‘I have perpetrated something about gravitation theory which somewhat exposes me to the danger of being confined in a madhouse for being a biggest donkey’s ear.’ Albert Einstein, referring to his ‘cosmological constant.’

Monah Seetah Custer worked in a Government Science laboratory, in the Astronomy section. Although she was perfect in her Astronomy assignments handed to her by the Head scientist in charge of the Laboratory, Monah came to feel insecure in her post as she, over time, came to believe her work as an Astronomer for the Government was practically useless as a service to their Democracy.

She felt it was merely a matter of time, soon, when her services would be permanently terminated.

She would have looked for paid employment beyond the Government, had she not discovered in Albert Einstein’s notes, passing comments and carefully considered guesses about a person travelling through Time.

Monah decided to stay on as a Government employee in order to avail herself of the facilities of the Government laboratory. She was fully and painfully aware that her working on Time Travel on the side using Government software, machinery and electronics would not be approved by the Government.

Monah spent many hours in libraries consulting the writings of Albert Einstein for his ideas about Time Travel.

‘Albert Einstein’s literary and Scientific legacy is one of the most voluminous of any figure in the history of Science.’ He was so productive an author, that today, seventy-one years after Albert Einstein’s death, two world Universities in charge full time see no end to making thousands and thousands of pages of his writings available for public distribution.

Although there is no evidence that Albert Einstein engaged directly in the invention of the hand-held cell phone, it was during his lifetime (1879-1955) that the evolution of the machine was in heated competition in laboratories in many countries.

The first hand-held cell phone call was made a mere eighteen years after Einstein’s death.

It was the electronics of the cell phone that indicated to Monah a viable direction of restating Einstein’s ideas about Time Travel into machine-mechanical mathematically electronic values.

Monah was excited. She felt she was on the brink of a breakthrough in discovering how to advance Albert Einstein’s considered Time Travel guesses into hard realities.

So far, with the exception of the last one, she had either correctly calculated Einstein’s guesses or, like Einstein himself, instinctively correctly guessed the mathematically measured value in each case.

In the last of Einstein’s carefully considered guesses she came up against a stone wall. With each of the other guesses, she had taken only months. With this last one, she had taken over a year already, and she felt she was still nowhere near a remedy; not even an option of a possible remedy.

That last carefully considered guess was Albert Einstein’s ‘cosmological constant’. It did not help that Einstein himself had long given up on his ‘cosmological constant’ long before he died.

Because of this feeling of insecurity, Monah set up a small laboratory in her kitchen at home to work on science matters in an attempt to find where she could apply for paid employment, and, as well, to tinker with the ‘cosmological constant’ whenever she had spare time.

The only reason she could afford her home kitchen laboratory was because the Government offered its Science employees small basic homes for low fixed rent.

Monah was constantly using some of Albert Einstein’s equations to invent small and simple hand-held devices to calibrate star angles and distances, and other configurations. She had patented two such inventions of hers.

On a day at her place of work, all workers were informed in the morning that they had the day off because a violent storm was forecast for later that day.

Monah lingered because since most of the other workers had left for the day, she had rare access to the advanced sophisticated electronic equipment in her Government workplace.

She used the access to further calibrate her Einstein pocket device. Only a workplace advanced console could enable her to safely work with temperatures beyond fifty-four thousand degrees fahrenheit, the usual temperature in lightning.

The storm had already begun when Monah set out to go home in the early afternoon. As was usual, one of her Einstein devices was in one of her pockets.

Thunder and lightning and near-tornado gusts of wind stirred up chaos all around her. Foolishly, she sought temporary shelter under one of the City’s planned sidewalk trees.

On the one hand, given the circumstances, it was well within scientific random probability that lightning would strike that tree.

On the other hand, given that the Einstein device in one of Monah’s pockets was over 80% electrical, the random probability of a lightning strike had become significantly nearer to being a certainty.

Lighting struck. The tree fell on Monah. Fortunately for her, the tree was not heavy enough to cause serious injuries. More fortunately for her, that bolt from heaven struck the tree directly, and her glancingly only. She extricated herself and struggled home, drenched by the rain.

When she sought to attend to the bruises on her arm, she discovered they had healed without a trace of having occurred!

After a few seconds, her surprise diminished significantly. In her search of world literature for information about the history of Time Travel, she had encountered Ancient Shamanism belief that a Shaman initiate struck by lightning had their impure body replaced with a body of celestial substance. Superstition notwithstanding, her thoughts about Ancient Shamanism lightning were somewhat supported by her discovery later that evening that the lightning had not only turned some sand on her clothing under that tree into glass, but also had welded together some of the internal parts of her Einstein device in her pocket, without adversely affecting the functioning of the device.

The experience made deeper sense to Monah Seetah Custer. She was well aware that by Cheyenne oral tradition, her late Mother, named Monahseetah, was the daughter of a chief of a native tribe that had been defeated in battle by an army led by General George Armstrong Custer.

Her Father himself had described her Mother as of ‘surpassing beauty and exquisite form’. Her Mother had said of her Father that he was ‘a son of the morning sun’.

Most important of all in her present circumstances, Monah remembered the belief within her Cheyenne heritage that their Shamanic rites succeeded in creating a true Shaman only if and when the ritual culminated in the devotee surviving a direct lightning strike directed by the gods themselves.

On a following day, Monah recalled she had not remembered to eat or drink for many days previously because that lightning had melded the tree liquid with her flesh, blood and bone tissue, to make her into a living machine; because the Einstein device in one of her pockets had not been damaged by the lightning, but, indeed, had played an immediate role in attracting and conducting the lightning through the thunder and the rain and the tempestuous winds; not unlike those elemental gods who occasionally and unpredictably choose to participate in a Cheyenne Shaman ritual.

At her laboratories, at home and at work, she conducted numerous experiments on herself over the next few weeks. The experiments confirmed that she was a living ‘artificial intelligence’ machine with no organic aspects about her.

And in her was an overwhelming desire to travel through Time.

Especially to travel back to turn
Albert Einstein into an A-I machine, as she had been turned. She would provide the lightning spark through a hand-held machine that had begun as an Albert Einstein ‘cosmological constant’ considered guess.

And, yes, too, she, Monah Seetah Custer, would seek to locate in the past, her Mom, Monahseetah Cheyenne; and her Dad, George Armstrong Custer!