Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: silly
  • Music: Glee, "Like a Virgin."

Taking the time machine for a spin.

Pop quiz time! Aliens (or mad scientists, or whatever) appear before you with a time machine, and tell you that you get to make two trips backward: one for your own personal gain, and one for the good of all mankind. Each trip can consist of several "hops" (so you can start by traveling back ten years, and then move forward two years, etc.), but can only include one backward hop, and can last for no more than twenty-four hours.

The rules:

1) You can bring anything you want to the past, but you can't leave anything behind. So you can't bring back the polio vaccine and start treating people. It wouldn't work.

2) You can't take anything forward with you, either, except for information. So you could, say, travel back with a copy of a book and a pen, and have the book signed with that pen. Or you could bring a camera and take pictures. But all things must be somehow made from materials you carried with you.

3) You can't get sick in the past, but you could be eaten by a T-Rex. No one native to the time periods you're visiting will notice anything odd about you.

For my personal use, I would pack a bunch of digital cameras, Flip video recorders, and a gene sequencer, and hop back to Messina in 1347. I would then document the Black Death in ten year jumps, with lots of photographs and recordings of people trying to breathe as they fully expressed the virus. And then, when I got back to the present, I would drive the CDC insane...but I would finally know for sure.

For the good of all mankind, I would hop back to the pre-tape losses BBC archives with a tape-to-DVD portable recording rig (and a technician), and get copies of all the missing Doctor Who serials. Upon returning to the present day, I would probably also get knighted.

So what's your personal use? And what's your use for the good of all mankind?
Tags: party games, silliness
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  • 120 comments

beckyh2112

April 22 2010, 01:45:32 UTC 7 years ago

I would first stare at the aliens, and then have a discussion with them about how "twenty-four hours is an essentially meaningless period of time when you are TIME-TRAVELING".

But I have always found time limits on how long you can spend time-traveling to be rather odd. I can come back half a second after I leave. Who cares how long I am out there, unless there are mechanical limits on the machine?

snowishness

April 22 2010, 02:04:49 UTC 7 years ago Edited:  April 22 2010, 02:11:37 UTC

Maybe no one wants you to have visibly changed/aged.

ETA: Or, actually, with this set-up it could be as simple as the time machine only lasting 24 hours before it needs recharging.

There are times time limits don't make sense, but a limit on how much subjective time you experience away can be logical.

beckyh2112

April 22 2010, 02:14:45 UTC 7 years ago

The time-machine only lasting twenty-four hours before needing recharging would come under mechanical limits of the machine. /amused

If it's a matter of "don't come back visibly changed, we don't want to deal with those problems and neither do you" (well, in that case, the whole "copying the Doctor Who serials is going to be problematic, but let's ignore that), they should also rule out getting tattoos, ritual scarification, piercings, or other body mods. *would probably do any of those given things if drunk enough while time-traveled*

I am probably tetchy because the last time I saw one of these time-travel questions, the rationale for the time limit was they had a lot of people who wanted to use it so you only got it for a limited time. To which I say "TIME MACHINE" over and over.