcated the exact
migration route, but they also destroyed the breeding stock of lobsters. After three
years, the supply dried up and the only thing left of the fishery was an impressive
research project with a big poster on the Fisheries Research Office wall. And then they
were perplexed when they could not find any more lobsters along this coast."
"Back to the expedition," says Freddy.
 "Well, on the 28th, Fisheries finally sent a truck again, this time with
a 13 foot long wooden dingy with a bad leak, an inoperative 9.5 hp Evenrude outboard, a
drum of outboard fuel contaminated with water, a drum of diesel black with bacteria, 3
more SCUBA tanks marked BAD, a large galvanized wash tub with some pots and pans, and 100
rolls of toilet paper filled with cockroaches.
"The fisheries guy who delivered this, John, was a thin,
nervous character, dressed like a tramp, who elected to stay and come out to the island
with us for "a bit of a holiday." I told him we didn't need any uncertified
divers and were not on a holiday and did not appreciate the case of toilet paper with the
have a nice day smiling face drawn on the side."
"That's when I called Brian and told him we would need to
charter a support boat because we could not work with Fisheries. Where was the money?
Brian said he had still not sent any of the field funds, so we couldn't get another
vessel, let alone any needed supplies. I realized we could never do the proposed
expeditions. So I told him to cancel team 3 until we could work things out."
"So where do we go from here?" Peter asks.
"I'd say we have to drive to Port Moresby and have it out with
the fisheries people. We have a written agreement with the government. They may decide not
to honor it but it's at least worth a try."
Time Travel
"It must have been pretty bad," Peter drives the rented
land rover along the 100 mile long broken road from Kupiano to Port Moresby.
"What?"
"Having a dozen people on a little island with no food or stove
or anything on Christmas." He's a good driver, watching the road like a hawk.
"You have no idea," I say. Good driver or not we are going
along about 70 kilometers an hour and since I have not gone more than 7 knots in the past
three months it seems dangerously fast.
"Too bad we couldn't go back in time and start this all over
again," he flashes his Peter O'Toole smile at me and I glance ahead to make sure he
stays on the road.
"You can't travel in time," I reply, wondering what,
exactly he thinks could have been fixed anyway.
"No, I mean if we could, you know. If we had time machines.
Someday I think we will."
"Impossible," I check my seat belt.
"No it isn't, nothing is impossible," he insists.
"Let's see you turn into a peanut," I say, "Right
now. Quick time."
"Oh, come on."
"Travel in time is impossible because time
only exists as a figment of our imagination. If you want to travel in time, you must
travel in thought, in concept. But you can't drive forward or backward in time," I
insist.
"What are you talking about?" Peter looks confused but at
least he looks confused at the road. There is a truck ahead.
"Time is an imaginary grid mankind places over reality to
measure intervals of change." I say, prefering this to Buckminster Fuller's
statement, "Minimal consciousness evokes a nonsimultaneous sequence, ergo time. Time
is not the forth dimension and should not be so identified. Time is only a relative
observation, a set of local sequences of experience after-image formulation lags of the
brain. Time is not a function of space. It exists in weightless, metaphysical
conceptuality. Instantaneity and eternity are both timeless, they are the same."
But even my simplification is a bit hard for him, he says, "What?"
"Look at your watch, OK? Your watch measures intervals of
change. Tick tick tick, like that. But the watch is measuring an agreed upon standard
interval. The watch does not MOVE in time. The atoms forming its shape jiggle around, but
they are the same atoms doing the same job before and after each tick."
"Uh....OK. Yeah. That's true. But what is the watch measuring
if not time?" He speeds up to pass the truck and I clench the window frame of the
door.
"It's measuring a standard, agreed upon interval of
change," I repeat, figuring he does not listen well. "The second is an
international standard. Today, it is based upon the release of a specified number of
electrons from an actual bit of radioactive material at a set temperature. Minutes are
sixty seconds. Hours are sixty minutes because it was easy to divide a circle - the face
of a sun dial or a watch - into sixty parts. There are twenty four hours in a day because
the planet takes one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes to spin once on its axis.
People started measuring time by the interval required for the shadow of the sun to move
radially around a circle..."
"I know about sun dials," Peter injects, "but why
can't you travel in time?"
"Because there is only one planet, one set of atoms, and we are
measuring its movement, its change in position. If we could move through time and went
backwards 24 hours the planet would no longer be there, but it would be the same universe
and the same time as when we started less however long it took us to travel. Earth would
still be there, about 48 million miles away."
"Well, you'd have to adjust the spacial coordinates, too," Peter says.
"How fast are we going?" I ask.
He glances at the speedometer, "Eighty kilometers an
hour."
"First, how about making that seventy? I'm a bit nervous
driving this fast." He slows a bit. "Second, the speedometer measures the
movement of the car from one location to another. The measurement system it imposes on the
system is kilometers and hours. These are both made-up measuring devices. Concepts made
out of words to describe the relocation of the car from one actual place to another. There
is no such thing as a kilometer. No such thing as an hour. There are only marks on a dial.
As the car moves, the painted indicator, geared to the turning wheels, moves, too.
Kilometers and hours are a mental grid, imposed by our communal mind on the world around
us. We use this grid to guide us but we can't travel within the ideas. Except in
imagination."
"What do you mean kilometers are not real?" He sounds
really confused now.
"Oh they're very real. Just like words are very real. You can
go and buy a meter stick of great accuracy. Your watch, no doubt a very accurate
instrument, likewise exists. But the meter stick and the watch are inventions of our
language. They are tools, and what they measure are also tools, inventions of our
language. There is one car. It keeps on changing its position on one planet. The planet
also keeps on changing its position relative to the sun. The sun keeps on changing its
position relative to the galaxy... and so on. The X, Y, Z coordinates of space and time
are inventions of hominids so we can think about and measure the changes in relative
position of things.
"The X, Y, Z coordinate system, using astronomical or metric or
English units of measurement, are a grid to assess the position of some focus of activity
relative to other focal points. They yield coordinates of points in space, or marks on a
surface, or any other focus of our attention. OK?"
"Well, OK. I guess I'd have to agree there. But time....." He dodges an enormous black pig.
"You must talk about measurements of things in terms of space
and time - a space time continuum - because the real objects we wish to locate are in
motion. The position of the car can only be described in kilometers per unit of time
because it is moving. Hell, even when it is stopped relative to the planet's surface, it
is still moving due east at 900 knots, relative to the sun, because of the planet's
spin."
"OK, but what is TIME?" he sounds frustrated with all
this.
"Time is the measurement system for intervals of change. And
it's not the same for humans as, for example, for bats."
"What? Whyever not?"
"Because bats perceive intervals of change much faster than we
can. When you look at the spinning blades of a fan you see a circular disk. You can't see
the individual blades because they change position faster than the human interval of
awareness. But a bat can see them and actually fly between the moving blades. When we look
at a movie we see a series of still pictures projected on a screen at 24 frames per
second. It seems like continuous motion to us. This is the human interval of awareness.
This is what we measure. Intervals of awareness. Our time grid is just a convenient way to
break down the days - an actual light/dark cycle caused by the rotation of the planet -
into functional segments. You can see the second hand of your watch moving. If you watch
closely for awhile you might barely perceive the minute hand moving. But you can't see the
hour hand move. That's the awareness framework we humans operate in. From more than one
24th of a second to about one minute. This interval of awareness, the rate we observe
objects changing position, gives us our sense of time." Peter's face is scrunched up
in thought. I add to his confusion a bit.
"Of course, our modern writing system has given us an expanded
sense of time. Now we talk about intervals far beyond our moment to moment awareness.
Right now scientists regularly think in terms of nanoseconds and cycles of billions of
years, well beyond what we can personally observe."
"OK, but it seems to me you're missing something," Peter
frowns.
"Yeah, I have left out something."
"What?" He glances at me again.
"Well, there is another, much more complex grid we overlay on
reality. Scientists use it all the time but try their best to describe the world without
using it. It goes by many names but biologists call it fitness."
"Fitness?"
"Like in survival of the fittest," I smile. "Fitness
measures how objects changing position relate to one another. It measures meaning,
goodness of fit, and all sorts of perplexing ramifications."
"Oh, I see where that leads to problems. What is the meaning of
meaning?" he gives me a quick chuckle chuckle.
"Actually, this is not such a difficult question. Not if you
take it one step further and examine what is really being measured. We always get back to
measuring the change in relative position of different beings in space. If two objects are
moving parallel at the same interval of change and in the same direction they are at rest
relative to one another. If two objects are moving towards one another they will collide.
If two objects are moving away from each other they will get farther apart. In each case
there is a different meaning relative to what the two objects will or can do to each
other; how they might interact.
"But fitness is also what happens when the two objects contact
each other or move together in some kind of bond. These interactions cause a change in the
state of the two objects, and thus have meaning." I look at Peter but his eyes are
glazed over.
"Take it back one step further, now. Our mental grid of spacial
coordinates and time are designed to locate a point in space. But you can't really define
a point in space. This is, again, a mental game mankind uses to describe the location of
an object, a being, as it moves. So let's say the spacial network of measurement really
describes the relative location of something we'll call a Being. As in to be.
"'And Time, the interval of awareness of this moving being, is
really the change in relative position of the Being. Change.
"And Fitness measures meaning, or the change in change, the
directionality of change. We call this change in change many things, including spin,
directional flow of time, evolution, or even learning. The change in change.
"To
Be, to Change, to have Direction. These are the three basic sisters
of reality. They are all the same process, but the language system we
use, and the measurement system we've derived in our language, forces
us to break the process down into these three different segments for
analysis. Reality, unlike our language system, is whole, seamless, one.
Our description of it is broken into discrete particles of observation
because that is the way our sensory, memory and response system operates.
"To Be, To Change, To have Direction are one interaction,
causing the apparent continual manifestation of an observer.
"You can't reverse the change in change. You can't undo
evolution. What has changed will never again be the same again." I think about the
kaleidoscope. Turn it and it changes. Turn it backwards and it changes again but is never
twice the same. But Peter has not seen my kaleidoscopes so I can't use them as an example.
For awhile, he just drives and I just watch the jungle and brush and
people and pigs as we draw closer and closer to the capital of Papua New Guinea.
"I still think we can move back in time," He finally says.
He's right, but not in the way he thinks.
Full Cycle
The expeditions will continue. Peter VonMurtens turned out to be an
excellent negotiator and we managed to convince the authorities to let us go ahead with
the rest of the expeditions as long as we do not survey the Tagula area (and thus threaten
their plans for the Misima station). So we'll survey the major fishing grounds for the
Samarai Provincial Fisheries Station. Neil Stanton, the Provincial Fisheries Officer, is
willing to help out with the project. National Fisheries will send down a support vessel
(ho ho ho) well in advance of the next team.
After we get it all set up, Peter and I retire to Peter Wilson's
house and brake out a few beers to celebrate. As we sit down, drinking the beer, he says, "Oh, I almost forgot. I've got the questionnaires from the participants of the next
teams."
He gets out a big stack of papers. The questionnaires gave a short
description of the people who are coming on the expeditions.
I swig my brew and look through them. As I read them, I recall Peter
VonMurtens' comments to the government panel describing "The American Divers who will
do the survey work."
The questionnaires, however, tell me 20% of them can't swim. Only
half of the people have any experience with SCUBA. Many of them are over 65 and more than
60% of them are women. I toy with my beer, visualizing how Fisheries will respond when
these people arrive at the airport. Then I think how the volunteers will respond to being
sent on a SCUBA diving expedition in the wilds of PNG when half of them don't dive. While
VonMurtens snozzles his beer and leafs through a Pacific Island Monthly magazine, I
carefully total the number of people who would be: useless to the team, unhappy with the
situation, angry with me, and destructive to our reputation.
Then I slowly put down the pencil, walk over and look down at him
and scream, "YOU SON OF A BITCH!" and leap on him. We go down in a crash
with me on top of him, ready to punch him in the mouth.
"WAIT! WAIT!" He cries, holding out his hands,"what
the hell is wrong?"
"Don't hand me that, you know damn well what's wrong," I
snarl with my hand cocked in a knuckle sandwich. "All your bullshit about The
American Diving Team and you send over a bunch of people who can't even swim."
"NO! No, wait, honest, I never looked at those files. They
handed them to me just as I was climbing on the plane. Look, Rick, we can work it out.
Don't hit me." He gives me his best Peter O'Toole grin. You can't punch a grin like
that.
I let him up and call Earthwatch. Brian gets on the phone and we get
him to agree to cull the teams and send only certified SCUBA divers. But he doesn't like
it.
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