Don’t get me wrong; I love time travel. It’s my single most favorite form of science fiction, right next to multiverse stories. I’m fascinated with the idea of being witness to the past, or finding out how we fare in the future. But as much as I indulge myself and feast on the tasty morsels of Back to the Future or 12 Monkeys I know deep down in my heart of hearts it’s probably a profoundly bad idea. More likely it’s a great way to kill yourself, quickly and painfully.
The Capacity to Flux
Back to the Future gave us a colorful, sanitized adventure where we never truly worried if Marty would fail, that he’d pull off his stunt. We understood this version of time travel was fraught with plot hole and paradoxical chicanery. Watching your photo fade slowly to warn you of your impending failure? I won’t comment.
I’m going to tell you what will happen instead.
Take your theoretical time machine and set it for, say, 1776. Lets meet the Founding Fathers. Watch them sign the Declaration of Independance. It’s not only educational, it’s inspirational. To have the chance to hear what was actually said in that chamber? Did Franklin really preside like some pompous self-appointed king over the meetings? You could make a fortune on the talk show circuit recounting the day you shook hands with Jefferson.
How could that possibly go wrong?
First, let’s say you manage to get your cosplay on good and tight, wearing the proper clothing for the era. Where do you come from? What’s your story? People would know you if you came over on a boat. To attend you needed to be a land owner or a servant. Have you boned up on your colloquial english? Have you actually read the text of the document, or pamphlets from the time? There’s a pretty good chance you won’t be understood most of the time. Accents are hard enough without another 300 years tacked on for good measure. You might think to yourself, these folks are American, but you’d be wrong. They’re very much still British at this time. To many at the time their acts were treasonous, or at best ill advised.
Then there’s the chance of dying of the stench. You think your spouse is quite a whiff after a jog on the treadmill or basketball with the guys, that’s peanuts to what these people smelled like. This is a time when people didn’t know washing your hands was the single best thing you can do to prevent sickness. And getting sick? Don’t even think about it. Doctors were doctors because they said they were a doctor. You don’t want one of them to work on you.
And people can kill you, usually without consequence. If you said or did something against the mores of the times, some law abiding citizen is within his rights to call you out. And calling someone out in the 1800s meant more than a fist fight. Someone was going to bleed. But don’t worry; if you lived just make it to one of those doctors I meanted above. They’ll fix you up.
For goodness sake, Jeff. Fine. No going back in time. I’ll just go forward you little party pooper!
Sadly going forward might not be much better. First off, everyone knows stuff you don’t know. In the future you’re pretty dumb. A five year old knows more about the world than you do 50 years from now. That kid can turn on the TV, which you can’t. Trust me; you won’t be able to do it.
That kid can reconstitute a McDonalds McRibb in their handy, dandy GE Reconsumate 2000 while waiting for Dora the Explorer in Outer Space to come back on. Her sister is in fifth grade and knows more about the world than you did in 2015. World War II? That was over a hundred years ago. Seriously, that like Civil War times. Who doesn’t know all about the lemon wars of 2072? Or the AI Emancipation Proclamation? Or the day Elon Musk finally set foot on Mars? Heck, you don’t even have an i-Chip in your arm. Did you know the President is a chimera?
It doesn’t take long for you to fall out of step with reality and become hopelessly lost. The series Kids React makes this point repeatedly; life is ephemeral and what you consider classic is only momentary.
The real deal…
Besides, I wonder if what people really think about when they think of traveling back in time is more like traveling back to your own past, in your own body to alter some key life decision. Like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, most of us just want another shot at the big game, a chance to keep our mouth shut, one more throw of the dice. Playing “what if” is like dreaming of the lottery; it’s fun to think about when nothing is going right in your life, but it leaves you feeling a little bitter in the end. Why didn’t the coach put you in the big game? Having the answer to that question won’t bring meaning to what you’ve done since then. Didn’t win the lottery this time around? Neither did a billion other people. You’re in the majority.
You see, with a few exceptions my life is pretty good. A chance to screw it up is not one I’d like. Altering any of my previous actions could unravel this life. Perspective tells me to work with the reality I have rather than waste time ruminating over something that did not happen. It’s hard to practice, though.
Time travel is possible it turns out. It’s always moving forward. One day you will have made it to the future, but it’s on a one to one scale. But it turns out you can change the future. You have the upper hand since you know it’s going to happen. Just be there to greet it when it does.