As I was perusing through my American history textbook (read: learning about the various wars, hypocracies, and infrequent successes of the American government; also, discovering that most American heros had a chief defect that makes them considerably less likeable), the thought popped into my head: "What is the worst thing that could happen to the world?"
To which I immediately answered myself, "The invention a time machine."
True, without time travel, Doctor Who would be worse than screwed over: he wouldn't even exist. Yes, I'm glad that Harry and Hermione saved the lives of Buckbeak and Sirius, if only for a short time, by using a Time Turner.
But come on, now. A real-life time machine in the hands of a real-life person? That would be the large-scale equivalent of giving James Blunt a recording label (someone fucked up on that one): complete and utter devestation. Massive suffering. No bloody idea what disaster would strike next.
When you have one disaster, it sucks, but at some point, it ends. It leaves behind scars, yes, but you at least you have something definite to deal with. If time travel was real, can you imagine how unsure the already unclear future would be? One minute, you'd be sitting at home; the next, you could be running out of your house screaming because of some war that started 5 years ago that you didn't know about until now because somebody just went back in time and pissed off a foreign country which then declared war on your country and now everything is absolute shit. It would be the scariest thing ever.
I don't know anything about physics or time or anything to know if time travel is even remotely possible. If I had to guess, I'd say it's not. I know, I know; nothing is impossible - really, though? I feel like time is so intangible, so unknown, that nobody would even know where to begin. And even if they had some vague starting point, how can you travel through time? It's not like aspiring to build a rocket that can reach a different galaxy; as difficult as that is, it can probably be done - it probably will be done at some point. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but assuming the human race doesn't completely kill each other off, probably someday.
And even if someone did travel through time, how would that logically work? If something in the past changes, then the present must change as well; but how? Would an alternate universe be created, in which a second version of our world reacts to the changed event while our own world continues on as normal? Would everyone suddenly find themselves in a different situation with no knowledge of how they got there? Would we cancel out the modern day and replay history in accordance to that event? Would we have our memories replaced with the new memories that had formed because of this change? Would some of us disappear, because we had never been born, because our parents had never met, because that changed event prevented them from doing so?
How shit would that be?
Even a rudimentary time machine that could only make a small animal go back a minute or an hour in time would be devestating. After all, virtually every invention has been modified, improved, changed, or more largely produced since it was first created. If we can travel back in time an hour, why not a day? A month? A year? If we can transport a mouse, why not a person? A group of people? An entire army?
Instead of fighting our battles in the present, why not the past? Why couldn't a modern country give Nazi Germany a hand and allow them to take over the world? Why couldn't they extend the Holocaust to the entire world, so that it affects every family?
Yeah. Time machine = cool in theory. Not so much in practice.
- A WARNING - I started this at 6 pm-ish and four hours later, I still hadn't finished it, haha. Sorry for the crap ending!
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