...self indulgence...

...livejournal...

...poetry & artwork...

...friends...

...randomalia...

...rpg excursions...

...leave me alone...

...back where you started...

ayahuascadreams: we'll ask the ratomatic how to build a time machine.
BigOrangePerson: yeah!
ayahuascadreams: and it'll draw a bunch of incomprehensible squiggles for us!
BigOrangePerson: not incomprehensible squiggles, megan, plans for a time machine!
ayahuascadreams: all it's currently capable of is incomprehensible squiggles. maybe we can work them into time machine plans.
BigOrangePerson: yeah
ayahuascadreams: and, of course, you and i are sufficiently intelligent and whatnot to avoid completely fucking up the present by changing events in history.
BigOrangePerson: yup! sure are!
ayahuascadreams: "hey, what do you think this would do?" "......." "huh."
BigOrangePerson: but we could go back in time again and stop ourselves from doing it!
ayahuascadreams: maybe. what if we returned to the present and had no memory of changing things because we'd made it so the fucked-up present was normal?
BigOrangePerson: well, then no one would remember and it'd be a moot point anyway
ayahuascadreams: we'd probably end up doing something like erasing our own existence, or the existence of the time machine so we couldn't get back.
BigOrangePerson: that'd suck
ayahuascadreams: especially since we'd be headed back to sometime in the past. the future might not be such a bad place to live.
BigOrangePerson: hmm, that would be worth a try
ayahuascadreams: would changing things in the future have an effect on the present?
BigOrangePerson: no
BigOrangePerson: ...i don't think so, anyway
ayahuascadreams: but if events in the future depend on a series of events that led up to it, wouldn't changing the end event manipulate the series of events that shaped it?
BigOrangePerson: i don't think so, because it's the end event, in theory the future is different after every passing second. it's more a potential future than an actual one, so it doesn't really exist in any stable way. you could do whatever
ayahuascadreams: but in that same line of theory, wouldn't it then be impossible to even travel to such an unstable, inconstant future? the very act of traveling there would probably trigger enough changes to undo it. my brain hurts.
BigOrangePerson: theoretically, you'd just be in a potential future, which, depending on whether or not you believe that parallel universes exist (for that very reason), would continue existing in it's own seperate time stream
ayahuascadreams: so, also theoretically, there would be absolutely no way to tell if the potential future you were in was the one you were actually going to experience someday.
BigOrangePerson: yup, pretty much
ayahuascadreams: see, this proves we should be research scientists. we just said a whole bunch of really smart-sounding stuff that got us absolutely nowhere and led back to "we don't know how it works".
BigOrangePerson: and you couldn't travel to the future and see yourself...well, it depends on which paradox happens. because either (one) you disappear from the time stream for that second and therefore in the future that you travel to, you have disappeared, or (two) if you're only gone for less than a second and time travel is instantanious, than you were never really gone and in that future you'd still exist ayahuascadreams: and then you also have to consider that if the future is its own series of parallel universes and time streams, the very act of traveling through them would open up endless new universes.
BigOrangePerson: yup
ayahuascadreams: maybe we should stick to the cloning mike thing.
BigOrangePerson: yeah!
BigOrangePerson: i wish that really would work, but i know a clone of mike wouldn't be an exact replica because of nurture. and that makes me sad
ayahuascadreams: and the successful sheep clone that was made was a baby. you'd have a baby mike.
BigOrangePerson: i don't want a baby mike
ayahuascadreams: i know. that wouldn't work at all with your plans for the clone.
BigOrangePerson: time travel is the only solution for that one as well. if mike could travel back even five minutes into the past, that would be awesome
ayahuascadreams: i think you'd need more than five minutes.
BigOrangePerson: yeah, but depending on how time travel works (which we don't know) if simply going back into the past effects the future, then five minutes would be a very not damaging amount of time ayahuascadreams: not a very useful amount, either. BigOrangePerson: well, we'd have to wait until this time travel thing got banged out and tested a little more
ayahuascadreams: i'm not sure how many practical ways there are to test something like that.
BigOrangePerson: someone has to actually invent a time machine first
ayahuascadreams: i thought you were going to do that part and i was going to steer.
BigOrangePerson: i don't know anything about building time machines.
ayahuascadreams: but...but...but i'm in charge of steering.
BigOrangePerson: well, you can still steer, but you need to find someone else to build it.
BigOrangePerson: get erin to do it
ayahuascadreams: okay. mike can help, too.
BigOrangePerson: great!
BigOrangePerson: mike is good at putting things together
ayahuascadreams: and then he won't bother us while we're hammering out the quantum mechanics.
BigOrangePerson: yay!