Chapter 10

In Which We Discuss Time Travel

Have you ever wanted to be able to travel back in time? I know I have.
Not back to the middle ages, or to any time BC, but to when I was a little kid, and I'd meet myself. I mean, hey, if you're going to time travel, you may as well mess up the whole space-time continuum, right? It's the only real way to find out if time travel actually works.
I mean, imagine you go back in time, and just observe. What good does that do you? How can you prove you had even done it? But if you do something that can be proven -- something to change the past -- there is always the proof that you did it, even if it messes up the timeline and you can not get back to the future.
I can almost picture it: you go back in time and change one thing. That one thing disrupts everything that happens in the future until time-travel is never invented, and they you are stuck in the 1980's or something.
I suppose that would be pretty strange -- living in an era you took for granted (except for the Smurfs, Alf, and G.I. Joe) -- with the knowledge of the future you now have.
But then you'd start to wonder: "did I really time-travel at all, or am I just in a paralell universe?" Then you'd start tripping out because those people are not your parents anymore, and so you can't legally mooch off them, and all the spoiling you did of the other you has just made, basically, an evil mini-you.
However, on the flip-side, everybody would believe you were a prophet when you tell them how Family Ties ends, and who wins the first Survivor, and when you played the stock market and became filthy stinking rich and bought Rhode Island. But I'm pretty sure you would be unhappy even then because... hmmm...
I suppose time-travel doesn't work anyhow... and if it did, it wouldn't be possible to build one out of a used propane tank, a VCR, a broken rolex, and a VW bug, right? I suppose my research notes wouldn't help either.
Anyone want to buy a used propane tank, and broken rolex and some research notes on time-travel?