On Time Travel

Boredom can do wonderful and terrible things to the human mind. What has boredom done for you? Here's what it's done for me. Its made me think about a little thing called time travel. This is an enormously complicated subject, and people much smarter than me have thought about the same thing and come to many, many different conclusions (mostly that it can never happen). My thinking is along these lines: Wouldn't it be cool? I could see all sorts of things... Real knights in real armor, dinosaurs! Wait... What about... Here is the vision of time travel that I have come up with at this point. It will probably change as I think on the subject more, but for now this is what I have. Many of the questions posed here are ones that I've posed to myself, note how most of the answers are less than satisfactory.

WARNING: The following will not answer any questions. It may, in fact, make things less clear.

Imagine yourself in a world where time travel has been invented. It would is like living in a world where the airplane just came into existence. At first people are incredulous, everyone is asking for proof. Gradually that proof is given. The inventors, clearly geniuses of the highest caliber, bring back knick-knacks from the dawn of time. A living dinosaur, Abraham Lincoln's hat, other brick-a-brack. Once proof is given people start to speculate about what time travel can do for them (because, as we all know, the individual comes first), then slowly but surely they consider what it will do for the world at large. Can we travel to a better future or back to a better time in the past? Yes, of course, it's a time machine.

On the day of the first public demonstration no one works, everyone is riveted to their televisions waiting to see video of... What? Knights in armor? Cowboys? Kennedy's assassination from a different angle, showing once and for all who the killer was? What ever it is, the world holds it's breath. The machine never appears to leave, that's how precise it is, it leaves and comes back before we even know it's gone. The world is confused, that was so very anticlimactic. But no matter, let us see the video that's been brought back. Some people are ecstatic that they chose to show the building of the pyramids, others not so much, but everyone realizes that what they're seeing is real.

Sounds great, doesn't it? On the cusp of a new age of humanity, an age where time is elastic and you can relive any moment you wish. Boeing will probably make the first offer to buy the revolutionary technology, or maybe Microsoft will snap it up, or perhaps Google. There will surely be a bidding war that wil make the inventors of the miracle device the richest men on the planet. Even if the aforementioned geniuses don't sell, those companies will all surely find the technology in their hands by some means. As production begins the richest people on earth snap up the first models. Things go wrong, people die, it's all very high profile. All other news takes a back seat.

Scientists (and pseudo-scientists of course) all offer dumbed down explanations of the workings of the machine, but the one thing they make clear is that there will be no "Back to the Future" scenarios. We've ruled out a single timeline, they explain. Rather any change in past events spawns an entirely new timeline which then carries on with into an altered version of future. Thus would be time travelers can go back to their chosen moment, do what ever they wish, and return to the present with impunity. After all, no one will know what they did in that time, since traveling into alternate realities is not the function of the time machine. So we can go back three or four times to the tomb of King Tut, steal all his gold multiple times over and become rich! What a concept.

Almost before the concept of Temporal Immunity has been explained the human rights groups are all over it. How can people simply travel back in time and change everything. What if, because of the action of an indiscriminate traveler, World War Two dragged on for another ten years? What if the Cold War escalated into World War Three? These are extreme examples, but they could easily happen. Is it ethical to relegate humanity, even if it is the humanity of another timeline, to the horrors that would result? There need to be regulations in place to prevent such happenings.

But they don't understand, the scientists say in rebuttal. One cannot police time travel. If a regulatory body was established they would have to send a representative with ever single time traveler, just to be sure that no shenanigans ensued.

Then make it so! The detractors respond.

While that debate rages across civilization as a whole, other more thoughtful people begin to consider what time travel means for humanity as it stands at this moment. The first conclusion they come to is this: Time is now irrelevant. When you can relive a single moment in time over and over and over time means nothing. Holidays will never be celebrated again, birthdays are gone, the calendar, wall clocks, all meaningless. The only events that hold any meaning are life and death. It is a brave new world. An incomprehensible new world.

Some of those less inclined to think of the consequences, or profits, of time travel pose different questions. Can we go forward? The scientists take a break from their various defenses to give the answer: No. Of course not. If each new event creates a new timeline then trying to go into the future would be impossible. It would be like navigating a road that is continuously changing, or climbing a tree where branches randomly grow or fall away constantly. In other words, the intrepid time traveler who goes forward faces certain doom. In that case, the askers ask, how does the traveler who goes back in time get back to this one? The scientists hem and haw. They have no idea, of course.

Why doesn’t the machine effect our timeline, why create new timelines, those who long to change that single unfortunate moment in their lives ask? Simple, someone answers, if it did that you would have no idea. Perhaps there is a machine that does that and we don’t know it. Maybe your life already has been changed.

* * *

Welcome back to the here-and-now.

There you have it, my vision of a future with time travel. I just reread it just now and realized that I traveled through time several time (past tense to present tense and back) but I fixed that, but that's beside the point. My point is... No, I don't really have one, I just thought that maybe others would enjoy these thought provoking suppositions.

An Auspicous Beginning

I woke up this morning thinking along these lines: I have things to do today. I need to write, I need to read, I need to get that fire going again, and I need to start a blog. Not necessarily in that order of course, and there were many other things involving sheep and dogs and cats that needed to be done, but you get the idea.

In a groggy, sleepy stupor my first order of business was to make tea. Thence to sit and watch the chickadees stuffing themselves brimful of the black oil sunflower seeds provided for them. I sound like I'm in my seventies, right? Would it help my case if I mentioned that NPR was on in the background? No? I thought not. In any case as I watched the birds I considered what I would put into the first post of my blog. I know what I want to put into the blog eventually. I want to make it a place where I can go and vent creativity like a mentally unstable person vents to their therapist. However, where to begin?

The answer was literally right outside my window. It was a story waiting to happen, one that was simple, true, deeply moving and profound. Therefore...

-The Bird Feeder-

As I watched the bird feeder outside the window, sun making the chickadees look as though they flew on wings of purest light, something interesting happened. A flock of turkeys, regular visitors to this neck of the woods, wandered into the scene. They first went to inspect sheep troughs to see if there was anything left over from breakfast and upon finding nothing decided it would be much more worth their while to lounge beneath the bird feeder. Without further discussion the motley crew vaulted awkwardly over the pasture fence and ranged themselves beneath the feeder. Undeterred by the appearance of their much, much larger cousins the chickadees continued their hyperactive feeding routine.

At this juncture I think it prudent to explain exactly how the feeder is set up. This way you can better understand just how absurd the turkey is. Beneath the feeder is a low, snow covered stone wall. Between the wall and the layer of snow atop it the feathered dinosaurs could easily have reached the feeder and simply gorged themselves directly from it, but being turkeys they chose to make things more difficult and went about their business of scratching in the puffy snow for any tidbits the chickadees might have dropped.

Things changed suddenly with addition of a third, altogether different species of animal. A squirrel came, seemingly out of nowhere, and pounced on the feeder as though it might escape. The chickadees were, as one can imagine, were quite put out by this most recent guest to the feeder. His drunken antics, and all encompassing tail kept them from getting anywhere near the food source. The turkeys, highly intelligent animals that they are, exploded into the air with a frightened flurry of wings... Then they realized it was just a squirrel and settled down.

While Mr. Squirrel rocked the feeder, attempting to get himself in the right position to maximize face stuffing, the turkeys came back from their embarrassing freak-out. As they returned they found the previously sparse pickings left by the chickadees had turned into the richest buffet in the world. The squirrel, in his attempts to get the food out of the feeder, was having more success in spreading the wealth than he was in actually acquiring it. The turkeys did not mind a bit.

Eventually, after finishing the food on the ground, the overlarge chickens had occasion to think about something else. They looked up and realized it was the squirrel who created food from the heavens. An epiphany! It was as though the turkeys had suddenly found God. With their beady eyes turned to the heavens they watched the squirrel dangle from the feeder just above their heads while food rained down like manna. The revelation lasted only a moment before more turkey-like behavior set in once again and They set back to their feeding with a will, trusting in the will of Squirrel to send them more food.

That's when the trouble started. The squirrel, after much trial and error, finally managed to balance himself atop the roof of the feeder and began to gorge on seeds. The feeder, which until now had been swinging wildly and dumping it's load on the ground, finally stilled and no more seed dropped from it. The turkeys had been forsaken. Helplessly, despite the fact that they could easily have eaten directly from the feeder, they looked to the happily munching Squirrel for salvation. In His infinite wisdom, He ignored them.

After much renewed scratching and squabbling for the scraps of seed still left to them the turkeys seemed to have given up. There was nothing left for them here, Squirrel was gone from the world and all was darkness once again. Then one enterprising young tom had an idea. His eyes glowed with pleasure at his own genius, and he nonchalantly waltzed up under the feeder where the Almighty fed with his luxurious tail hanging down. Our hero, with great pomp and ceremony, stretched his neck to it's limit and snapped his beak at the tempting tidbit of tail. In righteous indignation His Holiness the Squirrel pitched forward, which in turn caused the feeder to rock. Food fell from the sky as it had in days of old!

The less intelligent turkeys saw this as a sign that Squirrel was still with them. They flapped and jumped about for a moment, then settled in to their feast. The more intelligent turkeys (and intelligence here is definitely relative) commenced with the feeding right away, leaving the others to sing their foolish praises. Our hero did not partake of the food of heaven, instead embracing his new roll and appointing himself liaison to Almighty Squirrel. When the unfortunate deity managed to balance himself comfortably enough to stop the feeder from swinging, the enterprising youngster would stretch his neck to it's fullest and snip at what ever part of the squirrel hung lowest.

His ear, his nose, the top of his head, his friggin tail again! The squirrel came to the conclusion that his perch was no longer a viable feeding place. Chattering madly he looked down at the big, stupid birds assembled beneath him, leapt from the feeder and raced away across the snowy ground. The turkeys once again found themselves awkwardly frightened by the sudden movement, but after a moment they realized that Squirrel had dumped yet more food at their feet. They set in with a will.

It came to pass after several minutes that the seed on the ground was gone. The turkeys looked to the sky, hoping against hope that Squirrel would return and once again spill his seed upon their upturned faces. He did not. He never returned to that place again. The turkeys were abandoned. In shame, in hungry agony, they shuffled off to find a better place to feed.

Moral: Squirrels should not be depended upon.