First Project
Working Title: "Equation"
I'm sure everybody has had the fantasy of going back in time and straightening out that snotnosed brat that would eventually grow up to be one's self.
What if you were FORCED to do that?
I was inspired on this concept by the Robert Heinlein stories "All You Zombies", "By His Bootstraps" and "Time Enough For Love"--but I take the ideas from all of these into a different direction.
The story would be told by the younger half...the "victim" of this temporal meddling. It's 1977; the boy is eleven, and he witnessed an airplane falling out of the sky over his school during recess. Being the curious lad that he is, he finds the machine, deftly parked in a barn on an abandoned farm by the woods. He climbs in the cockpit, puts on the pilot's helmet, flips a switch on the dashboard--and uploads something from the plane's computer into his mind. It knocks him unconscious. He awakens outside the barn, goes home in a daze...and things begin to happen to him.
Part of the information he now has is about his own future...but to get at the whole thing he has to work out a huge mathematical equation. (It's the central thesis to the Unified Principle of Energy, Substance and the Timespace Continuum--which won't be actually discovered till well into the 21st Century.) This kid now can't stop working on the thing. He must write it down on blackboards and the backsides of notebooks. He must recite it. He must figure out what every symbol means.
Meanwhile, the pilot of the plane--who may be either the boy as an adult...or one of the kid's descendents!--is stranded in 1977 with no useful money or friendship contacts he can readily use. But he does have some information on 1977. He borrows money and wins big on the Triple Crown horse races, and then uses his winnings to get the resources to hide himself and recover the plane so he can repair it himself. But he also realizes that 1) repairing the plane and figuring out how/why he traveled backwards in time will take a while 2) while he's in the past the child half of him is in danger--and therefore he himself is in danger. The equation mishap is now a major complication. The kid is now drawing attention to himself.
The boy is learning enough about his future to see what's going to happen, or so he thinks. He takes some actions to improve his future...but for each action, a reaction looms. One spectacular "reaction" puts the boy's picture on the front page of the news...and the paranoia of the times mean that the usual villain--the Federal Government--shows up.
Which leads to the usual outcome for a 1970s confrontation--a car chase. The future rescues the past, they go to his safe-house...and the boy makes a breakthrough. And realizes that the information he has, because of the turns of events, is no longer his future. He has an idea on how to solve the equation, the paradoxes, and the dilemma of his future half--but this solution may turn out to be dangerous for them both.
I'm sure everybody has had the fantasy of going back in time and straightening out that snotnosed brat that would eventually grow up to be one's self.
What if you were FORCED to do that?
I was inspired on this concept by the Robert Heinlein stories "All You Zombies", "By His Bootstraps" and "Time Enough For Love"--but I take the ideas from all of these into a different direction.
The story would be told by the younger half...the "victim" of this temporal meddling. It's 1977; the boy is eleven, and he witnessed an airplane falling out of the sky over his school during recess. Being the curious lad that he is, he finds the machine, deftly parked in a barn on an abandoned farm by the woods. He climbs in the cockpit, puts on the pilot's helmet, flips a switch on the dashboard--and uploads something from the plane's computer into his mind. It knocks him unconscious. He awakens outside the barn, goes home in a daze...and things begin to happen to him.
Part of the information he now has is about his own future...but to get at the whole thing he has to work out a huge mathematical equation. (It's the central thesis to the Unified Principle of Energy, Substance and the Timespace Continuum--which won't be actually discovered till well into the 21st Century.) This kid now can't stop working on the thing. He must write it down on blackboards and the backsides of notebooks. He must recite it. He must figure out what every symbol means.
Meanwhile, the pilot of the plane--who may be either the boy as an adult...or one of the kid's descendents!--is stranded in 1977 with no useful money or friendship contacts he can readily use. But he does have some information on 1977. He borrows money and wins big on the Triple Crown horse races, and then uses his winnings to get the resources to hide himself and recover the plane so he can repair it himself. But he also realizes that 1) repairing the plane and figuring out how/why he traveled backwards in time will take a while 2) while he's in the past the child half of him is in danger--and therefore he himself is in danger. The equation mishap is now a major complication. The kid is now drawing attention to himself.
The boy is learning enough about his future to see what's going to happen, or so he thinks. He takes some actions to improve his future...but for each action, a reaction looms. One spectacular "reaction" puts the boy's picture on the front page of the news...and the paranoia of the times mean that the usual villain--the Federal Government--shows up.
Which leads to the usual outcome for a 1970s confrontation--a car chase. The future rescues the past, they go to his safe-house...and the boy makes a breakthrough. And realizes that the information he has, because of the turns of events, is no longer his future. He has an idea on how to solve the equation, the paradoxes, and the dilemma of his future half--but this solution may turn out to be dangerous for them both.