Weezebeecke, 1st October 1856
Dear Gosseling,
Five years have passed and I have a confession to make. I haven't been very clever. I've reached all my goals in my struggle with you and Alex, but that condemned me inevitably to the dull existence of a Lady of the Castle. The 20th of this month is my birthday and it would be a pleasure for me to celebrate this day just with you and Lisabeth. We can recall memories. I hope that you will answer soon.
Love and kisses,
Anne-Christine van den Weezebeecke
Eykenduyn, October 7th 1856
Dear Anne,
I thank you for your kind invitation which I accept with pleasure. I shall arrive by coach on the 19th. I have a great many things to tell you for in the meantime I haven't been idle. Just to reveal one thing: I have been searching for Nature's Laws which gave us those colourful images. Maybe we can rediscover some of those lost enchantments. I didn't quite manage to do so yet but I'll tell you about the present state of my investigations.
'Till very soon,
Your Govert Gosseling
Anne-Christine read and re-read this letter.
"He'll never change", she thought. "Always on the search".
She wasn't altogether unhappy about it. The years had slipped through her fingers without anything significant happening and this had oppressed her. Lisabeth went for her daily ride on horseback and Ruyters kept his kitchen-garden free of weeds. And that was almost all that happened.
When Lisabeth returned from her ride that morning, Anne- Christine opened the letter for her. "He will come", she said, sounding relieved.
"That's nice", Lisabeth answered, "Perhaps at last something will change."
On October 19th, Anne-Christine and Lisabeth had been waiting for the coach for almost an hour when they saw it approaching, still far away. After a while Anne-Christine welcomed her guest with a kiss on his cheek and Lisabeth added another.
"Welcome back to Weezebeecke", they said.
"It's good to be back again", Govert Gosseling said, looking around with satisfaction. Both girls offered their arm and the three of them walked down the lane to the Castle.
"What exactly do you do at the moment?" Anne-Christine asked incapable of hiding her impatience.
"I'll enlighten you in detail tonight", Gosseling said. "And don't be afraid, for I need your help. That's why I was more that just glad to receive your letter".
That evening they gathered around the fireplace, in which Lisabeth had started a fire. The flames didn't reach very high, but were enough to keep out the worst of the cold.
"It concerns those images which are hidden in the Muscovite Glassware, although once you both tried to make me believe otherwise", Gosseling began his long story. "Somehow they must be hidden in it and I have been wondering how. I didn't find out completely yet, but I think that I'm on the right track".
"I don't need those images anymore", Anne-Christine said, "I've seen them too often and I'm no longer really interested in them".
"So what do you want to see?" the scientist asked.
"I do not really know", the Lady of the Castle replied. "And, as a matter of fact, I do know very little at the moment".
"Not for the first time in your life", Govert laughed.
"But that will change if you'll help me and help yourself at the same time. Do you recall that evening exactly five years ago today?" he asked.
"Only too well", both Anne-Christine and Lisabeth answered.
"Well, I went home because I saw that my carefully prepared game had slipped through my fingers, with Anne pointing that rifle at me. You know by now, don't you, Anne? Your total victory was in fact a clumsy one. You were very bright, I have to admit, but you always have to keep something in reserve, because the attempt always brings more joy than the result".
"That is what I've told myself more than once lately", said Anne-Christine. "But you can't just think of something to prevent yourself being idle, can you?"
"Perhaps you can't", Govert said. "You rather prefer solving a clearly-defined problem which exists already or which at least you assume to exist. You want to win, but I act in a different way. I want to turn things upside down and I lack the patience to finish or even develop my ideas".
"And that is why you need us", Lisabeth concluded.
"Quite right", Govert said, laying his hand on Lisabeth's. "As I already wrote to you, I am looking for the physical principles on whitch the process of storing images is based. And, who knows, we may one day be able to travel through time with them, too".
"I'll tell you what I've discovered so far," he went on. "Make yourself comfortable, because it is a long story and I hope you won't fall asleep".
"Now. let me start explaining what the word 'change' means exactly. Almost everyone thinks that a 'change' can exist. Well that may be so, but there's more to it than that. Changes don't ever come alone. They always happen in combinations, which is the direction in which we will make our Time Travels".
"So far, I don't understand a syllable of what you're saying", Lisabeth said.
"Just wait, for the clouds will clear in a moment", the scientist assured her, glancing at Anne-Christine who was keeping her thoughts to herself, as usual. He searched for an example:
"For instance, if you put on a new dress, then that's a change, isn't it?. But it's not just the dress that is different, you also change yourself, as you feel more or less comfortable wearing different clothes. Other people, too, will appraoch you differently. So you can't change your look without influencing your mood and your entourage.
Therefore I rather avoid speaking of changes. I prefer the term 'transformation'. That indicates more precisely that you have to place simple changes in a larger perspective .
There is a proverb which says that minor causes may lead to important consequences and that is a truism.
What seems to be a small change at first glance may in fact be something very influential. Sometimes even a fierce war is provoked by a small mistake, and sometimes a piece of broken porcelain, thrown away without being noticed, may tell us a great deal about its former owner".
"You don't have to remind me of that", interrupted Anne- Christine.
"Very well", Govert continued, being aware that Anne- Christine had understood his hidden message. "Then I shall tell you something more about those transformations. You may say that any change puts the entire universe in turmoil. That may sound a bit exaggerated, but in one way it is true. With Anne dressed as a Lady of the Castle, we live in a different world from the world in which she is disguised as a chambermaid.
This influence certainly has its limits, nonetheless. An Indian in America won't be aware that the world has changed and he'll think that everything remains the same. So there are things which co-transform easily and others which remain almost untouched. Knowledge about this behaviour is very important, I think.
How does everything fits together? That is the question. But first there is something quite different and that is time. Time plays a prominent role in any transformation. Time changes endlessly and that makes the whole world change too".
"Isn't it the other way around?" Anne-Christine asked. "Doesn't time pass because things change? If nothing changed, time wouldn't even be noticed!"
"You can invert any reasoning but I prefer to see it my way for the moment", said Govert. "In my view time itself makes a new world, without us having to lift a finger. Now Anne is 25 years old. In a moment she will be 26 and then we'll live in a different world, with a 26-year old Lady of Weezebeeck Castle instead of a 25-year old".
The two girls had to smile, hearing those words by their guest, who himself seemed to find it a bit strange too, while he went on with his explanation.
"We may consider life as a chain of transformations, which may be invoked by us deliberately or which happen to us haphazardly. All these transformations together take us into a complete new world. Every new second of the day, we enter a new domain, which has something in common with the one we just left but which shows many differences, too".
Here the scientist paused for a while.
"Very well", he went on. "If we have any desire to fulfill, no matter what it is, then we can't just rely on the transformations, on which we have little or no influence at all.
For instance, if my desire is to see images of the past, then I'll have to do something to store and revisualise them. I could start to search for materials which are easily transformable for a while, but which then attain a situation which could be regarded as insensitive to transformation, a haphazard step of a wild animal in quick-drying mud, for instance. Something like that can survive for centuries".
"But we as human-beings can deliberately lay down messages, too, for instance by writing them down in wet ink. After it has dried, it is fairly insensitive to transformation but not insensitive to changes of temperature. Therefore we have to look for yet another transformation, like a space transformation into a safe-deposite box, which has a constant temperature".
The scientist had to laugh at his own words.
"Now, writing isn't a very suitable way to travel through time", he continued. "There must be a better one. Firstly, we don't have a direct image when someone writes something down or makes a drawing. Reality has been through a number of transformations even before the pen is put into motion.
And, secondly, to be honest, not all those transformations show a high degree of fidelity. It is far better to freeze the light itself than to store our interpretation of it.
Glass must be an excellent material for that purpose. Depending on its temperature, it can be as hard as steel or as fluid as ink. So, in my opinion, it must be possible to capture light images in glass by exposing the glass to different temperatures".
After these words, the scientist remained silent and looked at Anne-Christine. She said nothing but knew exactly what he was trying to prove.
"Do you have any results to show already?" Lisabeth wanted to know.
"I certainly do", the scientist said, taking a slim box from his pocket. From the box Gosseling carefully lifted a small sheet of glass and held it up to the light from the fireplace.
"This is a piece of glass which I made sensitive to temperature and light. On this little sheet I stored the view from my window", he said, not without a certain pride.
He handed the fragile object to Lisabeth, who couldn't suppress a cry of wonder, as she looked at it.
"It's just like a painting!" she exclaimed. "But painted in black only".
"Please, let me look at it too", Anne-Christine asked, eager to see for herself.
"Gosh, how smart of you!" was her first reaction.
Govert was satisfied with this result.
"And that isn't all", he said. "First, I want to have it in colour and then it has to move, preferably with high- fidelity sound added to it".
"Is that possible then?" Lisabeth asked.
"Well, I have good hope", the scientist replied, glad to be able to tell his story. "You see, eyes react rather slowly and if I show a great many images, one swiftly behind the other, then it will probably look as if the images move. But I haven't got that far yet. I've simply proven that one can store and recall images by using the proper transformations."
Anne-Christine still seemed to have doubts.
"This way you can only travel backwards in time. You can't store next week's view today", she remarked.
"No, this transformation is not suited for that purpose without adaptation.", Gosseling confessed honestly. "I've thought about that problem and have perhaps foud the solution.
The future is an extension of the past and, to know your future, you have to know a series of past events, which will enable you to predict the course of transformations. If I only had a series of those glass sheets bearing images, then I could continue them and thus travel into the future".
"But I don't possess them at present. And that brings me to the point where I need your help, especially Anne- Chrisine's.
Before I tell you what I need, I'll explain yet another quality of transformation. Do you know what 'infinity' is?" he asked.
Anne-Christine shrugged her shoulders.
"Something that doesn't exist", she said.
"Not quite so", Gosseling answered. "I call something infinite when it contains everything, the extreme limit of something. Those infinite domains are always very dangerous for, in the extreme, one quality dominates all the others, which seem to lose their importance. The infinite is the only domain where you can transform everything at the same time.
Everything which is not infinite there is reduced to zero and can be given any value at all after it returns from infinity. That's the way to change your existence drastically withy one big bang.
Certainly, you have to dare to take some risks and be able to resist the powers of the infinite", he added.
Then he turned to Anne-Christine.
"If you have a wish or a desire, then you'll have to act, Anne. I can reveal your future if I possess a long series of historical data".
He then stood up unexpectedly and said:
"I'm tired, I'm going to bed".
"Already?" Lisabeth asked.
"Yes", Anne-Christine said, "That is the best thing to do". She stood up herself and walked away, lost in thought.
"This is a peculiar birthday present, giving away your own best-kept secret." Anne-Christine said to herself. "And it will only give me a life-size risk in return. I pray that what I'm doing now is all right and may heaven forgive me if it isn't".
That night, she deposited Anne-Lise's letters carefully in Gosseling's top hat. She would celebrate her birthday alone with Lisabeth, for Govert Gosseling would leave in a few hours' time, without leaving any message, she predicted.