Time Machine
Oh man. If I invented a time machine, you know what I’d do?
I wouldn’t go back to last week and buy lottery tickets or anything – no way.
What I’d do is go back to the 1400s or something and show as many people as possible how to build their own time machine using locally-available materials. “Out of flux capacitors? Wait there. Er. Staye thou hither. I returneth, um… anon.” WHOOOOSH!!!
And then when all the people knew how to build their time machines, I’d come back to present day and see how much the world had changed.
I bet there would be a lot of schools named after me.
Imagine what 500 years of time travel would have done to now.
Imagine how the Weekend Songs would sound then, hey?
Of course I could have changed the course of history and possibly I would cease to exist. Or could have killed everyone, like if the future would have arrived much earlier, and the Battle Of Waterloo would have gone nuclear. Or people like me would have been genetically ruled out by sympathetic parents, or people would have realised the internet would never make any money and that time travel now meant that news had no value, so I’d be out of a job for starters.
Or maybe current affairs would have become like history and repeated itself so much that if you didn’t like the story, anyone could just go to the tipping point and change the course of events at any time, so you could be watching the news and the newsreader would go:
“Good afternoon, Nik Kershaw has died. One second. No he hasn’t. In fact, I don’t know why I said that, because nothing had happened to him in the first place anyway. No wait. Yes, he’s definitely died now. But quite some time ago.”
Then the newsreader would disappear and the other one would go: “I’m sorry, our previous newsreader never existed. And no one just read that last report, because it’s just me on the show and I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Now over to Nik Kershaw with the weather. Nik.”
“Thank vous, Francine, et maintenant tous le monde parle en francais parce ce que Napoleon a utiliser les bombes atomiques.”
Have a great weekend.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am
“So, in summary: some scattered showers, highs of 23 or 24, and the sun will be going down on me at about eight o’clock tonight.”
June 6th, 2008 at 10:28 am
“The cold is biting through each and every nerve and fibre.”
June 6th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Not the daughter?
June 6th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I wouldn’t go back to last week and buy lottery tickets or anything – no way.
Presumably that’s because lottery tickets are randomly generated by computer and therefore knowing what the winning numbers were going to be would do you no good whatsoever, yes?
*radiates smugness*
June 6th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
You can pick your own lottery numbers *or* have them generated by a computer. (At least in the U.S.)
June 7th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Can you? CAN YOU?
Cliff you are CRAZY not to go back in time and buy lottery tickets. Seriously.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
If everyone had lucky dips it would have saved hours of work in my petrol station job trying to explain the form to complete idiots.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
…and yes, if everyone had the ability to time travel would time even exist? The essence of time is inexorable, surely its very nature is so as not to allow time travel?
June 9th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Time is most exorable from the individual’s perspective.
see the movie ‘Primer’.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Every sci-fi film I’ve seen (and that is a LOT believe me) about Time Travel always has someone ranting on about they musn’t change history.
Hell If I could travel in time, I’d be changing stuff all over the place perhaps that’s what happening there’s so many people going back and messing about with the timeline that they all cancel each other out and nothing ever changes.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Perhaps changing history is what the time travellers were destined to do and the world wouldn’t be as we know it if people don’t go back in time in the future and change things…by the same token, if you subscribe to chaos theory, even the merest thing of having extra people breathing in the atmosphere at any given point in history could have a tremendous impact on history. Then again, I’m not even sure you CAN change history - history is simply what has already happened - if it’s already happened you can’t change it.
My head aches.