I think I’ve met you, but also know I Haven’t
Episode 5 –
Wake up and smell the influencers
Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish what you should believe in. Our world can seem pretty inundated with mysteries. Some of them are purely tales and myths, while others have a solid enough basis in fact. Stile13…kind of falls between the cracks. If you ask any of its adherents, they will generally tell you that the stile is a portal which, upon entering, will bring you to a parallel universe or dimension. They tend to be quite open and vocal about their experiences, celebrating the differences that their arrival in their new dimensions has brought. But, when you ask them to identify the exact location of a portal, they tend to get a bit vague and can quite often just wander away mid conversation.
Despite this lack of detail, an increasing number of people are being drawn to the excitement and colour that the enigmatic gateway brings into their everyday lives, and, even if they haven’t had a passing through experience themselves, they are claiming the right to believe in the portals existence, if they want to. As one newly converted guy put it,
‘It was the wife that got me into it. I know not everybody approves. But you know something…it cheers me up. And…it’s not like we’re doing any harm to anybody, are we?’
This blind acceptance of the idea of accessible dimensions has perplexed those in the anti parallel universe camp…and they have of late come out fighting, claiming that even this casual acceptance of portals can lead to an addiction of sorts, describing Stile 13 as the ultimate Gateway drug. They also claim that the swing in popular opinion is being deliberately perpetuated by a clandestine group of powerful portal people.
To counter this, they started a campaign called, wake up and smell the influencers. However, after complaints of public sniffing incidents from some well known social media personalities, the campaign leaders have had to add a caveat that the title is not to be taken literally.
Einstein described time as the fourth dimension. He said that to fully portray your location you not only need to know where you are in three dimensional space, length, width, height, but also where you are at any given moment in time.
His description has re-emerged of late, and excitement has been mounting over the possibility that a trip through Stile 13 might not only bring you to a similar parallel dimension, but also to a different moment in time.
Many in the scientific community have for years acknowledged that time travel is theoretically possible but, most probably, only in the direction of the future. Backward time travel would introduce potential problems of paradox and causality.
One of the best known examples of this is the grandfather paradox, which argues that if a person were to travel back in time, meet their own grandfather…and then assassinate him, they would then make their own birth impossible…thereby, not allowing the journey back in time, or the assassination, to happen in the first place.
However, some physicists have countered this, suggesting that these sorts of paradox’s can be avoided through a variation of the many worlds theory. They maintain that if you go back in time, and, for example…kill your granddad, you are actually creating a different dimension or time line. Everything you do in that version of your history will have an effect, but only in that alternate future.
University College Dublin recently held a symposium around the possibility of using Stile 13 for alternate dimensional time travel. The conference was well attended, with scientists, lecturers, theologians, students, and philosophers sitting alongside sceptics, interested members of the public, costume wearing sci fi enthusiasts, and a group of older men holding a banner saying, Grandfathers are not just for Christmas.
The conference’s introduction was given by the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, who maintained that we shouldn’t be afraid of portals, and that we should all just chill and relax into wherever, or whenever, they might bring us. The confident and laid back attitude she was aiming for was slightly stunted by her newly plucked eyebrows that gave her a constantly startled and surprised look.
‘Portals…and time travel, huh? I was walking around earlier, and I overheard quite a few of you saying that it’s only possible to travel forward in time…that, we cannot travel backwards. Well… you could be right. That might be the case. But we don’t know…because, we can’t see into the future. Be handy if we could (scattering of polite laughter)…but…we Can see the past…quite literally. It’s right in front of us…every night. Just look at the sky. The light from some of the stars you observe has taken so long to reach us here on earth…that the stars that emitted that light, no longer even exist. They burnt out long ago…disappeared…not there. We’re seeing them as they were many years ago.
Conversely, there are relatively new stars in the sky…that we cannot even see yet, because they are so far away that the light from them hasn’t reached us…even though they’ve existed for many thousands of years.
If we were travelling in space…and we managed to get a long long way from earth…we might see some of these stars blinking into existence. They would then be present in Our reality before anyone on earth was even aware of them. Does that make Our reality different to our earthbound brethren?
My point is…that just because we can’t see something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…and some things we can see, are not actually there.’
She then went on to partially prove her point, by tripping over the microphone wire as she stepped away from the lectern.
Black holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in space. Most black holes are thought to be the remnants of large stars, many times the size of our sun, that die in a supernova explosions. Even bigger black holes can result from stellar collisions. They are extremely dense, and appear eerily dark and bare and empty, with such strong gravitational attraction that not even light can escape their grasp.
The idea that these massive objects exist in space has been around for centuries, and yet, scientists have not been able to answer the question, Where do we go if we fall in to black hole?
In an attempt to answer this conundrum some physicists have combined quantum mechanics with the General Theory of Relativity, and have concluded that black holes may Not in fact contain a ‘singularity’, the point at which density becomes infinite.
Their conclusions add credence to the speculation that black holes are actual tunnels through space-time, called ‘wormholes’, shortcuts to other universes.
However, the probability that gravity would hugely stretch out and most probably pull apart and destroy anything or anyone trying to use this shortcut, is a little off putting for any potential wormhole travellers.
Recent research by the university of Manchester suggests that the Stile 13 phenomena IS in fact linked in some way to black holes. The obvious lack of huge gravitational forces, and the stretching and shredding that would most probably be involved in travelling through a conventional black hole, makes Stile 13 a much more attractive means of interdimensional travel. But why, if they are actually related to black holes, do they appear to be safe to travel through?
When asked about this Professor Cryan Bocks gave this answer.
‘Look, black holes are big, like very big. But…Stile 13 type terrestrial portals are small, really really tiny by comparison, so gravity doesn’t get the chance to build up in the way it does in space. But that doesn’t mean there’s no attraction or pull involved…people are definitely drawn towards the gateways. Sure…it’s almost as magnetic as myself…Ha-ha’
Young people have been the quickest to accept Stile 13’s existence, with a high percentage of them claiming to have already passed through a portal. Many parents have come forward in support of their offspring’s claims, confirming that the changes and differences they see in their child could only be explained by them being a new version of themselves. As one father put it when speaking about his four teenage daughters,
‘One by one it happened with my girls. I’d kiss them goodnight and tell them I love them, and they’d give me a hug and say they loved me, and everything would be great. Then a total stranger, who looked just like my daughter, would come down the stairs in the morning, and completely ignore me.’
Stile 13ager youth clubs have become very popular, and, generally speaking, they have been widely commended for their ethos of inclusivity and their acceptance of difference.
Ceremonial gateways…and in some cases stiles, have become a stock item in most of the 13ager youth centres, the idea behind them being, that by stepping through the opening, members can consciously divest themselves of things that may be troubling them, renew and even reinvent themselves.
Although the clubs, for the most part, do not claim that their premises host an Actual interdimensional portal, reports of onsite Stile 13ager parallel universe encounters and experiences are becoming more and more common, with many young members vociferously claiming that their gateway is real, and not just ceremonial. Their assertions have been endorsed by some well known personalities, with teenage pop star and Stile 13 advocate Jelee Bean, recently contending that young people’s minds are more open than adults, and their lack of cynicism and negativity makes it so much easier to find Stile 13 whenever they are ready to do so. His hit single, “All you have to do is step on through”, from the album “I’m a conventional interdimensional”, has been officially adopted as the 13ager youth clubs theme song.
All you have to do, is step on through, I’m a believer in gateways for me and you,
Be what we want to be, you and me, we’re in the fan club of alternate reality.
A piece, thought to have been done by renowned graffiti artist Banksy, caused quite a furore when it was recently discovered at the site of the original Stile 13 in Croke park Dublin. The drawing consists of a tall narrow darkened stile-type opening, with a single trailing left leg showing. The leg is bent at the knee, making it appear as if someone has just stepped in through the wall of the stadium, with the sole of the shoe clad foot tipped upwards to reveal the number 13.
As is the case with most “Banksy’s” there appeared to be no witnesses to the actual drawing of the mural. Excitement really intensified when it was discovered that there was a corresponding exit drawing of a stile with a right leg emerging, also with the number 13 on the sole, on the inside wall of the stadium.
No explanation has been forthcoming as to how this was accomplished. To gain entry Banksy would have had to scale an impossibly high wall…or would have had to have the aid of an accomplice who had access to the grounds. Croke park officials have conducted investigations, but found no evidence to support insider assistance for the artist.
Could it be, as has been widely suggested, that the famous street artist has found a way to use the terrestrial portals to allow him to create his art unhindered and unobserved? If so, how was this accomplished? Is it possible to mix dimensions…to create something in one world and…bring it with you…or make it appear in another? It’s hard to know, but the questions have only added to the mysterious persona of Banksy the artist.
Ironically, considering the lack of attention the real Stile 13 got on the day it first appeared, large queues of boisterous stile 13ers have taken to queuing at the Banksy stile…even when there’s nothing on in the stadium.
At this moment in time the world appears to be fairly evenly divided between supporters and believers of the gateways, and those who think the whole thing is implausible and would rather ignore it. Of course everyone is entitled to have their view…but, even if you’re a sceptic, it’s becoming very difficult to ignore the hullabaloo about stile13, and its ever expanding number of fellow interdimensional portals. Sure, you may not be able to prove if it's real or unreal, but…it’s getting harder and harder to discount the possibility of it.