As some of you will now there are times I can be a bit of geek about certain subjects.
Time Travel is one of them. I have many many theories on time travel and how it is not possible and never will be and I share these and various geek-sites made for geeks like me.
Yes, there are other geeks like me. Other geeks who find the idea of time travel extremely interesting but highly doubtful. And there are lots of us. Lots of people like me. How scary is that?
So, I have this keen interest in something that is not and never will be possible and there I am discussing my thoughts this morning in a geek chat room about the geek subject of non-existant time travel when I starting talking about a theory called the Grandfather Paradox. I've o doubt some of you will have heard of it and some won't.
This is it...
A baby girl is mysteriously dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. "Jane" grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for Jane, a series of disasters strike. First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery, doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they are forced to surgically convert "her" to a "him." Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room.
Reeling from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, "he" becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop's Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and abandoned, on the condition that he join the "time travelers corps." Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the drifter in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant.
The bartender then goes forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop's Place in 1970.
The question is: Who is Jane's mother, father, grandfather, grand mother, son, daughter, granddaughter, and grandson? The girl, the drifter, and the bartender, of course, are all the same person. These paradoxes can made your head spin, especially if you try to untangle Jane's twisted parentage. If we draw Jane's family tree, we find that all the branches are curled inward back on themselves, as in a circle. We come to the astonishing conclusion that she is her own mother and father! She is an entire family tree unto herself.
Some people credit Robert Heinlein with this concept where as others credit Rene Barjavel. Personally I couldn't give a flying fuck I'm just amazed that people who come in to a chat room and start spouting off about how time travel is possible have never heard of this theory. There wasn't one person! Surely if you're in to something in a big enough way to come into a chat room and start spouting off facts and figures then you have to have researched the argument from both sides! You can't just say "Oh yes, I think it'll work!" and not have basis for why, unless of course you're willing to say "okay so I was wrong and I think it won't work!" when someone presents you with your first argument going against your thoughts!
And if you want to tell me I'm wrong then at least tell me why wrong rather than just saying "no, you're wrong, time travel is possible and they work among us!"
Prove it you fucker!
