Tales of the Intermezzo - Time's Blister
                       A Transformers Universe Story
                     copyright 1998 by Dave Van Domelen
                     based on properties owned by Hasbro
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     "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play."
          - American Heritage Dictionary

From the _Proceedings of the American Physical Society Bicentennial
Conference_, March 21-27, 2099.  Opening Plenary Session, Dr. Okame Jones
presiding.  Visual record.

     "Good morning, and welcome to the Bicentennial Meeting of the American
Physical Society, as we celebrate the second century of physics.  It's been a
century that has seen great changes, from the rise of a world government to
cracking the secrets of quantum time."  Dr. Jones paused to allow for the
usual round of polite applause from both the attendees present in body and
those participating via interlink.
     "When we held our Centenary celebrations in old Atlanta one hundred
years ago, the world was on the edge of great changes.  The mere existence of
Cybertron and its inhabitants had shattered some of the greatest theories of
the twentieth century, leaving us scrambling to make sense of this new world
while at the same time dealing with the rapid advances in technology it
brought us.  Perhaps we would have seen such changes on our own, since that
was the time when Dr. Chase was at his most productive, but most now
acknowledge that the arrival of the Autobot/Decepticon conflict was necessary
to shake the scientific community out of its period of smug satisfaction
about matters such as the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass.  As
any of you who have flown in a gravitic drive ship can testify, Einstein was
all wet on that one," he allowed a low chuckle, and a few in the audience
snorted in mild amusement.
     "It gives me great pleasure to introduce the person you're really here
to listen to, Doctor Maria Fairborne.  Studying under one of the students of
Doctor 'Chip' Chase himself, Maria is Dr. Chase's academic granddaughter.
So, if Dr. Chase is the father of Quantum Time, I suppose that makes her the
niece of Quantum Time?"  A middle-aged woman standing off to one side
suppressed a groan, having heard the joke a hundred times before.  "Ladies,
gentlemen and others, I give you Doctor Fairborne!"
     There was an enthusiastic smattering of applause, mainly from those
present in the flesh, some of whom had come in from the outer worlds to
attend the conference.  The woman stepped up to the podium, the sound and
visual recorders automatically adjusting upwards to focus on her face.  She
was an imposing figure, to say the least.
     "Thank you, and I would like to apologize in advance.  You see, what I
am about to say will doubtless throw this entire proceedings into chaos and
draw attention from a great many worthy papers and discussions on the
agenda."  There was an uncertain murmur that passed across the crowd.  "As
you are all aware, when it became public knowledge that the Cybertronians had
traveled in time on multiple occasions, we had to reassess our concepts of
causality just as drastically as we'd been forced to re-examine our theories
of gravity when the first Decepticon floated overhead.  The Copenhagen view
of quantum reality, already on its way to replacement in the 1980s, was
completely scrapped and succeeded by what we now call the Chase
interpretation.  We realized there must be a fifth timelike dimension in
which our familiar three spacelike and one timelike dimension were embedded,
and that in this 'metatime' the laws of cause and effect were absolute.
Normally, time and metatime coincide, just as normally we see equivalence of
inertial and gravitational mass.  But the Cybertronians proved that one could
violate causality in regular time by manipulating the interaction of time and
metatime."
     The audience seemed somewhat confused.  Nothing she had said was news to
them, or suggestive of a shock.  If a radical advance in applied time theory
had been made, it would have leaked out already, and no one had heard
anything.  
     "I can see you want me to get to the point.  Here it is.  We now know
why the Maximals insisted so strongly that we surrender all Cybertronian
technology and remain within our own starsystem.  It wasn't to protect us
from 'future shock,' nor was it because they feared we might try to attack
them, as some jingoists insisted at the time.  It was because they knew what
we could not yet suspect about the nature of time, and time travel."
     Now the audience was agitated, as some of the quicker minds started to
make connections.  Dr. Fairborne activated the projection system and a map of
the world appeared in the air over her head, large enough for all to see.
     "As you probably know, research into metatime has been mainly concerned
with confirming its separation from regular time...without knowing for sure
how the two decouple, we cannot take any further steps.  My research team has
finally developed a way to detect discontinuities in the local metatime, as
some of you are already aware.  Our hope was to present the APS with a map of
the world, showing places where time and metatime had been separated at some
point by Cybertronian travels, the blisters on the face of metatime.  We
expected one, maybe two points, based on declassified stories of the Autobot/
Decepticon war, plus minor breaches at any location known to house a Space
Bridge.  We also expected not to be able to tell them apart in time, due to
the rough nature of our equipment.  We simply could not distinguish points in
time a mere decade apart.  So, this is what we expected to see...."
     The map lit up with a few red points, all the same intensity.  One was
prominent in the British Isles.  A larger number of extremely faint points
speckled the globe.
     "Brightness indicates the severity of the decoupling, color the rough
period of the decoupling, with recent times tending towards red and distant
times tending towards violet.  Due to the counterintuitive nature of
metatime, we wouldn't detect any disruptions for time travel that hadn't
occurred 'yet.'  The nature of 'yet' has led some to call metatime 'narrative
time,' as if this were all happening in a story.  Now, here is the map we
actually GOT...."
     Additional dots started to appear on the surface, of all colors of the
rainbow.  There were two purple specks.  A dim point in Africa, and an angry
welt in western North America.
     Dr. Fairborne paused to let the implication sink in.
     "THAT is why the Maximals were afraid of us.  Our history carries a
deadly secret...four million years during which Optimus Prime and Megatron
slept in the Rocky Mountains.  Anyone with time travel technology could go
back into this era and attempt to derail history by destroying either of the
two leaders.  That we're still around to see it suggests that either changes
take time to propagate, or that the damage was contained.  THIS TIME.  Either
way, it is now the highest priority of the human race to master time itself,
or we will be casualties of the next Cybertronian war."
     The room exploded into a cacophony of voices.

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Author's Notes:

     This was partly inspired by the fact that I got the APS Centennial
Meeting program in the mail today.  I've got an idea for a followup, but I
want to see how the season opener plays out before I fiddle with it any more.