Change Speed of Light: Explaining a Device in Sci-Fi Comedy

[Trying2Learn]

Summary:: Changing the speed of light, etc.

First: thank you everyone. You have all been a great help. I am a retired engineer trying to fill the gaps in an inferior education. Thank your for your ongoing guidance with all the questions I have asked over the years.

Now I will ask an absurd (but not stupid--I hope) question. It is not for me. It is for a friend. She is a writer and is drafting a novel that requires a science-fiction element. However! It is a comedy.

She needs about a paragraph on how to describe, as scientifically as possible, but for a lay person, the following scenario.

(One more time: this is not for me it really is for a friend and it requires the tongue to be planted firmly in the cheek -- it is a comedy, she says.)

Here goes...

"Someone creates a powerful magnetic device, intended to erase all computer memory. However, in the process, it has altered the quantum nature of light, converting it into a wave (not a critical issue), but (more importantly) altering the speed of light and enabling a moment of time travel."

It is a sincere question. She says: "Tell them to have fun with it."

She needs to "explain this device" in a way that sounds real, but hints at comedy.

 

[hutchphd]

I only know that "we have wrent the very fabric of space-time" is a required phrase.

 

[Trying2Learn]

I only know that "we have wrent the very fabric of space-time" is a required phrase.

OK... that is good. So you are on the same wavelength, because she even told me she needs to get beyond that phrase. But thank you for the smile.

 

[Bandersnatch]

- 'Doc! What on Earth is going on?'
- 'You see, Marty, this here thingamajig took the invariant duality of light and (having rent the very fabric of space-time, natch) transformed it into variable singularity. But not in a weird, black holey way, m'kay? This manifold of ours remains fully differentiable; it has merely gone somewhat wobbly. The discreteness of photons can no longer be counted on - much like Metallica in the late 90s, they've all turned classical.
Naturally, doing such unnatural things to the nature of light should not be taken lightly, but on the flip side the arrow of time seems to have become flippable. Which is very timey-wimey of it, if I may so flippantly quote the Poet.
I could explain more, but I think I already saw myself from the future on my way here, and I'm sure I'm dying to meet me again.'

 

[Trying2Learn]

- 'Doc! What on Earth is going on?'
- 'You see, Marty, this here thingamajig took the invariant duality of light and (having rent the very fabric of space-time, natch) transformed it into variable singularity. But not in a weird, black holey way, m'kay? This manifold of ours remains fully differentiable; it has merely gone somewhat wobbly. The discreteness of photons can no longer be counted on - much like Metallica in the late 90s, they've all turned classical.
Naturally, doing such unnatural things to the nature of light should not be taken lightly, but on the flip side the arrow of time seems to have become flippable. Which is very timey-wimey of it, if I may so flippantly quote the Poet.
I could explain more, but I think I already saw myself from the future on my way here, and I'm sure I'm dying to meet me again.'

On behalf of my friend.. thank you. She said this will work. Now she needs to tweak it into her story

 

[Bandersnatch]

Just to be clear, it's borderline technobable. Arguably, it has crossed the border and is blitzing towards nonsense. But it is at least jargon-adjacent.

 

[Trying2Learn]

Just to be clear, it's borderline technobable. Arguably, it has crossed the border and is blitzing towards nonsense. But it is at least jargon-adjacent.

Yes, clear. She told me it was what she wanted. She reworked it but left the jargon. Thanks again!