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@rdm@aus.social
2026-09-27 07:16 UTC
Time travel is generally regarded as impossible.
This is wrong.
Time travel has been invented at least a hundred times since the discovery of electricity.
So why don't more people know about it?
Well, it is because there is a problem with it. And everyone who discovers it falls for the same trap.
In order to travel in time, you need to be able to detach yourself from your local frame of reference. This is easier to achieve than you might think.
Once detached, you can travel back and forth in time freely, safely contained in whatever life support system you have devised. You can even snatch small items from the static times, and collect air and water - all without reconnecting to a local frame.
And that is the problem.
Reconnecting.
This requires much, much more energy than disconnecting. And the amount is exponentially affected by the amount you have travelled from your local frame.
Not how far you currently are from your local frame, but how far you travelled from it in total.
If you travel a single minute, you will need approximately twice the energy it took to disconnect. Two minutes, four times. Even if you travelled one forward and one back, that is still two minutes, and takes four times the energy. And it is proportional to the mass of the object being returned.
Most time travellers try for at least ten years for their first trip.
Exponential growth is a bastard of a thing if you are at the pointy end of it.
On the positive side, those of us who have made this mistake can communicate and interact. There are lots of us, really, but none of us have the energy required to get home. Or anywhere but where we are. Outside of time.
We have learned that we do not age out here. And we keep meeting new people. Maybe at some point we will find the people who can undo our mistakes. But it will probably take all the energy of our universe to do it.
Delivering this message took nearly the effective output of two megatons of TNT. And it consists of a handful of electrons. I'm sure you can do the math.
Please, do not follow us.
#SF #SFF #SciFi #TimeTravel #microfiction #microfic #tootfic #IAmWriting
Replies (9)
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@rdm@aus.social For a classic and fabulous golden age short story on this same theme, see Alfred Bester’s “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed.”
Open ##5035128
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@rdm@aus.social too much work. I think I’ll just stay right where i am.
Open ##5144583
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@rdm@aus.social Flying is easy. It's the "landing" that dissuades repeat attempts.
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@rdm@aus.social
Everytime you look in the mirror, you see your past.
Just sience without fiction, sorry...
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@rdm@aus.social love this.
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@rdm@aus.social
We've got quite a few time travellers here, too. Recently, they took control of key parts of government and even ordered individual street cobbles to be replaced in a village.
They're easy to spot, and labelled as either CDU or AfD, and have travelled back to 1933, even though they are still here.
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@rdm@aus.social
there is a sci fi story by william tenn, about the invention of time travel and it ends with pink octopus like things saying:
see, nothing is changed all those worries about time travel interfering with the future are baseless
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@rdm@aus.social is this a movie or something?
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@rdm@aus.social
I insist : this is #SciFi
Open ##5144609