Moebius 2157 | ONC2019 Short List [Complete]

X.1 | Clouds | Afterword

Welcome, dear readers, to the afterword for 'Moebius 2157', in which I would like to explain some of the ideas and inspiration for this story.

As you probably know by now if you've read this far, one of the main themes of this story is the 'grandfather paradox', which was part of the ONC prompt I picked, Speculative Fiction #5: An individual is somehow transported back in time and because some tropes are too wonderful to avoid, they inadvertently kill their grandfather. In a direct contradiction of everything everyone has ever been told, however, they do not cease to exist...

I guess you can now also see why I avoided mentioning it in a preface or even in the blurb. Judging from some reactions following Alyssa's first time jump, I feel like the surprise worked fairly well! And I do hope that in general, the twists and turns I came up with managed to surprise you.

"Now, talking about twists and surprises. I think there are some open questions about what happened in the last chapter. I admit, it was all a bit ambiguous... so I decided to bring our favorite three egghe- I mean, scientists together to explain some of it."

A lanky figure sitting at the table clears their throat.

"Oh! Of course, there is also Travis the Computer Guy here today. Hi Travis, so good to see you again. The readers really liked you, so I think they'll be happy to see you're back."

"Thank you," Travis nods appreciatively.

"So, as I said, our three scientists here-"

"I thought you're a scientist too," Rosie interrupts.

"Well, I'm a molecular biologist, not a physicist."

"But you wrote this thing," Baker says. "Surely you have to be able to explain it yourself?"

The author shrugs. "The people who've read the story liked you guys, whereas I am just the mean, evil author. I figured it would be better to leave the talking to you. How about you start, Rosie? Maybe you could tell the readers something about the title of this story?"

Rosie's face lights up with a smile. She nods and eagerly reaches for her stack of papers.

"Ah, yes. So let's start by explaining what 'Moebius' means."

She begins by making neat, sharp folds along the edge of a sheet and then tearing it into thin strips. She picks one up and holds it up at the ends.

"A strip like this has two sides (or surfaces) and one edge (or boundary). Now if we put the ends together... we get a simple loop. It has two surfaces – inside and outside – and now two edges."

She fixes the ends with a piece of tape, and puts the loop aside. Then she takes another strip of paper, and twists one of its end by 180° before putting them back together and fixing them. The new paper loop now distorts awkwardly as she places it on the table.

"Now this is a so-called Moebius strip, or Moebius band. It is defined as a structure that has only one surface and one boundary (edge). Now think once again about our 2D paperworld example, a circle living on this side of the loop..."

She points to the outside of the normal paper loop.

"...has no way to reach the inside of the loop, and vice versa (assuming it cannot cross the boundary/edge). On the Moebius strip however..."

She takes a pen, and begins to trace it along the Moebius band, drawing a red line. She rolls the loop along the table and keeps drawing, until eventually, she arrives back at the beginning of the trace of her pen, in one single line.

"It's a loop with only one surface. So what looks like the outside here is the inside over there, and vice-versa. There is actually no inside or outside on this loop."