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Time Travel Lecture
5 July 2010 16:21“The only thing time travel has ever been useful for is petty larceny”, Professor Peterson said from the front of the Temporal Studies lecture hall. “Except for the case of David Macker. Mr. Macker took theft to a new level. Some of you know what I’m talking about.”
Laughter rippled throughout the rooms as students from Universe Alpha One Prime chuckled at the other student’s ignorance. ‘High marks don’t buy you a past’, as the saying goes. As smart as the other students were, their universes were still locked into stable timelines with fixed viewpoints. Universe Alpha One Prime was by definition unanchored, as were the sixty-eight copies of it swirling around the probability sphere at the center of the galaxy. A shifting layer of probability built on a man-made temporal fault left over from the wars. The students from Prime had a disturbing way of changing appearances, changing names, and, worst of all, winking out of existence and having ‘never been’. Students from other universes noticed this but students from Prime didn’t. It creeped the other students out.
“Macker was one of the proto-temponauts. He constructed the first needle and found the energy equation necessary to skip that needle across the face of a time like a hard disk or an old-school record. At first decades and then centuries.” The Professor continued. “He looked up declassified scandals from centuries gone past and used that information to blackmail governments from old pre-split Earth, unaware that his own travels were causing more splits.”
The Zapruder film popped up on the screen in front of the classroom, instantly mirrored in the eyes of the students as they looked at Kennedy’s head snap back and the left, back and to the left, back and to the left.
“Macker took the declassified materials that outlined the entire setup and then went back two hundred years to the administration responsible and showed them the proof. They believed him. He had a shield in place so they couldn’t kill him. All he asked was that they put small amounts of money into bank accounts that Macker knew would still exist in our time. By the time he skated further down that timeline, compound interest had given him more wealth that anyone alive at the time. Then he’d come back here.”
Shots of planet Macker lit up the screen. The Alpha students weren’t laughing anymore. That level of carnage was sobering.
“The problem with his scheme is that is creates a paper trail. He was caught but the siege on his newly acquired populated solar system is still the costliest war ever fought in terms of loss of life.”
Amateur telescope footage came up. Dots of light flared and went out in a corner of the sky.
“Time travel theory is complex. The idea that Macker was repugnant and evil isn’t being debated. His crime worked. You can’t bring a loved one back to life or change the course of a marriage but currency and non-living minerals can shift from timeline to timeline.”
The students were left alone with this knowledge.
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Laughter rippled throughout the rooms as students from Universe Alpha One Prime chuckled at the other student’s ignorance. ‘High marks don’t buy you a past’, as the saying goes. As smart as the other students were, their universes were still locked into stable timelines with fixed viewpoints. Universe Alpha One Prime was by definition unanchored, as were the sixty-eight copies of it swirling around the probability sphere at the center of the galaxy. A shifting layer of probability built on a man-made temporal fault left over from the wars. The students from Prime had a disturbing way of changing appearances, changing names, and, worst of all, winking out of existence and having ‘never been’. Students from other universes noticed this but students from Prime didn’t. It creeped the other students out.
“Macker was one of the proto-temponauts. He constructed the first needle and found the energy equation necessary to skip that needle across the face of a time like a hard disk or an old-school record. At first decades and then centuries.” The Professor continued. “He looked up declassified scandals from centuries gone past and used that information to blackmail governments from old pre-split Earth, unaware that his own travels were causing more splits.”
The Zapruder film popped up on the screen in front of the classroom, instantly mirrored in the eyes of the students as they looked at Kennedy’s head snap back and the left, back and to the left, back and to the left.
“Macker took the declassified materials that outlined the entire setup and then went back two hundred years to the administration responsible and showed them the proof. They believed him. He had a shield in place so they couldn’t kill him. All he asked was that they put small amounts of money into bank accounts that Macker knew would still exist in our time. By the time he skated further down that timeline, compound interest had given him more wealth that anyone alive at the time. Then he’d come back here.”
Shots of planet Macker lit up the screen. The Alpha students weren’t laughing anymore. That level of carnage was sobering.
“The problem with his scheme is that is creates a paper trail. He was caught but the siege on his newly acquired populated solar system is still the costliest war ever fought in terms of loss of life.”
Amateur telescope footage came up. Dots of light flared and went out in a corner of the sky.
“Time travel theory is complex. The idea that Macker was repugnant and evil isn’t being debated. His crime worked. You can’t bring a loved one back to life or change the course of a marriage but currency and non-living minerals can shift from timeline to timeline.”
The students were left alone with this knowledge.
tags