Time Flies

It all began when James Henry Millard was an undergraduate lab assistant to the prominent Dr. Jeffery M. Decker. Dr. Decker was a leader in the field of optics. With Jim Millard's help, Dr. Decker invented a very special kind of glass. There was nothing like it in the world.

In their early experiments, they were bending light as far as was possible without distorting it. The Decker/Millard team was responsible for several exciting discoveries in this area. In their earliest efforts, they were able to bend the light of a laser almost eighty-seven degrees with very little distortion. However, they were always trying to improve upon these results.

The research team had experimented with several substances. They had refined the manufacture of refracting glass, and they were experimenting with the substances added to regular glass that would bend the light. In one particular experiment, they added a super-conductive material instead of their usual ceramic material. The light was bent as predicted. However, when they added a current, they got the most astonishing results. The glass was no longer transparent; however, it was not opaque either.

At first, they thought they had bent the light ninety degrees. Thus, all the visible light would come from the edges of the glass. By experimenting with a laser, they discovered that this was not the case. The distinctive red laser light did not register on the glass. In addition, the image did not dim when the edges were covered. In fact, the glass had a strange glow even when there was no light at all shining on the glass. Moreover, at times the team could see strange shadows moving in their glass. These shadows would come and go in a random fashion. The team could find little order to the movements of these shadows. They repeated the experiment several times, and still the shadows appeared.

For three years, they experimented with their glass. With improvements in super-conductive ceramics, there came improvements in the glass. Furthermore, with the independent discovery of a transparent film capable of heating and cooling the glass, they were able to reach a wide temperature range to observe the reaction of the super-conductive material. Thus, they were able to vary the amount of resistance to electrical flow throughout the glass. In this manner, they could find the ideal amount of resistance for given amount of voltage. This produced very good results. The shadows were beginning to take forms.

The team also experimented with the amplitude of the current flowing through the glass. When they determined optimal amplitude for the differing voltages, the forms became even clearer. However, the images were still not perfect. Optimizing the needed voltage and adding the ideal amount of ceramics was the next step. This part of the research took the longest. After painstaking trial and error, the images from the glass became very clear. It was through the sharpness and clarity of the images that it became clear that this was not a television image. The picture became very sharp. It had a better resolution than any known television signal.

Not only did these images not look like television images, they did not behave like television images. The people seen in the glass were not very interesting. These figures appeared to have rather mundane lives. Moreover, the movements of a television set do not alter the picture of that television set. It was a different story with this glass. As the glass moved, the pictured changed. It was as if they were looking at a mirror. The background and point of view changed with each movement of the glass. The scientific team was at a loss to explain this phenomenon.

However, this did not alter the enthusiasm of the team; in fact, it drove them to a new goal. The next several months the researchers tried to get sound to correspond with the images coming from this view screen. All these experiments were a resounding failure. The sound was on no broadcast frequency that they could locate. The team tried every possible frequency. When two people in the glass would converse, their conversation was a secret never to be heard by the science team. With failure after failure, the team finally gave up. The secrets conveyed by the images were safe from the intruding scientists. It was time to alter the course of the experiment.

By observing the images during these several months, various team members noted that all the images were relatively stable. An object, other than a person, appearing in the glass on one day was usually there the next day. In particular, Dr. Decker noticed a picture of an individual playing a tuba. This picture appeared on the far wall of the room that was conveyed by the glass. When someone obtained the first clear images, this picture appeared in the background. On any given day, that same picture would be hanging there on the far wall of the room depicted in the glass.

Furthermore, the people on the other side of the glass would change their routines. That is, they would not be doing the same thing every day at 4:37 PM. As a matter of fact, it appeared that the people in the glass were living their own lives. They would do things that people do ordinarily. Further, the team's log noted that the style of clothing that these people wore was very out of date.

Nonetheless, the stability of the scenes helped guide the team to the next stage of experimentation. The new objective would be to "change the channel". Maybe the team could pick up on some new images. Possibly there would be some audio to be found for a new set of images.

Changing temperature, amplitude, voltage, and dozens of other factors, image after image was discovered. After several weeks of experimenting, Jim Millard made a remarkable discovery. With his particular set of inputs, several very familiar scientists appeared, and they were working with a strange piece of glass. It was the team's own image appearing in the glass and in the image within the image was a picture of an individual playing a tuba. Dr. Decker stated, "It is like looking through a window into a whole new world."

That was it! You could almost hear the lights being turned on. It all made sense now. The reason that the images changed when moving the glass around was the fact that the scientists were looking through a window into a strange world. As the window moved, so did their view of this world. These were not television images at all. The analogy of looking into a new world also helped explain the stability of the images. The people in the glass were real people with real lives. This also helped explain the clothing that these people wore. That was the style then. In addition, one of these people living in this strange world obviously liked the tuba and thus hung a picture of a tuba player on the wall.

Furthermore, this helped explain why they could not find any sound on any frequency. The sounds coming from the people in this strange new world were not broadcast on any frequency. They were simply spoken. A completely new technology would be required to discover what these people had to say.

Now the team had to prove their theory that these were images were from another dimension. However, the scientists were euphoric because it was apparent that it could be possible to observe what was happening in a dimension other than their own. In a world with only three perceivable dimensions, people could see into an infinite number of different dimensions.

All of this pushed the researchers and of course Jim Millard into the realm of the time/space continuum. He would devote the rest of his life, studying dimensions, time, and any other relevant theories to aid in his search. A search for something he had not even yet imagined.