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11th
July 04
 |
 Here’s
a serious scientific question: if time-travel is ever going to exist, doesn’t
that automatically mean that time-travel always has existed and always
will exist?
Let’s say that a hundred
– or a thousand – years from now some genius comes up with a flawless
way to travel back and forth through time. Actually, travelling forward through
time is already possible; in fact, it’s mandatory. But let’s
say that time-travel in the SF sense becomes viable... That means that time-travellers
will start visiting the past. And there’s going to be a lot of them, because
even if there’s only one traveller a year, well... Between now and the end
of time there’s an infinite number of years.
So, with an infinite number
of time-travellers, there’s bound to be a large number of cases where the
traveller gets ambushed and his machine gets stolen. In most cases the thieves
won’t be able to make the machine work, but some of them will. Thus, the
secrets of time travel will be laid bare for all people – of all times –
to use and abuse as they see fit.
The upshot is this: as we
have yet to encounter any visitors from the future, time-travel is not and never
will be possible. QED. However... Despite the cast-iron logic there, I happen
to know that time-travel is indeed possible.
I hear you cry, “Gosh,
Sprout! You’re so clever and sexy and everything, but what the drokk has
this got to do with the price of munce?”
Well, dear reader, gird
your loins and buckle your swash, because Sprout is about to reveal something
that’s going to take your breath away (and no, it’s not a plastic
bag):
You see, I know that time-travel
is possible because the man from the future told me.
He arrived at the door last
night. “This is Sprout Mansion?” he asked my manservant.
“It is,” I said.
“And I’ll thank you to keep your eyes off my manservant,” I
added, as I closed over my bathrobe.
 “I
come to you from the future with knowledge of things to come,” he said.
“Specifically, I’ve got the gossip on the next fifty years of 2000
AD.”
“What, it’s
still called 2000 AD fifty years from now?”
“Yeah. Well, mostly.
Just recently it merged with another publication, so now it has both titles. But
you know how it is; they’ll drop the other title after about six months.
But right now it’s called 2000 AD and The Financial Times.”
He sighed. “To be honest, it’s not really the cutting-edge stuff it
is here in your time. That’s one of the reasons I came back. I want to be
able to experience the comic when it was at its absolute best.”
“And that’s
right now?”
“It sure is. I mean,
here in the year 2004 you haven’t even found out that Judge Dredd turns
out to be an alien all along!” Then he went “Drokk it!” and
slapped his hand against his forehead. “Sorry, I’m always doing that!
This is even worse than the time I let it slip that Rogue Trooper gets
killed at the end of the fifth movie because Vin Deisel was sick of being typecast!”
Curiosity got the better
of me. “There’s going to be some Rogue Trooper movies?”
“Yeah, but they only
made them because they couldn’t get the rights to Ace Trucking Co.”
His eyes went all misty. “Man, that would have been a cool movie! Jonathan
Ross as Ace – of course, this was before he got the body transplant and
went mad and was hounded out of his castle by torch-wielding villagers –
and Rik Waller as GBH. But maybe it’s just as well it didn’t get made;
I downloaded the script off the externet and the writer clearly didn’t know
his stuff. For the Speedo Ghost he had a disembodied spirit in swimming trunks.
Anyway, here I am, from the future. I bet you have a million questions to ask
me!”
I thought about this. “Next
week’s winning Lotto numbers?”
“Four, seventeen,
eighteen, twenty-one, thirty, and forty-four. Anything else?”
“Er... Will I win?”
 “Yes
and no... Yes, you’ll win, but what’s going to happen is that your
great-great-great grandson is going to come back in time and rig the machine so
that it gives different numbers and someone else wins instead. This is because
he’ll be annoyed that you don’t leave him anything in your will. But
listen... I’m really only here to talk about 2000 AD. Ask me anything
you want!”
“Does Floyd Kermode
ever stop writing letters to the Nerve Centre?”
“Yes, but only after
his advisors tell him that it’s not proper protocol for the First Earth
President to send fan letters to a comic.”
“Well, tell me about
the new Dredd movies, then.”
The future man got a wistful
look in his eyes. “Ah, the Dredd movies! Well, I could tell you all
about them, but you don’t really want me to spoil the surprise, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the first few
were good, but after Macaulay Culkin took over the role they went into a bit of
a decline.”
“Oh. What about the
comic itself?”
“Like I said, it’s
not as good as it used to be.”
“How do you mean?”
“It started off as
a kids’ comic, right? And then it sort of grew up with the readers. When
I come from, 2000 AD has been running for eighty years... There’s
not a lot of excitement in a comic for people who are well into their nineties;
Jerry Atrik and The Way Things Used to be So Much Better in The Old Days
is probably the best of the recent strips, though CyberGranny isn’t
bad either. And there’s a new series of The Harlem Haemorrhoids starting
soon, that should be good. As for the old strips... Strontium Dog got distemper
and had to be put to sleep. The ABC Warriors were dismantled and stored
in the shed just in case the bits come in handy some day. Dredd spends
most of his time complaining that his neighbours play their music too loud. Robo-Hunter’s
been rejuvenated and cloned so many times that he’s now his own grandpa.
And you really don’t want to know about the Valkyries,” he
added, with a shudder.
“What else can you
tell me about the future of 2000 AD?”
He shrugged. “Like
what?”
“Did they even finish
off that bloody Dan Dare story?”
The future man swore and
raised his eyes. “I was warned about your obsession with that bloody strip!
Just forget about it, okay? No, it never comes back. And I’ve visited the
future of my own time, too... I know everything that happens in the next five
thousand years’ worth of progs, and Dan Dare never makes another
appearance. He’s gone.”
 Before
I could respond to that, he interrupted me: “And no, they don’t
use any of your stupid ideas to bring him back! Don’t look at me all innocent!
I know you’re planning a column where you suggest lots of ways to finish
off the story!”
“Damn it!”
“However,
they do use your idea about a female clone of Judge Dredd. That one’s
a great success!”
“I don’t
remember ever suggesting that!”
At this point,
the time-traveller produced a very old, tattered and yellowing sheet of paper,
on which were some very familiar words. “You mention it in this column.
See? Right here where you quote me as saying, ‘However, they do use
your idea about a female clone of Judge Dredd.’”
I stared at the
page. “But this is crazy! You mean that you’ve got the Sprout column
that I’m about to write, and it’s all about you coming here?”
“Yep.”
He pointed to another paragraph. “See this paragraph? It says, ‘“Yep.”
He pointed to another paragraph.’”
I read the following paragraph
too, and – after it mentioned about me reading the following paragraph too
– it said, “It says what I’m saying right now! Even as I’m
saying it!”
The time-traveller whipped
the page away. “I know you want to keep this, but you can’t, sorry.
It’s worth a small fortune.”
I beamed. “Because
I wrote it?”
“No, because it’s
printed on real paper. There’s only another sixteen years to go before
the last tree becomes extinct.”
“Tell me more about
my own future, then.”
He shook his head. “No
can do. That’s against all the rules, and I’ve said too much already.
Anyway, I’d better be off.” He took a tiny device out of his pocket
and began tapping the buttons on it.
“That’s your
time machine?”
“Yeah. It’s
not as cool as my brother’s, though. He can download really cool ringtones
on his. Okay... Nice to meet you, Sprout. Hope that the coming infection doesn’t
get you down too much. Just don’t scratch the sores and stay away from bright
lights, you should be fine. I really only came back to 2004 to open a bank account.
You people think that house prices are high now? Wait until the government
introduces their new taxation system: lawn tax, garden gnome duty, banister tax,
three-point-plug tithe, openable door tariff, surface area tax inclusive of shelf-space,
view out of the upstairs window tax... It’s crazy! There’s even a
tax on owning a television set, whether you watch it or not!”
“Er... We have that
one already,” I said. “It’s called a television licence.”
“Seriously? Aw, funt!”
The future man’s shoulders sagged, and he started hitting more buttons on
his time machine. “Better go back further...”
And a few seconds
later, he faded away...
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