The mother of all time travel stories

volchok · May 20, 2012, 3:11pm

I was recently watching a fascinating talk on youtube by Michio Kaku about future technology and at one point he tells the audience what he thinks is the mother of all time travel stories:

[b]The year is 1945. A stranger emerges from the darkness carrying a baby girl that he leaves at an orphanage. Well, the nuns find this baby girl, they don’t know where this baby girl came from, so the nuns call her… Jane. So Jane grows up at the orphanage wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”

When Jane is seventeen years old, she’s a beautiful young woman and finally has her first boyfriend. A drifter comes drifting into her life, but it just wasn’t meant to be. They quarrel. She argues with her boyfriend. It’s a very sad story. First, she finds out that she’s pregnant. Her boyfriend has left her. She’s abandoned and pregnant. She’s rushed to the hospital 9 months later and she delivers a beautiful baby girl. But somehow, somebody breaks into the hospital that night, kidnaps Jane’s baby girl, and vanishes into the darkness.

Wait, it gets worse. Jane is bleeding very rapidly and death becomes a real possibility. The doctors must perform an experimental emergency operation. They have to change Jane into Jim.

Well, Jim wakes up the next day with a huge headache and he’s told the bad news. First, the boyfriend left her pregnant, somebody stole her baby, and now she’s not even Jane anymore! She’s… Jim??

So Jim grows up to become a bar room drunk. Every time someone asks, “Who are you, Jim? Where’d you come from? Who’s your mother or father?” He just didn’t know.

Finally Jim one day is once again stone drunk at the floor of the bar right after a bar fight. The bartender comes up to him and says, “Jim! Jim! Wake up! Hey, guess what? You see, I’m not really a bartender. I’m actually a time traveler. Let’s step into my machine and see who is this Jim/Jane.”

So they go back into the past. Poor Jim, he doesn’t know where he is in the past. However, he meets this beautiful seventeen year old girl and it’s love at first sight. But it just wasn’t meant to be. They quarrel. Then Jim finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant. Jim says to himself, “Holy crap. History is repeating itself! This happened to be me! Well I’m going to make sure that my baby gets the best education possible.”

That night, nine months later, Jim goes to the hospital, breaks open the window, and kidnaps his own precious baby girl. Then Jim, holding his baby girl, goes back into the time machine back, waay back into the past until it’s 1945. It’s a dark and stormy night. Jim comes in from the darkness carrying his precious baby daughter and drops her off at an orphanage.

Well, the nuns don’t know what to do with this baby girl the next day so they just decide to call her Jane. And Jane grows up wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”

Anyways, Jim finally gets it together. Well, I don’t want to be a drunk for the rest of my life. So Jim decides to join the TTC, or Time Travelers’ Corps. So Jim has many wondrous exploits in the annals of time.

Now Jim is an old man. He thinks to himself, “I’ve had a good long life. But I want to give myself one final mission. For my last mission, I’m going to go back in time, put on a wig, and impersonate a bartender. To meet a certain bar room drunk who just got into a fistfight because someone said, “Who are you Jim? Who’s your mother? Who’s your father?”[/b]

Did you get it?
Crazy, right?

Apparently this story is taken from or based on a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein called All You Zombies.

_Outside · May 20, 2012, 4:16pm

Only thing that can be said is;
“To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction” ~ Newton

volchok · May 20, 2012, 5:29pm

Really? That’s what you have to say to that story? lol

James_S_Saint · May 20, 2012, 5:33pm

I stopped reading right there.

The_Golden_Turd · May 20, 2012, 6:18pm

Wait till that tranny decides to become a nun… each of the nuns, one after another.

iambiguous · May 20, 2012, 6:19pm

Michio Kaku:

[b]Newtonian Determinism says that the universe is a clock, a gigantic clock that’s wound up in the beginning of time and has been ticking ever since according to Newton’s laws of motion. So what you’re going to eat 10 years from now on January 1st has already been fixed. It’s already known using Newton’s laws of motion. Einstein believed in that. Einstein was a determinist.

Does that mean that a murderer, this horrible mass murderer isn’t really guilty of his works because he was already preordained billions of years ago? Einstein said well yeah, in some sense that’s true that even mass murderers were predetermined, but he said, they should still be placed in jail.

Heisenberg then comes along and proposes the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and says: ”Nonsense. There is uncertainty. You don’t know where the electron is. It could be here, here or many places simultaneously.” This of course Einstein hated because he said God doesn’t play dice with the universe. Well hey, get used to it. Einstein was wrong. God does play dice. Every time we look at an electron it moves. There is uncertainty with regards to the position of the electron.

So what does that mean for free will? It means in some sense we do have some kind of free will. No one can determine your future events given your past history. There is always the wildcard. There is always the possibility of uncertainty in whatever we do.[/b]

I can’t help but wonder then: Why didn’t volchok stop reading too?

volchok · May 20, 2012, 6:27pm

That quote is actually from a big think video which I watched a long time ago.
Suffice to say, he contradicts himself in it but, what does that have to do with the topic at hand? Are you going to have a go at me every other thread now?
Are you really that sore?

I think this time traveling paradox is fascinating given that every single character is the same person and I don’t see what Michio Kaku’s views on free will have to do with it.

iambiguous · May 20, 2012, 6:54pm

I was clearly reacting to Saint’s tongue in cheek reaction to Kaku. And when I use a my tongue is in cheek too. I’m just excercising my right to exercise my right to be mischievous.

And I am never sore in a philosophy venue. What would be the point, the nihilist would query.

_Outside · May 20, 2012, 8:10pm

Its was the only complete thought i could get out without ruining the story with my girlish excitement of how brilliant it was.

We all love a cheeky tongue [size=85](Especially when it isn’t directed towards us)[/size]
Do not worry it was just a simple misunderstanding on both sides lets buck up and enjoy “the mother of all time travel stories”

If anyone were to go at you in every other thread it would be me. To tell you how its purely amazing beyond comprehending, words can’t even described the pureness of it.

Oh! there goes my girlish excitement!

Pandora · May 21, 2012, 6:14am

Moreno · May 21, 2012, 1:24pm

The most convoluted, strange and challenging time travel story I’ve read is Pierre Boulle’s Time out of mind. It gets so complicated causally my little brain felt all squinched up from the effort. This is an old story, by the guy who wrote Planet of the Apes, the book, that is, which is not really like any of the movies.

volchok · May 21, 2012, 5:39pm

Actually the most convoluted time travel story is probably the plot of Primer. imdb.com/title/tt0390384/
Truly impossible to keep up with.

Tab · May 21, 2012, 6:06pm

Nice story. It only had one character.

I’d like to know how they gave Jim a fully functioning pecker however, with baby-yoghurt emitting properties. But then, I suppose the future will hold miraculous things.

The_Golden_Turd · May 22, 2012, 12:06am

No, the most convoluted Time Travel Story is Dr. Who

youtube.com/watch?v=d941hp6V … re=related

He’s been time traveling for like… 50 years nearly.