Wrangling Time

Time travel can be hazardous to your health. Essay 900 words, 5-minute read.

Image: https://1d6chan.miraheze.org/wiki/Steam_Tank

By Ray Tabler

Time travel tales fall into two broad categories, one in which you can’t change the past, and one in which you can. Although ultimately frustrating, the no-changes-allowed variety is more eloquent. No matter how elaborate the time loops get, it all has to be tied up in one futile bow by the end. The protagonist is taught some measure of humility by his failure to outwit causality. Examples are the movie Final Countdown, and the Michael Crichton book and movie Timeline. Much effort is expended, to no effect.

Then there’s the free-wheeling alternative. If the past can be changed, controlling those changes usually proves very difficult. If not impossible. A Sound of Thunder, originally a Ray Bradbury short story, then a movie, explores how a modification as small as stepping on a butterfly can ripple through time and destroy civilization. The Back to the Future series of movies allows the past to be altered, albeit with less dire consequences.

This essay will focus on a causality which can be cajoled onto an alternate path. It might take some doing. And the results might surprise you. But we’ll assume the past is somewhat malleable.

Surprisingly enough, a reluctant causality isn’t the only problem.

Say you’re an erstwhile time traveler, who finds himself stuck back in the Middle Ages. And, you don’t just want to let things be, living out the rest of your life in primitive squalor. So, kicking off the industrial revolution a few centuries early is an attractive option. This is exactly what the protagonist of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court attempted, after almost being burned at the stake as a witch.

Attempted is the keyword here. Things didn’t work out well for our well-meaning Yankee. Even with King Arthur’s backing, the Yankee encounter’s stubborn resistance to his plan for bestowing the blessings of modernity upon medieval England. Funny how people are reluctant to having their entire lives upended like that. Both entrenched interest and common people will join forces to battle change. Fear of the unknown is a powerful motivator.

On the other hand, what if the Yankee had succeeded? The industrial revolution unfolded over hundreds of years in Europe. Not enough time for some, but less shocking than overnight. And the effects were tempered by the enlightenment philosophers, who pointed the way to a rational society. (Perhaps too rational. But that’s another essay.) I shudder to imagine a steam-powered feudalism, complete with industrialized crusades.

In contrast to people resisting the time traveler’s efforts, it’s possible for the response to be too enthusiastic. The traveler’s only real advantage is the knowledge he has of the future. A future. As soon as he opens his big fat mouth, and tells someone in the past what’s going to happen, that advantage begins to unravel.

Revealing the future changes the future. Whoever you let in on the secret might have a reason to steer things their way. The traveler can lecture all he wants about not changing too much. That will render his remembered future less and less accurate. The people in charge of your past may not care. If they can squeeze an advantage out of out of what you told them (however small and temporary), they will.

Here’s a likely example. Say you zip back to World War II, and spill your guts to Winston Churchill. That might get you a less-disastrous Dunkirk, or prevent Dieppe. But what else might Churchill do with your information. He knows the Allies will win the war, so maybe he tries to stack the post-war deck by delaying supplies to the Soviets via arctic convoy routes. When questioned about the wisdom of allying with the Russians, Churchill famously said, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I’d find something nice to say about the Devil himself.” And that’s pretty much how he viewed Stalin. Slowing the Soviet steamroller, and limiting the scope of Soviet post-war domination of Eastern Europe would appeal to the sly old rascal.

And what would prevent Churchill from being somewhat reluctant to cooperate with the Americans on the atomic bomb? British scientists initiated the research which became the atomic bomb. They eventually combined efforts with the US. But maybe Churchill would’ve decided that keeping that power for Britain alone was a better option. Especially with data from the future pointing the way.

And the time traveler’s remembered future is no longer in the cards.

In fact, how much can the traveler change the past before he suffers, personally. Say Churchill’s monkeying about with shipping schedules prevents the traveler’s grandfather from meeting his grandmother, or just delays his parent from being conceived at the proper time. The traveler would be a different person, if he’s there at all. Would he change faces mid-debrief by MI-6? (Or would it be MI-5?) Would he simply disappear? Would the people talking to him notice? Since he wasn’t there in the first place, why would they remember? “I’m sorry, old boy. What the point of this meeting?”

Time travelers beware. Renovating to the past to suit your preferences can be hazardous to your health.

END.