Changing Time in 2500

Dr. Alex Fox was, in a word, a mess. It was unbelievably difficult to find anything remotely good to say about him from his friends and family. Therefore, I feel morally compelled to limit my description of him to as little as possible. In short, he was an egotistical academic from the University of Newcastle who mistakenly thought the entire universe revolved around him. He was short, bony, and had distinctively long ears as well as emerald green eyes. His physical aspect was objectively revolting and did not win him many close relationships in either his workplace or the neighborhood where he lived. However, it came with a surprising benefit that few who saw him could ever possibly have imagined: eternal life.

Dr. Fox could live forever since the ageing process no longer had a visible impact on him. He had stopped his biological clock at 35 and he was quite content with his current age. He could tell the world how great his genes were due to his ancestors without too much questioning from others, but the truth was that he had frozen his DNA or removed the impacts of time on his body. His skin had a light blue color, which made several curious members of the public suggest he go to the hospital to find out what was happening. He never visited doctors or any other medical professionals. “Why would I go to a doctor?” he replied one day. “I am one already.”

A doctor of biology is not the same as a medical doctor, but Dr. Fox had quite an extensive knowledge of the human body, and his specialty was molecular biology. A few years ago, the professor had a breakthrough. He had discovered how to use a series of complex biological polymers to stabilize and reprogram cellular telomeres. In the reader’s own plain English, he had total control over the basic programming of the human body and this made him as excited as a middle school boy who had just found a date for the upcoming dance. He had achieved immortality, but he did not want to tell anyone; imagine the consequences for the general public. Unluckily for Dr. Fox, or perhaps not due to the rules of time, the reader is learning about these unusual events based on the hardly legible scribbles the professor put in his large pink diary. The book was almost mistaken for a girl’s writings, but the odd academic had no family, and thus the puzzle pieces did not fit. One big learning moment from this story is to be careful where a journal or diary is stored. The professor’s private and personal thoughts were placed under his bed and inside a shoe box for the police to easily find after his disappearance.

Anyways, his problem was instantly solved the moment he saw the answer: the time machine. The physics department had just finished the wildly expensive project and was quietly looking for animals to help with testing. The chimpanzee they had sent to the year 1452 and had ended up in Cuba happily returned with handfuls of tropical fruit in its hands. However, the small innocent hamster supposedly sent to the court of Richard the Third was most bothered by the experience and this made the physics department pause all trips in time. Interestingly, neither of the two animals seems to have impacted history in any meaningful manner, and this was taken as excellent proof of the marketability of time travel.

On the other hand, it is rather upsetting to see a chimpanzee vanish in the middle of Cuba, but nothing much was thought about it by any of the witnesses. Even the readers may have seen something and reflected on where it went in the following second. That probably was not time travel, and it need not be considered too deeply. Thinking too deeply can really only make a mental hole, and research has determined that mental holes are significantly less useful than physical holes. With a hole in the ground, you can hide items, extract oil or water, and perhaps even use it as a bunker. Mental holes can ultimately be damaging since little research has been done on how to quickly get out once a person has fallen into one. Dr. Fox had ample mental hole escaping experience, but this time, machine mental hole would prove his unhappy ending.

The machine itself looked innocent enough to the average human. It was a 5-foot pink cube with the words “THIS IS NOT A TIME MACHINE” printed in large white letters on each side of the cube. The label and color was most likely an addition from the psychology department for future studies. Please, do not repeat the mistakes from the past, or the future if you are reading this report earlier than intended. The machine also made a “ping” noise every 5 seconds. Again, this was thought to make the user rethink his or her life choices before using the machine. Dr. Fox was not put off in the least by such silly sorts. “I cannot be bothered to even consider them,” he would remark to his colleagues. They experiment simply for the sake of writing more research reports, and I can’t stand that sort of behavior.”

Dr. Fox saw solutions where others saw only rules. He merely “borrowed” it on a Monday morning when everyone else in the university was eating in the cafeteria. One young psychology student did see the machine flash and vanish with a final “ping” noise. It was a torturous moment for him because he could not decide whether to record his observations or not. In the end, that same student was extensively studied and the results are published in the journal of indecisiveness. The readers of any point in time are strongly discouraged from reading that particular psychology publication because, as it has probably been guessed, it will only make a reader more indecisive.

Why did Dr. Fox use the time machine? It was simple. He wanted to live forever and not be bothered at all. He also wanted to meet famous people, and so began with leaders from his secondary history classes. He would start with Napoleon and then he would meet Hitler. A short mental list was forming and he considered talking to Jesus as well. That final meeting would answer the questions about religion. He was all set, and with a few modifications of the machine, he was moving through the different dimensions until he ended up in Moscow during the French occupation.

The temporal displacement was a violent and bumpy movement, but the constant “ping” noise was the absolute worst for Dr. Fox. “What does that noise mean?” he asked himself in a grumpy tone.

He opened the time machine’s door and cautiously peaked outside. In the city street, thousands of French soldiers were wandering about and were busy being bored. Moscow was a burnt, abandoned rubble. Dr. Fox stepped out and nobody paid him any attention. He attempted a weak greeting in French and waited hopefully. It did not work at all. The soldiers kept walking and moving around without noticing the stranger. This did not bother the professor in the least.

Dr. Fox explored the city for about an hour when he ran into a group of French officers and Napoleon happened to be among them. He was staring at the sky and looked rather gloomy. A few of the officers shared their idea of looking for Russian troops outside of Moscow. Others talked about building houses for the cold weather and preparing for storms. One inexperienced officer talked about going back to France and this made everything worse. Napoleon was lost in his thoughts or his own unique mental hole and he would not get out of it without injury.

“Hello Napoleon!” greeted the British professor. “I am from the future!”

Napoleon stared and his eyes grew big, but he did not reply. He checked with his generals to see if any of them had noticed this stranger. Dr. Fox, who had wisely accounted for a language barrier, pulled a small device from his pocket. It was a universal translator. He pressed some buttons and moved a switch up before beginning to speak in a loud voice with lots of misplaced authority. His words would alter history, but not in any significant way,

“Hello!” Mr. Fox emotionally began. “I know everything. I can tell you what will happen where and when. It is all in my head. Ask me anything? I have the answers. What do I want in return? I´ll tell you. I´ll tell you. I want an island. You grew up on an island. What do you think? I’ll give you the world and you just need to give me an island.”

Napoleon narrowed his eyes. “An island?” he answered coldly. “I am Napoleon, Emperor of France! I need no help. God is with France and I am France.”

At that instance, his generals stopped and examined the exotic-looking stranger with his unusual clothes and physical features. “Forgive me, emperor!” a young officer declared. “I should have removed this street dweller. He is an insult and will be removed at once. Come, soldiers of France, remove this one from our sight!”

Dr. Fox soon found himself being pulled away from Napoleon by 4 French soldiers, and he was thrown into a nearby pile of snow. Much of the snow was yellow and brown from common bathroom related activities. Soldiers threw snowballs at him for fun, and the local children kicked him without mercy. Once the crowd had grown tired of the stranger, they left him alone. He was bruised, beaten, and broken. Neither Napoleon nor history would remember his appearance. In a state of total humiliation, he left and programmed the time machine with a new destination in the future...or the past for the reader.

Hitler proved to be even a more miserable fellow than Napoleon. The Red Army had surrounded Berlin and was moving closer to the leader’s bunker. There was little hope among the German public, and it was almost the end. Dr. Fox tried a different approach with the defeated German chancellor. He gave over the entire process of how to make a simple atomic bomb and laser weapons. Hitler grew even more depressed afterwards since he was seeing a wildly weird looking Englishman in Berlin showing him super weapons while there was no hope for Germany. Lesson number 2 from this story is to begin at the beginning if you want to change time, since there is not much that can be done at the very end of a war. These tips and ideas should not be used by any reader with questionable designs like Mr. Fox. Be warned!

Next, he found Judas Iscariot instead of Jesus, and he did not think too much about it. This would prove a major mistake and would bring us to the end of the professor's interesting diary entry. It was a bad move overall! Lesson number 3 is to make an excellent plan and be a critical thinker. Judas had just finished his meeting with the chief priests and was sneaking away with a large bag of silver. He was visibly worried and did not seem to be happy about anything. He was painfully torn between his overwhelming greed and his unique memories of Jesus. The miracles were obvious and could not be anything else besides power from God. Dr. Fox was also somewhat surprised by his third victim of time travel at that moment.

Dr. Fox, with his larger-than-appropriate grin, approached Judas with limitless optimism and his universal translator. These people would have had no clue what he was saying if he used English, unlike Napoleon or Hitler. “Judas Iscariot!” he shouted out. “A word, if you please. I’m from the future. I can tell you right now that money is going to cause you a lot of trouble. I have a much better offer for you! Let us take this Jesus fellow to another town and make him do what we want. We could have anything at all. Life would be perfect!”

Boom! Boom! Boom! That did it. Time, space, and all subatomic particles suddenly stopped. A bubble seemed to form around the professor, and he froze. He had not considered that all the possible dimensions, parallel universes, and limitless possibilities had an omnipresent manager. The stop button had just been pushed, and the biology academic had been violently removed from the system.

In about a minute or some short time afterwards, Jesus approached Dr. Fox. He had a sad expression on his face. It was a mix of disappointment and bother. Then, he touched the professor lightly on the left arm and left him with the last spoken words the mad scientist would ever hear. “You have been searching for power, glory, and control!” Jesus told him. “Here it is! Enjoy it alone! You will never leave this place! It is a most shameful act!”

Boom! Boom! Boom! There was no light for the professor. There were no people. There were no countries. No cities. No drink. No food. No rivers. No mountains. No oceans. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Darkness is the absence of light or complete nothingness. In the end, the final word in the professor’s diary was “nothing.”

What can we learn here? There are consequences for everything. If you break the system behind everything, like Dr. Fox, then there will be countless problems. Do not worry! Above all the stars, planets, and other celestial objects is a force holding everything in order. Beyond the many dimensions there is a careful controller. Outside of the limitless possibilities is a supreme manager. Many people call it God.