Time Travel

I seem to be spending a lot of time thinking about time travel and often try to figure out how to use time travel in my stories. Even the story I am working on which is high fantasy was going to have some time travel in it. Those scenes never made it into the story and likely won't. I'll have to leave it for another story.

In my way of thinking with my belief in God I doubt we will ever be able to time travel. This doesn't stop me from dreaming about it and writing stories about it. If time travel were possible I am of the belief that we couldn't change the past as all we would accomplish is being a part of that past even if history hadn't recorded our part in it.

So if someone were to try to prevent the assassination of president Abraham Lincoln they would fail because they did fail as we all remember that he was assassinated. One scenario that would work is if a switch took place but in that case the real Abraham Lincoln went into hiding or was whisked away to some other time, never to return.

I do not like the multiple dimensions or alternate realities themes or that if you were the time traveler you would remember how it was but everyone else would not. It seems to me that if technology can be used to time travel that there still would only be this one earth with the people on it and that no matter how hard one tries you couldn't really change the past.

This wouldn't mean I couldn't go back in time and interact with people. I could even by stocks in a company I knew would be around in my time. I could buy coins I knew would become valuable. I'm a coin collector and would try to get some 1909 S VDB coins along with gold coins. The way I see it if I did that, it already happened, and so I didn't change anything. However, up until the time I traveled back in time I probably wouldn't know about the stocks nor where the coins I'd bought were stored. Most likely I'd just bring them back with me to the future and cash out. Of course, if everyone could do this then we'd probably be living in a much more chaotic time now than we currently have.

I started this morning by tweeting about time traveling with this tweet: If you could time travel, when and where would you go? Why? To be honest, I am trying to find ways to make friends on twitter and through this blog besides simply tweeting every follower I have and asking you want to be my friend. It's not the same as having a good conversation about things that interest us. So I posed that question.

I can answer it better here with more than 140 characters. I am sure I would travel back in time as well as go to the future. I know one of my first, if not first trip, would be to go to the future and see if there was a colony or exploration trips to the moon or Mars and see if I could get on one of them. I might have to do some traveling to the past to buy things I knew would bring me wealth in the future so that I would have the money to get on an expedition.

I would likely give some serious thought to see if there were any way to fix my failed marriage before it failed, but that would only be if I believed the past could be changed - although that might be the thing I tried to change even if I were convinced that it wasn't possible.

Also I would go back in time to meet and talk with Jesus before his crucifixion. That I'm sure would be a very interesting conversation, especially as I would expect him to know I was from the future.

I think if time travel were something that I could do on a regular basis, whenever I wanted to, I'd end up using it too much to extend my days so that I could get more done which would have the effect of shortening my life span because I'd be living for say 48 hours in a 24 hour time period because I'd be in the same 24 hour period of time more than once in different places. I don't think I'd want to meet and talk to myself and that is one area that boggles my mind as to how such an encounter would play out.