Taking the time machine for a spin.

[seanan_mcguire]

Pop quiz time! Aliens (or mad scientists, or whatever) appear before you with a time machine, and tell you that you get to make two trips backward: one for your own personal gain, and one for the good of all mankind. Each trip can consist of several "hops" (so you can start by traveling back ten years, and then move forward two years, etc.), but can only include one backward hop, and can last for no more than twenty-four hours.

The rules:

1) You can bring anything you want to the past, but you can't leave anything behind. So you can't bring back the polio vaccine and start treating people. It wouldn't work.

2) You can't take anything forward with you, either, except for information. So you could, say, travel back with a copy of a book and a pen, and have the book signed with that pen. Or you could bring a camera and take pictures. But all things must be somehow made from materials you carried with you.

3) You can't get sick in the past, but you could be eaten by a T-Rex. No one native to the time periods you're visiting will notice anything odd about you.

For my personal use, I would pack a bunch of digital cameras, Flip video recorders, and a gene sequencer, and hop back to Messina in 1347. I would then document the Black Death in ten year jumps, with lots of photographs and recordings of people trying to breathe as they fully expressed the virus. And then, when I got back to the present, I would drive the CDC insane...but I would finally know for sure.

For the good of all mankind, I would hop back to the pre-tape losses BBC archives with a tape-to-DVD portable recording rig (and a technician), and get copies of all the missing Doctor Who serials. Upon returning to the present day, I would probably also get knighted.

So what's your personal use? And what's your use for the good of all mankind?

Comments

[orlacarey.livejournal.com]

I sooo sooo sooo want you to get that trip for the good of mankind!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

[seferin.livejournal.com]

Go back to Sinai, to record the Ten Statements, then move forward to Hillel's academy, to ask questions.

Second trip, Give Jimmy Carter a peak at Al Gore's book about climate change so he can steal the arguments

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Nice.

[deire.livejournal.com]

'Good of all' trip: Travel back in hops to different locations and institute hand washing and sanitation early.

'Personal good' trip: Travel back in time to my first college year and shake myself till I agree to also go pre-med but take one art class a semester, even if it takes an extra year to graduate? I'd be better off *if* I could handle it without melting my brain. I'm not really sure.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Excellent.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

For me: I'd got back in time to senior year, tell myself to dump the looser I was dating and tell myself to go to a cheap college and study History. (I have a degree in Architecture. Guess what field I don't work in?)

For Mankind: I'd go an tell Lief Erickson to stay in the Americas, head south along the coast, and colonize the heck out of it. Native American faiths and peoples would have survived far better, and Columbus wouldn't have gotten the credit for finding "India." (Guess what I'm planning to write about in my next alternate history novel?)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Now that you've created a paradox and were never born, where shall you keep your things?

[cupcakery.livejournal.com]

Good of mankind: I would go back to the Library of Alexandria with a digital camera with a kagillion gigabytes of memory.

Personal use: hop back to Jack the Ripper and find out who he is, and then hop forward to find out who the Zodiac Killer was (I go pfft at your lousy Arthur Leigh Allen theory, general media), with a few other incidental stops on the way that I haven't quite decided yet.

That Doctor Who trip sounds mighty awesome, and would be totally supported by me. More Two episodes for everyone! (And don't you mean pre-80s? Who started in 1963, not before WWII.)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

You're right. Kate just also wants me to save a bunch of WWII footage, and I got my wires crossed.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

I would first stare at the aliens, and then have a discussion with them about how "twenty-four hours is an essentially meaningless period of time when you are TIME-TRAVELING".

But I have always found time limits on how long you can spend time-traveling to be rather odd. I can come back half a second after I leave. Who cares how long I am out there, unless there are mechanical limits on the machine?

[snowishness.livejournal.com]

Maybe no one wants you to have visibly changed/aged.

ETA: Or, actually, with this set-up it could be as simple as the time machine only lasting 24 hours before it needs recharging.

There are times time limits don't make sense, but a limit on how much subjective time you experience away can be logical.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

So, I was RIGHT about what you'd do! Hehe!

Hmm. So, your rules of time travel herein forbid returning with materiel, but allow you to keep anything you went with despite it being changed. Rules only allow for "backwards" travel, do they? So here's my question: are you allowed to leave information? If so, my goal would be to travel back roughly 600 years back, leaving information that would lead to a vast Illuminati-esque shadow government that would culminate in the modern day with my elevation to Ruler of Ze Vorld!

Then I'd have to think about something to travel back in time for selfish reasons... ;)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Nope. Remember that everyone who deals with you in the past doesn't think there's anything odd about you, which means you're quietly forgotten as soon as you leave. Otherwise, you've just wiped yourself out.

[ravens-shadow.livejournal.com]

My brain goes 'splodey from the possibilities. Sorry in advance for the length. I maybe went a bit too far. XD

For personal gain: -If the jumps forward could also go to different places- I'd start around 900 B.C.E. with pens/pencils, notebooks, digital cameras and a digital recorder (to leave notes to myself if I can't record people from the time period), and I'd document the origin of Beowulf, complete oral version, then jump ahead to the first time it was written down. Then I'd jump ahead to Renaissance Italy, snap pics of Da Vinci and his work over years (how much did he really paint himself), jump ahead to the era of British Romantics, just to soak in the atmosphere before jumping ahead to WWI and WWII to document with pictures and notes (talk about primary resources for research!), and I'd finish with a jump to the annexation of Hawaii, and then tell my younger to talk more art and history classes in college.

For the greater good: Go back to about 8 C.E. and document the childhood and young adulthood of Jesus (I'm working under the assumption that he is an historic figure), through the crucifixion and to the first written copy of the New Testament. I know even with photos and notes, probably a lot of theologians wouldn't believe me, but at least more accurate information would be out there. [Oh, would we understand all the languages of the places we visit?]

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Remember that changing your own timeline is bad, as it leads to you not being in the place you'd need to be to acquire the time machine in the first place. No language translator, I'm afraid. But you can bring anything you want with you, so you could always grab a translator.

[shaharazad.livejournal.com]

I suppose that wanting to see the Big Bang would be considered unreasonable under these rules? Oh well... Um maybe record the meteor strike that finished off the dinosaurs at the end of the Ctetaceous. That would be for the good of mankind. And for my own gain. Ooh! Ahh! Fireworks!

BTW, Pneumonic plague is a bacteria, not a virus. That could be important if you're going to stay alive while documenting. :)

[shaharazad.livejournal.com]

Umm... Cretaceous, rather.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, but I really love your brain

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Hee.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Dr. Who isn't that old. It *might* be older than Star Trek, but if so, not by much.

[alexwearspants.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who started in 1963? Apparently three years before Star Trek. (Star Trek I had to wiki, I admit. :) )

[beccastareyes]

All mankind -- go back to 1969 or so, and make copies of the original master tapes from Apollo 11.

Personal -- Well, something weird happened in Saturn's C and D rings in 1984-ish that a postdoc friend is working on. If I can take the time machine to Saturn, I'd like to see what it was, and maybe figure out a way to observe it from Earth. (Then tell him where the data was for a co-authorship.)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

That's fair!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

... If there's no time limit on when the device can be used:

Seal it up in the care of a company I trust for 100 years, then have them bounce it back with futuristic information that would allow us to avoid important catastrophes and advance our knowledge greatly, 'cause I am tired of us not having serious space colonies. };D

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

The time machine is not on loan for quite that long. Sorry!

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I'd go back and get DNA samples of thylocines, dodo birds, and other extinct critters to clone them and bring them back to life. If the information-only restriction applies, then I'll just sequence the genomes and reconstruct them from the information later.

[aineotter.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I think it still takes signifcantly more than 24 hours to sequence even a simple organism.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

Personal is fairly easy. I'd gather about $10k in U.S. currency from 1967 or earlier. Jump back to 1967, and use the money to set up a trust for my 11 year old self, investing the money in the stock of a company called Berkshire Hathaway. I'd also try to find a way to meet with and talk to my 11 year old self, and give him a couple of very specific and personal pieces of advice to help him deal with the hardest of the years ahead. Plus, I'd let him know about the trust.

(Berkshire Hathaway? That's Warren Buffet's holding company. If I remember correctly, $10K invested in 1967 would be worth about $80M today.)

Good of the world is a complex notion, and I don't know enough about history to have a whole lot of faith in my judgement. Maybe I'd go back to Dallas in 1963, and phone in some sort of fake threat to keep JFK out of that motorcade. Or, following your example, I'd take back a small but really high quality audio recording device, and hit New Orleans a few times in the 1925 to 1930 time frame to get as much as I could of Louis Armstrong in live performance.

[oreouk.livejournal.com]

I thought of that, but you're not allowed to leave anything behind in the past that you brought from the future, so you would need to find someone in the past that you could convince to do this and share the proceeds. Or do that thing where you go back with a small amount of money just before some sporting event that had a really odd result, bet, collect the money and then invest it - it wouldn't matter if your original money couldn't stay behind because the money you won could remain.

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

[Inspired by Stephenson's Baroque Cycle]

With a battery powered digital projector, lots of batteries and a bottle of caffeine pills, I would storm the halls of the Royal Society and delivery 24 lectures on the upcoming centuries of scientific advancement. There'd probably have to be lots of glossing over and "trust me on this for now, but here's how you could verify it..." but it would be _soooo_ satisfying. It'd probably be 12 hour-long lectures and 12 Q&A periods. I'd jump ahead a day (week?) after each so the Society would have a chance to digest and forumlate their queries (so subjectively, it'd be one 24-hour lecture streak).

...figuring out how to formulate "All modern knowledge" into a series of 12 paradigm upsetting lectures would be a pretty cool exercise in, and of, itself. How to break it down? How much math to include? (probably have projector displaying a mathematical sidebar the whole time with someone transcribing it for future reference/instruction).

If you hand Newton the cliff notes on the Principia (so to speak) what does he do then? Retreat totally to alchemy and biblical scholarship or wade deeper into the Ocean? If you lay out Darwin's observations 250 years early...? And steam engines? And give those damn universal language people the Dewey Decimal system and some basic computer science??

So many dead ends and incredibly random tangents. To be able to convince just a _few_ of these minds that perhaps here are some paths you don't need to wander down all the way to the end. Honest. Really not worth your time.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Alas, because everyone semi-ignores you, they'd all forget your lectures. That, or you'd create a time paradox and wipe us all from existence.

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

I'd go move the contents of the Library of Alexandria to a series of secure locations that remain undisturbed today, and then "discover" them (nobody would then be able to argue about the items' age, and they could re-enter history without lots of awkward and weird explanations). Mostly because I want more Sappho, and there isn't any, and that makes me cry.

I would probably spend the personal trip just going various places/times and filming/photographing them for reference.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Nice!

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

I'd find my 12-year old self and have a heart to heart talk with him about how good things eventually get, and have him write down with his own pen and paper some things he could do to make it better, from immediate guitar and martial arts lessons to when to buy and sell Microsoft, AOL and Enron (culminating with a short-sell of the latter). I'd also try and talk to my dad about his son's needs.

Then I'd hop further back and choke George W. Bush to death in his crib. Business before pleasure.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[aineotter.livejournal.com]

I'm amused that finding the agent of the black death is for you, but the Dr. Who tapes are for humanity. I wholly approve, either way.

I would visit what would become the Burgess shale, with scuba gear and a good camera and video recorder and piles of memory. And...can I bring a laboratory capable of genome sequencing? Eh, that can't really be done in 24 hours. But it would still be worth it to get video.
I'm not sure whether that's for me, or for humanity. For me, most likely

Since the Dr. Who tapes have already been saved, I think I'd look up a good stock, or lottery ticket, or something for about 100 years ago in Australia, and identify someone who will use that to set up a breeding sanctary for thylacines. Because they should be here, now. Or possibly try to arrange something similar for the sea mink, but the timing of their exctiction at shortly after colonization makes that trickier to manage. Maybe ivory billed woodpeckers? Argh, there are too many I'd want to go back and try to save... :(

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Greenpeace + time machine = PEAK BIODIVERSITY NOW, BITCHES.

[dianthus.livejournal.com]

*tries to imagine how slow the upload would be and wonders where all the data would live*

[hasufin.livejournal.com]

Hm. Planning is important here.

The natives aren't going to think I'm doing anything odd, huh? Sort of an SEP field?

I'd create a list of specific events in history which are of interest: the Battles of Marathon and Thermopylae. The expulsion of the Hebrews. The Dancing Plague, the disappearance of the Roanoke colony, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand... I could make an exceptionally long list here. Might have t trim it down.
Oh, yeah. I'd spend a LOT of time looking at Paleo-American migrations. Gonna start something like 50,000 BP.

I'd hop back to the earliest. Record that. Hop forward to the next, record that, etc. Video, of course. WHere possible do more in-depth analysis - interviews, examination of documents, and so forth. Gene sequencing is a maybe, but only if copies made using my own material can be used (I don't trust myself to do proper gene sequencing on the fly, but I can run a PCR just fine).

I'd also want to check geology. I'd grab or even commission a few interesting pieces - art, special bottles of wine, maybe a nice Ancient Egyptian boat, or some early metalworking. I'd secrete them in caves, tombs, or other places which I know to be undisturbed in the present time, where I could pull them out myself, knowing exactly where they are.



Then, for fun? Petroglyphic graffiti. They're gonna find circuit diagrams in the Eastern Desert, Bohr-model atoms in French caves, African rock arrangements that match the layout of some nearby solar system. If I can swing it, I'll build a megalithic monument which says "We apologize for the inconvenience" in EBDBIC.
And, yes, Kilroy was here, dammit.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Your choices entertain me all to heck.

[alexwearspants.livejournal.com]

That second one is a glorious, glorious idea, and must be done.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I would so be knighted.

[djonn]

For personal gain:

This would take some Very Careful Navigating, but...I'd jump back to 1845 in order to track a very particular wagon train that got lost in eastern Oregon and -- while lost -- came across a gold deposit now known as the lost Blue Bucket mine. With a series of very short and very precise hops (and the judicious application of videography and matching of maps with modern GPS data), it ought to be possible for a timejumper to determine exactly where along the train's path they found gold, thereby enabling present-day me to capitalize on the knowledge.

For all mankind:

Through some combination of stealth, subtle intervention, and/or ingenious persuasion, I'd forestall the untimely passing of Jim Henson.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Interesting choices!

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

The day before my dad started smoking, with a photo of Kaia, and one of him on his 57th birthday, for my own selfish reasons and the good of humanity, because my dad was awesome.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I miss him.

[princess-kessie.livejournal.com]

For humanity: Assuming I could not go back to the Dawn of Time and get proof of just how the Universe and planets/inhabitants were born, I would get proof in a number of hops that global warming is a cyclical, normal event that humanity has no control over - to stop governmental fear campaigns and big business profiting from that fear, and find a way to stop Big Pharma profiting from the stuff they do to perpetuate sickness.

For myself? That's so tough. Anything I might do for myself might alter the current timeline - and, while tough at times, I wouldn't want to jeopardise what I already have. If I could guarantee only making what I have better, I'd tell past me to invest early, buy property early and patent a really good idea I had 25 years ago that wasn't patented until about ten years ago. I'd also tell past me that following one's heart is far better than listening to one's mother and to pursue the career I truly wanted at 15. But if any of that changed anything I have (or anyone around me) for the worse, I wouldn't do it. I'd simply go back to certain world events I'd like to experience - such as Woodstock, the Beatles live, Elvis live, Many more concerts by people no longer here (like Buddy Holly/the Big Bopper/Richie Valens), the moon landings, and as many hops as I was permitted to fit in...

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Excellent!