Matt the Mouth
The news is depressing. If there’s anything on this planet that could make even the most bubbly of all optimists switch over to a glass‐half‐empty, gun‐half‐loaded attitude, it’s your average modern news broadcast. They may be the most diabolical purveyors of misinformation to ever exist, but that rant about media reform is a subject for another time. What’s been haunting me lately however is a story I happened to catch the other day. I’ll just give you the horrifying headline: “Man claims to have invented a real time machine.” Just hearing those words caused white‐hot, paralysing fear to shoot down my spine. Time travel is something I forbid anyone to invent and here’s why. I don’t trust any of you.
First of all, there’s that whole butterfly effect scenario. You go back and just intend to change one little thing, maybe even with good intentions, but that tiny alteration causes another change and then another. Eventually, every major event in history will have been altered domino style until our world becomes unrecognisable. Sure, you just went back to try and stop yourself from setting your neighbour’s dog on fire two years ago, but then one thing leads to another and when you come back, you discover that you’ve caused the apocalypse. The last thing I need in my life is to be blinked out of existence because you wanted to travel back in time to win the lottery, or un‐impregnate your girlfriend.
To be fair though, I wouldn’t even trust myself to not wreak havoc. I think the first thing I would do would be to go back and try to witness some of my childhood. My memories of those youthful, carefree days are a bit spotty and I’d like to know how things really went down. Plus, I’d like to go back and evaluate my parents because I have good reason to believe they had no clue what they were doing.
I have questions…particularly about that story where I was duct‐taped to a wall. Then, I’d flash‐forward on, into my high school to give a few people a swift kick in the kidneys and an elbow‐drop to the crotch. I’m sure you can sympathise. After that, my move would be to go about righting a few of the wrongs that have happened in my past, namely the embarrassing ones. I could’ve done without that incident involving the karaoke and the high‐slit prom dress.
Lastly, I think I’d round off my little trip through the centuries by becoming a tourist, and heading back to witness some of the major moments in history. The first thing that comes to mind is Dallas, Texas in 1963. Here I would give a certain window in the schoolbook depository a little extra attention. There’s a chance I would also try to intervene in some of the great travesties of the past, but like I said, it’d most likely end in disaster. I would try to prevent the sinking of the Titanic, but that would probably lead to a world where Hitler was crowned World Emperor and outlawed all forms of cake.
The even scarier thing is that none of this is taking that dark side of human nature into account. Thus far, it’s only been innocent blunders that ruined life as we know it. I think we all know though that when a source of unlimited power (such as time travel) comes along, its use by people will tend to be a bit more towards the sinister side, or at the very least, towards greed. I’m not just basing this on the fact that I’ve seen Citizen Kane or Star Wars either. I know I would be fallible as well and after much deliberation, I would succumb to temptation, travel back and be the first person to invent the Snuggie, before reaping all of those dozens of thousands of dollars in reward.
So let’s just all agree to let time travel stay in the realm of sci‐fi. No good can come of it.
‐ Matt Smith
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