You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you.
You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself.
What's in it?
The Truth About Time Travel
When it comes to time travel I adhere to some strict laws of logic and ethics. Well, ethics don't have all that much to do with the time travel laws since for me those laws are like unchanging laws of physics. The way I see it, you cannot change time--past, present, or future. Whatever happens or is going to happen is the way it is and nothing can change it.
This is what I hold against movies like Back to the Future and Looper. Since B2F is a comedy I can let that one pass. But even though I like Looper, it has broken the cardinal rule of time travel and therefore cannot be taken seriously. You can not come from the future to change something in the past so it will change a future outcome. Can't do it, it's against the laws of time physics. What's set in time cannot be changed. Anyone care to dispute that?
You can argue that there could be multiple alternate time dimensions with an infinite number of outcomes, but I find that theory somewhat difficult to accept. I suppose split time tracks could be possible, but I prefer the single time thread theory.
What's in the Box?
To establish the parameters of my Back from the Future fictional scenario, I will first presume that I will be very rich in ten years. If time transport were actually possible in ten years, it would more than likely be restrictive to most people other than the very wealthy or influential. Since I am not on track to become politically influential or powerful in any other ways of achievement, then wealth would be the way I would be able to get in on time transport.
How would I become hugely wealthy? In the box I would send a number of winning lotto combinations which I would play over the years in order to accumulate huge sums of money. I would also include some stock market outcomes and other finance information that I could use to make investments that would give me lucrative payouts. I would also send an assortment of popular candies just to treat myself with sweets of tomorrow.
This would all make sense since I would not be changing an outcome, but enabling what was going to happen. Everything that would happen between now and ten years from now would be totally logical, would adhere to the laws of time physics, and would be as it was meant to be with the appropriate outcome.
What do think? Is my time loop neatly constructed? Why would this not work--assuming that time transport were possible?
M Pax, Suze, and Nicki are hosting the Back From the
Future Blogfest on March 1. Visit their sites for the LInky
list so you can read what others wrote about.
Enabler!
ReplyDeleteOver-thinking it, Lee. Multiple timelines works best. No, it's not reality either, but it's science fiction. Have some fun with it.
Hmmmm. A very calculated box-load if I do say so myself. I'm ashamed I didn't think of it.
ReplyDelete~Just Jill
I love it! This is such an earthly adequate response to a completely imaginary question. Good thing I put down my coffee, or I might be cleaning up my screen right about now! Thanks so much, Lee and save me some candy, would ya?! :)
ReplyDeleteFun idea! I think I would also include future family pictures in my box to see "who joins the family" by then!! Oh, and the lotto numbers. Yes, the lotto numbers. ~Angela
ReplyDeleteI guess that works . . .I didn't even try for realism with this one, except I did dump out the coffee.
ReplyDeleteLotto tickets would be nice. :-)
Loosen up, Lee. We really don't know time travel, and what I read say we've imposed all these limitations ourselves. (string theory, alternate universes, etc)
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the super inventions being glommed on by those with the money. Good luck with the Lotto numbers!
I read a book about time travel in fiction and apparently it is generally accepted that a traveler to the past cannot change the continuum but s/he can affect it. In other words, what's past has passed. But it happened that way because the visitor has always been there.
ReplyDeleteThere's a delicious sting going on in this scenario. It seems on the face of it to be perfect, assuming time travel were possible, but on closer reflection something about the time/logic continuum doesn't quite add up! But I loved it.
ReplyDeleteI think that really when you watch a film about time travel you're already having to suspend your belief about it because obviously time travel isn't possible so for anything else to be unrealistic or whatever is okay with me. I doubt anybody's travelled back in time before so nobody knows what would really happen if you disrupted the past, it's all unrealistic and requires a suspension of believe so I say we just enjoy it and try not to think too much. I haven't seen Looper to judge it either man.
ReplyDeleteThat's well thought out, but any sort of technology can be 'pirated' or stolen.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you become a crook in the next ten years? :D
An excellent post Lee. very good items, a good idea for a blogfest.
ReplyDeleteYvonne/
Alex-- Not much thinking on this one at all. I go with what makes the most sense to me. Infinitely divergent time lines just don't seem very logical, but they can make for infinite stories.
ReplyDeleteJill -- It seems to make sense to me so far as time transport can make sense.
MJ-- Candy of the future? I wonder if it can be made better for us than it is now.
Angela -- The lotto numbers are the key to future wealth.
Tyrean -- Speaking of coffee I think I'd better dump the rest of mine. I'm over coffeed this morning.
DG -- There is so much that is seemingly illogical about time travel that I look for the possibility that seems most logical to me then it's easier to suspend disbelief.
Suze -- That's the most logical to view the concept I think. No matter how hard we try we can change events, but we can become a part of what happens.
Rosalind -- I think it makes since if you think of the events as a closed loop. What happens happens because you make it happen.
Yeamie --Actually I do believe that time transport is possible, but it does have to be governed by certain natural laws of physics. I find it hard to suspend disbelief when writers are going against those laws.
Mark -- By hook or crook. Whatever it takes I suppose, but I don't think I'll be going into politics so maybe crook is out of the question for me.
Lee
Well thought box and well argued single time thread theory.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to you to be utterly logical about this. Glad you could work it out to your satisfaction. I don't know about not being able to change the future. I guess I think most of us end up where we're supposed to be, but the paths we take there can vary.
ReplyDeleteVery nice. It seems you've sewn up the logic very neatly. Care to share some of the candy? :) Have a great weekend.
ReplyDeleteDude, I love the whole Lotto angle. I'm so on board with that too.
ReplyDeleteSounds logical enough. Love that you sent yourself some financial info!
ReplyDeleteNutschell
www.thewritingnut.com
Yvonne -- Hope you got a new ultramodern computer in your box.
ReplyDeleteAdriana -- Single strand is the best thing I can think of.
Nicki-- Time is fixed in my way of viewing it.
Mary -- Sure, you deserve some candy for co-hosting this fest.
Michael -- As they say, "Money is time" or is it "Time is money"? Either way you gotta have money.
Nutschell-- Now I hope that darn box shows up tomorrow. I could use it right now.
Lee
Aw, Lee...you're so logical. :-)
ReplyDeleteI would say that you changed the future with your lotto and stock stuff if it caused you to do something that you would not normally have done. If, without the box, you would not have done those things, only the tampering caused them to happen.
ReplyDeleteI think you haven't thought through the inclusion of special treats in the shoebox. Seriously, to taste something divine that you can't go to the store and refill... that is a tragedy of our times. I had a favorite candy in Australia, and that was bad enough. To have to wait years for your special candies, wrong move. Just saying. :)
ReplyDeleteI just Googled and found the candies I loved in Australia—yup, buying them right now. :)
If you don't believe you can change the time line, then sending yourself that box already happened.
ReplyDeleteLD --I know. I just can't help myself.
ReplyDeleteAndrew -- But the outcome was the result of being given the tools to create the outcome. The loop is a closed cycle within time where the result relates directly back to the event that created that result. No attempt was ever make to change time, but to fulfill what was meant to be.
Julie -- My fear is that in the future my favorite candies will not be as good as they are now just as many candies now are not as good as they used to be. I think the divine would be now and the future, whatever is still left of the candy industry, will have weird additives and such. I would just want to confirm this.
L.Diane -- That's right. The box was sent just as it always had been intended it would. There would be nothing I could do to change it and I would become wealthy in the future as intended. Nothing would have been changed, only fulfilled.
Lee
That's circular logic, the same as your loop, like defining a word with a word.
ReplyDeleteIf the event cannot happen without intervention from the future, time has been changed. Period. Maybe you can't see the change because of the loop, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
We can throw out our going back and killing our grandfathers, even if unknowingly, as Oedipus killed his father. We haven't discovered time travel. If our descendants do, we are the ones who will get killed and not beget their great-great grandparents. So, its their problem if they can't return to their future selves. Let them worry about it.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I love all time travel stories. It is a fictional world and so long as the writer stays within the bounds of the world they create I can suspend my belief and just have fun with the story. I love B2TF and Looper. I also liked Somewhere in Time, Kate & Leopold, and I am sure that there are others. My brain is just frozen. It would take me a long time to think of a really good list of items that I would send myself!!! But I love this idea:)
ReplyDeleteI love time travel movies whether logical or illogical. Putting financila stuff in your time travel box is very typical and not original. But I guess you can do whatever you want. Is there a Jaws 34 in the future?
ReplyDeleteI hope you will send back enough lottery numbers and stock information to share with your devoted readers Lee.
ReplyDeleteJO ON FOOD, MY TRAVELS AND A SCENT OF CHOCOLATE
Well Blogger or something did it again--all sorts of intricate responses left only to be eaten and disgorged into who knows where. So here are the short versions. Sorry, but I've got to go watch a time travel movie.
ReplyDeleteAndrew --Que sera sera.
Jack --- Welcome to blogging. I hope my descendants don't come back gunning for me.
Robin - I'm always game for any time travel film no matter the logic. It's a genre I love.
PTM -- Money is what makes sense.
Jo -- Gotta keep a low profile so as not to call to much attention to my scam--er, I mean, scheme.
Lee
Interesting chicken-and-egg loop. You're presuming a need for wealth in order to send something back from the future, but in order to get wealthy, you'd first have to send back that financial info so you can capitalize on it. Neat!
ReplyDeleteSusan -- Works for me due to a progression that doesn't change history but drives it and creates the outcome.
ReplyDeleteLee
Maybe you should change the name to Back From The Futures! I also like your ideas about the lottery tickets, and favorite candies.
ReplyDeleteJulie
You're over thinking this Lee, lol. But I kinda knew you would. I expected you to be the next Rush Limbaugh in your future :)
ReplyDeleteI had winning lotto numbers in my future-past too. The only way to win that set up. But, I did wonder myself about paradox in sending the winning numbers to myself. You see, I agree with you on the whole future looping thing. I haven't got that settled to my satisfaction. But, it is just playing around, so I told myself no harm in dreaming, right?
......dhole
Well now.
ReplyDeleteThat was...
Um...
Very well thought out.
Yes, very well thought out.
Yet another interesting and well thought out piece from the kit of Arlee,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this info,
Phil @ Philipscom
An ambassador to A to Z Challenge @ Tina's Life is Good
And My My Bio-blog
I too believe time travel to be impossible...but supposing...and using your box...aren't you changing the future by using the numbers and winning money that someone else would have? Maybe even the person who uses that money to invent a time machine! Also, if you send yourself lotto numbers, etc. Won't hundreds of others be doing the same? Won't that dilute the pool of funds, split the winning up among hundreds and making you all comfortably middle class, not rich? Won't we all just be in the same position as we are now? Just trying to use all the new technology to think of some great inventive entrepreneurial idea that no one else has come up with yet?
ReplyDeleteTime may be fluid as in "time stream". Not that one time tributary would end but that another would be created. Time travel may consist of traveling that stream, its currents ever changing. But that's just me. :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd future numbers of the Lotto are chief in my dreams of time travel, too! LOL.
The Time Cops will come after you to make sure your plan doesn't work.
ReplyDeletehttp://joycelansky.blogspot.com/2013/03/back-from-future.html
Julie -- Yeah, me and my weakness for candy.
ReplyDeleteDonna -- It's all speculation and you can never over-think speculation the way I see it.
Angela -- Thank you. Now if I can apply this same thinking effort to something that really matters.
PV -- Thanks! Now if only I could put it to the test to see if it works.
Ron -- That scenario could happen, but it's all a silly dream anyway, isn't it?
Roland -- I think about money coming my way a lot lately. It doesn't matter what lottery it comes from or what stream I'm floating in.
Joyce -- Coincidentally I watched Time Cop last night. Loved it! They broke all of my time travel rules, but the film was great fun.
Lee
Loving the pragmatism! I am infinitely sensible about things like getting the washing dry, but a complete fantasist about the time space continuum :-)
ReplyDeleteGoing forward in time is fairly easy. Going backwards is not. We already have to deal with going forward at different rates on a daily basis. Look up how the GPS satellites work and how we have to correct them for time dilation.
ReplyDeleteVelocity creates time travel as well. The Twin Paradox is an interesting read, and it also gives an easy factual way for people to travel interstellar space without need for warp drives or sleep skips. Go fast enough and time slows down to where it really does just take a week to get there. Of course everyone else grows old waiting for you to arrive...
However it's all about the "what if" when it comes to time travel. What if I go back and do something different. It's a fantasy that everyone can relate to. What if I kissed the girl. What if I turned left instead of right. What if I kill my grandfather or Hitler.
Your circular logic made me smile, Lee. Interesting, though, that wealth makes it all go round.
ReplyDeleteYeah that bothered me when I watched "Looper," too. A lot. I explored time travel in my novella Litria. It was fun.
ReplyDeleteLily -- I like things to be as simple as I can make them. I'm lazy.
ReplyDeleteSBJ -- I'd rather go into the past since I'm already going into the future. I'd just like to know what things were really like. Even the things in my childhood and younger days. I want to know if my memory is really right.
Kittie -- Life is filled with circular logic.
Jolie -- Time Cop was even worse in it's logic, but I love that movie.
Lee
The candy shows time travel hasn't changed you that much :P
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be great if that could happen? There is one problem I see: if you could do it, so could others. And who wouldn't want to? So, before long, the lottery would run out of money, someone would figure out how to close this "loophole," and it would all be over. I guess you'd want to be one of the first to get rich this way!
ReplyDeleteThat's messing with my head! That's a good way to get rich, though!
ReplyDelete