A time travel story

And then it was the next morning.  The Morning. 

The time machine was finally, really, actually ready.  I’d gotten all the calculations right, and I knew exactly what I was doing.  I’d also seen more than enough time travel movies to know that I needed to start small, go incrementally, so I decided to start with a twenty-four-hour trip into the past.  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed the button.

 

Everything would be ready tomorrow.  It was ready now, but I wanted a day to inventory everything again just to be sure.  I had to be sure.

I decided to take myself out for a celebratory dinner.  This was going to work.  Not only had I cracked the relativistic problems of travel into the future, but I’d figured out how to break physics itself to go back in time.  It shouldn’t be possible at all, despite what all the movies said.  Time only works in one direction, and human beings aren’t like salmon that can swim against the current.  

That was a weird metaphor, but kind of apt. 

But there was someone else who needed to share this victory with me.  My old professor, Dr. Johnson, had helped me conceptualize the warp matrix that formed the key to the machine.  She deserved half of the credit, if not more, for this achievement.  I called her up. 

“Jack?  What’s up?” Her bright voice streamed out of my phone. 

“Dr. Johnson, I’d like to take you out to dinner,” I said.

“You would?  Does that mean…”

“Yes.  I’ve cracked it.  Well, we’ve cracked it.  Tomorrow, I will break the time barrier.”  I knew how I sounded. I didn’t care.

“Damn.  Alright, I will allow you to buy me dinner,” said Dr. Johnson.  “Meet me in an hour at Stavro’s.”

“Stavro’s, eh?  Alrighty then.”  What was money to me now?  I was Biff Tannen with a sports almanac.  I could make time my bitch. 

I picked out a stylish outfit and looked at myself in the mirror in my bathroom.  Dark circles under my eyes, but that was natural – I’d been working on this nonstop for months, and sleep was, to put it mildly, a secondary concern.  I was exhausted and jittery with adrenaline, teetering on the edge of the kind of madness that comes from a severe lack of REM sleep, but I knew enough not to step over that edge. 

Stavro’s was a swanky Greek place uptown with white clad waiters and a long waitlist.  But they also had a bar, and there were two seats there that I quickly claimed. 

“Vodka soda,” I said to the bartender, who nodded and began pouring from the well.  “No,” I decided, “make it top shelf, and forget the soda.  Just a very, very dry martini.”  The bartender furrowed a brow but nodded again, and set about making my very dry martini. 

Dr. Johnson arrived a few minutes later, and I stood to greet her.

“Sitting at the bar?” she asked, an eyebrow arched.

“You want to wait two hours for a table?”

“Good point.  Whiskey, light ice.”  She named a brand I hadn’t heard of, but I wasn’t much of a whiskey guy.  The bartender nodded at her.  He set my martini in front of me – basically a large glass of cold vodka – and began pouring Dr. Johnson’s whiskey.

“Can we see a food menu?” I asked the bartender.  He pointed to a QR code on a placard set on the bar.  Dr. Johnson and I each scanned it with our phones.  We set about the business of ordering heaps of grape leaves, souvlaki, spanakopita, and other Greek delicacies. 

“So.  You cracked it, did you?”

“Yeah, I did.  The key was in reimagining the warp matrix as a four-dimensional cube.  A tesseract.  The navigational systems allow the traveler to map a point on the tesseract – basically, a time coordinate – and travel there.” 

“Told you,” she said.  She had, kind of. 

“Yeah, you did.”  She could have this. 

I toasted her with my martini and she clinked my glass. 

“So what’s your first destination?” she asked.

“Basically, now.  In fact, I should…hah, I should look for myself.”  I cracked a wry grin and looked around the restaurant, but I already knew that if I succeeded, I would assiduously avoid any contact with myself for fear of creating a paradox.

“Good, taking it slow and steady at first,” said Dr. Johnson. 

“So what’s your bet?  Predestination paradox, time loop, alternate realities, or butterfly effect?”

Dr. Johnson took a sip of her drink and furrowed a brow.  “My vote is on time loop.  If time travel is possible, then someone is bound to have invented it.  If that’s you, then whatever changes you have made to the timeline are probably already baked in.  Of course, there’s definitely the possibility of creating parallel realities, but…I just see that as much less likely.” 

“So I’m Kyle Reese then?”

“Something like that,” she said.  “Although that’s more of a predestination paradox.  I’m sure at some point you’ll go back in time and try to kill Hitler, but for whatever reason you won’t succeed, because you didn’t.” 

“Because I didn’t.”  I repeated, and took a sip of my drink.

“Exactly.  You did something, you are doing something, and you will do things in the future.  Traveling to the past doesn’t change the when of when things happened.”

“So no butterflies?”

Dr. Johnson shook her head.  “If the invention of time travel is inevitable, and there were such a thing as a butterfly effect, then reality would be constantly in flux.  Now, as people caught up in the changes, we may not notice it, but I don’t think physics allows for such radical and ongoing chaos.”

It was so easy talking to Dr. Johnson.  She was just so damn smart. 

“What about the Primer theory?”

“What, that you’re basically creating a clone factory, sending multiple copies of yourself into the past?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I finished my drink and waved at the bartender for another.  He nodded.

“I don’t buy it.  There’s something about the law of conservation of matter.  You can’t make multiple copies of a person, because that’s creating matter.  It’s like the transporter problem in Star Trek.  It shouldn’t have been possible to create a Thomas Riker, because the transporter should only have had enough matter for one Will Riker.”

“But it’s not that I’d be making multiple copies of myself – just the same me at different points in my own timeline.”

“Still don’t buy it,” she said.  “I think there’s one of you, and that’s the case wherever you are in time.”

I thought about this for a minute.  “But that would mean that if I travel back in time, I’ll just sort of be rewinding my own memories, as it were.  I’d go back to, say, now, and relive this conversation just as it occurred.”

“Maybe,” she said, and shrugged.  “You’ll find out tomorrow.”

And the evening progressed thusly, with the two of us pontificating excitedly about theories of time and the complexities of temporal physics, and eating copious amounts of delicious Greek food washed down with too much alcohol.  I collapsed into my bed with a spinning head and a mind racing a million miles per hour. 

And then it was the next morning.  The Morning. 

The time machine was finally, really, actually ready.  I’d gotten all the calculations right, and I knew exactly what I was doing.  I’d also seen more than enough time travel movies to know that I needed to start small, go incrementally, so I decided to start with a twenty four hour trip into the past.  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed the button.

 

Everything would be ready tomorrow.  It was ready now, but I wanted a day to inventory everything again just to be sure.  I had to be sure.

I decided to take myself out for a celebratory dinner.  This was going to work.  Not only had I cracked the relativistic problems of travel into the future, but I’d figured out how to break physics itself to go back in time.  It shouldn’t be possible at all, despite what all the movies said.  Time only works in one direction, and human beings aren’t like salmon that can swim against the current. 

That was a weird metaphor, but kind of apt. 

But there was someone else who needed to share this victory with me.  My old professor, Dr. Johnson, had helped me conceptualize the warp matrix that formed the key to the machine.  She deserved half of the credit, if not more, for this achievement.  I called her up. 

“Jack?  What’s up?” Her bright voice streamed out of my phone. 

“Dr. Johnson, I’d like to take you out to dinner,” I said.

“You would?  Does that mean…”

“Yes.  I’ve cracked it.  Well, we’ve cracked it.  Tomorrow, I will break the time barrier.”  I knew how I sounded. I didn’t care.

“Damn.  Alright, I will allow you to buy me dinner,” said Dr. Johnson.  “Meet me in an hour at Stavro’s.”

“Stavro’s, eh?  Alrighty then.”  What was money to me now?  I was Biff Tannen with a sports almanac.  I could make time my bitch. 

I picked out a stylish outfit and looked at myself in the mirror in my bathroom.  Dark circles under my eyes, but that was natural – I’d been working on this nonstop for months, and sleep was, to put it mildly, a secondary concern.  I was exhausted and jittery with adrenaline, teetering on the edge of the kind of madness that comes from a severe lack of REM sleep, but I knew enough not to step over that edge. 

Stavro’s was a swanky Greek place uptown with white clad waiters and a long waitlist.  But they also had a bar, and there were two seats there that I quickly claimed. 

“Vodka soda,” I said to the bartender, who nodded and began pouring from the well.  “No,” I decided, “make it top shelf, and forget the soda.  Just a very, very dry martini.”  The bartender furrowed a brow but nodded again, and set about making my very dry martini. 

Dr. Johnson arrived a few minutes later, and I stood to greet her.

“Sitting at the bar?” she asked, an eyebrow arched.

“You want to wait two hours for a table?”

“Good point.  Whiskey, light ice.”  She named a brand I hadn’t heard of, but I wasn’t much of a whiskey guy.  The bartender nodded at her.  He set my martini in front of me – basically a large glass of cold vodka – and began pouring Dr. Johnson’s whiskey.

“Can we see a food menu?” I asked the bartender.  He pointed to a QR code on a placard set on the bar.  Dr. Johnson and I each scanned it with our phones.  We set about the business of ordering heaps of grape leaves, souvlaki, spanakopita, and other Greek delicacies. 

“So.  You cracked it, did you?”

“Yeah, I did.  The key was in reimagining the warp matrix as a four-dimensional cube.  A tesseract.  The navigational systems allow the traveler to map a point on the tesseract – basically, a time coordinate – and travel there.” 

“Told you,” she said.  She had, kind of. 

“Yeah, you did.”  She could have this. 

I toasted her with my martini and she clinked my glass. 

“So what’s your first destination?” she asked.

“Basically, now.  In fact, I should…hah, I should look for myself.”  I cracked a wry grin and looked around the restaurant, but I already knew that if I succeeded, I would assiduously avoid any contact with myself for fear of creating a paradox.

“Good, taking it slow and steady at first,” said Dr. Johnson. 

“So what’s your bet?  Predestination paradox, time loop, alternate realities, or butterfly effect?”

Dr. Johnson took a sip of her drink and furrowed a brow.  “My vote is on time loop.  If time travel is possible, then someone is bound to have invented it.  If that’s you, then whatever changes you have made to the timeline are probably already baked in.  Of course, there’s definitely the possibility of creating parallel realities, but…I just see that as much less likely.” 

“So I’m Kyle Reese then?”

“Something like that,” she said.  “Although that’s more of a predestination paradox.  I’m sure at some point you’ll go back in time and try to kill Hitler, but for whatever reason you won’t succeed, because you didn’t.” 

“Because I didn’t.”  I repeated, and took a sip of my drink.

“Exactly.  You did something, you are doing something, and you will do things in the future.  Traveling to the past doesn’t change the when of when things happened.”

“So no butterflies?”

Dr. Johnson shook her head.  “If the invention of time travel is inevitable, and there were such a thing as a butterfly effect, then reality would be constantly in flux.  Now, as people caught up in the changes, we may not notice it, but I don’t think physics allows for such radical and ongoing chaos.”

It was so easy talking to Dr. Johnson.  She was just so damn smart. 

“What about the Primer theory?”

“What, that you’re basically creating a clone factory, sending multiple copies of yourself into the past?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I finished my drink and waved at the bartender for another.  He nodded.

“I don’t buy it.  There’s something about the law of conservation of matter.  You can’t make multiple copies of a person, because that’s creating matter.  It’s like the transporter problem in Star Trek.  It shouldn’t have been possible to create a Thomas Riker, because the transporter should only have had enough matter for one Will Riker.”

“But it’s not that I’d be making multiple copies of myself – just the same me at different points in my own timeline.”

“Still don’t buy it,” she said.  “I think there’s one of you, and that’s the case wherever you are in time.”

I thought about this for a minute.  “But that would mean that if I travel back in time, I’ll just sort of be rewinding my own memories, as it were.  I’d go back to, say, now, and relive this conversation just as it occurred.”

“Maybe,” she said, and shrugged.  “You’ll find out tomorrow.”

And the evening progressed thusly, with the two of us pontificating excitedly about theories of time and the complexities of temporal physics, and eating copious amounts of delicious Greek food washed down with too much alcohol.  I collapsed into my bed with a spinning head and a mind racing a million miles per hour. 

And then it was the next morning.  The Morning. 

The time machine was finally, really, actually ready.  I’d gotten all the calculations right, and I knew exactly what I was doing.  I’d also seen more than enough time travel movies to know that I needed to start small, go incrementally, so I decided to start with a twenty-four-hour trip into the past.  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed the button.

 

Everything would be ready tomorrow.  It was ready now, but I wanted a day to inventory everything again just to be sure.  I had to be sure.

I decided to take myself out for a celebratory dinner.  This was going to work.  Not only had I cracked the relativistic problems of travel into the future, but I’d figured out how to break physics itself to go back in time.  It shouldn’t be possible at all, despite what all the movies said.  Time only works in one direction, and human beings aren’t like salmon that can swim against the current. 

That was a weird metaphor, but kind of apt. 

But there was someone else who needed to share this victory with me.  My old professor, Dr. Johnson, had helped me conceptualize the warp matrix that formed the key to the machine.  She deserved half of the credit, if not more, for this achievement.  I called her up. 

“Jack?  What’s up?” Her bright voice streamed out of my phone. 

“Dr. Johnson, I’d like to take you out to dinner,” I said.

“You would?  Does that mean…”

“Yes.  I’ve cracked it.  Well, we’ve cracked it.  Tomorrow, I will break the time barrier.”  I knew how I sounded. I didn’t care.

“Damn.  Alright, I will allow you to buy me dinner,” said Dr. Johnson.  “Meet me in an hour at Stavro’s.”

“Stavro’s, eh?  Alrighty then.”  What was money to me now?  I was Biff Tannen with a sports almanac.  I could make time my bitch. 

I picked out a stylish outfit and looked at myself in the mirror in my bathroom.  Dark circles under my eyes, but that was natural – I’d been working on this nonstop for months, and sleep was, to put it mildly, a secondary concern.  I was exhausted and jittery with adrenaline, teetering on the edge of the kind of madness that comes from a severe lack of REM sleep, but I knew enough not to step over that edge. 

Stavro’s was a swanky Greek place uptown with white clad waiters and a long waitlist.  But they also had a bar, and there were two seats there that I quickly claimed. 

“Vodka soda,” I said to the bartender, who nodded and began pouring from the well.  “No,” I decided, “make it top shelf, and forget the soda.  Just a very, very dry martini.”  The bartender furrowed a brow but nodded again, and set about making my very dry martini. 

Dr. Johnson arrived a few minutes later, and I stood to greet her.

“Sitting at the bar?” she asked, an eyebrow arched.

“You want to wait two hours for a table?”

“Good point.  Whiskey, light ice.”  She named a brand I hadn’t heard of, but I wasn’t much of a whiskey guy.  The bartender nodded at her.  He set my martini in front of me – basically a large glass of cold vodka – and began pouring Dr. Johnson’s whiskey.

“Can we see a food menu?” I asked the bartender.  He pointed to a QR code on a placard set on the bar.  Dr. Johnson and I each scanned it with our phones.  We set about the business of ordering heaps of grape leaves, souvlaki, spanakopita, and other Greek delicacies. 

“So.  You cracked it, did you?”

“Yeah, I did.  The key was in reimagining the warp matrix as a four-dimensional cube.  A tesseract.  The navigational systems allow the traveler to map a point on the tesseract – basically, a time coordinate – and travel there.” 

“Told you,” she said.  She had, kind of. 

“Yeah, you did.”  She could have this. 

I toasted her with my martini and she clinked my glass. 

“So what’s your first destination?” she asked.

“Basically, now.  In fact, I should…hah, I should look for myself.”  I cracked a wry grin and looked around the restaurant, but I already knew that if I succeeded, I would assiduously avoid any contact with myself for fear of creating a paradox.

“Good, taking it slow and steady at first,” said Dr. Johnson. 

“So what’s your bet?  Predestination paradox, time loop, alternate realities, or butterfly effect?”

Dr. Johnson took a sip of her drink and furrowed a brow.  “My vote is on time loop.  If time travel is possible, then someone is bound to have invented it.  If that’s you, then whatever changes you have made to the timeline are probably already baked in.  Of course, there’s definitely the possibility of creating parallel realities, but…I just see that as much less likely.” 

“So I’m Kyle Reese then?”

“Something like that,” she said.  “Although that’s more of a predestination paradox.  I’m sure at some point you’ll go back in time and try to kill Hitler, but for whatever reason you won’t succeed, because you didn’t.” 

“Because I didn’t.”  I repeated, and took a sip of my drink.

“Exactly.  You did something, you are doing something, and you will do things in the future.  Traveling to the past doesn’t change the when of when things happened.”

“So no butterflies?”

Dr. Johnson shook her head.  “If the invention of time travel is inevitable, and there were such a thing as a butterfly effect, then reality would be constantly in flux.  Now, as people caught up in the changes, we may not notice it, but I don’t think physics allows for such radical and ongoing chaos.”

It was so easy talking to Dr. Johnson.  She was just so damn smart. 

“What about the Primer theory?”

“What, that you’re basically creating a clone factory, sending multiple copies of yourself into the past?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I finished my drink and waved at the bartender for another.  He nodded.

“I don’t buy it.  There’s something about the law of conservation of matter.  You can’t make multiple copies of a person, because that’s creating matter.  It’s like the transporter problem in Star Trek.  It shouldn’t have been possible to create a Thomas Riker, because the transporter should only have had enough matter for one Will Riker.”

“But it’s not that I’d be making multiple copies of myself – just the same me at different points in my own timeline.”

“Still don’t buy it,” she said.  “I think there’s one of you, and that’s the case wherever you are in time.”

I thought about this for a minute.  “But that would mean that if I travel back in time, I’ll just sort of be rewinding my own memories, as it were.  I’d go back to, say, now, and relive this conversation just as it occurred.”

“Maybe,” she said, and shrugged.  “You’ll find out tomorrow.”

And the evening progressed thusly, with the two of us pontificating excitedly about theories of time and the complexities of temporal physics, and eating copious amounts of delicious Greek food washed down with too much alcohol.  I collapsed into my bed with a spinning head and a mind racing a million miles per hour. 

And then it was the next morning.  The Morning. 

The time machine was finally, really, actually ready.  I’d gotten all the calculations right, and I knew exactly what I was doing.  I’d also seen more than enough time travel movies to know that I needed to start small, go incrementally, so I decided to start with a twenty four hour trip into the past.  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed the button.