Underd0g
May 30th, 2018, 10:06 PM
TheSnowstorm
byUnderd0g
Looking over the young boy's shoulder, the slightly built man watched keenly as the boysketched. It was an unpleasant circumstance they, and the other bus passengers found themselves.
Travelling from Hamburg to Berlin in 2014 should have been uneventful, after all, the manhad an advantage with his travel plans. He was from the future, and everyfactor of his mission in this past was carefully and meticulously considered.The climate conditions were known to be extreme, but the quickness of this particular snowstorm had evaded the intelligence provided to the man now peering at the work of this young artist.
Snow had been piling up against the bus for 20 hours and the motor has sputtered and died. No more gas meant no more heat. The child's pencil shaded his picture with more vigor.
"Don't worry folks, they know where we are and will be sending help any minute now." The bus driver's voice sounded less and less confident.
"You are very talented," the man said to the boy. "What are you drawing there?"
"I'm making a graphic novel. I want to make a time travel story without a paradox. They all seem to have impossible storylines. I don't want to have mine picked apart by the nerds that read it. It's kinda hard, there's a lot to think about," the kid lamented.
"Let me give you a stranger's perspective," the time traveler suggested, "What problems are you having?"
"Well, I've watched every time travel story I could find from 'Back To The Future' to 'Looper' and ironically, the best one I could see, was 'Groundhog Day'; a day that repeated over and over for years. It was a local phenomenon and therefore the changes were kept isolated. But the cause of it was unexplained and seemed spiritual or metaphysical or something." The boy welcomed the distraction. He noticed on one side of the bus, the windows were completely covered with snow. The air had quickly become frigid soon after the motor had stopped.
"It seems you're on the right track. The world would get reset day after day, and nothing could be visibly affected by anyone but the hero of the story."The traveler debated what he could reveal and what he could not. "Plus, whenever went into the future, he only went into the past. What if in time travel,you could only go backwards? It would negate the need for multiple timelines and co-universes."
"How entertaining could that be? You'd never get to see things get resolved on a world scale, the enemies wouldn't get their comeuppance. Why would anyone go into the past if they couldn't return anyway?"
He asked valid questions. It made the traveler examine his own motives. Was his mission legitimate? Why attempt something that he would never see validated?
"Wouldn't it be noble to create a character who would have the courage to venture into such an unknown? He would leave all he loved and who loved him. It would be a tale of sacrifice, readers are moved by sacrifice." The traveler curled and uncurled his toes to bring circulation to them. They started to ache, he could see the boy's breath.
The boy took up another venue, "How could you bring the readers to suspend their disbelief long enough for them to swallow the possibility of time travel? Matter can't occupy the same space at the same time. Wouldn't it be logical that matter from the future can't occupy space in the past where it exists somewhere else on the planet?" His chest felt tight. He didn't want to look weak in front of this stranger. It really was getting cold.
The traveler laughed to himself. He remembered that this was 2014 and they really believed this stuff. It was a time when quantum mechanics and string math was still theory. Black holes were a mystery and cosmology still held so many unknowns.
What the heck, he'd help the boy out with his project. "What's the fastest known energy presently known?"
"Light," the boy quickly answered.
"What if there's something faster than that? What if that matter was common on earth we just aren't presently aware of its existence right now? What if you could trap it so that it wasn't going in a straight line or even a curve, but rather it would bounce back and forth at incredible speed until its container had no choice but to hurl it in the direction you had plotted for it? And finally,what if the black holes in space could actually be charted so that you could be sent at a trajectory to meet with a past orbit? Just sayin'." The traveler was gauging the behaviors of the other bus passengers. They were getting nervous. The bus driver was slumped over the driver's wheel. He didn't want to look at the riders.
"So you can only go back in time and never see the results unless you lived to see them, which would mean you would have to live long enough to catch up when they invent time travel? Pffft! There would have to be something terrible like 'TheTerminator'. It would have to be apocalyptic to motivate someone to reset the whole earth on the off chance he could save it; not to mention he'd have to beone self-important individual." The boy was skeptical.
The traveler reflected on what events brought him here. Yes, most were convinced that the reset was inevitable and necessary. There were many who qualified to make the trip. As far as being a narcissist, the lottery weeded out those. He definitely didn't want to leave his family, no matter how the reset was experienced, he wanted to be there. He didn't care that he may be able to live out a full life.
He realized his mission was a long shot, but humanity had this drive to adapt and survive even when the odds were against victory.
The mood in the bus was growing aggressive. People were getting scared and starting to take it out on each other.
The boy looked up at the man and asked, "Are we going to survive this?"
"How would I know?" replied the traveler.
byUnderd0g
Looking over the young boy's shoulder, the slightly built man watched keenly as the boysketched. It was an unpleasant circumstance they, and the other bus passengers found themselves.
Travelling from Hamburg to Berlin in 2014 should have been uneventful, after all, the manhad an advantage with his travel plans. He was from the future, and everyfactor of his mission in this past was carefully and meticulously considered.The climate conditions were known to be extreme, but the quickness of this particular snowstorm had evaded the intelligence provided to the man now peering at the work of this young artist.
Snow had been piling up against the bus for 20 hours and the motor has sputtered and died. No more gas meant no more heat. The child's pencil shaded his picture with more vigor.
"Don't worry folks, they know where we are and will be sending help any minute now." The bus driver's voice sounded less and less confident.
"You are very talented," the man said to the boy. "What are you drawing there?"
"I'm making a graphic novel. I want to make a time travel story without a paradox. They all seem to have impossible storylines. I don't want to have mine picked apart by the nerds that read it. It's kinda hard, there's a lot to think about," the kid lamented.
"Let me give you a stranger's perspective," the time traveler suggested, "What problems are you having?"
"Well, I've watched every time travel story I could find from 'Back To The Future' to 'Looper' and ironically, the best one I could see, was 'Groundhog Day'; a day that repeated over and over for years. It was a local phenomenon and therefore the changes were kept isolated. But the cause of it was unexplained and seemed spiritual or metaphysical or something." The boy welcomed the distraction. He noticed on one side of the bus, the windows were completely covered with snow. The air had quickly become frigid soon after the motor had stopped.
"It seems you're on the right track. The world would get reset day after day, and nothing could be visibly affected by anyone but the hero of the story."The traveler debated what he could reveal and what he could not. "Plus, whenever went into the future, he only went into the past. What if in time travel,you could only go backwards? It would negate the need for multiple timelines and co-universes."
"How entertaining could that be? You'd never get to see things get resolved on a world scale, the enemies wouldn't get their comeuppance. Why would anyone go into the past if they couldn't return anyway?"
He asked valid questions. It made the traveler examine his own motives. Was his mission legitimate? Why attempt something that he would never see validated?
"Wouldn't it be noble to create a character who would have the courage to venture into such an unknown? He would leave all he loved and who loved him. It would be a tale of sacrifice, readers are moved by sacrifice." The traveler curled and uncurled his toes to bring circulation to them. They started to ache, he could see the boy's breath.
The boy took up another venue, "How could you bring the readers to suspend their disbelief long enough for them to swallow the possibility of time travel? Matter can't occupy the same space at the same time. Wouldn't it be logical that matter from the future can't occupy space in the past where it exists somewhere else on the planet?" His chest felt tight. He didn't want to look weak in front of this stranger. It really was getting cold.
The traveler laughed to himself. He remembered that this was 2014 and they really believed this stuff. It was a time when quantum mechanics and string math was still theory. Black holes were a mystery and cosmology still held so many unknowns.
What the heck, he'd help the boy out with his project. "What's the fastest known energy presently known?"
"Light," the boy quickly answered.
"What if there's something faster than that? What if that matter was common on earth we just aren't presently aware of its existence right now? What if you could trap it so that it wasn't going in a straight line or even a curve, but rather it would bounce back and forth at incredible speed until its container had no choice but to hurl it in the direction you had plotted for it? And finally,what if the black holes in space could actually be charted so that you could be sent at a trajectory to meet with a past orbit? Just sayin'." The traveler was gauging the behaviors of the other bus passengers. They were getting nervous. The bus driver was slumped over the driver's wheel. He didn't want to look at the riders.
"So you can only go back in time and never see the results unless you lived to see them, which would mean you would have to live long enough to catch up when they invent time travel? Pffft! There would have to be something terrible like 'TheTerminator'. It would have to be apocalyptic to motivate someone to reset the whole earth on the off chance he could save it; not to mention he'd have to beone self-important individual." The boy was skeptical.
The traveler reflected on what events brought him here. Yes, most were convinced that the reset was inevitable and necessary. There were many who qualified to make the trip. As far as being a narcissist, the lottery weeded out those. He definitely didn't want to leave his family, no matter how the reset was experienced, he wanted to be there. He didn't care that he may be able to live out a full life.
He realized his mission was a long shot, but humanity had this drive to adapt and survive even when the odds were against victory.
The mood in the bus was growing aggressive. People were getting scared and starting to take it out on each other.
The boy looked up at the man and asked, "Are we going to survive this?"
"How would I know?" replied the traveler.