Monday, February 16, 2009

The problem with time travel...

...it's never as easy as it seems. 

Alright...test, test, 3, 2, 1, go.

I've only got a few minutes before the next, um, event, so I'm going to have to make this quick. You're listening to this, I'm assuming, because you're interested in my work. That's good. In fact, there is soon to be an opening in my field, one which I currently occupy. More on that later.

Everybody says that you have to learn from the past--learn from other's mistakes--and this is especially prevalent in the sciences. So prevalent, in fact, that it becomes rote--you just, stop hearing it after a while. But I'm here, now, to say it one last time, and to give you, the intrepid time-traveler, an account of my mistakes, so that you hopefully won't make them. First off: forget everything you think you know about time travel. It's wrong. You know, all of those times in the vids where the traveling back or forward is as easy as pulling a lever...no, forget about that. Secondly, on to the good stuff: you have to realize early on that a time machine is never simply a "time" machine, it's also got to be a "space" machine. The hacks who try and make their own devices on Earth never seem to realize that, say, you try and go a month into the future--something simple--that when you materialize in the future, the earth is going to be a few thousand kilometers away from when you started. The guys that try and go themselves usually end up as asphyxiated comets. Now, traveling in the other seven dimensions is fairly trivial, but you need to account for motion in the "big four." It's a bit harder to do, but I always put my machine pretty far above the solar plane, and I haven't hit a comet yet.

Finally, because I think I've only got a few seconds left: don't worry about fucking up history. You can't do it. It's fixed. Everything that's ever been done, has been done. Or did you really think that you were the first person to try to kill Hitler? Oh! and one last thin--

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