Time Travel
TIME TRAVEL
It's a menace.
You know it, I know it. Your neighbors surely agree. We don't talk about it, but the issue is always there... lurking over us.
Why is time travel a bad thing, Saint Tuesday asked rhetorically? I'll tell you why. Just about every recorded instance of time travel in popular fiction either
directly results in catastrophic damage to the timeline, requiring immense effort and jumping-through-hoops to even halfway-repair, OR
is ITSELF a direct result of some sort of catastrophic accident so gigantic that it can only be corrected by ALTERING HISTORY ITSELF.
Let's take a typical example.
One fine day in 2027, your hypothetical son, little Johnny X, stole Doctor Quantum's prototype Time Vespa to see what his ridiculously doyen parents were really like when they were young. He went back to 2007 and met you! Keeping his real identity a secret, he set you up with the unrealistically stunningly attractive babe or hunk you had always moped over but never had the nerve to ask out, and like a flash, you two were inexplicably married and having a kid.
Johnny returned to the future, his mission accomplished. Only problem was, time has been subtly altered by young Johnny's interference! You were going to get together anyway, but because of Johnny, you met at the bar instead of the disco, you got married on July 23rd instead of the 22nd, and nine months later your firstborn kid turned out to be a girl.
Since she was conceived on a different day, she was conceived with different sperm. She got a different set of DNA so of course she turned out to be a different person.
20 years later, kooky Doc quantum invented his Time Vespa, but young Jennie X had jazz band practice that evening. She never stole the Time Vespa and never went back in time.
But nevertheless, Johnny X arrived from the past, returning to the exact moment he left.
At which point he realized that, in 2007, history had been fundamentally altered by a guy who was never born.
And the universe realized this too, belched an unhappy error message, went to the blue screen of death and ceased to exist.
"So? Time travel hasn't been invented."
YET. By definition, time travel will have to be invented at every single point in history simultaneously. So if, at some point in the future, time travel will be invented, then the time travelers could - in fact, MUST - be here RIGHT NOW, observing, recording, taking part in, meddling with and generally screwing up history as we think we know it.
This is a real risk. This could happen at any second. It has ALWAYS been a risk and will be in perpetuity.
Unless we act "now".
Our mission
To preserve the integrity of the space-time continuum, I hereby petition the governments of the world to immediately enact laws banning the research and practice of time travel.
Status of this mission
Immediate success!
We first observe that the universe as we know it still exists.
Next, we see that there are no time travelers here in the present day.
From this, we surmise that nobody has traveled back to 2007 because nobody has ever invented time travel.
Finally, we conclude that nobody invented time travel due to the success of this campaign.
Thanks to everybody for your participation!
It's a menace.
You know it, I know it. Your neighbors surely agree. We don't talk about it, but the issue is always there... lurking over us.
Why is time travel a bad thing, Saint Tuesday asked rhetorically? I'll tell you why. Just about every recorded instance of time travel in popular fiction either
directly results in catastrophic damage to the timeline, requiring immense effort and jumping-through-hoops to even halfway-repair, OR
is ITSELF a direct result of some sort of catastrophic accident so gigantic that it can only be corrected by ALTERING HISTORY ITSELF.
Let's take a typical example.
One fine day in 2027, your hypothetical son, little Johnny X, stole Doctor Quantum's prototype Time Vespa to see what his ridiculously doyen parents were really like when they were young. He went back to 2007 and met you! Keeping his real identity a secret, he set you up with the unrealistically stunningly attractive babe or hunk you had always moped over but never had the nerve to ask out, and like a flash, you two were inexplicably married and having a kid.
Johnny returned to the future, his mission accomplished. Only problem was, time has been subtly altered by young Johnny's interference! You were going to get together anyway, but because of Johnny, you met at the bar instead of the disco, you got married on July 23rd instead of the 22nd, and nine months later your firstborn kid turned out to be a girl.
Since she was conceived on a different day, she was conceived with different sperm. She got a different set of DNA so of course she turned out to be a different person.
20 years later, kooky Doc quantum invented his Time Vespa, but young Jennie X had jazz band practice that evening. She never stole the Time Vespa and never went back in time.
But nevertheless, Johnny X arrived from the past, returning to the exact moment he left.
At which point he realized that, in 2007, history had been fundamentally altered by a guy who was never born.
And the universe realized this too, belched an unhappy error message, went to the blue screen of death and ceased to exist.
"So? Time travel hasn't been invented."
YET. By definition, time travel will have to be invented at every single point in history simultaneously. So if, at some point in the future, time travel will be invented, then the time travelers could - in fact, MUST - be here RIGHT NOW, observing, recording, taking part in, meddling with and generally screwing up history as we think we know it.
This is a real risk. This could happen at any second. It has ALWAYS been a risk and will be in perpetuity.
Unless we act "now".
Our mission
To preserve the integrity of the space-time continuum, I hereby petition the governments of the world to immediately enact laws banning the research and practice of time travel.
Status of this mission
Immediate success!
We first observe that the universe as we know it still exists.
Next, we see that there are no time travelers here in the present day.
From this, we surmise that nobody has traveled back to 2007 because nobody has ever invented time travel.
Finally, we conclude that nobody invented time travel due to the success of this campaign.
Thanks to everybody for your participation!
Labels: Humor, Time Travel
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