Stopped Clock: The Best Way to Travel
There are a lot of different ways to move through time, it turns out. In fact, as near as I can tell, there might be exactly as many ways to move through time as there are time-travelers; I've yet to met two who have the same fundamental system.
I don't just mean the special-effects trim on the event itself. That's pretty mutable, actually; you can discover "your" way of traveling from your lab room and later on figure out how to generate the same field around a moving vehicle, for example. But the way the traveler's system relates to time, to the stuff itself, seems to be traveler-specific. For some reason, no time-traveler (that I've met) has ever been able to travel using some other traveler's method; it just doesn't work. This is why I've never done any time-travel with any of the regulars at the Stopped Clock; none of them can take me with them since (apparently) I'm a traveler myself, albeit one who hasn't discovered his own system yet.
Each system has its own extra features and benefits, and they all have their own drawbacks and limitations.
Some can be dialed to any arbitrarily specific time; others can only happen at some set interval or range of intervals offset from the "present". Some can take the traveler to other locations in the process; others drop the traveler in the exact same spot they're standing when they activate. Some can be turned on as desired while others can only happen when some sort of certain trigger event occurs, or at regular set periods, or entirely randomly and involuntarily. Some can only go into the "past" or only into the "future". Some physically transition the traveler into the destination time/place while others remove some existing person for the traveler to temporarily replace. Some can only travel within the time period where they themselves lived their normal lifespan, while others cannot travel elsewhere within their own normal lifespan. Some can encounter themselves and have done so many times; others are strictly prevented from doing so when they try. Some can revisit a time/place they've been before, others can only travel to any given time/place once. Some can change history and when they "return" to the "future" everything has been altered; others find that no matter what they do, causality has diluted it and nothing has changed; while others are unable to affect anything at all, like ghosts.
As you might expect, the pros and cons of each traveler's personal system are a frequent topic of discussion slash debate slash argument slash fighting at the Stopped Clock. Everyone envies some element of someone else's system, some aspect of it that lets that other traveler experience the travel in a way that they themselves never will. Maybe because I don't yet know how to travel, and thus don't know what my limitations are going to be, I feel like it's sort of fruitless to go around and around with the whose-travel-is-better debates since they're sort of rock-scissors-papery.
And anyway, it's somewhat moot since everyone agrees that Jerry Walkabout has the best system.
Jerry got the "walkabout" nickname because he's Australian, even though he's not Aborigine. Jerry is apparently able to move rather effortlessly through quantum probability, the upshot of which is that he has access to an infinite number of variant universes which he shifts between as drastically or subtly as he wants, which means he can not only move through time or place by simply shifting to a universe where spacetime is offset from where he "currently" is, but he can also wind up in places where the rules are fundamentally different. He was apparently born with the ability, he's been doing it his whole life, and he apparently mostly uses it for exactly the same thing any other Australian guy with unlimited travel capability would: to drink local booze and nail local girls.
He was in the Stopped Clock the other night, telling us about a pair of girls he'd been freewheeling around the New Orleans French Quarter with.
"French Quarter… when?" I asked, thinking about all the phases NOLA has gone through in three hundred years.
"Oh, right now," he said.
"So what's the mood like there right now, with the spill going on?" I wanted to know.
"What, the BP accident?" he chuckled. "In the variant where I was at the time, crude oil develops on trees. Totally renewable resource. What's being drilled out is coffee. Deepwater Horizon busted open a vein of high-pressure espresso. Millions of gallons washing up on the beaches, getting into the water table. You've never seen such an over-stimulated city in your life. Great fuckin' time."
"That's ridiculous," I said. "There's no way that the fossilization of the Mesozoic turned into coffee."
"That's what I thought, too," he shrugged. "So I went back to see what those dinosaurs were like." He shook his head as though clearing a nightmare from his thoughts. "Wicked fast. Crazy aggressive. Damn near got me, they did."
"So… do people worry about Peak Coffee in this variant?"
"Some do," he said, "but there are a lot of deniers. Still, on the whole they don't have it very rough there, so I'm sure something nice will come along to sort it out for them."
"Well, I'm glad New Orleans was able to catch a break there, after all they went through with Katrina."
"Katrina?" he scoffed. "On that variant, the climate cycle forms sugar at altitude. Katrina was one giant cotton-candy fluff-fall. Greatest fucking city in the world." He drained his beer. "Well, I'm off! Those girls aren't gonna fuck themselves, after all. Well, I mean, they might, but… Anyway, great to see you gents again."
And then he was gone, leaving an entire bar full of envy behind him.
Some of the regulars think Jerry might be God. Others think he's full of crap. As far as I can tell, with this crowd, how could you tell the difference?
------
For consideration: Can God make up a load of bullshit that even He could not call Himself on?
I don't just mean the special-effects trim on the event itself. That's pretty mutable, actually; you can discover "your" way of traveling from your lab room and later on figure out how to generate the same field around a moving vehicle, for example. But the way the traveler's system relates to time, to the stuff itself, seems to be traveler-specific. For some reason, no time-traveler (that I've met) has ever been able to travel using some other traveler's method; it just doesn't work. This is why I've never done any time-travel with any of the regulars at the Stopped Clock; none of them can take me with them since (apparently) I'm a traveler myself, albeit one who hasn't discovered his own system yet.
Each system has its own extra features and benefits, and they all have their own drawbacks and limitations.
Some can be dialed to any arbitrarily specific time; others can only happen at some set interval or range of intervals offset from the "present". Some can take the traveler to other locations in the process; others drop the traveler in the exact same spot they're standing when they activate. Some can be turned on as desired while others can only happen when some sort of certain trigger event occurs, or at regular set periods, or entirely randomly and involuntarily. Some can only go into the "past" or only into the "future". Some physically transition the traveler into the destination time/place while others remove some existing person for the traveler to temporarily replace. Some can only travel within the time period where they themselves lived their normal lifespan, while others cannot travel elsewhere within their own normal lifespan. Some can encounter themselves and have done so many times; others are strictly prevented from doing so when they try. Some can revisit a time/place they've been before, others can only travel to any given time/place once. Some can change history and when they "return" to the "future" everything has been altered; others find that no matter what they do, causality has diluted it and nothing has changed; while others are unable to affect anything at all, like ghosts.
As you might expect, the pros and cons of each traveler's personal system are a frequent topic of discussion slash debate slash argument slash fighting at the Stopped Clock. Everyone envies some element of someone else's system, some aspect of it that lets that other traveler experience the travel in a way that they themselves never will. Maybe because I don't yet know how to travel, and thus don't know what my limitations are going to be, I feel like it's sort of fruitless to go around and around with the whose-travel-is-better debates since they're sort of rock-scissors-papery.
And anyway, it's somewhat moot since everyone agrees that Jerry Walkabout has the best system.
Jerry got the "walkabout" nickname because he's Australian, even though he's not Aborigine. Jerry is apparently able to move rather effortlessly through quantum probability, the upshot of which is that he has access to an infinite number of variant universes which he shifts between as drastically or subtly as he wants, which means he can not only move through time or place by simply shifting to a universe where spacetime is offset from where he "currently" is, but he can also wind up in places where the rules are fundamentally different. He was apparently born with the ability, he's been doing it his whole life, and he apparently mostly uses it for exactly the same thing any other Australian guy with unlimited travel capability would: to drink local booze and nail local girls.
He was in the Stopped Clock the other night, telling us about a pair of girls he'd been freewheeling around the New Orleans French Quarter with.
"French Quarter… when?" I asked, thinking about all the phases NOLA has gone through in three hundred years.
"Oh, right now," he said.
"So what's the mood like there right now, with the spill going on?" I wanted to know.
"What, the BP accident?" he chuckled. "In the variant where I was at the time, crude oil develops on trees. Totally renewable resource. What's being drilled out is coffee. Deepwater Horizon busted open a vein of high-pressure espresso. Millions of gallons washing up on the beaches, getting into the water table. You've never seen such an over-stimulated city in your life. Great fuckin' time."
"That's ridiculous," I said. "There's no way that the fossilization of the Mesozoic turned into coffee."
"That's what I thought, too," he shrugged. "So I went back to see what those dinosaurs were like." He shook his head as though clearing a nightmare from his thoughts. "Wicked fast. Crazy aggressive. Damn near got me, they did."
"So… do people worry about Peak Coffee in this variant?"
"Some do," he said, "but there are a lot of deniers. Still, on the whole they don't have it very rough there, so I'm sure something nice will come along to sort it out for them."
"Well, I'm glad New Orleans was able to catch a break there, after all they went through with Katrina."
"Katrina?" he scoffed. "On that variant, the climate cycle forms sugar at altitude. Katrina was one giant cotton-candy fluff-fall. Greatest fucking city in the world." He drained his beer. "Well, I'm off! Those girls aren't gonna fuck themselves, after all. Well, I mean, they might, but… Anyway, great to see you gents again."
And then he was gone, leaving an entire bar full of envy behind him.
Some of the regulars think Jerry might be God. Others think he's full of crap. As far as I can tell, with this crowd, how could you tell the difference?
------
For consideration: Can God make up a load of bullshit that even He could not call Himself on?