As a professor of Physics at Columbia University, my dad used to spend a lot of time researching time travel. Whenever I'd get the chance, I used to peek inside his office and look at the writing on the whiteboards that lined the wall.
Sometimes I think my dad loved this stuff more than me.
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Our family had a huge financial windfall when my dad invested in Apple Computers in 1994 at their lowest point and held onto his stock until just last year after Apple had become the most profitable company in the world. With money taken care of for the rest of our lives, my dad was able to quit his job and focus completely on cracking the mystery of time travel. And just last night, my father took the whole family out to dinner at Applebee's to announce that he had done it! He had invented a small device that would allow its user to travel back in time! And of course, like any curious son of a scientist, I broke into his lab to mess around with it.
5. Warn yourself of the dangers of time travel
You don't understand! Nothing good can come of this! Burn the device! Just burn it!
Hmm, I feel like a lot of future versions of me have been showing up lately to warn me about the dangers of time travel. Weird. In any event, here are my top ten uses for time travel!
10. Help avert national tragedies
The first thing I did with my time travel abilities was go back and try to save the Star Wars prequels. You know how bad The Phantom Menace was? You should have seen it in the shape I found it in when I convinced LucasFilm to let me do a re-write on its script in early 1998. It didn't have any light saber battles, contained a ten minute uninterrupted shot of a baby crying, and hinted, in not so subtle terms, that perhaps Communism wouldn't be the worst direction for the United States.
9. Change painful moments from your childhood
He was (probably) going to love it!
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A great thing to change in the past are small, personal tragedies. For instance, when I was six I made my dad one of those clay molds of my hands for Christmas, but then I left it precariously on the edge of the table and walked away. I still remember hearing the crash today and running into the kitchen, seeing my dad sweeping up the hands I'd made and throwing them in the trash. I would have loved to go back and save it if I didn't right then accidentally rip a hole in the time space continuum.
8. Fight an alternate timeline version of yourself who came through a rip in the time space continuum
I mean, I didn't take any snapshots, but it was basically this.
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The worst part about time travel is accidentally ripping time in half and creating evil alternate versions of yourself. Before I could get inside and rescue the hand casting, I was beaten up by an alternate universe doppelganger who had this horrific bleeding eyebrow. Let me tell you, this doppleganger was so much better than me at fighting, he beat me with embarrassing nonsense moves like the Stone Cold Stunner and that crane kick from The Karate Kid. He even had the audacity to pull me in close and whisper "Soon the soldiers of my universe will be ready and your timeline will crumble." So it's like, "I guess have to go deal with that now."
7. Stop the invention of time travel
I thought I could go back and discourage my dad from working on time travel so I wouldn't be able to accidentally rip apart the universe. But my dad was not into it. He was all "Blah blah I have to do this, blah blah there are things I can never tell you". Whatever, he never listens to me.
6. Stop your father from becoming wealthy in the first place
You know when you're trying to be cagey about something you're really really not supposed to say but then you get it in your head and it becomes the only thing you think about to the point where of course you say it? So I was thinking that if my dad never had the money to fund his time travel research it could never be invented. But it turns out I was the one who suggested he invest in Apple in the first place. As it turns out, every idea I've ever had is the worst idea ever.
4. Get the jump on your evil alternate universe doppleganger
Since I didn't listen to me, I figured I could go back to the Christmas of my sixth year again and again, building an army of Mes that could defeat Evil Alternate Me and his army of Evil Alternate Supersoldiers. That plan didn't work super well, as my dad, seeing grown-up me for the first time in his timeline, hit me witha baseball bat thinking I was a burglar. I guess I can't really blame him, but I don't think I'm asking a lot if I expect him to recognize me. I look like a tall version of his kid wearing a fake beard.
3. Finally understand your father
When I explained to my dad that I was here to fight an evil, alternate universe of myself, he explained that the universe protects itself pretty well. "We don't have to play cosmic censor," he said. "The time space continuum can handle itself. Turns out, reality is tough."
"So does that mean we can't change anything?" I asked.
"No. No, I can't believe that. You're six years old right now. If that's true, those are six years I'll never get back."
At that point, I realized my eyebrow was bleeding. I took the hand caste I'd made 19 years ago and also earlier that week and smashed it on the ground.
2. Pretend to be an alternate universe doppelganger
It's actually incredibly liberating to go into a fight knowing exactly how it's going to end. No matter what crazy moves you try, be they Stone Cold Stunners or that crane kick from the Karate Kid, the ending is already defined and you can go wild knowing it won't ever change. It's the feeling we should have gotten from the Star Wars prequels. After I'd beaten myself up I told him I was from an alternate dimension because a) that's what sent me on this time travel journey of self discovery and b) I wanted to mess with him. Me. Him Me.
1. Learn to accept the past
When I returned to the present, my present, I sat down with my dad, told him everything, and informed him that it was his relentless pursuit of regaining those six years of my childhood that had cost him the nineteen years that followed. It was then that we resolved to be grateful for the opportunity we have right now, in this moment, to move forward. No more attempting to change the past.
We did go check out dinosaurs real quick, though. That was tight.
comments! What horrors of your past would you try to change? Let us know in the
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