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

slothman

April 22 2010, 05:29:04 UTC 7 years ago

Are we allowed to change the past? If so, I go back about 10 years and tell myself a few simple things I need to do in order to (a) spare obsessivewoman a lot of suffering and (b) spare my cats some trips to the emergency vet while minimizing disruption to history. (It’s a good metric for your level of contentment with your life: what would you change about your own history, knowing the amazing amount of uncertainty that could be created by your intervention?) If “leaving anything behind” includes information or any other ways to change history, then I take some good covert recording gear back to Philadelphia in 1787 and get the Founders on record answering some clarifying questions about their intent in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, just so I can mess with the heads of people making absurd claims. For all mankind, I would grab some appropriately-trained archaeologists and pay a late-night visit to the Library of Alexandria with some high-quality recording gear.

seanan_mcguire

April 23 2010, 06:27:11 UTC 7 years ago

It's best if you don't, but I love your choices.