The Paranoid Time Traveler and How It All Worked Out in the End

This post is my contribution to the "Smiley Sociology Study" happening on my friend Rachel Hoyt's blog as we speak! You can visit it at this address:

http://rhymemeasmile.blogspot.com/2011/02/smiley-sociology-study-3-time-travel.html

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So there is that song that says, “I had a million dollars but I spent it all…” I do not really care for the song, but I figured that describes my experience with time travel. You see, I did have a million dollars, but I spent it for a chance to travel back in time to any date of my choosing. It was a one shot deal. Since I am a historian, I had a lot of eras I wanted to visit so I poured a lot of consideration into my choice.

Initially I was drawn to ancient times, way back on the edge of human history when the lines of the known and the speculated become pretty blurry. I reasoned that it would be a huge boost to my career to spend some time as a tourist, then hurry back here to deliver stunning works of academia on little known subjects. But then I thought it through. The chances some guy would split me in half with a sword seemed pretty likely, my sword skills not being what they used to be and their fascination with the subject and all. Then diseases, natural hazards, and the immense amount of work just to keep from starving entered into the equation and I remembered that the average life expectancy was only about 28 years old. So it might have even been a big joke on me. You know, showing up and having them say, “Surprise” you are 45 years old, so in this era you’ve been dead for 17 years. That just didn’t seem like it would be worth a million bucks. All that for a few books seventeen people might thumb through.

As I scrolled forward through time, a lot of the same worries kept resurfacing. I saw myself popping into the middle ages just in time to catch the plague. Or maybe I was burning at the stake for spilling the beans on the whole geocentric vs. heliocentric debate just a little too soon for the church’s tastes. After a while, I thought that maybe I was being selfish and instead of thinking about what was in it for me; I should instead try to do some good for all of mankind.

So of course this led me to think about going all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Yes, to the very cusp of creation, arriving just in time to slap that apple out of Eve’s hand and bash the serpent in the head with a large lump of rock. That thought started to appeal to me, because, with my work done, I would have of course been hanging out in a perfect paradise. But then doubts started in.

What if all went as planned, but then some sort of weird sexual tension ensued between Adam, Eve, and me? I know it sounds unlikely, since you have two perfect beings and then me, somewhere on the scale below perfect. But what if Adam was just not a very reasonable guy or Eve liked to walk on the wild side; like she had already demonstrated with that whole apple and snake episode? Now I am faced with either getting my butt kicked by a twelve-foot tall superman, or having all of humanity blaming me for whatever happened next. Then of course there are issues of religious theology. What if I asked them to set the time machine for the point of creation and arrived in deep space just in time for a front row seat to the big bang? After thinking it through, I lost my zeal for the idea.

Maybe I could not help all of humankind, but what of some? What if I showed up in the Americas in 1490? I could travel up and down the coastal regions saying, “Look, some guys are going to show up here in a couple of years. Trust me when I tell you that as soon as you see them, set them on fire!” “Do not hesitate for a second, just do it, you will thank me later…” Of course nobody would have understood a word I was saying so it probably would not have turned out very well for any of us.

So now I had a full blown phobia about time travel. No matter how great I thought an idea was at first, cracks immediately appeared. I began to be terrified that I would be hurling through the space/time continuum when I suddenly remembered, “Wait, I do not even know what Da Vinci looks like, what if I give these airplane plans to some random idiot?” I imagined showing up in 1950s America, ready to soak up the golden age without the fear of nuclear annihilation that was on everybody else’s mind. Then I would have found out that there was no Mayberry, or that main street America never was, father never knew best, and that it was impossible for me not to notice all those “other” people who do not seem to be enjoying the times as much as a few folks were. That and let’s face it, “The Fonze” would have just been annoying after a while.

So in the end, I just ended up going back to 1974 with a bag of cash and investing it all in some dude building a strange contraption in his garage. While I was there, I soaked up some of the 1970s flavor that I was unable to do the first time around when I was only 9 years old. You know, caught a few incredible concerts, rolled down endless roads with a few crazy dudes on bikes, and generally just stayed mellow. When my visit was over, I was sucked back to the present, none the worse for wear. As for how it all worked out? How do you think I had a million bucks to blow on some time junket that never even left my own lifetime? That guy’s contraption ended up being the start of the whole technology boom that led to my ability to write this post.