Short Story - Meeting Relativity, by Joe Grand

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    Looking back at the desk I noticed a pipe holder and a briar pipe still lit as a small circle of smoke drifted toward the ceiling. I waited. I wondered what would happen next. After a few minutes when nobody showed up I moved behind the desk with a vague feeling of trespassing. I sat in the oak office chair. The papers on the desk seemed to be written in German. I opened the top drawer on the left hand side of the desk and inside I found a number of usual items one might find in a desk. Pens and a few pencils, a coffee mug and a bone handled letter opener.

     When I picked up the letter opener to look at it, I could see my distorted reflection in the blade. I noticed some reflected writing as I passed by the pullover. There was something written on the pullover the old man had given me.  It was backwards in the knife blade and I began to pick it apart one letter at a time.  N-O-T-E-C-N-I-R-P. I looked at the old pair of corduroys he had lent me. The ridges were rubbed off the knees and seat. I found myself laughing. What had the old guy said to me? Something about light being bent; and something else as well - about the curvature of space.

     I knew a little of the theory of relativity. It offered proof that time could be altered. It stated that if you could travel through space fast enough and in the right direction, you would age very little, while time on earth raced ahead at its usual pace. I glanced at my reflection in the letter opener. I furrowed my brow. “Not bad”, I thought.

     There was a knock at the door and the old man appeared. “Five minutes are up.”

     I protested “But I didn’t-” He cut me off. “Nobody ever wants to leave once they get here. Come along now like a good fellow.”

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