First thought:


How do you go to your boss and say,
"I've just lost
the only Computer in the world,
overboard in that ship that went down just there;
I hope you don't mind.

"And, um, there won't be another
proper Computer
for MMLXXIII years.

"Sorry..."

                           ?


          Boss:

"Oh, don't worry;
just put your name on that little list,
over there,
right under the fellow
who lost the 
World's First Wetcell Battery
somewhere in Iran,

about M years ago.

That'll make two
of you."




                          -2-


     It is (in)conceiveable
     that, somewhere in the world
     someone has just lost a thing
     that will revolutionize the world
     in Two Thousand Years.

What kind of thing
is Mind?





                          -3-

It was not a clock; there were no clocks.
It was not a scribing device, and
it was not a toy, and
it was not an experiment.

Never mind what it was;
what are we?

What was he asking
of the Universe?

                          -4-

Blish says that Roger Bacon
may have discovered most of 
the Theory of Relativity
in the Thirteenth Century.

What if they had not lost
that device?

Where would I
have been born?


                          -5-

It is not too late.
Probably.


                          -6-

Whoever made that Mechanism
covered everything up to
Einstein.


                          -7-

What in god's name
would Hawking
have been thinking about?


                          -8-

What a resilient fool
is Man.

                          -9-

Or did everything important
depend on the timing?
And has the clock
run
out?

hurry up, please...

©  Copyright, 2000; Malcolm Beckett