T is for Time Travel: or, back to the future, first class...

April A-Z Topic:  Time Travel

I've decided it's time to do something terribly grown up and responsible.  It's time to invest in my future.

Literally.

That's right, boys and girls, I've decided to invest in the Time Travel Fund! You've never heard of the Time Travel Fund? Well, go to this site and have a squiz.

All for the price of ten measly American dollars, I can have the satisfaction and peace of mind of knowing that only seconds before my death, time travel experts from at least five hundred years in the future will pull me out of my time frame and replace me with an inanimate clone who will do my dying for me. What convenience!

I'd always assumed, like most of you I'm sure, that my first time travel experience would involve a mad scientist, stolen plutonium and a car with funny doors. Well, I suppose you can't expect anything else from the generation brought up on Back To The Future movies.

 But it now seems I have the option to travel with all the style and comfort that five hundred years of evolution can provide.  Hopefully I'll find myself living in a Utopia of unparalleled peace and prosperity.

Of course, knowing my luck I'm more likely to end up in a H.G. Wellsish nightmare with Morlocks chasing me around, trying to make sausage out of me, or maybe in a world full of talking apes where humans are kept in cages as pets.

 But hey, life's a gamble.

Holes in the fabric of space/time...

Time travel.

Yeah, I went there.  I'm edgy like that.

The reason for my non sequitur, you ask?  Well, it's because I'm pretty sure I've discovered actual, honest to god proof that time travel exists.  Or at least that it's possible for pockets of one time to crop up in another.

It's kind of like that British show "Goodnight Sweetheart" about the guy who discovers a portal to WWII era London in an alleyway so he opens up a second hand shop right near it, thus providing the audience with charming wartime stories and his store with exceptionally cheap good quality antiques.  But the portal I've discovered isn't being used by a delightful cockney man, nor is it helping anyone sell 1940's era coins.

No, the portal I've found ... and got photographic proof of ... is in the Ralph Lauren in Sydney.

Yeah, I know, it's a pretty big claim.  I'm sure many of you are out there scoffing right now, thinking to yourselves "Oh Kellie, you silly person you!  Even if time travel did exist, why on earth would it be in the Ralph Lauren store?"  To that question, dear readers, I have no answer.  All I can do is present my evidence.

This is a photo I took while I was on holidays in Sydney back in March.  As you can quite clearly see, there is compelling evidence that a portal to 1987 has opened up, and the fashion from that era is seeping through into our time.

The distinctive colours, patterns, and styles of the items on display are clearly not from this time period.  In fact, I'm almost certain that I remember seeing Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air wearing something similar in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE!!!

As it's rather unlikely that Ralph Lauren would allow such monstrosities to appear in their displays unless there was some sort of space/time phenomenon, the natural conclusion is that a pocket of time from the late eighties has spontaneously appeared in the middle of their store.

Hopefully this isn't some sort of portent about the end of the world ... I always said I thought the whole Maya calendar bro-ha-ha was a crock and it'd be really embarrassing if it turned out to be right.  But if it is, and this turns out to be the beginning of the end, I just want you all to know that I love and value each and every one of you.

No, don't look at me, I don't want you to see me cry...

Something's gotta give...

Thanks Pinocchio, just tear
the space-time continuum
to shreads!

Like all good Doctor Who fans, I do love a paradox.  It always gives me a little thrill to wrap my brain around something that shouldn't make sense, but does.  It's the geek in me I guess.

I think that's why I love that old song "Something's Gotta Give", where an irresistible force meets an immovable object.  Which, of course, is completely impossible.  If a force is irresistible, then it's not possible for an immovable object to even exist.

And there are so many of them, like the Crocodile Paradox, where if a crocodile steals a man's child and promises to return it if the man correctly predicts what the crocodile will do, what does the crocodile do if the man says that the crocodile won't return the child?  Or the Socratic Paradox, which refers to a quote that Plato attributed to Socrates that went "I know one thing, that I know nothing".  Or even the good old which came first, the chicken or the egg ... which we all know the answer to.  Eggs have totally been around longer than chickens!  Dinosaurs laid them for gods sake!

But I think the most mind blowing paradox I've ever heard of though was the one described in Robert Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies".  It's basically a version of the Grandfather Paradox on steroids.  We've all heard the old "If you travel back in time and kill your own grandfather, how can you have been born to travel back in time and kill your own grandfather" schtick, this just takes it several steps beyond that.

A baby girl is mysteriously left at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. "Jane" grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. 

She falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for Jane, a series of disasters strike. First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery, doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they are forced to surgically convert "her" to a "him." Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room. 

Reeling from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, "he" becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. 

Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop's Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and abandoned, on the condition that he (Jane) join the "time travelers corps." Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the drifter in 1963. 

The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant. The bartender then goes forward nine months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers corps. 

The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop's Place in 1970.

Essentially, the girl, the baby, the drifter and the bartender are all the same person.  Is your mind blown?  If not, try doing up a family tree for poor Jane.  That'll definitely send you round the twist!

Back to the future?... past?... present?...

And THAT, my friends, is why time travel makes you shit at grammar!

Okay, so maybe it's less time travel and more my shitty grammar that makes me shit at grammar ... but my point still stands!

But I digress.

Lately I've been thinking about time travel.  Not in an "I'm an insane person who's going to gaffa tape a mobile phone an a shit load of plutonium to a vintage car and try to get myself blown up" kind of way, more in a "Hmm, I wonder what I'd do first if The Doctor's blue box landed in my front yard and offered to take me anywhere/when" kind of way.

So, after careful deliberation, here is my list of places I'd want to go if time travel was cheap, reliable and guaranteed to not rip a hole in the space/time continuum if I accidentally meet my seven year old self and pat her on the head.


1.  The Athenian Agora:  Ooh, time to learn something new about me!  Did you know I've got a degree in archaeology?  True bananas!  When I decided I was bored and wanted to go back to school, I looked over the courses and picked the most interesting one I could find.  It also translated to the least job opportunity creating, I'm afraid.  I live in Australia.  We're limited in what's available archeologically speaking to the past 200 years ... unless you're REALLY into shell middens.  But back to the Agora!  While I was studying I did a whole class on it during an intensive summer semester and I loved it!  I loved learning all the indepth stuff about a specific place rather than the typical overview that you get in those classes.  I'd love to go back to when it was the bustling city centre of Athens and see if it looks anything like the recreations.

2.  Times Square in 1945 when peace was declared:  Can you imagine being part of that party?  I've always been a teeny bit obsessed with the world wars (remind me to show you my collection of unknown WWI Soldier portraits that I rescued from second hand shops and eBay sometime) and I think I'd like to experience what it felt like when they all realised it was finally over.  The partying, the dancing in the streets, how amazing would that be?

3.  Woodstock:  I'm not much of a music person, I've always preferred the narrative to give me my moods, but I AM a liberal hippie Pagan and it looks like the sort of place I'd fit right in ... as long as i didn't have to spend the night.  From what I understand, the toilet facilites left a lot to be desired, and I'm a bit precious about that sort of thing.  I think roughing it is staying in a three star hotel.

4.  America's "Wild West" in the 1850's:  Late enough that there's stuff going on and they're settled, but before the Civil War.  Come one, who as a child DIDN'T want to be a cowboy/girl?  I love the idea of the Old West, or maybe I just love the idea of crinolines, I'm not sure.  Either way, I'd love to go and see what it was really like.  I can't ride a horse ... but that's what they invented carriages for, right?

5.  Last Thursday:  I've only got two words to say about this one ... Lotto numbers!


So, there you go, my list of places to go in a TARDIS!  I wonder what you'd choose?