Bones of the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

numbers and taking advantage of them? Only one thing:
    â€œParadox.
    â€œA paradox is anything self-contradictory and yet irreconcilable. For example, the barber of Seville, who shaves everyone in town who doesn’t shave himself. Does he shave himself or not? The statement, ‘This sentence is a lie.’ True or false? A little closer to the bone, a man goes into the past and kills his grandfather as a child, thus preventing his own birth. How can he exist, then, to commit the murder in the first place?
    â€œWithout time travel, paradoxes are pleasant logical puzzles which can be neatly despatched with a tweak in the rules of logic dealing with self-reference. However, once it’s possible to physically invade the childhood of one’s grandparents, the resolution of paradoxes becomes vitally important. So we’ve given this some serious thought.”
    Griffin paused, frowning down at his notes for a beat. Nobody made a sound. Leyster did not feel any particular warmth or charisma from the man, but he was clearly alone in this. The entire room was with Griffin.
    â€œIt turns out that paradox is deeply embedded in the nature of existence. The two are profoundly interrelated.
    â€œThird slide.” Another cartoon, this one of an athletic man in Greek skirt and lace-up sandals running furiously toward a turtle crawling away from him on the road ahead.
    â€œConsider Zeno’s first paradox. Achilles, the fastest man in the world, wishes to overtake a tortoise on the road ahead of him. He races toward it as swiftly as he can. However, by the time he reaches where the tortoise was, the tortoise is no longer there. It has moved a little further down the road. No problem. He simply races to that new spot. However, when he arrives there, he finds again that the tortoise has moved away. No matter how many times he tries, he can never catch up with the tortoise.”
    Griffin produced a tennis ball from the pocket of his jacket. He tossed it lightly into the air, caught it on the way down. “Consider also, Zeno’s third paradox. Achilles draws his bow and shoots an arrow at a tree. The tree is not far distant. But in order for the arrow to reach the tree, it must first travel half the distance from the bow to the tree. In order to reach that midway point, it must travel half of that distance. And so on. In order to arrive anywhere, the arrow must perform an infinite number of operations. Which will take it an infinite amount of time. Obviously, it can never move.”
    Suddenly he threw the ball as hard as he could. With a soft boom , it hit the closed ballroom doors and bounced away, up the aisle.
    â€œNevertheless—it moves. Paradox can and does happen. This is the riddle of Achilles. How can the seemingly self-contradictory exist so easily in this world?
    â€œAnd to this riddle we have no answer.
    â€œNow, in just a minute, I’m going to leave the room, and take a limo back to the Pentagon. The trip takes roughly half an hour. I’ll travel an hour into the past—so that I’ll emerge from the Pentagon exactly one half hour ago. A car will be waiting for me. I’ll ride it back here to the Marriott. The driver will let me off at the front door. I’ll walk through the lobby, down the hall, and to the closed doors of the Grand Ballroom.”
    Heads were already beginning to swivel.
    â€œAnd I’ll enter the room … now .”
    The doors opened and Griffin strode in, smiling jauntily and waving as he made his way to the stage.
    The two identical men shook hands.
    â€œGriffin, good to see you.”
    â€œGood to see you , Griffin.” The earlier Griffin addressed the audience: “As you can see, it is indeed possible for the same object to be in two places at the same time.” He handed the later Griffin the microphone. “And now I must leave to take that limo I told you about earlier, because—well, I’ll let my one-hour-older