Thrice Upon a Time

Infobox Book


name=Thrice Upon A Time
author=James P. Hogan
cover_artist=Rowena Morrill
language=English
subject=Time travel
genre=Hard science fiction
publisher=Ballantine Books
release_date=March 1980
isbn=auto isbn|0|3|4|5|3|2|3|8|6|0-345-32386
preceded_by=The Two Faces of Tomorrow
followed_by=Giants' Star

"Thrice Upon A Time" is a science fiction novel by James P. Hogan, first published in 1980. Unlike most other time travel stories, "Thrice Upon A Time" considers the ramifications of sending messages into the past and/or receiving messages from the future, rather than the sending of physical objects through time.

ynopsis

It is December 2009. Murdoch Ross and his friend Lee Francis Walker visit Murdoch's grandfather, Sir Charles Ross, in his castle in Storbannon, Scotland. Sir Charles is a Nobel prize recipient for his work in particle physics, more specifically the isolation of free quarks.

Supposedly, when a nucleon decays into three quarks, the first two quarks appear immediately, while the third quark appears only a brief moment later, on the order of a millionth of a yoctosecond. An accepted theory was that the original decay produced two quarks and a third unknown particle, dubbed a "quason", which subsequently transformed into a third quark. Charles, however, offered a different, radical explanation: all three quarks were created at once, but the first two were "propagated back in time". Charles dubbed the energy which had allowed the propagation through time as "tau waves". Although his theory was completely valid and consistent, the researchers of his time refused to accept it because of the implications involved, namely the failure of the laws of conservation. He retreats to the family castle in Storbannon to continue his research in private, finally succeeding in building a working time machine capable of sending messages to the future and past.

When the two young men arrive, Charles takes them down into the basement, where the machine is located. As they enter the basement, a computer attached to the machine prints out a sheet of data, which Charles hides from the others. He asks Murdoch to type in a 6-character random message into the computer, who complies. Charles then activates the machine and transmits the message one minute back in time. Finally, he shows the paper printed out previously, and Murdoch and Lee are amazed: the printout contained the exact same random characters typed, which were printed "before Murdoch had typed them in".

After Murdoch and Lee have gotten over their initial shock, they decide to experiment with the machine. Murdoch tries to fool the machine into creating a causality paradox, by deliberately receiving a message from the future, and not sending the message back at the due time. Suddenly, the entire system turns bizarre, and they are flooded with messages from all over the ten-minute range of the machine. They abruptly turn off the machine and leave.

While outside, Murdoch and Lee talk about the implications of the machine's existence and how the time continuum could allow for time travel without introducing a paradox. They formulate theories similar to the many-worlds interpretation, finally deciding that none of the theories discussed fit their previous observations.

The next day, Ted Cartland, a friend of Charles and a former RAF officer, arrives to examine the machine he had helped build. They repeat the experiment, and Ted is bewildered as well. Ted, however, has a trick up his sleeve: he writes a computer program to do what Murdoch had done the day before, to remove the human element from the experiment.

The machine picks up an unexpected message, telling the experimenters that a jar had been broken. True enough, Lee was on the verge of accidentally pushing a glass jar off a shelf. However, they are unable to contact their future selves with the broken jar, as they apparently no longer exist. Charles postulates that upon sending the message back, their selves in the future had changed their past and thus had been "erased" from existence; the new universe in place had the jar fully intact. Thus causality is preserved. The fear of being erased chills them, and so they quickly disable the machine again.

As time goes by, they establish an experiment protocol, and set up automated tests to gain more information about the physics behind the machine. The machine is upgraded to allow for more data throughput and a range of twenty-four hours. Murdoch also meets a girl named Anne Patterson during a mishap while out shopping with Lee in Kingussie, and immediately falls in love. It turns out later that she works as a doctor in the new fusion reactor in Burghead. Elizabeth Muir, another close friend of Charles, works there as well, and Charles invites her to his castle to investigate the peculiar machine.

Burghead and black holes

The fictional European Fusion Consortium (EFC) has commissioned a large fusion reactor in Burghead, to compete with the technologies of the United States and the USSR. The colossal energy obtained from fusion meant that huge amounts of power might someday be available at negligible cost. All three parties used inertial confinement technology, with the EFC opting to use ion beams as the power source.

During this time, Murdoch and Lee get to tour the large Burghead facility through Elizabeth, who is Principal Physicist there, and Murdoch builds a relationship with Anne. One day, the reactor, still in the testing phases while producing power, is shut down when apparent erosion is detected in the fusion chamber. Two days before, the team at Storbannon had experienced an apparent failure in the time machine, with Lee asserting the failure to be due to interference. The machine then suddenly resumes operation again, and they elect to ignore the problem. Shortly after the incident, strange events start occurring around the world, with so-called "bugophants" (a portmanteau of "bug" and "elephant") drilling tiny, long, straight holes through a myriad of objects, from human bodies to telescope mirrors.

Finally, the team finds out the cause of the erosion in the Burghead plant, the interference with the machine, and the bugophants themselves: the repeated fusion tests at the plant had, over the course of two days, produced some "two million" microscopic black holes, which had tunnelled through the basement of the plant and concentrated around the Earth's core. As the black holes annihilated matter, they emitted tau waves and caused interference even before the reactor tests. Although conventional theory stated that black holes could not form from the comparatively low pressure produced in the reactor, and small black holes could not survive long anyway, the conventional theory had failed to take into account the existence of tau waves and their effects.

Lee suddenly goes into spasms and loses consciousness during a dinner with Murdoch and Anne. He is rushed to a local hospital, and then transferred to a special unit created to deal with a new outbreak, which had apparently affected him and several others in Burghead.

While the rest of the team is away, Murdoch finds that the machine is about to be swamped with interference, and may soon be unusable. He decides to take matters into his own hands and transmit a message far back into the past to remedy the situation. To get around the twenty-four hour limit of the machine, he asks Anne, who had learned low-level programming in university, to write a program that would repeatedly bootstrap itself back in time until it reached the date desired. Anne complies, despite deep misgivings. They manage to send the message, knowing they will be reset into the new timeline, and may never meet each other again.

Their past selves receive the message and act on it immediately. They have no choice but to tell the bewildered managing committee at Burghead of their findings, including revealing their time machine. Pending investigations, the reactor is shut down indefinitely.

Centurion

In the new timeline, word of the time machine spreads to the EFC headquarters in Brussels, and other places. Lee turns ill in the castle one day, and suddenly collapses. As a doctor, Anne contacts Murdoch, who is away, and suggests Lee has succumbed to a new outbreak, apparently a variant of multiple sclerosis, but progressing much faster (only a few weeks as opposed to years) and very deadly.

Murdoch pressures Anne to reveal more information about the outbreak, which appears to be highly classified. Anne doesn't know much either. However, Murdoch finds out that a distinguished medical specialist, Sir Giles Fennimore, has arrived from London to investigate the outbreak. He learns that the disease is somehow connected to the West Coast, where Lee had been residing in September 2009, and his suspicions are raised further.

Ted and Elizabeth help Murdoch investigate. After interrogating Ralph Courtney, chairman at the Burghead facility, and a chance meeting by Ted with a young RAF pilot, they eventually find out (Ted knowing much of this from his previous RAF experience) that Anglo-US authorities had wished to establish an advanced laboratory for potentially dangerous research into viruses, genetic manipulation, and similar subjects. Naturally, this project stirred up a large controversy over public fears of containment failures and contamination, and was eventually scrapped. However, the possible scientific advancements offered were simply too great to pass up. Thus a satellite, QX-37, was constructed and launched into space, purporting to house an observatory. QX-37 continued the experiments secretly.

In August 2009, the satellite passed right through the path of the Perseids meteor shower and was hit by a large meteor, against astronomical odds. It broke up and disintegrated into the atmosphere. After the breakup and fallout, to prevent public panic the entire effort was classified and codenamed "Centurion". Again, surpassing the odds, a single, mutant strain of multiple sclerosis survives on its way back down to Earth, and infects the entire population of the West Coast, with a gestation period of nine months. It was during this time that Lee was infected, as he was in the West Coast at the time.

The West Coast of the United States is one of the most densely populated ares in the world, and soon thousands of people start reporting symptoms and getting hospitalized. The new strain is named "omnisclerosis Californians". A vaccine is announced and vaccinations begin in California; however they are stopped after 811 of the people treated die from neural disorders triggered by one of the production batches, which had not been manufactured properly. Even though the vaccine worked, the public would not trust it anymore, and were now left with no defense against the virus.

The team decide to contact Fennimore through Minister of Advanced Technology and Science Graham Cuthrie. Though initially skeptical, he is convinced of the machine's authenticity after a demonstration. They propose a pilot test: instead of changing many months of history, they offer to reset the events leading to the vaccine mishaps which had caused Fennimore much distress, five days ago. He reluctantly agrees. He is asked to prepare a comprehensive document detailing the manufacturing problem, with additional measures taken to ensure its authenticity.

In the new reset timeline, the faulty vaccine batch is retracted and the 811 deaths do not occur. Fennimore becomes a spokesman for the team, convincing world governments to take action. It is decided that information needed to produce and distribute the vaccine will be sent back several months in time, as well as other current events, to help their past selves make superior decisions.

Epilogue

The message is sent to the afternoon of January 16, 2010, from July 28, 2010, shortly after the message about the black holes is received. The message is split up into two parts, a header announcing the message, and the message body itself arriving an hour later, to allow the team to attach more computer memory to the machine for the message to be received in its entirety.

That very day, Murdoch and Lee go out shopping in Kingussie, and it is implied that Murdoch will meet Anne again, for the third time. This is the origin of the story's title, "Thrice Upon A Time".

Themes

* Paradigm#Paradigm_Paralysis. Most scientists have blind faith in current knowledge and are very hostile to what-if scenarios. The story in the book is an interesting parallel to the actual 2008 controversy surrounding the Safety of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

* Skepticism. Nearly everyone outside Charles' immediate circle of acquaintances are initially skeptical of Charles' invention, despite being shown live demonstrations, with some going as far as to accuse him of fraud, or compare him to Uri Geller.

* Bureaucracy. It is difficult for the team to contact any high-ranking officials, even in dire situations. This is compounded by the fact that most of these officials are skeptical of the existence of a time machine, and do not want their time wasted.

* Politics. Politicians and governments are reluctant to trust each other and collaborate, even on extremely important matters. When the Prime Minister hears of the machine, he immediately considers its defense implications, instead of its applications to world improvement.

* Secrecy and trust. The governments behind the "Centurion" project classify all information and tightly restrict its dissemination, even to people like Murdoch and Charles who might be able to offer help. The people do not trust authority either; a single defective batch of drugs is enough for people to avoid the life-saving "omnisclerosis" vaccine.

* Love and destiny. No matter how significantly the timeline is reset, Murdoch invariably ends up meeting and falling in love with Anne. This implies that love transcends even time, and that they are naturally destined for each other.

Technology

Being written in 1980, some of the technology in "Thrice Upon A Time" differs from today's realities.

Paper

Paper is a component of everyday life, with most devices equipped with a printer; this includes vi-sets and the time machine itself.

Vi-sets

"Video sets", abbreviated to "vi-sets", are some sort of modern telephone which allows live video transmission between callers, as well as the transmission of arbitrary data, and can print out hard copies of this data. Other multimedia, such as games and graphical operating systems, do not appear in the novel, though there is no reason why they should.

Vehicles

All modern automobiles come with an automated control system allowing one to cruise hands-free on most official roads and highways. All road vehicles are thus also bound to the local traffic rules on controlled roads. However, older models, without full automation support, can bypass this restriction.

Computers

The computer controlling the time machine is a DEC PDP 22/30, the model number presumably intended as pastiche on the PDP 11 series (Hogan is a former DEC employee), and machine code is still used for many programming tasks, though High-level languages are mentioned. It should be noted, however, that the programming tasks mentioned in the story would have to be done at a low level, being mostly hardware programming with very strict size requirements. The computer for the time machine had less than 50 Megabyte/Mebibytes of computer memory, a far cry from the situation today, where a typical personal computer could easily contain one or more Gigabytes/Gibibytes of RAM, and hundreds of times that for hard disk drives. However, scientific computing often makes use of only the resources required, which may differ greatly from those for normal home computing.