DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Phanteur, issue 5, May 1948

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Phanteur, issue 5, May 1948

Page 3

3 PHANTEUR 3

A tiny primate, gripping the branches of a tree with prehensile feet, climbed high above the danger-ridden ground, and fed peacefully on exotic, juicy fruits. And again the Great Clock ticked; sooner, this time, as measured by the circling stars, but still, just another tick of the Clock. 
Another primate, huge and muscular, and possessed of a cranial cavity out of all proportion to his size, as judged by contemporary standards, and bolder than his fellows, climbed down from the trees to which his tiny ancestor had fled--how long ago? Well, just one tick of the Great Clock; it couldn't have been very long. The stars said it was a long time, but they could not be said to know; their configurations did not alter so much between ticks now as they once had, but still they altered greatly. 
A short, ugly being squatted in a cave, surrounded by his females and his young. A fire blazed at the mouth of the cave, and bones littered the floor; bones of beasts great and small, but lacking in the sunning that lived in the brain of the slouching Neanderthal who grasped his club in his ill-formed hands and growled at the shadows beyond the fire. The Clock had ticked many times since his ancestor climbed down from the tree; yet the stars had changed no more than they had in a single tick in the age before that ancestor descended to the surface of the ground. Was the Great Clock wrong--or were the stars?
Homo Sapience strode through the forests, armed with spear and throwing stick and chipped flint axe. The Clock ticked, and herds appeared. It ticked again, and cultivated crops sprang from the soil--and the stars changed but slightly, unable to maintain the pace. 
Cities spread like mushrooms along the rivers, and around the inland seas. Ships, powered by the breath of The Demons of the Upper Air, sailed the surface of Neptune's realm, spreading goods and knowledge of many lands, and carrying the marvel of writing thousands of miles from the point of origin--and the stars gave up the unequal contest; their movement could not longer be detected between the ticks of the Great Clock, so frequent were they. 
Yet, even then, time scarcely moved at all, in terms of our present-day concepts. A tick was a millenium; then a century; a decade; a year. How long was it between ticks when the nineteenth century opened? How long when this century began? The pendulum of the Great Clock was shortening rapidly, but still the ticks were distinctive clicks; the Sun and the Moon, which had long ago replaced the stars as the celestial bases of comparison, said that months, or weeks, or days, remained between ticks. 

Einstein wrote a simple-seeming equation -- "E = mc2 -- and, though Man did not know it yet, the hours, and minutes, and seconds into which he had sub-divided the day, in that instant became crude units, still useful for measuring duration in certain aspects of the macrocosm, but pitifully inadequate for the precise work implied by that equation. The ticks of the Great Clock ceased to be individually audible; time was soon to be measured in micro-seconds. The ticks blended. The first throbbing bass notes rose to a piercing whine as the Great Clock strove to keep pace with the electrons whirling faster and ever faster in Lawrence's new cyclotron. 
A bomb exploded at Los Alamos; another at Hiroshima. 
The Great Clock is no longer audible, as it strives to keep pace with the ever-accelerating pace of the human mind; its "ticking" is now perceived as a secondary violet glow, offspring of the cataclysms generated only in the hearts of stars -- and in the atom bomb. 

Time does not march; instead, it clings madly to a second-order sub-atomic particle driving faster and ever faster into the secret places of the Universe.

Whew!! No wonder I couldn't keep up!

The End

Saving...

3 PHANTEUR 3 A tiny primate, gripping the branches of a tree with prehensile feet, climbed high above the danger-ridden ground, and fed peacefully on exotic, juicy fruits. And again the Great Clock ticked; sooner, this time, as measured by the circling stars, but still, just another tick of the Clock. Another primate, huge and muscular, and possessed of a cranial cavity out of all proportion to his size, as judged by contemporary standards, and bolder than his fellows, climbed down from the trees to which his tiny ancestor had fled--how long ago? Well, just one tick of the Great Clock; it couldn't have been very long. The stars said it was a long time, but they could not be said to know; their configurations did not alter so much between ticks now as they once had, but still they altered greatly. A short, ugly being squatted in a cave, surrounded by his females and his young. A fire blazed at the mouth of the cave, and bones littered the floor; bones of beasts great and small, but lacking in the sunning that lived in the brain of the slouching Neanderthal who grasped his club in his ill-formed hands and growled at the shadows beyond the fire. The Clock had ticked many times since his ancestor climbed down from the tree; yet the stars had changed no more than they had in a single tick in the age before that ancestor descended to the surface of the ground. Was the Great Clock wrong--or were the stars? Homo Sapience strode through the forests, armed with spear and throwing stick and chipped flint axe. The Clock ticked, and herds appeared. It ticked again, and cultivated crops sprang from the soil--and the stars changed but slightly, unable to maintain the pace. Cities spread like mushrooms along the rivers, and around the inland seas. Ships, powered by the breath of The Demons of the Upper Air, sailed the surface of Neptune's realm, spreading goods and knowledge of many lands, and carrying the marvel of writing thousands of miles from the point of origin--and the stars gave up the unequal contest; their movement could not longer be detected between the ticks of the Great Clock, so frequent were they. Yet, even then, time scarcely moved at all, in terms of our present-day concepts. A tick was a millenium; then a century; a decade; a year. How long was it between ticks when the nineteenth century opened? How long when this century began? The pendulum of the Great Clock was shortening rapidly, but still the ticks were distinctive clicks; the Sun and the Moon, which had long ago replaced the stars as the celestial bases of comparison, said that months, or weeks, or days, remained between ticks. Einstein wrote a simple-seeming equation -- "E = mc2 -- and, though Man did not know it yet, the hours, and minutes, and seconds into which he had sub-divided the day, in that instant became crude units, still useful for measuring duration in certain aspects of the macrocosm, but pitifully inadequate for the precise work implied by that equation. The ticks of the Great Clock ceased to be individually audible; time was soon to be measured in micro-seconds. The ticks blended. The first throbbing bass notes rose to a piercing whine as the Great Clock strove to keep pace with the electrons whirling faster and ever faster in Lawrence's new cyclotron. A bomb exploded at Los Alamos; another at Hiroshima. The Great Clock is no longer audible, as it strives to keep pace with the ever-accelerating pace of the human mind; its "ticking" is now perceived as a secondary violet glow, offspring of the cataclysms generated only in the hearts of stars -- and in the atom bomb. Time does not march; instead, it clings madly to a second-order sub-atomic particle driving faster and ever faster into the secret places of the Universe. Whew!! No wonder I couldn't keep up! The End