THINGS I HATE ABOUT TIME TRAVEL

THERE’S NEVER ANY MUSIC

Right now, I am home at a rare moment. I need to be. Trips have been hard. One of them took a couple of years. I don’t seem to age anymore, but I still feel the years. I have my music on. Empty Shore, by Deuter. Awesome, theraputic, and peaceful. I have Ottman Leibert One Guitar album, and the Doobie Brothers. My choice of music player is my (our) iPad. But the iPhone works too. My iPad is hooked via the headphone jack to an old Radio Shack amplifier with Optimus speakers. The walls of this room reverberate with goodness. Neighbors are off, away in their isolated houses, as I am in this one, so I disturb no one. I let the music pour over me.

You can’t take your music with you when you time travel. At least not to the past. It is too easy to end up in some jail, where all of it is taken away from you. Imagine what they would do with your ‘artifacts’ they discover on your person?

Yeah, I look closely through the portal at the time and place I am going to travel. If I’m there, and in trouble, I need to go rescue me. What? Rescue before you go and get into trouble? That’s the way it works. I’m always pulling my bacon out of the fire. But I got to go the second (first) time anyway. There’s work to be done. (It took a while before I figured this out. Someone else had to rescue my bacon, back then, before I learned.)

But anyway, in the future, I take my iPhone and iPad (I have my own now). No one pays attention to your antiques. So I have my music with me when I am alone (It is still bad taste to play your private music in public, in the future). A Day In The Life plays.

Oh, there’s music in the past, and in the future. The music you hear in the past reminds you of your playlist you can’t listen to. (And if you stop to listen, you will miss the opportunity you were waiting for). On the other hand, the music in the future is toxic. Never listen to it. It will cause your ears to bleed. (Seriously!) Wear earplugs when you go to the future.

THERE’S NEVER A WOMAN AROUND WHEN YOU NEED ONE

And if there is, she is not the one you want. The one I want. The only one I want, is safe at home with my counterpart, the other Roger. She is content. I am alone out here in the most distant place you can imagine, remote from everything I love and desire. Time travel is that way. But I take contentment to know that she is safe and happy where she is. That is enough. Barely.

Besides, regardless of how good looking a girl is you chance to meet in your travels, she is as likely as destracting and toxic (in any number of ways) as the music is. Learn to be the monk you have become. Any temporary (and temporal) alliance you form will only feed your regret. Me? I stay well away from those women with a Gibson Girl figure (my weakness).

THERE MUST ALWAYS BE PAYBACK

To make money, you have to remain in one time for a long period. And to make money quickly, you must take it from people willing to give it to you in trust – an investment as much as in you as a trustworthy person, as it is in your very risky venture. (Yeah, the Gilgamesh factor helps, but this is an abuse of it.)

The best part of time travel, however, is that you have opportunity to repay those kind folks. Best to repay them by sending them funds to a point in time before you ‘borrowed’ their money. Make sure it is in your name you used with them, and the name of the investment. Otherwise, they will not know where the money comes from. (Yeah, once they know your name and get their money, they will not invest in you. So what? Some paradoxes can be paradoctored.)

Other kinds of payback involve whoever the person was you came across as you walked through a portal. Sometimes, it requires that you kill them, and that you kill them before they commit the crime you saw them commit. Believe me, you won’t lose sleep over this, regardles of what you think of it before it happens.

THERE ARE ALWAYS ENEMIES

Someone out there, in all of time and space, knows what you are doing, and they are actively seeking to stop you, kill you, or erase your existence. You will confront them at some point in your travels (or they you). Don’t worry about it. Take steps beforehand to rescue yourself from those places. Always use the portal first to view where you are going, so that you can see those traps and make preparations to thwart them.

Enemies can be stopped, killed, or erased. Just make sure you do it to them at an earlier time than they do it to you.

You will never find a safe haven somewhere in time and space until these enemies are put away for good. You will have no regrets about that, once you have accomplished your task. Meantime, you will have all sorts of doubts about all that.

Your safe haven will likely mean that you are marooned someplace in time. Learn to enjoy where you end up. You will be there a long time. Bloom where you are planted. Take a wife (and a new identity) and have lots of kids. (Widows make better wives.) Find a career you absolutely enjoy doing. Perhaps you will catch a whiff of this, in all your travels. Let your heart be at peace. Life is good (and that is the one thing I love about time travel; I know how it all ends).

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