Hatman! My Time Travelling Adventures (Part 9) A Brief History of Time Travel from the 24th Century to 'Present' Day.

I'm writing this on my Timephone from the year 2047. I'm snowed into a bunker hidden in the forest. I think it's about October, but I'm not quite sure. I've kind of lost track of time.

I'd imagine that by this point in the story (if you've been following it up to now) you'll be starting to wonder about how Time travel works - how was it invented - how can it be physically possible to travel through Time without your body becoming atomised and scattered across the Universe - or how the fabric of space-time is not torn apart by impossible paradoxes. Well, I'd be wondering, so I'm just going to tell you what I have learned about it from my twenty years of Time travelling.

In my travels, I've met lots of Time travellers - some of them famous, most of them quite anonymous. You'd be surprised how many there our out there. Mostly we try to avoid each other - mainly because it can really mess up the (what you'd call) 'Space-Time Continnum' (though there really is no such thing, as you'd understand it). But also because they are more often than not, boring voyeurs and not half as interesting as either you or they would think they would be. I've met a few really good ones though. I'll never see them again, and if I do, they probably won't remember me, or they'll remember a completely different version of events, if they remember meeting me at all. That's another reason why Time travellers don't really hang out together. You might think you know them, but the next time you meet them (which is unlikely), they'll be someone completely different.

That's because of the factor of randomness that occurs each time you travel between dimensions. The further you travel, the larger is the factor. For example, if you were to travel from where you are now, to exactly the same place as you are now, but one second into the future, the factor would be small. That is, if you could travel one second forward in Time and then and second back again, you would not find the world much different from how it was when you left it. (You would not experience the paradox of encountering your earlier self as you would in fact have travelled to a neighbouring dimension, almost identical to the one you just left). As I understand it though, travelling short distances in Time isn't possible for people of our size. An average height fully grown human would span about 20 dimensions, which corresponds to roughly 3 years in practical Time travel terms. Anything less than that and you risk being spliced going through the portal, which is not something you'd want to happen to you. Best to stick to ten years or more, just to be on the safe side.

Nobody (at least that I've met) knows exactly the ratio of randomness to time or dimensions crossed. It's almost impossible to measure the extent of random difference from one reality to the next, because you can (in all likelihood) never go back to the one you just came from to compare. There are too many variables and it's also quite unpredictable. There are rough estimates among Time travellers, usually based based upon gambling odds carried from one dimension to another, but these vary a lot, and they're probably all wrong. I'd be surprised if anyone knows.

Most Time travellers, like me, got into Time travel by chance. By some weird turn of events. As such, not many that I've met, really know very much about how Time travel actually works. You'd be surprised how many don't even think about it or question it - like most people in your time really don't have a clue, or particularly care, how their smartphone, or camera, or car, or the internet, or even their own brain, actually works. As long as it does, who cares? They're like that about Time travel.

...I'll just mention at this point, so as to not confuse you, that in the telling of this story, I'll be using the past tense, even when talking about what you'd consider 'future events'. For example, I might say -

'Most Time Travellers agree that the first use of Physical Interdimentional Travel by a human was in 2323.'

And you will understand that even though you are reading this in 2017, the fact that I am referring to an actual event which has already taken place (at least in this dimension and most other dimensions in this region) then it makes sense that I say 'was' and not 'will be'. You'll see. It will be clearer that way. This is the way that Time Travellers talk, because if you've just travelled - let's say, from London in 2017 to London in 1917, as I did - then the Time you came from (2017) will actually be in your past, even though you are now in an 'earlier' Time. Yes, it really confused me at first as well. Our minds aren't really prepared to deal with that sort of change, but they are surprisingly adaptable....

What follows is a rough Timeline for the history of Time Travel, which I have pieced together over the course of my travels. Special thanks goes to Keeanu Reeves, who is a great scholar of Time Travel History. I met him in Spain in 1860, and we had many a long conversation about the ins and outs of Time Travel, but I'm not sure if he'd remember it now.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME TRAVEL, FROM THE 24TH CENTURY TO PRESENT TIME

2323 - Is generally agreed to be the year that the first Interdimentional Portal appeared on Earth, which was large enough for a human to pass through. Some people say it came from intelligent beings from another planet who picked up on the signal from the first Timephone, which was invented in 2030, by a man who's name I don't know, who disappeared shortly after the first successful test.

The timephone is a kind of quantum computer, which utilises the little understood phenomenon possessed by certain subatomic particles, of being in two places at the same time - and others which are able to travel almost immeasurably short distances across Time. The idea was that a network of quantum computers could be set up across time and send messages back and forth from 'future' to 'past' and vice versa.

This was achieved and it soon had the unexpected result of causing all world economies to collapse at that same time as putting an end to all major wars. You see, stock market traders and military strategists were able to warn their earlier selves of events yet to happen, and so take precautionary or alternative measures to avoid those outcomes. It soon became clear that fighting war was impossible, because the enemy always knew what you were going to do. War became more of a farce than it already was. Likewise, the whole concept of money (which, after all is only an illusion agreed on by most people) fell apart, and money became completely worthless.

Time phone technology was suppressed by all remaining world governments, while they continued to exist and function - the last national government resigned in 2039 after it was agreed that they were no longer needed and no-one payed any attention to them anyway.

Meanwhile, in the 24th century, there was a brief boom in the creation of new Interdimentional Portal (IP) devices (such as the one I found in the attic of my parents' house in 2017) and these found there way across many dimensions and Times. It's thought that as many as ten thousand of these devices were made, in all shapes and forms, before a serious anti-gravity accident caused the entire production facility to be swallowed by a small, short-lived black hole.

Since that time (It was around 2387, I think) Time travellers have played an important, though little recognised role in the development of technology - from the invention of the wheel in prehistoric times, to the creation of the world wide web, which was primarily created to enable the use of Timephones even further back into the 'past', with greater reliability.

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In the next part I'll get back to the story. It's just that snowed into this bunker, stranded in the year 2047, living on mostly on canned and dried food, the memory of great great grandma Esther's fruit cake would be enough to drive me to despair, knowing that I'll never taste it again.

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Here is an interesting little documentary you can watch, giving evidence of a few cases of Time Travel. Everything in it is true.

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Follow the 'hatman' tag to read previous parts of the story. It might make more sense if you do, but I can't guarantee it.

Here are links to the other parts. .They seem to disappear from the tag after a time...

https://steemit.com/hatman/@stillgideon/hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-part-8-great-great-grandpa-tells-me-a-bit-of-family-history

https://steemit.com/writing/@stillgideon/hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-part-7

https://steemit.com/writing/@stillgideon/hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-part-6

https://steemit.com/writing/@stillgideon/5bfjrf-hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-parts-1-to-5