The Tachyon Anti-Telephone

It’s really a simple invention if you think about it for a year or so. Time is another dimension; a place that you could travel if you could go. A telephone sends a signal through fiber optic cable or by satellite but the Tachyon Anti-Telephone sends them faster than the speed of light. I reach out to touch someone but I find it’s only myself. Everytime I answer it, I’m not home but I can’t reach anybody else. It all started back in detention for skipping physics class in the 11th Grade with a book report on Nikolai Tesla complete with the schematics of how Death Rays are made. Something in there got my attention, when he mentioned the negation of mass/gravity by converting them to information effectively vibrating as a frequency. I had the idea that day but it would take years, twelve long years to finally build the device.

At 7:54 AM on the 6th of January, 2017; I called myself at 7:54 AM on the 6th of January, 2016 using a device that I had just completed. The black and golden gizmo had the retro appearance of an old candlestick phone with the microphone prominent for sound wave collection and the tethered receiver nestled to the side to be held to the ear during use. It behaved in every way as a telephone would save for the theoretical modification that rather than conveying the voice across great spans of distance; the voice could be sent to approximately the same point in space but backwards or forwards through time by way of tachyon pulse. Whereas the telephone sends and receives analog sounds as electrical pulses across a network of fiber-optics; the anti-telephone does not change the signal's position in space but by a few angstrom-the motion is in time alone at a minimum wavelength of 1 light year forward or back.

While it may seem absurd or paradoxical to attempt to send a message to myself a year before I had completed the device; that was precisely why I had to try-to resolve this conundrum would be the ultimate test of time travel. With no way to receive the transmission common sense dictates that the line to the past before today will be dead and that only future selves may contact me or I them. What a surprise when the phone rang and I answered.

"Hello?" I said timidly from the present.

"Who is this?" I replied from the past.

As the shared recognition of our voice dawned we both laughed.

"Well, as glad as I am to hear that it seems to be working," I said, "How is it that you have a functioning tachyon anti-telephone when I've only just finished building it in my time?"

"Every year, on this day and at this time, we speak." echoed back my own voice flatly. "The anti-telephone simply appears in the region of space near where the original call took place."

"You mean I've called you before?" I asked somewhat perplexedly.

"Since I was a small child." I said with a hint of sadness, "No one believed me at first but the regularity of the event allowed them to confirm it's reality."

"Who are they?" I asked just as a loud series of thuds came from outside my door.

"The Tick-Tock Men." I replied from the other side, "They know where and when you will be happening. It's only a matter of time."

The anti-telephone began to fade in my hands as the door gave at its hinges and the faceless men entered to carry me away.