When this story takes place, the fictional "Drode's Equations" have been
lost for so long that they have become practically mythological. And so
the historian protagonist is surprised to find them in his own family
library. The author does a very good job of conveying what it feels like
to look at an equation and try to understand it. As the historian gets
more and more aquainted with the equations in question, he begins to
realize that the significance of them is the absence of the variable
representing time in one of them, even though it is supposed to be
equivalent to the others in which time is explicit. As a consequence, even
if just briefly, he is able to perceive the reality around him without
time.
It was reprinted in The
Ascent of Wonder and you can read the comments that appear in that
volume about it here. |