The Discovery of Time Travel

Meet Jaco; he's a fairlyr average guy from the 25th century, here to explain how humans developed time travel.

The future, at least from the past’s point of view, is a lot different than many people would have expected. At first that may seem like an obvious sentiment; however, it only requires a brief history lesson to see what I really mean by that.

From where you stand, reading this, you can probably observe that much of the educated world believes that a serious change in how resources are used must occur. The fate of Earth, so far, could go two ways. The changes could be made and the human race could go on to prosper " or, the efforts of civilization could fall short and humanity could collapse. Well, that’s just what happened. Two sides to one story; both played out on their own stage.

You see, humanity thought that the events of the past were the only truth. What happened is what happened and there was nothing you could do about it. And that was true. Was true. Now it’s not.

Actually, it hasn’t been true for quite some time " almost two centuries, now.

Basically, time travel has been something humans were a bit obsessed over since " well, probably since we had a concept of time. Once sustainable production resources were discovered and able to be harvested from Mars and the asteroid belt we began to enjoy expansion the likes of which was never known.

Respected physicists began working on the element of time. Relative, as Einstein labeled it, was the key word. The question was being asked: Is time relative enough to be manipulated? Indeed it was. In fact, once funding and supplies were out of the picture, the solution came quite simply. The technology is dependent on a few aspects of physics which haven’t quite been theorized in your time but make two very, very important things possible. Those things are deep space travel and, most importantly, time travel.

Now, don’t get me wrong; time travel with ease wasn’t something that happened literally overnight. In fact, the first timeship was massive and actually involved a smaller craft passing through it. So they built it in space, between the orbits of Earth and Mars, just to be safe. They sent a small crew back fifty years, only to realize when they didn’t return a year later that the timeship could not recall the travelers. The time-travel device must remain with the time travelers " or at least be accessible.

So a second mission was made, this time sending the travelers back to a time after the completion of the timeship but before the first effort was made. The idea was to send two men back in time to warn of the dangers of traveling without a way to return, yet allowing the second mission a way to return. The second mission failed to return.

In retrospect, the answer was quite obvious; hindsight is always 20/20. If the second mission was a success, then the first mission would never have happened as it did, thus eliminating the need for the second mission to relay the message it did. If that particular message was never sent, the first mission would have continued as originally intended which brings us right back where we started.

So where did we send those first two missions? Did they even go to the past or were they incinerated upon entering the vortex? As it turns out, simply traveling through time changes it. It doesn’t change the time the traveler came from, however; it creates an entirely new timeline. Each timeline has its own unique signature. Figuring out that signature turned out to be incredibly hard. You see, it’s entirely possible for someone to go back in time to observe exactly how Stonehenge was build (and by whom) and then return to their home time and report their findings. And that’s exactly what happened.

Within seventy-five years of the first mission schoolchildren were watching videos filmed by time-traveling historians of Qin Shi Huang ordering the construction of The Great Wall. We knew everything about everything and no one was spared the knowledge of it. Time travel became a resource which was founded by scientists and historians who wanted to world to become a better place because of it.

The technology was so unexpectedly simple, cheap and effective that handheld devices soon became available to institutions with enough desire. The name “timeship” stuck, despite the needlessness of an actual ship. It wasn’t a perfect device " not safe for a school field trip " but quickly became a popular commercial enterprise. It wasn’t rare for wealthy or devoted individuals to take a trip back to witness their favorite moments of history. By the 150^th anniversary of time travel the average civilian could purchase a short getaway trip to the mostly uninhabited pre-colonial Americas, to dine with their favorite world leader or even to see a loved one, one last time.

Sure, some people went back in time to prevent " maybe even to cause " harm or disaster. No one cared; it didn’t change anything from where we stood. Sometimes they would come back, report how much better the world is since they killed so-and-so and then leave again to enjoy the future they created. It wasn’t uncommon to meet timestampers, either. Timestampers were men and women who worked for timeship vacation agencies in picking out ideal times and locations for possible vacationing markets.

Specialty vacations were an very popular item; hike the Appalachian Trail before it was established; board Columbus’ ships bound for the Americas; fight in the revolution of your choice; watch a gladiator match in the Coliseum; see the first performance of a Shakespeare play or witness Elizabeth I crowned Queen of England.

Soon it became apparent that one could seek pasts already different than our own. Instead of going back in our own history, why not explore a different one? What if America lost its revolution? What would the world be like if Hitler was never born; if he never lost the war? What if you had asked her out in sixth grade? Or, as my friend, Matt, was more interested in, if society didn’t turn itself around in time to save the planet? These became specialty vacations as well. For the right price, you could explore any “what if” you wanted.

And that’s exactly what we did. We saved our money, got ourselves into tip-top shape and took countless self-defense classes as recommended by the brochure. “Protection starts with yourself” it proclaimed, followed immediately by a lot of subtext we had to squint to read. We spent a year getting ready for the trip only a psychotic idiot would enjoy and then made the commitment. We signed our names on the contracts absolving the timeship vacation agency from any responsibility for our well-being.

What we were told to prepare for in the six months before we left was this: cannibals, violent and disease-carrying wild animals, violent and disease-carrying humans, hunger, thirst, soreness, lots of walking, running and maybe even some crawling. We were told that what we might see, hear and more likely smell could be disturbing, disgusting and frightening. We were told to educate ourselves in as many survival methods as possible " we were even recommended books written for the particular trip we were going on.

Our group was small; one experienced guide who was ironically the author of one of the books we read; a trainee guide on his third trip; Shawn and Shannon, husband and wife; a guy who told everyone to call him Skiff, his real name was Ash Merloe; my friend, Matt Croe; and me, Jaco Rudd.

And once it was time, we arrived at the timeship agency’s office to meet our guides and be on our way.

Reviews

[Political Punk ~~ CBD]

wow amazing... can't wait to read the rest.

[Katie]

This chapter almost has the feel of a history class. Albiet a very interesting History class. You have a very interesting concept here. I look forward to seeing the rest of it.