Time travel is either possible or it’s not. It is a simple binary answer, or at least I think it is. My entire life has been based on understanding the rules around the questions and problems you are trying to solve. The more specific you ask the question the more solvable it is. Unfortunately, most of the world lives in the grey, as opposed to black and white and does not like binary questions. Ambiguity is the realm of lawyers and demons, I am not sure there is much of a difference between them, but they do have their uses at times.
I am a gamer and I have lived my life with that thought on how I approach everything. At work it was the same. What are the rules that govern this game? Once you know the rules you can then tweak, bend, or use them to maximize what you want to get. You want a pay raise, what are the rules that govern them. Do you have to wait for an annual review, or can you get your annual review and then apply for an internal position and get another raise a few months later. Using these approaches and others I was able to squeeze out a few more percentage points here and there, they add up over the long run.
I have been playing games in all formats since I was a kid. The key was in understanding the rules. Life in a lot of ways is no different, you just need to understand the rules, and use them to your advantage. With work for me the goal was trying to make more money. I was never the creative type who could create content and have a fabulous startup company and be a billionaire by the age of 25. I am a bit older, perhaps a lot, and yeah I am still not a billionaire.
What I was able to do was to get experience and jump from company to company gaining titles and more money with each jump, until I was able to jump to a startup company and get moderately wealthy. In the last jump I was able to get equity from the beginning, in other words before they went public. I was able to trade my experience for equity. Within 2 years we were public. 6 months after that we were bought out and my equity stake was worth 15 million after taxes. As I said not a billionaire but overall, not too bad. It gave me options, pun intended.
I had enough to retire on and live a moderately comfortable life never having to work again if I wanted it that way. We had signed all the papers this afternoon and I left the celebrations to have some quiet time by myself to reflect. I needed to think what to do next. Honestly at this point I had achieved what I wanted with my work goals. Running a company was not for me, I just wanted the paycheck. So, what did I want?
Time travel is either possible or it’s not.
I looked at the scotch glass, seeking wisdom. The golden amber color was seducing in a lot of ways. It is wonderful to look at and delightful to taste. Scotch for me has always been a great reflection drink. You can sit and think while looking at it for answers. Drinking a bit more helps free the thoughts, at least that is what I like to tell myself. And if no answers come, after a while you really don’t care.
So, if it is possible how do you do it? I wasn’t going to be able to invent time travel, that was clear. Again, that is just not my skill set. If it is possible then they should be able to come to me…right? The argument against this has always been well if that was the case why haven’t we seen anyone from the future yet.
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Another delightful sip…
Why would they though. Unless there was something worth coming to see why would they come? Honestly what do we have here that’s worth seeing? This was the key then, in order to attract the time travelers, I needed something to get their attention. And honestly why would they take me anywhere if we did meet?
Time for another glass…
15 million was not going to be enough to get anyone’s attention I expected; I needed more money. I also really didn’t want to go back to work again, and honestly, I don’t think working was going to get me the kind of money I needed to make it happen. What if I invested the money into a trust account of some sort…. with the sole purpose of when or if time travel was possible they develop the technology or buy me a ticket to come get me. It didn’t matter how long it took, I could set up the fund now and define the timeframe for them to come get me. Just running some numbers on my phone, it looked like a ten million investment might get to be almost 200 billion in about a hundred years. The next hundred would be obscene. Even with inflation that should be a ton of money. Certainly, enough to get someone’s attention.
Ok so now I had a plan. Awesome… it either works or it doesn’t. Now where to go. Everyone loves the idea of time travel, but if you had a chance where would you go for the first trip. There is a ton of history to choose from, but the reality is I don’t think I would enjoy most of it. Rome sounds great, taking in a gladiator fight, drinking some crappy wine, and trying to figure out how to use the vomitorium. The biggest problem though is I don’t speak Latin. Hopefully the time travelers have a solution for that one, I was sure my phone and translator app were not going to connect to the internet at the colosseum.
I also needed to prepare myself with some items for travel. Money would be nice, and a few other modern comforts. The internet would be out, but I could download a ton of apps and as long as I could keep my phone charged, I should be able to use it, I wasn’t sure I would be able to take it though. Again, these are all simple enough problems to solve if I thought it out and packed accordingly. The question was still where to go.
The more I thought about it the easier the choice became. There are two periods of history I have always enjoyed that could work. The American Revolution and the Tudor period of England. I wasn’t sure I could speak Old English well enough, but hopefully I could get a few classes to help me with that weakness. Otherwise plan B was Boston in the spring of 1775. That would be fun and fascinating to see too.
Over the next several weeks I put things into a motion. I found some lawyers who were willing to set up a trust fund and take me seriously. It cost more than I would’ve liked in fees, but the reality is most people thought I was crazy. After that I focused on getting the equipment and training, I thought would be helpful. I just did not know if the trip was going to be a few days, a few weeks or even months in length. Either way I wanted to be fully prepared for the trip.
I had asked that the time travelers meet me one year after the creation of the trust. I thought this would give enough time to get things setup, get the training I needed, and allow me to close out any personal items for a few months if needed.
The location I chose to meet them was in Boston. If it didn’t work out at least there was a good selection of restaurants and bars in the area that I could commiserate or plan my new set of actions in. I thought at this point I had planned everything out. I had spent a year covering every possibility that I could think of, where this might go, and how to prevent it from going wrong. Once again, I was convinced I was using the “rules of the game” to suit me. Of course, when you think you have everything figured out that’s usually when life comes around and kicks you in the nuts.