Not Quite The Twelve Monkeys
Monkeys escape from a primate research facility located in a suburban area next to a mass transit rail line. The heck you say? Authorities attempt to prevent widespread panic by assuring the unsuspecting public that these poor, hapless monkeys pose no threat to humans even though they have not been tested for any diseases that may be harmful to humans.
Days pass without incident, no word in the press as to whether or not the little beasts have been rounded up and within a week the story is forgotten. A month later, a young mother brings her child into the emergency room of the local hospital late at night. The child is listless, cold and clammy. The mother frantically tells the ER doctor that the child was normal and healthy earlier in the day but when she went outside to bring the child in for dinner she had found her lying on the front lawn unresponsive.
As the ER staff begins trying to stabilize the young child they notice that several more people arrive by ambulance, all showing the same signs as the child. Unresponsive, cold and clammy. The palor of death hangs above them. Vital signs are weak and fading. The first thought that crosses the minds of the doctors is that these people all appear to have been poisoned. Perhaps they all live in the same neighborhood? A nurse is directed to contact the local fire department and public safety officials to inform them of a possible contamination.
In the meantime, the doctors are left scratching there heads. Everything they are trying to do in order to save these peoples lives is failing. By all outward appearances, these people have been poisoned by something but they have been unable to narrow down the source to effectively treat them. And now, there is a steady trickle of new patients arriving, all with the same symptoms.
Normally we’d be getting to the point in the story in which something out of the ordinary happens and makes the doctors and hospital staff stop and realize that whatever is going on is well beyond belief.
Think about it. This all started out with a reference to monkeys escaping captivity from a government research facility, those same monkeys could have possibly been infected with some sort of exotic virus or contagion and now you are seeing what is happening in the emergency room. It could all be a coincident but you probably know that it is all related. What would happen if one or all of the ER patients were to suddenly die and then for some unexpected reason come back to life? Zombies? Supernatural forces?
I don’t know and I am not sure I could explain what was happening if such an event were to happen. All I know is that I am getting a little concerned. Of course, it is quite possible that these people were exposed to some sort of chemical agent, perhaps a tanker truck or rail car had rolled through the area and a leak occurred and they were exposed. I’m no scientist or doctor but I’m certain that there are plenty of industrial chemicals that would cause such symptoms in humans. And let me remind you that at the moment, nobody has died, they are simply displaying some symptoms that have the doctors baffled.
Tests have been and are being run to check for possible clues that will help the doctors diagnose and treat the symptoms. With luck, the doctors will be able to save everyone that was exposed. It’s not my intent to create some sort of horrific scenario. Just because people are coming into the emergency room with unexplained symptoms does not mean that the outcome will be apocalyptic. There was a flu pandemic in 1918 that devastated the world population and we recovered from it so don’t panic just yet. And if this is just a localized contamination then hopefully the local public safety officials will isolate and deal with the situation promptly, before it can spread. Besides, monkeys spreading a deadly virus, who’d buy that?
I wasn’t there, I didn’t witness those early events firsthand and even though I’ve met several people who claimed to be in that emergency room on that first night, I’ve not really done much to verify their accounts. What I do know is this, not an evening goes by that I don’t hear a banging against the wall or scratching on the glass. There are bars on my windows and doors and I don’t think that I’ll ever live on the ground floor of any structure again. There is never even the slightest urge to venture out after dark.
(to be continued…)
Time Travel: A Good Reason To Stay Home pt. 4
The mind of a mad man. Guy was thinking about this whole time travel experience and began to wonder just why, if he possessed this awesome ability, did he decide to travel back in time and kill himself and his parents? I mean, it was not like he had a miserable or traumatic upbringing. His childhood was uneventful but he remembered that both of his parents loved him and always did their best when it came to raising him. So why did he go back to 1968 and kill them? This was just over a week ago in present time but now that he tries to remember his motives he realizes that he can’t. He draws a blank.
When he thinks about it now he begins to wonder why he didn’t just travel back and witness some historical event or travel back in time into a bank vault to steal money. He looks around his room. Nope. No rascally rabbits here. Time for a long sleep.
End-Part 4
(to be continued…)
Time Travel: A Good Reason To Stay Home pt. 3
You have to realize that for someone with just a high school education who had spent their entire life working menial jobs and just getting by, the concept of time travel was simply over their head. And for Guy to find himself in this situation it was, well it was just too much to handle. Just think of how many different ways that time travel has been portrayed in fiction. Everything from far out machines to mysticism and to find out that all it took was to untether yourself from the present and drift backwards in time on some sort of ethereal current, who would have thought.
On top of everything else, he has to decide whether or not to keep this discovery to himself or share it. But with whom? The government? Probably not the wisest decision but who can you trust with something like this? No matter who you tell word is bound to leak and then who knows will come knocking at your door. And what kind of proof can you give anyone? Guy also began wondering, that when he goes back in time what happens in the present? What would an observer see? Obviously his physical body disappears but is there a flash of light or poof of smoke?
Maybe he should hold off on letting anyone in on his little secret until he has had more time to document the phenomena and perhaps gather some solid proof of his travels backward through time. The last thing he would need would be for someone to think him crazy and have him committed.
End-Part 3
(to be continued…)
Time Travel: A Good Reason To Stay Home pt. 2
It has been just over a week since the man has returned from his trip to the past and just as he thought, the present has remain unchanged. This is a good thing considering that he just killed himself and his parents 41 years ago but it is equally disturbing that he just had dinner with his parents last night.
So wait, he had this time travel thing all figured out before he made his first trip. He knew that there was no such thing as a multiverse or parallel worlds or multiple dimensions. He lived in this universe and he and everything in it followed along on a single timeline that never diverged or branched off. He also knew that when he traveled back to 1968 and murdered himself as a baby that he would survive due to the fact that he was able to untether himself from the timeline of 2009 and move back to 1968, reattach himself and then proceed with his course of action. Once that was accomplished he simply untethered himself from the 1968 timeline and came back to the present.
It was a very neat trick and it all went off without a hitch except for the fact that now he has no way to explain how, in a single timeline that doesn’t branch off or deviate in any way, he was able to have dinner with his parents after having killed them a week prior in the year 1968.
He was protected by the fact that he simply detached himself from time and space but everyone else in the world, regardless of the year, had or should have been firmly attached and subject to the actions of those around them. If he had caused any individual other than himself any kind of harm or caused them to alter their own previous history in any way then he should have been able to see physical proof of his actions when he returned back to the present.
But no. This was not appearing to be the case. He remembered that when he returned from his trip last week he took the time to scour the internet for any signs that something was different about this world. He read the newspapers and watched the cable news programs looking for some kind of change no matter how small. But so far, everything in the world was exactly the same as it was prior to his departure. Even his parents.
Traveling through time was great, it was the achievement of a lifetime and it worked. But now it created some very serious questions.
End-Part 2
(to be continued…)
Time Travel: A Good Reason To Stay Home pt. 1
The year is 2009 and a man steps into a time machine and travels back to the year 1968. Upon his arrival in the year 1968, the man locates his mother and father and his one year-old self. For whatever reason, perhaps just plain old insanity, the man murders his mother, father and his one year-old self. What happens to the man at the instant he kills his one year-old self?
Absolutely nothing. Assuming that the man is able to pull off the murders and escape arrest and prosecution then all that will happen is that the man will continue to live out the remainder of his natural life the same as he would had he remained in the year 2009. There would be no “grandfather paradox” or “autoinfanticide” as some scientists and science fiction writers have imagined. And if the man is able to live from 1968 back up through to the year 2009 he would also be able to witness his younger self depart from 2009 back to 1968.
How is this possible? Is time travel even a possibility? I am simply assuming that if it were possible to travel backward in time then it would mean that someone would have crafted a method for untethering an individual from spacetime and once that individual has been untethered then he is free from any ill effects caused by his current self moving backwards in time and harming his previous self.
Another interesting thing that could happen is that the man could depart from the year 2009, travel back to the year 1968, not harm his younger self, and then simply watch through the years as he grows up and ventures out into the world. And whether or not he chooses to influence his younger self in any way, the man would still continue to live and age normally, just like he would have had he never gone back in time.
The older self would even be able to persuade his younger self from having any interest in time travel and prevent the other version of himself from ever traveling back to 1968 like he himself had originally done. Whatever actions taken by the other self would have no effect on the man. They would would be the same, yet possibly, very different individuals. The main difference being that the original man would have memories of his original life leading up to his trip back in time and would then be able to call on those original memories to compare them to the actions of his other self as he watched himself live life all over again.
So far I have only spoken about the man making a one way trip back in time. But let us now suppose that the man went back to the year 1968, murdered his younger self, realized that he still existed and then went back to the same point in time in the year 2009 that he originally departed from and then took a week off to contemplate what had just occurred.
End-Part 1
(to be continued…)
