Like Clockwork

I guess I shouldn’t be trusted to keep promises, at least, not this summer. Well what was your promise, one might ask? To be typing this. Specifically, more than one. I’m such a terrible blogger because I can’t follow a routine. I only sporadically post and that’s just plain laziness on my part I think. So I’ve decided to try making the promise for the second time and keeping it this time. I think everyone deserves a second chance.

So recently, I’ve been exploring time travel.  I’ve always had a fascination with it. When I was little, I used to take great pride in saying, “I’m going to build a time machine.” I used to read mythology as a kid. For me, mythology was the closest fantasy ever got to being reality and that’s why I was attracted to it. Pathetically, with no clue of the actual science behind time travel, I used to daydream about my trips back to those ancient time periods imagining walking arm in arm with the pharaohs, being a warrior of Sparta, or sipping tea cozily in a grand palace. I was such a fool. What’s more embarrassing though, I think, is the fact that my attraction went on till the 5^th grade. It was the beginning of the year and we got an assignment in our homerooms to write about our dreams for our future, basically, what we wanted to do. I bet you can guess what I wrote. Later on, our thoughtful albeit naïve answers were posted on the hallway board so every 5^th grader, teacher, and all other perusing eyes could look at them whenever they wanted. While walking to lunch, down that same hallway, a boy from another class came over and started talking to me about my “dreams”. He mumbled something, “Quantum mechanics” and I just thought, “What the hell is he talking about?” Like I said, I was a fool.

Foolishness aside, I’ve seriously noticed today that through the years even though my attraction maybe has taken a backseat on a bus, it’s still there-simmering-and has cropped up more than once through the years. Remember Phineas and Ferb? I’m sure you do. My brother watched it religiously all the time so I got sucked into it too. I know, how childish of you. If you have younger siblings, it’s a fact of life. We’ve all come to accept it. Anyways, that time travel episode-one of my favorite ones. I’ve rewatched it quite a few times with my brother on YouTube. Then there’s the story of Rip Van Winkle. I’ve read that story countless times. More for the heartwarming reunion which gives you a fuzzy feeling, but still the question has evaded my mind, “What if I went to sleep and then woke up and everything as I knew it had disappeared?” It’s a scary thought, but also one that leads to adventure. Of course, there’s Back to the Future. It’s hilarious and light hearted, but you still root that everything turns out fine. And that car? I mean, if I could have one of those-stick shift- that would be the way to go. Which brings me to present day. I’m currently watching an anime called Steins Gate which explores time travel way more in depth. It’s not childish anymore. The consequences are brutal. The reality exciting and filled with constant uncertainty.

The basic theory from the show and from the research I’ve done seems to be that jumping into the future is more possible or less impossible than jumping into the past. However, Steins Gate, so far, at least explores the past and parallel worlds. Every time you make a time jump or a change in space-time continuum a new world line is created which diverges from your original world line. Think of the original as A and the post change or switch B. B stems from A. In theory, once the switch is made your memories are reformed to fit the world line that you are now in. It will eliminate inconsistent memories. The catch is, even though let’s say, hypothetically, you make one tiny change from A to B that might not be the only change present in B. I think because in the new world line of B it has be consistent for it flow parallel to other lines it needs to make more than change for that to happen. One little change can create a domino effect. There is no way to predict exactly what will change. Have you ever thought about if you could change the past what you would do? For me, there are some things I would like to change, but more than that I want to see the past. I want to learn from it so that I somehow can contribute to creating a better future in a little way or a big one. I don’t know. If there is some way to do that, I would take the chance. Would you?