 This advance was fired by some mixed-up combination of abstract mathematical speculation, capitalist greed, global geopolitical power struggle, and sheer mysticism.We know (roughly) how it all turned out, but if we had been living in those years it would have been impossible to sort out the fantastical possibilities from the plausible ones.Maybe we could split time and be in two places at once, or travel backward and forward at will, or maintain parallel lives in parallel universes.