Time Travel

Time travel has been a phenomenon of science fiction since the very first days of the genre. Man has been fascinated with the possibility of manipulating one of nature s most divine traits. Recently the question of the possibility of time travel has crossed over from the world of fantasy to serious science. It is no longer a question left just to the authors of sci-fi stories. Thus now more than ever it is imperative to investigate whether the idea of time travel is even meaningful. To explore this question it is necessary to first clearly understand time and subsequently the concept of time travel. Time has always been considered to be an intrinsic part of our environment. It is so fundamental to our thought processes that it is always taken to be an absolute. Only recently did modern physics begin to study the nature of time and how it relates to space. Together space and time constitute the very fabric of reality known as space-time. We now take it for granted that space- time is a real entity which is independent of our existence. The problem lies not in this assumption but in how it is applied to the nature of time. It maybe true that time is a state variable of the universe but there are definite indications that our view of it is either incorrect or incomplete. Time is always discussed as if it were a fluid. We seem to think it flows and has a direction or an arrow.

Another underlying every day assumption is that time is absolute for everyone. On the other hand the physics of relativity tells us that time is a dimension and there is no such thing as absolute time. This information causes many people to prophesize that we should be able to move just as freely through the fourth dimension as we do through the other three spatial dimensions. Here is where the discrepancy lies, in the connection between the dimensional nature of time and the classical fluid view of time. In our attempt to reconcile the intuitive view of time with the physics of relativity, we try to join the two in such a way that is still acceptable to our common sense. However the recent past has shown that as physics gets closer to describing the very nature of the universe, it gets further away from current day common sense and intuition. The best example of such a branch of physics is quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics has time and time again held up to experimental evidence and yet its basic tenet of probability/uncertainty is highly unsettling to most people. If we are to embrace the relativistic and dimensional nature of time, then we must abandon the one stemming from the idea that it is fluid. We must also accept that as beings who exist physically in three dimensions it will be extremely difficult to visualize how exactly a fourth dimension fits into our existence. A limited analogy of a two-dimensional being having difficulty grasping the third dimension may be used. The only problem with that analogy is that time, if it is indeed a dimension, is very different from the three spatial dimensions we perceive. Thus if we begin to accept the idea that time is purely dimensional and we have a somewhat limited perception of it, the concepts of past present and future take on new meaning. They all coexist.

A world line isn t created as one move forward through time; it is always there in its entirety. However we will never be able to see this because our brains are not equipped to deal with such information. The complexity of our neural net at our current stage of evolution does not meet the standards to comprehend time in its true form. One of the most important methods of information organization that the brain uses is sequencing. Our memories are temporally ordered to a large extent. Time is the main associative operator in the thought process. As the brain gets new information from the five senses, it is time stamped and goes into memory. Imagine the information overload and chaos that would occur if we began to see past, present and future all at once. One would go completely insane. An analogy to the situation would be a dam breaking. A dam allows small amounts of water to flow consistently and calmly. If the dam were to break the sudden onrush of water would destroy everything in its path. Thus it can be seen that there maybe a profound difference between the real nature of time and time as perceived by the human psyche. This is the handicap we have in coming to grips with time as it really is.

In a nutshell this could mean that time is the dimension in which the other three spatial dimensions exist. Our 3D world is a level curve of a surface in 4D. We cannot experience the whole surface at once. But by moving through that surface we can experience it piece by piece. This is the current state of things. Since space itself is expanding through time, we are forced to move through it as well and feel the passage of time and its arrow. Equipped with the new idea of time as a dimension we are closer to its real nature. Thus the question of time travel can now be better tackled. The idea of time travel must first clearly be defined. Obviously it does not refer to the normal ticking of the clock we experience due to the expansion of space. It refers to a movement through time not caused by the expansion of space. This leaves two possibilities. Relativistic time dilation and discrete jumps through time. Time dilation can be implemented to create, in effect, time travel to the future. Since it is a one way trip no paradoxes arise. All you are simply doing is slowing down the rate at which you move through time compared with normal space. It is done by moving at speeds close to that of light. When you slow down enough to once again move through time at the same rate as which space is, you will have arrived in your future faster than you normally would have.

The extreme case analogy would be suspended animation. No paradoxes arise because one does not disappear from space (violating the

conventional concept of the conservation of mass-energy). You simply move through space at such a velocity that you begin to run into its dimensional boundary that is expanding in time. This causes your rate of passage through time to be different from that of space. There is no example that could sufficiently illustrate this mechanism but consider the metaphor ramming into space itself a starting point. It is the second concept of jumping through different points in time that is problematic. It is still unclear as to whether the laws of current physics or even future physics will allow such a thing and even if it did, some very unsettling paradoxes arise when considering time travel of this sort. They arise because of the psychological view of time. However assuming that physics does not have a problem with such a mode of temporal travel the paradoxes can be dealt with if we use the dimensional viewpoint of time.

One of the paradoxes that arise is the grandmother paradox. In essence it states that if one were to go back in time and kill his or her grandmother, then their mother would never be born and she would never give birth to the time traveler. Of course then the question arises how did he/she travel back in time in the first place? The idea gnaws deeply at the notion of cause and effect. But what if cause and effect were an illusion? The connection our thought processes make between two occurrences need not necessarily exist outside of our head. If the past and future exist at the same instant then so would cause and effect. They need not be in any order. The order we perceive is a creation of the mind. They are just there, always. Subsequently if a being free to move through time was to interact in what they thought were the past, the future need not change. The idea may be very unsettling at first but then so was Einstein s introduction of time dilation. The second paradox of free will is more metaphysical in its nature. A thorough examination of it is beyond the scope of this paper. However it can be briefly examined in its relation to the passage of time. One of the questions concerning time is whether the future is open or not. From the dimensional point of view of the conclusion leans towards a closed future since it already coexists with the past and present.

On the surface this appears to have deep implications about free will. Are we truly free to choose as we do? This is an ambiguous question. From the point of view of an omnipotent being who can see entire world lines the answer would be no. However from our point of view, even if we knew that the future was closed, we cannot know what that future is. Therefore free will seems to hold. The counter argument to this reasoning is that no matter what decision you make, that was the decision you were destined to make. This argument is circular and highly flawed. If any decision is predestined, then predestination really has no effect on the decision making process. Once again this is related to how one defines free will.A third oddity that usually surrounds time travel of this sort is the violation of the conservation of mass- energy. An example is if one time travel back a few minutes and meets the former self and then both time travel to the future to meet another and so on, matter will be created out of nothing. This argument could be falsified if it is shown that the amount of mass-energy is constant not only in space but also through time. Since three dimensional space is enclosed in the fourth dimension of time, it is really the time-mass-energy that has to be conserved. All of the energy and mass of the past, present, and future coexist in time and together they are conserved over time.

In examining the nature of time and subsequently the question of time travel, hopefully the most popular arguments concerning the two topics have been addressed. This is not to say that the point of view presented in this paper is necessarily the correct one. That is left to the future physicists and philosophers to ponder over. However it does appear to shed light on an exit out of the hall of paradoxes that are usually associated with the subject matter. Whenever a theory can explain all the same concepts as the theory it is superseding, and more, it usually is accepted in the scientific world. Many scientists agree with this point of view of time and hopefully as more come to accept it, we will make further inroads into its understanding and time travel.

The novel Kindred by Octavia Butler is a story based upon time travel. The protagonist,

Dana, travels back in time to Maryland around the early 1800’s when slavery was very prevalent. Dana makes it clear that they were originally observing everything. She states on page 98, “We’re observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors.” With Dana being a black woman in the 1800’s she was bound to be a slave. Butler creates the setting based upon the trials Dana encounters as a slave and the experiences she had in the 1970’s where she was originally born. The author makes it so that the reader can determine how attitudes towards women and blacks have changed; it is evident that there is a different reflection of the challenges, but they still exist in the current time.

In my opinion, Kindred displays slavery as though it is not a modern-day thing. The main difference with modern day slavery is that it is voluntary. No one was forced to work in the job Dana obtained; if your work didn’t meet your boss’s criteria you were sent home. This is obviously nothing like the brutal punishment that the slaves received for not working to their slave master’s approval. On page 212, Dana recalls working at the plantation. “I raised the knife and chopped at the first stalk. It bent over, partially cut. At almost the same moment, Fowler lashed me across the back.”

To this day racism is still common. During the time of Kindred, civil rights weren’t in place. Dana was not like an average slave when it came to her speech, clothing, and education; but her skin color put her into the same category as the slaves. It was impossible for her to be anything other than a slave. “In town, once, I heard a man brag how he and his friends had caught a free black, tore up his papers, and sold him to a trader. I said nothing. He was right, of course. I had no rights, not even any papers to be torn up.” (Page 139). All slaves had the same rights, which were none and at any time a free slave could lose their freedom. At times children

were created between white men and black slaves. The children would be considered slaves

unless freed by their owner. Rufus took advantage of this by raping and buying Alice as a slave. He didn’t necessarily care that this type of union wasn’t acceptable to most other whites.

Dana and her husband Kevin’s union was also seen as unacceptable. This was made clear when Dana told Kevin, “I think my aunt accepts the idea of my marrying you because any children we have will be light… She doesn’t care much for white people, but she prefers light-skinned blacks… Anyway, she forgives me for you. But my uncle doesn’t. He’s sort of taken this personally… He… well, he’s my mother’s oldest brother, and he was like a father to me even before my mother died because my father died when I was a baby. Now… it’s as though I’ve rejected him. Or at least that’s the way he feels.” (Page 111). Her uncle is not pleased with their union and neither is Kevin’s sister. He lost touch with his sister after she was unaccepting of Dana and disowned him. He explained to Dana, “I thought I knew her, I mean, I did know her. But I guess we’ve lost touch more than I thought… she didn’t want to meet you, wouldn’t have you in her house or me either if I married you.” (Page 110) Although their union was unacceptable to society due to the animosity between the two races, Rufus was still willing to accept his children. He educated them and eventually set them free from being slaves. His father and wife on the other hand did not approve and abused the children at times.

Blacks are not the only class that has experiences with racism. All throughout the world women are looked at as beneath men. Kindred exemplifies this as well, Margaret Weylin was a white woman who was illiterate compared to the original Mrs. Weylin who was more educated than her husband, Tom. Mr. Weylin made sure that his next wife wasn’t educated. This is evidenced on page 98, “Daddy was married to her before he married Mama, but she died. This place used to be hers. He said she read so much that before he married Mama, he made sure she

didn’t like to read.” In addition to it be being normalized to have little to no education, women did not help the men in controlling the slaves. This was made obvious following the passing of Rufus and Mr. Weylin, the general expectation would be to pass on the plantation to Margaret but she was expected to not get involved in it; as it was her job to take care of the household and children.

In modern times women are treated better but it is still a general expectation by society for women to conform. It was expected for women to be submissive, Butler exemplifies this when Kevin got upset `with Dana on page 109, “The second time he asked, though, I told him, and I refused. He was annoyed. The third time when I refused again, he was angry. He said if I couldn’t do him a little favor when he asked, I could leave. So I went home.” He expected her to do as he pleased even though she didn’t want to. This was even shown early in the novel, during her choice of a career path “They wanted me to be a nurse, a secretary, or a teacher.” (Page 55). All three of these are known as careers for women. This was part of the reason she hung on to her agency job although Kevin offered to take care of her until she found something better, she didn’t want Kevin to strip her of her independence so she declined.

Although Dana looks for independence from her husband she still loves him and they continue to have a healthy relationship. Throughout the novel, her views of her husband remain the same although she observes how whites treated black women in the 1800’s. She witnessed the sexual degradation that black women suffered from white men in the raping of Alice and her love for Kevin remained the same. (Foster)

Problems that were introduced in the book still are prevalent even though this novel is over a century old. The novel describes a never-ending cycle of controversial issues that seem to have disappeared but still thrive in modern day. Oppression is present even if racism is ignored.

In conclusion, the novel revealed that racism, gender inequalities, and slavery are still a disguised component of today’s world.

Works Cited

1. Octavia Butler. “Kindred”. Boston: Beacon Press

   Book

2. Foster, Guy Mark. “Do I Look Like Someone You Can Come Home to from Where You May Be

   Going?” 2007. Web.

Reading Through Time

Time travel fiction has often been a genre that fascinates and enlightens readers probably due to the fact that being able to change the past and know the future is something that has not been done in reality. Time travel is a subject in literature that takes a reader through a personal journey into the past and/or future to show how they are intertwined and impact the present.

Past events are restructured in the present (Wittenberg). The past always repeats itself in extreme and subtle ways. For example, many years ago America kept black slaves as free labor workers. Now, even though we do not call them slaves anymore, America still has many racial biases and discrimination issues. In this way, the past is inserting itself into the present and carrying on into the future. One particular example of this is the story A Christmas Carol.

In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean old man with no Christmas Spirit and, as a result, he is visited by three ghosts: Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future. Christmas Past comes to show him all of the Christmases that made him hate the holiday so much in the present. He reminisces, through the ghost, on the Christmas’s he spent alone before and after his sister died and then the Christmas that his girlfriend broke off their engagement (Dickens). This shows how his past is a central force in his present personality. Many readers will relate to this time travel story as it shows a person who went through something in the past and it shaped who they are in the present. Everyone has experienced that in some way or another.

Scrooge is then made to experience his present after seeing his past so that he can make the connection between the two and maybe, along the way, learn how to fix the way he is living his life. This also gives him and the reader a chance to see how others, who may not be as

fortunate as we are, can sometimes be more grateful for the little they do have than those who

have everything they think they wanted and still be unhappy. Time travel stories open the eyes of the reader to see all aspects of life and how it can and should be changed.

Finally, Scrooge is shown his future if he does not change (Dickens). Many of us can remember parts of our past but glimpsing the future to see how our choices could affect the rest of our lives is something that many people would trade their left arm to do. Part of the reason time travel stories are so fascinating and real to many readers may be because of the chance to see into the future. A Christmas Carol shows how taking another glimpse at the past affects the present attitude and can change a “should have been” into a possibility (Wittenberg).

Another good example of how time travel stories engage the readers through experience

is Kindred by Octavia Butler. Kindred is a novel that is set in the 1900s with an African American woman named Dana who is sent back in time to alter events that will ultimately save her future self. Butler connects the past and present by sending Dana back in time where African Americans are still treated as slaves. The memories of someone who experienced slavery is nothing compared to someone actually experiencing it at the time (Hampton). Dana, in the present, is married to a white man so she is even more frightened and confused when she is sent to a part of the past where white men beat and attempt to rape her. Octavia Butler uses time travel to show the past as a “present reality” through Dana’s eyes (Hampton). Dana is not in control of when and where she time travels so the reader connects to her as a passenger of a new

narrative.

Dana does not remember a past that she was not born in so her adventure is centered on what she learns from her ancestors. As she goes back in time to witness slavery first hand, her present self is starting to understand slavery better in her time. Dana, uncontrollably, goes back

in time multiple times so that she can save her ancestors in the past and, in consequence,

preserve herself and her family in the future (Hampton).

Time travel, in the novel Kindred, is a way of crossing boundaries. “The conceit of Kindred is that Dana sees how the bonds of the past become the very means to freedom from her legacy in the present; not only is the past necessary to the present/future, but the present/future becomes the very way or means by which the past acquires its meaning in Dana’s life” (Hampton). Meaning that without the past happening the way it did and Dana learning to understand the past as it intertwines with the present, then Dana’s whole existence as a free African American female would not have the same significance it does now. This, as well, helps the reader connect to Dana through time travel. As Dana is transported back through time, the reader experiences how the past and present exist within each other and that memory is the key component of time travel. Dana’s great-grandfather, Rufus, inadvertently sends Dana through time to him every time his life is in danger so that she can save him and return to her own time. Rufus’ mind is what brings her to the past so Dana’s memories are altering with the past and that is how she is allowed to exist in the present as well (Hampton). Because Rufus is the central force of her time travel to the past then he must be a key figure in her present. “Dana’s method of traveling through time and space can therefore be interpreted as rethinking the past and the present” (Hampton).

What these books and articles have in common in accordance to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is that they use time travel as a central focus, not so much to change the past, as to understand how the past is intertwined into the present and, by extension, the future. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooges misery in the present stemmed from the misery of his past Christmas’ and would have carried so far into the future that no one would have been to his funeral if he had not chosen to change his attitude. In Kindred, Dana’s adventure to the past gave her a better understanding of her freedom and privileges in the future. Finally, in The Time Machine, the time traveler’s adventure into the future shows him that his assumptions of the way things should be are not always right and the past always comes back around, in some way, to repeat itself in the future. The time traveler feels as though society will be more evolved in the future and his arrogance gets him into a lot of trouble. This causes him to go back to his own time, share his story, and leave again to perhaps help change the future for the better (Wells).

The one difference among these stories, though, is that in the first two there is no time machine. The time travel method, while physical, is a mental process that is interpreted as rethinking past mistakes and choices rather than having a machine take you into the future. Having time travel without the machine seems more relatable to readers because time machines have not been invented. The reader can connect more with the time traveler of the story if they are simply being back in time through their own means. It is the same as looking back through history and your own life.

There are many other time travel stories such as The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, and Time and Again by Jack Finney that use time travel as a central focus that continues to fascinate readers. Why is that? Is it perhaps because we have yet to physically travel back or forward in time and experience this ourselves? Or is it that we love to experience the past through a point of view other than our own and a history book’s?

Works Cited

1. Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. Print

2. Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. New York: Global Classics, 2014. Print.

3. Hampton, Gregory. “Kindred: History, Revision, And (Re)Memory of Bodies.” Obsidian III

   6/7.2/1 (2005): 105-117. Humanities International Complete. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.

Time travel stories are the stories in which people get lost in the dimension of time (and space). Time travel stories seem to have more with the fantasy writing, but they, in fact, may present us with a very realistic depiction of contemporary society and men. Authors of this kind of literature do that in not so obvious way, for the facts they want to exhibit lie hidden beneath the improbability of time travel, and comical situations the characters who travel through time usually get into.

The source of comic lies in the situations where a character finds his usual behavior and beliefs contrasted and often confronted with those of an alien surroundings he finds himself into. From this kind of social, cultural and temporal misunderstanding rises a comical situation which the character finds difficult to manage, and therefore looks silly, or finds the society he got into to be that way. But behind these comic, light-hearted situations lurks the fact that shows that the cause of this type of misunderstanding lies in the rigidity of the characters. It shows how people are often not able to understand different social rules and customs, and therefore stick to their usual patterns of behavior, which makes them unable to adapt and empathize with people unlike themselves, which is not funny at all.

The characters in time travel novels are somewhat stereotyped as typical representatives of their societies. This occurs because the character’s personality and behavior are strongly opposed to different social rules, so what is taken as most ordinary and common in one society, and often goes without giving any notion to it, becomes highlighted and very obvious in a different setting. That’s how Hank Morgan is a typical man from industrial Connecticut, or how Arthur Dent is a typical Englishman from the second part of the 21st century.

Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee on King Arthur’s Court”- Hank Morgan is this type of character- lost in time and rigid in his behavior and beliefs. He finds himself listening to the jokes of Sir Dinadan in king Arthur’s court. Hank Morgan finds Sir Dinadan far from being funny and is utterly bored with his stories.

“Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech — of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn’t any such thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities — but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the scoffer didn’t laugh — I mean the boy. No, he scoffed; there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t scoff at. He said the most of Sir Dinadan’s jokes were rotten and the rest were petrified. I said “petrified” was good; as I believed, myself, that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hit the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn’t been invented yet. However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no use to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn’t ripe yet.

“

Hank Morgan describes Sir Dinadan’s jokes as played-out and heard hundred times before. And that is true, but what Hank does not realize is that perhaps those jokes seem rotten and old, because they are really old- ten centuries or more. Hank Morgan shows his rigidity in regard to people different from himself. He wastes no time in describing Sir Dinadan’s jokes as bad and boring, but it never occurs to him that some people may have a different sense of humor than his, or may not have foreknowledge he possesses so that they can understand his jokes, like the page boy who doesn’t quite catch his joke about classifying Sir Dinadan’s jokes by geological periods, simply because he does not know what geology is. Nevertheless, he finds his own jokes funny, and decides to keep this particular one in mind if he ever gets medieval people to discover and learn about geology. Hank Morgan thinks it would be useful for these people to deal with geology, for it is useful for him and other men of his industrial civilization. He is simply not able to realize and acknowledge a society different from his own. He sees rising industrial America and its democracy as the best possible way of ordering human society, and finds Medieval England and feudalism repulsive and terrible. He does everything in his might to reform it, never doubting whether he is right or wrong.

“A short while before this, Arthur Dent had set out from his cabin

in search of a cup of tea. It was not a quest he embarked upon with a great deal of optimism., because he knew that the only source of hot drinks on the entire ship was a benighted piece of equipment produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It was called a Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer, and he had encountered it before.

It claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks

personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared

to use it. When put to the test, however, it invariably produced

a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but nit

quite, entirely unlike tea.

He attempted to reason with the thing.

“Tea,” he said.

“Share and Enjoy,” the machine replied and provided him with yet

another cup of the sickly liquid.

He threw it away.

“Share and enjoy,” the machine repeated and provided him with another one.

“Share and Enjoy” is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is

the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent

profit in recent years.

The motto stands – or rather stood – in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young complaints executives – now deceased.

The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the

local language, to read “Go stick your head in a pig”, and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.

Arthur threw away a sixth cup of the liquid.

“Listen, you machine,” he said, “you claim you can synthesize any

drink in existence, so why do you keep giving me the same

undrinkable stuff?”

“Nutrition and pleasurable sense data,” burbled the machine.

“Share and Enjoy.”

“It tastes filthy!”

“If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink,” continued the

machine, “why not share it with your friends?”

“Because,” said Arthur tartly, “I want to keep them. Will you try

to comprehend what I’m telling you? That drink …”

“That drink,” said the machine sweetly, “was individually

tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure.”

“Ah,” said Arthur, “so I’m a masochist on diet am I?”

“Share and Enjoy.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Will that be all?”

Arthur decided to give up.

“Yes,” he said.

Then he decided he’d be dammed if he’d give up.

“No,” he said, “look, it’s very, very simple … all I want …

is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen.”

And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it

about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in

the milk before the tea so it wouldn’t get scalded. He even told

it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company.

“So that’s it, is it?” said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished.

“Yes,” said Arthur, “that is what I want.”

“You want the taste of dried leaves boiled in water?”

“Er, yes. With milk.”

“Squirted out of a cow?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose…”

“I’m going to need some help with this one,” said the machine

tersely. All the cheerful burbling had dropped out of its voice

and it now meant business.

“Well, anything I can do,” said Arthur.

“You’ve done quite enough,” the Nutri-Matic informed him.

It summoned up the ship’s computer.

“Hi there!” said the ship’s computer.

The Nutri-Matic explained about tea to the ship’s computer. The

computer boggled, linked logic circuits with the Nutri-Matic and

together they lapsed into a grim silence.

Arthur watched and waited for a while, but nothing further happened.

He thumped it, but still nothing happened.

Eventually he gave up and wandered up to the bridge.

In the empty wastes of space, the Heart of Gold hung still.

Around it blazed the billion pinpricks of the Galaxy. Towards it

crept the ugly yellow lump of the Vogon ship.

Just as Hank Morgan represents the typical American man from the industrial era, so does Arthur Dent stand for an average British guy from the 21st century. Arthur Dent gets even more misplaced in space and time than Hank Morgan does- he gets to travel into future and past all throughout the galaxy. That quite messes his mind up, but Dent manages as well to mess up quite a few things as well. He is the same sort of a character like Twain’s time traveler Morgan- Dent finds difficulty in adapting to a strange environment and thinks his way of life and his society best possible. He is rigid in his habits and expects everything in the universe to work like it does in Great Britain. He asks the

computer to produce him a cup of tea, for he finds it as terrible to be deprived of tea as it is to spend five years in a swamp.

“Later, I was thrown off a spaceship. Still in my dressing gown.

Rather than the space suit one would normally expect. Shortly after that I discovered that my planet had originally been built for a bunch of mice. You can imagine how I felt about that. I was then shot at for a while and blown up. In fact I have been blown up ridiculously often, shot at, insulted, regularly

disintegrated, deprived of tea, and recently I crashed into a

swamp and had to spend five years in a damp cave.”

So the computer tries its best to make a cup of tea, but Arthur Dent is not satisfied. So the machine takes all the power from the starship in order to make tea. Too bad the ship gets attacked in that moment, and all the people on the starship, including Arthur who is still wining about a proper cup of tea, escape utter destruction merely by luck. The situation is extreme and very funny as well- no one would think a simple cup of tea could be a cause of such a fatal destruction. But underneath this comical situation Arthur Dent, rigid in his behavior, does not realize that exactly this kind of behavior may cause disasters in another time and space, like this cup of tea that almost kills everyone on the starship. Arthur Dent travels the galaxy and time, sees new worlds and species, but still has difficulty escaping the routed patterns of behavior he is used to back home.

Time travel stories present the readers with fantasy worlds and comic situations. This kind of a story setting and comic usually has a surface and a deeper level, which reveals facts about human nature, that are not so pleasant and obvious to us, ego- centered humans.

It’s February 3rd 1909 and a scientist is working on a time traveling machine in

Washington D.C. and wants someone to test the time traveling machine to see if it works. But he doesn’t want just no normal person he wants the President Theodore Roosevelt. So, the next day February 4th 1909 he knocks on the White House and the maid comes to the door and says “what do you want?” The scientist replys “I would like to have Theodore Roosevelt test out my time traveling machine” could you please tell him for me and have him come to my lab tomorrow if he would like. So the scientist leaves and the maid goes and tells Theodore Roosevelt and TR says I would love to go to his lab can you please have clear my schedule for tomorrow. So the next day he leaves the White House to head to the Lab.

He arrives and enters the lab where the scientist says hello and says thank you for wanting to test my time traveling machine, but one thing you should know about this is that I don’t choose what year and day this goes to so be ready for anything and any time and you only have the day. So he starts the time machine and it zaps TR. TR goes into a trance like state, Now finally TR comes out of his trance and he finds himself in front of the White House but does not know what year it is. So he knocks on the door of the White House and asks what day and year it is and the woman replies February 5th 1809. TR thinks, then he asks who is in the White House now, The woman replies well Thomas Jefferson of course, you seem confused would you like to come in and eat with the president. So, TR enters the White House and enters the dinner room and sees Thomas Jefferson one of the presidents he hates so dearly, but would love to debate with.

Theodore Roosevelt: Hello Mr. President

Thomas Jefferson: Hello, Little Farmer

TR: Excuse me I am no farmer

TJ: Then what are you ser?

TR: I am the President of the United States

TJ: Your absurd because I am the President

TR: No, I am the President of My time

TJ: What do you Mean? He asks

TR: I mean I am from the future

TJ: Ok Theodore so what would you like to talk about?

TR: I would like to talk about our political views and how we feel about certain things

TJ: Well to start off I am a strict constitutionalist and I believe that if it does not say that you

can do something in the constitution, then you can not do it. How about you Theodore?

TR: You may call me Teddy if you want Thomas.

TJ: Ok Teddy that sounds good.

TR: Now I totally disagree with you because I believe in free interpretation of the Constitution because if you need to do something that is for the betterment of the people or for the betterment of anything that you should be able to do that even if the constitution

doesn’t say you can.

TJ: Why would you think that the constitution was written for a reason to state what we can and cannot do.

TR: Well if you believe that then why did you go against what you believe and go through with the Louisiana Purchase. The constitution never states you have the right to Purchase land.

TJ: I went through with the Louisiana purchase to expand the U.S. and I thought I am going against my own principles but only to expand and there was a reasonable reason for that.

TR: Well I am glad you put the nation’s needs in front of yours. How about your thoughts on Foreign Policy

TJ: I believe in staying neutral

TR: Again that is absurd Mr.Jefferson because My belief on foreign policy is that the U.S. needs and needs to become a world power. The U.S. needs to increase the influence and prestige on the world. We must create a powerful defense in case a conflict arises with an enemy. I will not let anyone stand in my way, I will use force as it is needed so that our country is thought of as a strong and powerful and not as a weak nation.

TJ: As a Nation we have no time to deal with Foreign Policy, we need to focus on our own nation. We need to be able to deal with our own problems.

TR: Even when dealing with foreign policy you can still focus on our nations own problems all you are doing is becoming stronger and more influential.

TJ:Neutrality is the best way in not getting into any problems

TR: No Mr. Jefferson we must “speak softly and carry a big stick”

TJ: There is no need to spit in my face Mr. Roosevelt. That is rude.

TR: I imagine if your views are absurd as they have been that your views on social issues are much more absurd.

TJ: Well, I believe that the government should cut all possible cost, and that means cutting down the army and the navy, and should not intervene in people’s lives and not regulate them. TR: Again Absurd you must regulate people, you must regulate business which is run by people because if you don’t practices might be unfair, you must regulate business so the customers are getting a safe product and make sure workers are treated fairly, also you must conserve the environment for the future generations.

TJ: One thing I can tell is we don’t agree on anything.

TR: Well Thank you for talking with me on your Political views and thank you for allowing

me in to eat with you, but I must leave now as I have little time till I will be taken back to my own time. Bye

So TR left and wandered around the streets for about an hour till he went back into a trance

like state. Then he got out of the trance like state and was back in the Lab. He told scientist he

was taken to 1809 where he had a debate with Thomas Jefferson on Political views and that

they did not agree at all. TR said I am so glad to be back in my own time and told the scientist that his time traveling machine definitely works but he might want to find a way to

make it so you can choose what day, month, and year you travel to. So TR left then and went back to his Normal life as President.

Time Travel

Imagine being able to travel back in time to change your answers on a test, or going back to enter the winning lottery numbers and winning millions, or going into the future to visit your future self. This may sound impossible to you now, but soon enough, or even as we speak, this dream could become a reality. Time travel’s been one of man’s wildest fantasies for centuries. It’s long been a popular trend in movies and fiction, inspiring everything.

Before I can talk about time travel, we need to understand how it may be possible. One way to achieve time travel into the future would be travelling at the speed of light in space, as first theorised by Albert Einstein. The accepted theory is that one would have to build a space ship that can travel at the speed of light, and head out into space. But there is another feasible way to travel though time, and once again it involves going into outer space. Einstein also theorised that if you were to situate yourself on the edge of a black hole, time would pass more slowly. While most people think of time as a constant, time is actually an illusion; it is relative – it can vary for different observers depending on your speed through space. Time can’t exist without space, and space can’t exist without time. Any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time.

Time-travel is one of the strangest ideas that mankind as ever come up with. Time-travel is the ability to go into the future or the past and interact with the objects and people there. It seems like the greatest thing humans could invent, and if that is so, why is it that all scientific studies don’t focus on creating a machine that can travel through time? We could go back in time and stop wars before they start; we could take people who don’t deserve to hold a position of power and make sure they don’t enter that position. If we have all of these possibilities at our disposal with a time machine, then why don’t we make one? For one simple reason – time-travel is a fantasy, and only a fantasy.

Now, let’s pretend we have a fully functional time machine for our use and we go back in time and stop Hitler before he starts to bring Jews to concentration camps. While this may seem like a heroic thing to do, the most disturbing part is that you may never exist if Hitler never became the Nazi leader. Events that we think we have no part in whatsoever can actually affect our family tree, and if your great-grandfather would have ever met your great grandmother, and if he hadn’t, then he has different children, and they are part of a completely different future from what had existed before. Even though time travel may be possible in the near future, we have to wonder, whether it will be a good breakthrough, or will we live to regret it. Changing something that happened, or that is going to happen, can have catastrophic effects on the world as we see it. It may even remove the existence of certain pivotal people in history. People may get so overwhelmed with the power of being able to change the world, that they might even change their own destiny’s. There is no time like the present. It’s a human idea after all. The future is your past, and the past was your future. Going back in time is not possible at this moment because there is no way to gather all that energy that once was, as a figurative shape, together at one time, for a few moments. And the future will never happen because there is no way of accessing it like a fast forward button. Especially since “Time” runs backwards. You end up going “forward” but in reality you’re going towards a world that has been happening all at once for what

seems so far to be your life. In the meantime, however, interested time travellers can at least experience it through movies, television and books.

From the time that I was old even to realize what a dream was I had many. I had dreamt to become so many things year after year, as I grew. It became a different dream every time. Sometimes I dreamt to become a doctor or lawyer, pediatrician, teacher, and even a famous business woman who traveled across the world and worked for the president.

Growing up, seeing my two elder sisters graduate from high school with almost straight A’s and go to Cal States even though they had gotten accepted to UCS, I dreamt a little bigger dream than theirs. I dreamt to go straight to a University and to try the hardest I ever have. I dreamt to do more than anyone in my family when it would come to educating myself. I dreamt to live my life to the fullest and to learn everything I can about the things I love, to become knowledgeable on all that I could.

Even though, I was in a hard to learn environment, parties, movie nights, concerts, I tried my best to stay away from all relationships and other distractions. When I moved to Port of Los Angeles High School, from Carson Senior High School, my ideas on everything completely changed. The environment was beautiful and clean, the teachers were nice and cared about teaching their students. There was this indescribable feeling I got as I entered into this school. I became a little more interested and became a little more interactive with the teachers. I communicated with almost all my fellow peers.

They say not to be picky about choosing a school to go to because education is the same everywhere you go. I disagree, changing schools made a huge difference for me, a better difference. By going to POLAHS and being involved in clubs and programs I got plenty of chances to go on trips to colleges, preform in the talent shows each year, and an opportunity to go on a trip during spring break of May 2010 with school to New York, Washington DC, and Virginia.

Traveling around the world, studying abroad, visiting historical places has always been a dream of mine and thanks to my hard working parents I got to begin living my dreams, at age 16. This experience, to travel alone for a week to Washington DC, New York, and Virginia, showed and taught me so a lot that I didn’t know. I saw many different types of environments and the way people from cities outside of California were.

I got to ride on an air plane after 10 years, this time alone, I got to stay at hotels with my roomates and have sleepovers every night. I got to visit monuments, universities, historical buildings and got to eat at places I never thought I would. One place I went to for lunch was called Bens Chili Bowl in New York. I sat where President Obama sat. I got a chance to be kind of independent; I was given the chance to show how responsible I am to my teachers and to my parents.

My mother and father are considered to be modern compared to their parents. They believe that their daughters and son should be educated and should all have successful careers. They showed my siblings and we that we can achieve anything and everything that we want or hope to achieve. They showed us that we have it in ourselves to be successful adults. My parents have always supported me in every decision I’ve made and will always continue to do so. I want to make my parents proud of me with whatever goals and careers I choose to accomplish. I want to grow up successful and be able support them the way they have always supported me.