Time Traveler Part 2

The question from the audience was "What was your first experience of time travel?"

Well, this is a very good question, though not very dramatic.

You see, I was in time travel school and many people think of time travel in the old industrial modal, as dramatized by HG Wells. In fact it is highly regulated. Not just anybody and go and time travel.

I do remember my first test, clearly. It was a foggy morning as I walked amidst the old red brick building, across a yellowed swath of grass, to achieve a sidewalk beneath grey/green olive trees. I stepped on a rotten olive that had fallen onto the concrete, and paused..

The grass and concrete was covered by these scores of these black, oily holes, the effect by a great deal of traffic earlier that evening. It was very early and I had been feeling very clean and refreshed, as we do in the morning.

Unperturbed, I lifted up my shoe to scrap off the split olive, when at that moment, my pal, Larian Brad, came around the side of the columned alpha sigma phi house, to yell, "Onkotawaka! Ya you!"

He was from Tertaka, an island that is equivalent, mostly, to your Hawaii. There is significant geologic variation between my earth and your earth, but not so much that far away from everything else.

He was calling me a...well, its obscene, allow the translator to do its censoring.

(Audience laughs)

At any rate, he sidled up alongside me, engaged me in conversation, but only as a gag. He clandestinely placed a gravitation interference device on my shoulder sleeve. This kind of device is only powered by gravitational interferences...the kind of waves that would occur, for instance, where the gravity of Earth equals the gravity of Venus. Which is a point in space that moves as these planets orbit at different speeds.

Which is related to how time travel has its physical manifestations.

I know you have general questions about how time travel works, but I will get to these later, as I must address the questions from the audience as they are submitted to me.

At this point, it is a massive digression, and I am not prepared to answer how time travel is accomplished with great accuracy. To be honest, part of my demotion and somewhat unspectacular career with the Time Traveler Institute is due to the fact that I was no star student in the physics and engineering aspects.

Ahem, hence the startling job of pizza delivery. We all have to start somewhere.

So, my first experience had me blown way off course. This occured in many similar, but slightly different parallel realities, as I later encountered in one of my first, uh, well, I guess you could call it a "Me" convention.

So I do not feel unique, or victimized, though, I do feel a slight sense of injustice as Larian has gone on to a superior rank.

More about that later.

I, well, the I that forms a kind of cluster of selves...its probably a drag to constantly refer to this reality as it is a level of objectivity you, my Earth audience, does not ever experience.

For instance, it may be possible, at some point of the publication of these lectures, or even in this very lecture hall right now, that there is a pirate, or a renegade time traveler acting like they are hearing this information for the first time. There are many such instances, at least in the cluster of parallel realities which I inhabit, where pirates and sneak and clandestine operations and intrigues, coordinated over many various and divers parallel realities, of which I am in complete ignorance of. Or, I could be lying. I could be a pirate.

See, your objectivity is severly compromised precisely because you cannot communicate with parallel reality versions of yourself, as all time travelers do.
It would be a dangerous situation if I was a pirate, for I may hold this audience hostage, kill you all instantly with a small, common, neutron like bomb, but ask youself, would a pirate reveal his or her self in such a public arena?

Please, do not be afraid. Or, if I may be so bold, be deliciously afraid, or amused, but please, do not worry.

I would wager that there are representatives of the Time Traveler Rules and Regulations Bureau here. I do not know who among you is this representative.

Please, believe me, there is a number of realities where in fact, such a pirate or outlaw may indeed hold the audience hostage. I am not involved, nor do any of my tertiary brethren talk of such a dangerous condition. Somewhere, one does exist, but not anywhere near here. In time, I mean.

Well, back to 'my first occasion', which was just to get a medical data about my specific physiological reaction to the time warping effects.
Of course, we wear time suits, or we have vehicles which shield us from these effects, but, the total phenomenon, the physics of time travel, is not perfectly understood.

Take, for instance, the case of Harmon Krinn. Harmon Krinn is famous, every one I have spoken too, even those of one different parent....but similar genetic evolution, know about Harmon. He is the most time traveler most allergic to time travel. Thats right, allergic. The docs have no other explanation.

Its not so esoteric, for I have my own interpretation: Harmons sinus's get somewhat distorted in the transition from one parallel reality to the next, and the naturally occuring dust irritates. He bleeds, a lot. To the point of passing out.

We all see his broadcast, for he reads the time new now!

But I digress!

I strolled into the time travel gate, wearing one of the school proprietary time suit...which is worth its own worry, surounded by the whirr and razz of the air snapping and pulling, the air being pushed and pulled by the time gate is actually very fresh, but there is a slight, not unpleasurable smell of ozone..
The machinery at the school is somewhat old, I must tell you. The school formed, I do not know how long ago, and in formation it had certain insurance guidelines to follow, which is something I just learned recently.

The guidelines enabled the construction of many varied time ports about the classrooms of the Time Traveler Institute, but of course these had to have a maximal level of safety. That level is very stringent. Since then, our school engineers have developed time suits with the option to time travel built into them. These are still being tested as possible cancer risks, but then, what we call cancer your primitive technological state would term as instant death. (He laughs, audience is quiet).

More about that later, but to get to the story, Doctor Hinkle, a long-faced, low-voiced, blond-banged, ass-lengthed hair, older chick...who took herself very seriously, failed to note the small gravitional device even as she helped me don my suit.

I went through, and ended up on a planet that was more of a bakery than a habitat..

The line of communication had been broken, the desert was intesely radioactive, and the local sun cast a red glow, even as it was going nova. I either had a long span of time, given that the star could have been a red giant for hundreds of millions of years and this planet was, well, where you Neptune is now. Or, I had but moments as the star had just exploded, and I was on a planet that was as close to your Star as your planet Mars.