SPACE, TIME, ALICE & ME

There's space; there's time.

Space is the height, depth, and width around me as I sit at the kitchen table. Time is what I see on the wall clock as it ticks and moves me from the present into the future.

Space and time, however, are part of the same reality, and the sum of space and time equals the four-dimensional and all-important SPACE-TIME.

These are concepts I've tried to include in CHANGED IN THE NIGHT. As my protagonist, Allana Odette Blair, sits at her kitchen table with Mr. Zee, her science tutor, she experiences a glitch in time that plunges her (and me) into a journey filled with mathematical, philosophical, psychological ramifications.  

Time is something to consider.

There's a reason that I dedicated my book to Alice, who first fell down the rabbit hole. 

When Alice falls down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, she lands in a hallway that appears perfectly normal until strange things begin to happen; when my protagonist, sixteen-year-old, Allana, takes a terrifying plunge, she winds up in the mythical Land of Alon where strange things also happen. 

Carroll's Alice discovers a table with a key on top, but the key doesn't fit the locks to any of the doors in the hallway. My Allana discovers an ice cave with the final door that cannot be opened.

Alice finds a door behind a curtain. Allana finds doors that cannot be opened.

My main character is so confused by all that happens to her, she winds up in a mental facility. Carroll's Alice is so disoriented by the dislocation in time and space, she weeps a pool of tears.

Her tears, of course, are symbolic of something else. The word "tear" is spelled exactly like "tear," as in ripping apart, or "tear," as in rushing at a great speed.

What seems to be isn't; what isn't seems to be. It's all a puzzle.

Alice's journey down the rabbit hole creates a tear in time and she finds herself in a space located between reality & fantasy. In CHANGED IN THE NIGHT, Allana also experiences a rift in her world as she stands in a spot where ley lands intersect and vacillates between dreams and reality. 

Here in this space between reality and fantasy, the physical world changes in an instant; creatures and objects appear or disappear for no reason, and logical thought brings about only nonsensical answers.

When reality and fantasy intersect, the result is a crazy, mixed-up world where nothing is as it seems.

In this frame of reference, it's easy for Alice (and Allana) to doubt her own identity or wonder if she even exists at all.

Alice comforts herself by reciting lessons as things get "curiouser and curiouser." Allana resorts to ways to maintain her equilibrium as her dead brother lures her into a frightening game that reveals the awesome power of science and alternate viewpoints.

The sense of time in wonderland is endless, circular or static without beginning or end; it’s always teatime for the mad hatter. As the tea party moves around the table, the direction isn’t necessarily linear because time isn't linear.

Time does not go in a straight line. 

Stuck in 1952, Allana suffers from the confusing elements of time. As she holds her brother Jack in Abeyance, she, too, is unable to move forward. Time is the Mickey Mouse clock on the wall, the cuckoo clock over the kitchen table; abducted by aliens, it takes only an instant to be at the moon. 

Albert Einstein revealed that space and time, as physical constructs, must be combined into a new mathematical/physical entity called space-time. The equations of relativity show that both the space and time coordinates of any event must be combined together by the mathematics in order to accurately describe what we see.

Lewis Carroll attempted to demonstrate these ideas in ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Space consists of three dimensions, and time is one-dimensional, space-time must, therefore, be four dimensional.

And so it is believed that space-time is a continuum. As far as we know, there are no missing points in space or instants in time. Both can be subdivided without any apparent limit in size or duration.

Physicists consider our world to be embedded in this four-dimensional space-time continuum. All moments in history, all events, people, and places are described in terms of their location in this continuum.

Space-time does not evolve. It simply exists.

And down the rabbit hole we go!