Thursday, January 7, 2016

The Eisenberg Constant

Eugene Egner's The Eisenberg Constant is a short story about a man who has paid to live in a fixed loop of time, and who is experiencing some bugs in his home installation. The story is quite simple: he waits three days until a technician can make a house call to troubleshoot the problems. It's also complicated --- since he is familiar with his fixed one-week loop, while he waits he wanders around, noting differences from the usual functionality and trying to stay sane and coherent, while time jumps and judders around him. It's a delightfully Philip K. Dick-ian story, which doesn't loop itself in the usual manner of time travel stories... after all, the apparatus is experiencing bugs!

I rate this story as suitable for a transoceanic plane ride and the accompanying musings about trusting your life to a piece of complicated machinery which completely encases your body for long periods of time.


This post's theme word is insalubrious, "detrimental to health". A survey of fictional literature produces the composite idea that time travel is insalubrious.

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