Just a reminder, you mostly don’t have to read these in the same order. Do me a favor and send one of these chapters to someone.
“Time travel isn’t real. At least it isn’t real in the puffy vest and delorien kind of way. People can’t travel to the past or the future. There are too many different ways to create a paradox. Paradoxes tend to break the basic laws of physics or logic. A Bootstrap Paradox or Predestination Paradox for example. Something traveling into the past and causing itself or traveling into the past and changing some event or another.” The Professor was slowly pacing in the front of the lecture hall. He noticed that he was losing some of his audience.
“What harm would be done by traveling back in time and killing teenage Hitler before he came to power or poisoning Xerxes before he set out to take on Leonidas at the hot gates? Well, we may avoid the Holocaust and World War II, but what happens to every person that was affected by those events? Do they cease to exist and are replaced by the non-hitler-affected versions of themselves? Surely, there were people that got together and had babies because of the dominoes that fell due to the war. Or those soldiers that now didn’t die and had more children, people that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
“Most importantly, removing Hitler from history, removes the motivations to remove Hitler in the first place. The time traveler, if he or she still existed in the new non-Hitler timeline, would grow up in a world without a reason to travel back in time and kill Hitler. Would be raised by people completely unaffected by the Holocaust, essentially completely different people. And thus without motivation, the time traveler doesn’t go back in time for the assassination. So, is Hitler alive or dead? He was alive, did horrible things causing the time traveler to travel back in time and kill him, causing those horrible things to not happen and thus removing the reasons for the time traveler to kill him.” Still, some students looked confused, or bored, or… who knows what?
The professor wondered why everyone wasn’t on the edge of their seats. This was the most fascinating subject to study at this time. People were slipping forward and back in time and this lecture was on why time travel can’t exist.
“Another hypothetical,” he continued, “a scientist is in his lab as someone is trying to break in. His aging secretary hands him an old revolver she had in her drawer for protection. He uses the gun to kill the attacker. He then steps into his Time Machine and travels back in time 40 years with the gun. He seeks out and locates his Secretary as a teenager and gives her the gun. He convinces her to always keep it in her desk drawer for protection. Where did the gun come from? Who made it? When was it created? More importantly, where did the matter used in its creation come from? Does it age? Does it get older each time the loop is played through and will eventually rust beyond functionality or does it reset in age and get younger when the scientist takes it back in time? If so, why does it de-age and he doesn’t? If it doesn’t deteriorate or de-age, then why is it immune to entropy? This ageless gun with no origin either can’t exist or entropy and the conservation of mass are not universal laws.”
A student near the back vibrated and slipped back in time. “Someone slap that child.” A nearby student leaned over and slapped the 11 year old.
A student in the third row raised her hand, “Doctor Walden? What about slipping?”
“Temporal Displacement,” he corrected.
“Uh, yeah Temporal Displacement. Doesn’t slipping prove that time travel is possible? We’ve all slipped… er… been temporarily displaced. You were 17 years old just last week in class.”
“Yes, I’m glad you asked. Temporal Displacement or ‘slipping’ isn’t time travel. Or at least not in the traditional sense. When an individual slips in time, they don’t travel, they’re still in the present moment, physically here with us.”
“But they get younger or older…”
“They do. They gain all of the physical and mental attributes, experiences, and memories of the age that they slip to. But they don't travel. I am 48 years old. Last week I slipped to 17 years old. But I did not travel back in time. In the past there is a 17 year old version of myself that is completely untouched by the future. Last week, I became that 17 year-old without traveling in time. I existed in the present moment as a past version of myself. In fact, I was 17 when I was 17 and I was 17 again 31 years later in the timeline. The past was completely unaffected because we cannot affect the past, but my experiences as a 17 year old informed how I behaved last week in the present moment when I slipped back.”
Just then, a student slipped forward, looked around disoriented, and demanded, “what’s the date?!”
Several people answered, “August 22nd.”
She began frantically stumbling over her classmates in their seats trying to get out. She screamed, “He hasn’t come in yet. Get out! Run!” Students started to evacuate. There were confused shouts as everyone fled towards all three exits. “Not that way!!!” She screamed pointing at the exit in the back of the room and ran out of one of the side exits in the front.
Doctor Walden vibrated and slipped 18 months into the future. His shoulder still hurt from his healing collarbone and he was out of breath. He remembered always being a little out of breath after his lung collapsed from the bullet passing through it. He realized where and when he was.
There is no way he would forget today. Any moment now an angry student with a gun would run in and start shooting.
He remembered his frantic student’s slip and everyone evacuating. He also remembered the shooter coming in and firing on him as he ran to the exit.
He didn’t remember this slip forward. This slip was new in the timeline. The future was changing in real time. He was armed with his memory of the past from the future. He realized that if he changed anything he could die. He had been, was about to be, shot twice in the chest, one hitting his collarbone and one inches away from his heart.
Knowing the future changes the future. In his current future’s past, he gets shot and doesn’t die. Everything he did at this point would change things. A flinch in a different direction, walking at a different speed, standing and staring at the back door… anything at this point would change where those bullets hit. Knowing the future changes the future. He might not be lucky enough to leave with a broken collarbone and collapsed lung this time.
The shooter was coming for him. He had caught this student cheating. Garrett Jones had failed the course, causing him to drop out of school. His girlfriend didn’t want to date a dropout… his life fell apart. In his note, the student conveniently left out his cheating, poor test scores, and missing assignments. He blamed everything on the professor and he was coming.
Walden looked at the exits and the open sight lines to the back door. Running to the exit was how he remembered being shot. He dove behind the lectern and began to shake, slipping forward another two years. If he stayed here too long, no one would slap him back to the present moment and he’d enter a slip-chain and pass his death. He wondered if this second slip was informed by the first slip… he still didn’t remember slipping on this day, so slip-chains were linear, not affected by the present moment, but slipping along the same timeline as they initial displacement. He was remembering a changed and now nonexistent future. He hadn't hid behind the lectern before. He remembered getting shot while walking towards the exit.
There were a lot of implications to this, if he lived, and if he could write this down before slipping back to the present moment and losing it, it would be a significant discovery.
He heard the back door open and close. He held his breath. He heard footsteps walking towards the front of the room. They stopped. The shooter grunted. The professor sat for what seemed like an eternity in silence.
The shooter took his backpack off, unzipped it, and put his gun back in his bag. He casually walked back out of the room.
The professor waited a while and then called the cops. He slipped forward again while on the phone. He ran outside, quickly wrote, “The shooter is Garrett Jones” on his arm and yelled, “hit me!” at the first person he saw. He was smacked back to his present age and didn’t die of temporal displacement.
Months later, he would find that notes written on your arm while in a future state are inadmissible in court. Which made sense because what our displaced future selves remembered in the present of the future changed the future. The fact that we know what our future selves will experience, changes what our future selves will experience. They are not facts.
The school’s video cameras are admissible in court. But they merely showed Garrett Jones not shooting anyone. The video showed him walking into a classroom holding a gun in an open carry state, stopping, and putting the gun into his bag. He hadn’t shot it, pointed it at anyone, or made any threats. The video showed him walking into a room and walking out.
Now, there was an unrealized future where a school shooting took place. In the realized timeline, Garrett Jones hadn’t started shooting, hadn’t wandered through campus unloading and reloading his gun injuring and killing, and hadn’t been gunned down by the police. He would have, but when he walked into the classroom and didn’t see the professor, he decided to come back another time. There was no evidence in the present that was admissible in court.
Garrett Jones started dating a barista who had written Garrund on his cup when they first met. He got a job at the local gun store and firing range. Doctor Walden had slipped back to the present, forgetting his discovery of linear chain-slipping, and started seeing a therapist for future-state anxiety.