Negative Time
The Clown had a reputation as an efficiency expert because he had developed the negative time theory which was actually very efficiently placed in to use by the department of transportation. The theory worked like this: The Clown calculated that the distance from here to there or that is to and from any point, meaning any destination was predetermined by one simple factor: the shortest distance. the straightest route. So it seemed that all one had to do was to aim directly at the destination A and with speed one would arrive at the point of desire. The problem was that the shortest distance between two points was also the most impossible to travel because there was a very good possibility that there were many other destinations, points of departure and points of arrival, for others, that were sure to be in the way, and as the distance grew between two points this intervention became more aggravated. So the shortest distance was not only difficult to navigate but impossible to do.
Understanding this very well our dear clown set out to grade the impossibility of the shortest distance. He decided one could calculate how close one could come to the most desirable route and by doing so grade the impossibility factor of a destination and then with that information in hand one could decide if one really wanted to go there. If one really wanted to be friends with the person at the end of that destination or if one could just stay home and not make that a destination does eliminating the impossibility altogether.
The first part of the calculation was to draw an imaginary straight line between the point of departure and the intended point of arrival. One then measures the exact distance of what is known as the ideal separation. Ideal separation is the normal distance between things that is trees are next to each other not on top of each other because it is a settlement that is more natural and therefor more ideal, so distances are settled by a silent arrangements of space. The Clown did not bother with the possibility that there were better arrangement possibilities, he took it for granted that matter settled and so displaced itself much like water and for that matter any other form of arrangement like cities could do no different. Some people because of this, faulted his accuracy but in reality his calculations appear very precise. The clown then took that known ideal distance and then measured how long it would take to travel that distance with the speediest mode of transportation. The ideal time and the ideal distance were then given an absolute value, that absolute value could not be reduce or divided any further, but it could be increased and if it increased then it would take away from the ideal absolute value.
The taking away from the absolute value was what came to be known as Negative Time. Negative Time or NT, was a stupendous concept, negative time was simply the amount of time one spent traveling away from one’s ideal distance in relationship to the destination. One then could take the ideal possible amount of time and the ideal possible amount of distance and just begin calculating negative time. So if a character was traveling from east to west, any time that was spend moving more south or north or east or that is away from the intended destination would be counted as negative time. The character then adds up how much negative time was done, based again on distance and time, and he can then calculate what percentage of the trip was negative time. The Clown concluded that a good trip, worth the effort would generally approximate a twenty-seven percent or less of negative time. Anything over the twenty-seven percent mark was by the clowns own standards just too much of a waste of time. Transportation engineers quickly begun to deduce negative time factors to all major destinations and so followed a campaign to reduce NT travel to below twenty-one percent. Of course there were a few mountain chains that made it horrifying to calculate negative time factors, because one could spend in some cases up two three-hundred percent of the trip time in negative time this was mind boggling and some people traveling to this places were encouraged, particularly by tourist bureau, not to perform negative time calculations.
Researches discovered that for the most part, that is with the exception of wealthy neighborhoods, most places were, it seemed, miraculously closed to the 27% mark so nature had more or less arrived at the same conclusion as the Clown. Soon after this cities were graded on their ability to maintain their NT to a kind 23% or below, this made them environmentally and efficiency friendly. In fact migration to cities where the negative constant was higher than that saw diminishing populations, and the equation correctly predicted which areas would have the lowest population densities. No one however could ever determine if this was a natural or a Clown caused loss, perhaps life was merely discovering universal rules for packaging.
On a Sunday I was taking a walk through the universities sculpture garden where the gates of hell adorned the daisies and the bushes well, when I overheard a lecturer, so in silence I intruded to listen.
Understanding this very well our dear clown set out to grade the impossibility of the shortest distance. He decided one could calculate how close one could come to the most desirable route and by doing so grade the impossibility factor of a destination and then with that information in hand one could decide if one really wanted to go there. If one really wanted to be friends with the person at the end of that destination or if one could just stay home and not make that a destination does eliminating the impossibility altogether.
The first part of the calculation was to draw an imaginary straight line between the point of departure and the intended point of arrival. One then measures the exact distance of what is known as the ideal separation. Ideal separation is the normal distance between things that is trees are next to each other not on top of each other because it is a settlement that is more natural and therefor more ideal, so distances are settled by a silent arrangements of space. The Clown did not bother with the possibility that there were better arrangement possibilities, he took it for granted that matter settled and so displaced itself much like water and for that matter any other form of arrangement like cities could do no different. Some people because of this, faulted his accuracy but in reality his calculations appear very precise. The clown then took that known ideal distance and then measured how long it would take to travel that distance with the speediest mode of transportation. The ideal time and the ideal distance were then given an absolute value, that absolute value could not be reduce or divided any further, but it could be increased and if it increased then it would take away from the ideal absolute value.
The taking away from the absolute value was what came to be known as Negative Time. Negative Time or NT, was a stupendous concept, negative time was simply the amount of time one spent traveling away from one’s ideal distance in relationship to the destination. One then could take the ideal possible amount of time and the ideal possible amount of distance and just begin calculating negative time. So if a character was traveling from east to west, any time that was spend moving more south or north or east or that is away from the intended destination would be counted as negative time. The character then adds up how much negative time was done, based again on distance and time, and he can then calculate what percentage of the trip was negative time. The Clown concluded that a good trip, worth the effort would generally approximate a twenty-seven percent or less of negative time. Anything over the twenty-seven percent mark was by the clowns own standards just too much of a waste of time. Transportation engineers quickly begun to deduce negative time factors to all major destinations and so followed a campaign to reduce NT travel to below twenty-one percent. Of course there were a few mountain chains that made it horrifying to calculate negative time factors, because one could spend in some cases up two three-hundred percent of the trip time in negative time this was mind boggling and some people traveling to this places were encouraged, particularly by tourist bureau, not to perform negative time calculations.
Researches discovered that for the most part, that is with the exception of wealthy neighborhoods, most places were, it seemed, miraculously closed to the 27% mark so nature had more or less arrived at the same conclusion as the Clown. Soon after this cities were graded on their ability to maintain their NT to a kind 23% or below, this made them environmentally and efficiency friendly. In fact migration to cities where the negative constant was higher than that saw diminishing populations, and the equation correctly predicted which areas would have the lowest population densities. No one however could ever determine if this was a natural or a Clown caused loss, perhaps life was merely discovering universal rules for packaging.
On a Sunday I was taking a walk through the universities sculpture garden where the gates of hell adorned the daisies and the bushes well, when I overheard a lecturer, so in silence I intruded to listen.
posted by Ricardo Correa at
12:42 PM
