…I chased them off with a flaming newspaper
The Doclopedia #50
Things That Blow Up Real Good: Canadian Time Bombs
On another Earth, in 1990, Canadian scientists working at a top secret lab found a way to make a bit of very rare crystal resonate in such a way that it altered the flow of time around it…for one sixteen thousandth of a second, which in physics is about two years.
Within days, the whole operation was moved to a top secret location and given a budget roughly five hundred times as large as they previously had. They also went from a staff of 7 to a staff of 129, so that in a mere 6 years, they had the crystals warping the flow of time for a full 3 seconds. They also found that anything entering the warp area would be moved ahead in time 5 minutes. The object would just disappear, then reappear in the exact same spot five minutes later, with no time seeming to have passed. The area of effect was a spherical space 4 inches out from the crystal.
Fast forward to the summer of 2005 and they had the area of effect up to 50 feet out and the time warping effect up to 30 minutes. It was then that the military had an idea: time bombs for use against the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. After much debate upon the wisdom of telling the rest of the world about this new bit of technology, they decided to go ahead with it.
The result was spectacular, but not in the way you might think. See, the time bombs were only used on the enemy a few times, generally in order to give U.N. Troops 30 extra minutes to set up a perfect capture or kill. Most of the time, the bombs were used as a way for troops to jump ahead in time and do things that needed to be done. As a result, the terrorists became very spooked, the military became more effective and in the end, huge numbers of terrorists ratted out their leaders rather than face whatever the hell powers the U.N. Was using. Things in that part of the world were far from perfect, but at least combat operations were over and worldwide terrorism was way down.
As you might expect, the bad guys (and more than a couple of the good guys) really wanted to get their hands on a few of those time bombs. Fortunately that never happened. What did happen is that the scientists kept working on the technology until they found a way to reverse the time warping effect, thus allowing time travel into the past. In fact, going backwards in time was even easier and more effective. The same bomb that could send you 30 minutes forward could be made to send you 6 hours backward. At one point, using a series of bombs, a team went back 48 hours and prevented a terrible fire that would have killed 105 people in a hospital.
After that, and with the supply of the original crystal dwindling, they went for broke and built one huge ass time bomb. The year was 2011 and the estimate was that the bomb would send them back at least 15 years. The idea was to go back and give their 1995 selves all the data they had accumulated up to 2011, thus advancing time bomb technology by a huge leap. They assembled a team of 24 people and 4 truckloads of equipment. Then they set off the bomb.
Which is why now, in the present year of 2012, the world has enjoyed well over 150 years of peace and prosperity under the shining example of Canada, which now stretches from the Guatemalan border in the south to the Arctic in the north and from sea to shining sea. Soon, Canada will celebrate her bicentennial by starting up the new Lunar colony and by giving England, Wales, Ireland & Scotland their independence.
Pretty good use of time, eh?
Tomorrow: Woolongi Lizards
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