Circa AD 2000 to 2099

“Who are you talking about?”

“My husbands.” She shook her head dolefully. “To find five more difficult men would be positively Martian.”

Figuring backward brought him quickly to the equivalence he wanted: one second in ship time was two hours in Garrard time.

And then the terminator’s claws began to manufacture their own varieties and attack Soviets and Westerners alike. The only humans that survived were those at the UN base on Luna.

At the moment I can’t prove to you that it works. Unless you believe my great great great great grandson really is what I say he is.

Now! Now to make a halfway decent world! Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.

flick!

Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world! Mac Albin pulled the little red switch toward him.

flick!

His face was pallid, because he spend little time in the sun, andhis speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.

I may be able to prevent it: Is that what you mean?

Snodgrass decided to make the Roman world healthy and to keep its people alive through 20th century medicine.

Isn’t it obvious? The war did happen. You never did go back with your warning.

He thinks of me now as the one person who’ll be able to say who’s the original and who’s the plagiarist when “the other guy” does eventually turn up!

You see, Dad and Lewis are trying to get it together, to secretly transfer a lot of young people into the future, bypassing the eco-crisis or whatever it is. Start a new civilization.

On the fourth page Alice finds a clause warning the prospective renter that the company cannot be held liable for any consequences of actions by the renter which wantonly or wilfully interfere with the already determined course of history. She translates that for herself: If you kill your husband’s grandfather, don’t blame us if you get in trouble.

Time is said to be the fourth dimension, but it differs from the other three in one conspicuous way—our consciousness moves along it. From past to present only, alas. Time itselfdoes not flow, no more than, say, width can flow. Our minds flicker from one instant of time to the next. This analogy was my starting point. I reasoned that if consciousness can move in one direction, it can move in the other direction as well. It took me fifty years to work out the details, however, and make what I call a flashback possible.

What can I do to save us from ourselves? How to save my friends, my city, my state, my country, the entire world from this obsession with doom? Well, it was in my library late one night that my hand, searching along shelves, touched at last on an old and beloved book by H. G. Wells. His time device called, ghostlike, down the years. I heard! I understood. I truly listened. Then I blueprinted. I built. I traveled [. . .]

Kyle: [to Sarah at the Tech-Noir Club] Come with me if you want to live.

. . . мы сможем в будущем, и не таком, господа-товарищи, далеком, заснять всю жизнь Пушкина скрытой камерой, записать его гол . . . представляете, какое это будет счастье, когда каждый школьник сможет услышать, как Пушкин читает собственные стихи!

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. . . we will be able in the future, and, gentlemen-comrades, not such a distant one, to photograph Pushkin’s entire life with a hidden camera, record his voice . . . imagine how wonderful it will be when every schoolboy will be able to hear Pushkin read his own poetry!

The stasis room creates a static field of time. Just as x-rays can’t pass through lead, time cannot penetrate a stasis field. So although you exist, you no longer exist in time, and for you, time itself does not exist.

Travis: We might destroy a roach—or a flower, even—and destroy an important link in the species.

Eckles: So?

The time-traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe—women!

Tucker: Where’d you learn to shoot like that?
Billy: You might say I learned from the best.
Tucker: And who might that be?
Billy: You’d never believe me.

Sf is full of this sort of thing, from the power fantasy of the alienated child to the alternate history where Hitler is strangled in his cradle and the Library of Alexandria is saved from the torch.

Channel Six, our foremost epistomological anthrosociologist has redlined and outlined you for a mission back in time.

We are one, the same person: Jonathan Hughes.

Stiles: For years I brooded on it. I was in complete despair, and then one night, I was rereading H. G. Wells and his wonderful time machine, and then it struck me. “Eureka!” I cried, “I’ve found it. This [pounds book in hand] is my blueprint.”

Zero pollution, maximum ozone shield: Something tells me we’re not in New Los Angeles any more.

The T-800: [to Sarah at the Pescadero State Hospital] Come with me if you want to live.

“Wow,” whispered Jack. “I wish we could go to the time of Pteranodons.”

Jack studied the picture of the odd-looking creature soaring through the sky.

“Ahhh!” screamed Annie.

“What?” said Jack.

“A monster!” Annie cried. She pointed out the tree house window.

You know what he said when I told him he should run at least one unmanned? He said, “If something unfortunate does happen, we can go back in time and pull Miss Engle out before it happens, can’t we?” The man has no notion of how the net works, no notion of the paradoxes, no notion that Kivrin is there, and what happens to her is real and irrevocable.

“My magic wand!” Annie said, waving the flashlight. “Get down. Or I’ll wipe you out!”

“For a thousand years,” said the ghost-queen. “I have waited for help.”

“No one escapes Cap’n Bones!” he roared. His breath was terrible.

“The moonstone will help you find your missing friend,” the master said.

She may be a wreck, but she wants to be here. Not like Paramount’s version.

Jack nodded. Now he remembered. The ninja master said they wouldn’t be able to find the Pennsylvania book until they had found what they were looking for.

If you can’t change anything because it’s already happened, you may as well smell the flowers.

It’s a transmogrifier. A device that can change anyone into anyone else. I can change General MacArthur into President Truman, Shirley Temple into Marilyn Monroe.

She stroked the mammoth’s giant ear. “Bye, Lulu. Thank you,” she said.

Jack nodded. “The book says the moon base was built in 2031,” he said. “So this book was written after that! Which means this book os from the future!.”

“You must show that you know how to do research,” said Morgan. “And show that you can find answers to hard questions.”

“Slim, you should write your book,” said Annie.

Jack watched as she hopped off the ladder. Then she started to walk through the tall grass, between the zebras and giraffes.

The tree house was on the ground. There were no trees and no houses, only an endless field of ice and snow.

“This story was in a library in a Roman town. I need you to get it before thelibrary becomes lost.”

“Give a message to the silk weaver. You will see her at the farmhouse,” said the young man. “Tell her to meet me here at twilight.”

The serpent’s neck was as tall as a two-story building. Its green scales were covered with sea slime.

At that moment, Plato returned. With him was a young woman dressed in a long tunic with a colored border. She was holding a scroll.

“Well, at least that’s good,” said Jack. “The ship won’t sink, even if it is lost.”

“. . . I got in the way of the buffalo. I couldn’t escape. So I held up my hands and shouted, ‘Stop!’ Then, out of nowhere, a beautiful lady in a white leather dress came to help me.”

“When you saved the tiger, you saved all of him,” said the blind man. “You saved his graceful beauty—and his fierce, savage nature. You cannot have one without the other.”

But at least I got to have exciting adventures as a dog!

We’d like to volunteer as nurses.

He remembered the morning this started, holding his own in his lane, the early commute streaming toward its destination, when he saw the mini-van coming toward him from the on-ramp.

“Yes! And you have to keep going for our sake,” said Annie. “For the sake of the future children of America, sir.”

Suddenly, the schoolhouse door blew off its hinges! It went flying through the air!

Jack slowly stood up. His legs felt wobbly. As he brushed off his pants, the deep rumbling came again—louder than before.

When it became clear that time travel was even a remote possibility, the government bought a lot of scientists. Those who didn’t play got discredited.

I rettili attaccarono tutti insieme i gettarono a terra Trappola. Gli azzannarono un polpaccio con le zanne affilate come quelle dei piranha, e chissa come sarebbe andata a finire se non fossi arrivato io agitando un osso: — Via di qui! Viaaaaaaa!

I dromaeosaurus, colti di sorpresa, arretrarono e si diedero a una fuga precipitosa.

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Suddenly, the pack attacked all at once. They threw Trap on the ground, and one of the grammed his arm with sharp fangs. Who know what wouldhave happened if I hadn’t furiously waved the bone and should at the top of my lungs.

“Go awayyyyyyyyyyyy!” I yelled. “Scram!”

Taken by surprise, the Dromaeosaurs retreated and swiftly took flight.

The large clock appeared to be broken, its second hand stopped at thirteen seconds past the hour.

“’Tis,” said Wil “The queen pretends to be young and beautiful. Just as you pretended to be a boy, and the bear pretended to be an actor. You see, all the world’s a stage.”

Zak: My dad consults on these super-secret projects, and I think this is one of them.
Francesca: So your watch stops time?

Oh, I can’t believe it: The only time a witch falls to pieces is when she’s separated from her soul mate.

But he couldn’t find the magic. He couldn’t find the words that finished the rhyme. Worst of all, he couldn’t find Annie.

Be kind to those who feel different and afraid.

You see, this thug nightclub owner threatened our little Lois Lame over there—

Oh, oh, oh—I think you went back a little too far!

Jack took a deep breath. “I’d like to read a little about surfing first,” he said. He put his board down and pulled out the research book.

“People can’t go back. You can’t change history Think about it! When my father was five years old, he lost his brother. It changed his life. He became an only child, grew up as an only child. All his memories are of being an only one. You can’t change that now, can you?”

“No,” Charlie said quickly. “I’m sorry.”

His uncle hadn’t finished. “Henry’s parents mourned him, just as they mourned poor little Daphne. James was their only child and, as a result, he was probably spoiled. His father died in the war and his mother left everything to him, including her lovely cottage by the sea. You can’t change that, can you?”

Welles clenched his fists. When he spoke it was in a lower tone. “Life is dark.”

Shorty: Look, if we know anything, we know that time travel's not possible. Einstein proved that. Right?
Michael: Time travel, yes. But Einstein was very clear that he believed time viewing, theoretically, could be accomplished.

Non siamo più a Kilmore Cove.

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“We’re not in Kilmore Cove anymore,” he said aloud.

And she was continually amazed at how easily everyone else accepted their situation, the blunt, apparently undeniable reality of the time slips, across a hundred and fifty years in her case, perhaps a million years or more for the wretched pithecine and her infant in their net cage.

I wanna be thirty and flirty and thriving.

Sure. Researchers. Tourists. Criminals altering their present by manipulating the past. Religious pilgrims. Collectors. Who knows what motivates people in a million years from now?

“I’m going to the future and you can’t stop me,” said Peter.

This is the part where I’m transported through time and everything goes back to the way it was, like I’d never become Santa at all.

Peter: “I'm going to the future. I want to see it for myself!”

She turned her back to him, hugging herself, aware that her entire body was shaking as if with convulsions. She had always wanted to believe in time travel. There were scientists who said it was possible, and they had put forth theories of quantum physics and black holes to explain it. Claire hadn’t even tried to understand, as science was not an easy subject for her. But she understood the basics: If one traveled faster than the speed of light, one would go into the past.

None of the theories or what she had thought or even currently believed mattered. She know with every fiber of her being that Malcolm was the medieval laird of Dunroch.

No, he had stepped out of time, she somehow thought. Allie trembled, her heart accelerating so wildly she felt faint. There was so much power emanating from him, and finally he was bathed in moonlight. Allie breathed hard. He was even better than she had dreamed. Big, bronzed, beautiful.

Molly, that’s totally crazy. You can’t stop yourself from existing because you do exist, you have to exist.

If you think about it too long, you’re going to go crazy, and then I’ll never get to your time.

Aidan hadn’t noticed her, she was certain, but she had taken one look at him and had fallen hard. She was hopelessly infatuated. She thought about him every day, dreamed about him at night and had even spent hours on the Web, reading about themedieval Highlands.

Es regnete fürchterlich. Ich hätte besser nicht nur den Regenmantel, sondern auch Gummistiefel angezogen. Mein Lieblings-Magnolienbaum an der Ecke ließ traurif sein Blüten hängen. Brevor ich ihn erreicht hatte, war ich schon dreimal in eine Pfütze getreten. Als ich gerade eine vierte umgehen wollte, riss es mich vollkommen ohne Vorwarnung von den Beinen. Mein magen fuhr Achterbahn und die Straße verschwamm vor meinen Augen zu einem grauen Fluss.

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It was raining cats and dogs, and I wished I’d put on my wellies. The flowers on my favorite magnolia tree on the corner were drooping in a melancholy way. Before I reached it, I’d already splashed through three puddles. Just as I was trying to steer my way around a fourth, I was swept suddenly off my soggy feet. My stomach flip-flopped, and before my eyes, the street blurred into a grey river.

Dr. Tom: Ultimately, Erica, you just have to decide. You have to choose how are you going to be. I mean, you could spend the rest of your life caught up, in that fear. Okay. Or, you could face it. Take the leap. See what comes. Your ice cream’s melting.

Dr. Tom: Do you think that it’s appropriate to address one of your life regrets through plagiarism?

Across the room, upon the floor, he saw the gold necklace she had worn for two-and-a-half centuries, the amulet he had given her. The talisman was an open palm, a pale moonstone glittering in its center.

It had survived the fire, untouched and unscarred; his wife, who had powerful magic, had not.

“No!” He leaped into time.

If I had the power to decide never to meet him again, I reasoned, surely I had the power to change the course of the relationship for the better.

I’m certain I didn’t send myself any mail recently, but then again, I have plans to do so in the near future—or near past, I suppose.

Erica: Leave my brother alone. Don't mess with the babysitter.

Dr. Tom: It’s 1974
Erica: ’74? But how can that be? I'm not born until ’76.

Erica: I should have gone to her the next day and talked it through.

Erica: Our friendship, it’s still there. And I know that I’ll find my way back to it, but I need some time.
Ethan: What do I do?
Erica: Nothing. You just have to wait for me to be ready.

Erica: If I could go back, I would not kiss Ethan.

I’m giving you one special power: shape-shifting. . . . You know, like Odo on Deep Space Nine.

Dr. Tom: What have you done?
Erica: I . . . I didn’t have a choice.
Dr. Tom: Really?
Erica: Okay, fine. I did have a choice.

So if they had gotten home five minutes before they left, like those ladies promised they would, then they would have seen themselves get back. Before they left.

Sam’s excitement increased. She believed in the Duisean. The Rose women had their own book, the Book of Roses, which contained all the magic and wisdom entrusted to them by higher powers, and passed down through the generations. The Book was now in Tabby’s keeping—it was always in the keeping of a Rose witch. One of the Highlanders had come for it, to bring it back to her. Why wouldn’t the Masters of Time have a book of power?

After a man dies, he meets God, upon which he doesn’t find out the meaning of life, but he does discover something about time and the meaning of the universe.

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Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?

I don't want to talk to you about time travel or therapy or anything.

Jude: [holding baby] You know I can’t stand these things, right?

Erica: My dream is to write fiction, and that will happen someday. I am not letting that go.

Erica: [with Kai at her side][/actor]

There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.

You were expecting robots, flying cars, everybody in silver jump suits?

Dr. Tom: I think it might be time to rip away the safety net. Erica, today you’re gonna solve your problems like the other six billion souls on this planet: all on your own.

It’s amazing, you know? You stand beneath a car: There’s always so much more going on underneath than you’re aware of.

Dr. Tom: Why am I having the same fight with Erica that I used to have with my daughter?

Gada: Think of the implications if we do stop something . . . mess with things that we don’t understand.
Flint: You wouldn’t say that if we’d stopped the tanker.
Gada: Perhaps the tanker was meant to crash. It wasn’t our place to . . .
Flint: . . . Save lives?

Erica: If I woulda stayed, I woulda been rich in my twenties. I . . . I mean I could have paid off all my student loans, and I never would have needed to work at that stupid call center. I would have had the time and the means to dedicate to my writing, and my life—it would have been completely different.

It’s not complicated. You can’t stay in this hallway forever—you have to choose.

Rubinrot, Begabt mit der Magie des Raben, Schließt G-Dur den Kreis, Den zwölf gebildet haben.

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Ruby Red, with G-major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven.

This device allows us to transport into the future or past, at a date or destination of our choosing. Unfortunately, the consequences of altering the order of history are so dangerous [thunder], we’ve chosen to leave it alone. So you mustn’t touch!

Yes, exactly. You step on a bug and the fucking Internet is never invented.

You’re going to need a lot of dog food.

He looked at the sole red logo and decided it was the on button. He thought about where he’d like to be, and pushed.

Erica: I feel ready to start phase two.

What do you do when a piece of your life is suddenly missing? We know we’re supposed to move on, but how?

Dr. Tom: And this time?
Erica: I’ll spend every second with Leo. No Trent, no distractions.
Dr. Tom: I wouldn’t count on it.

Kai: In a few weeks, I come back to 2010 on another regret, and while I’m here, we sleep together.

Adam: I would walk away from Sean instead of hitting him, and that would change everything, Dr. Tom—and I know that’s not how this works.
Dr. Tom: Why don’t you let me worry about how this works.

Friendship . . . two people choose each other through some mysterious mix of alchemy and circumstance. On the surface, the reason for our choice seems obvious: They share our interests, they make us laugh—but isn’t there more to it than that? And do we ever really stop and wonder why this person and not another?

Erica: Can I change this? I mean, can I avoid sleeping with him ’cause Kai said it was gonna happen—which means it’s already happened for him, which means . . .
Darryl: . . . you have to go through with it to avoid creating a paradox.

Because using information that you have gleaned from a trip to the past to try to fix your life in the present contravenes the rules.

Like twin phoenixes, we rise from the ashes—right?

Look at me. You went back there and you faced what happened, and now you have to face how it made you feel. And that’s how you break the pattern.

Sent you back? No, Miss Strange, you don’t understand. You’ve been in a coma for two weeks.

I'm so sorry—I . . . I . . . I didn’t mean to dredge up the Ghosts of Christmas Past.

Patrick, with this time machine, we can go back to the past and make our young selves wiser!

Will they get it right? Will SpongeBob and Patrick get to see their superheroes in their super-prime?

When joined as a whole, the Devil’s Stone was rumored to perform many miracles: strike people dead in an instant, turn lead into gold, even open portals in time.

Erica: So what do I do? Do I just go out there, hand him the card, and ask him how he’s handling the divorce?

Erica: It’s not that I’m not happy doing what I’m doing—I mean, I love my work. It’s just sometimes I wonder if I shoulda tried harder to be a writer.

Erica: My mother is my patient?!

Lucy: tell me who this is.
Unknown: I’m u 10 years in the future.

This is now my new favorite moment in human history.

Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.

Being the future inventors of time travel wasn’t all bad, of course. It was great to know that we’d never lose anything, never go to a movie that turned out to be a stinker, never buy a book we wouldn’t want to finish, never go out to a restaurant where the service was lousy, and never get stuck in a traffic jam, because we’d always be warned away, beforehand. It was terrific to have some future version of myself pop in just as I was about to irritate my wife with some inconsiderate comment and tell me, “It would be a really bad idea to say that.”

Jake stared from one man to the other. A horse neighed behind him, and shuffled through the thick straw bedding. His eyes narrowed. Where the hell was he? He’d fallen asleep on the uncomfortable mattress in his jail cell last night, thinking about his strange encounter with his new lawyer. He glanced around. He stood inside an old wooden barn, in a horse stall to be precise. The familiar pungent smell of horse sweat, manure, and hay permeated the air. The equine occupant of the stall chose that moment to blow hot air down Jake’s neck. He swatted an impatient hand at the horse’s nose to make the animal move away from him. He thought he’d seen the last of horses since leaving Montana. How did he get here?

I was tracing a design that was etched into the wall, and it started glowing and humming. And then my whole body was being stretched and pulled, like I was a giant rubber band. And there was a sound that vibrated through my skin and into my stomach, which is probably what made me want to puke—er, vomit.

It’s too easy for me to say the wrong thing today, and if I do, we may never meet at all

You have no idea how many of my younger selves freak out when I show up.

He discovered that Einstein’s quantum theory was essentially correct and that he could stabilize a traversable wormhole through space-time using exotic matter with negative energy density.

Inim-nordah redilloc eht dehsinif ev’uoy. Wow!

Think of History as a living organism, with its own defence mechanisms. History will not permit anything to change events that have already taken place. If History thinks, even for one moment, that that is about to occur, then it will, without hesitation, eliminate the threatening virus. Or historian, as we like to call them.

I can’t kill Hitler or shag Helen of Troy, unfortunately.

Proctor: You’re lucky, Nick. You have skills that we want, so we’re giving you a choice: You can take your chances with judgement, or . . . [fishes undeader gun from a drawer and places it on the desk]/actor] you can join the R.I.P.D.

I am slightly lost in space and time right now and need to get home in order to make sure my children get milk for their breakfast.

I, uh, digitized the actual footage taken from the night. I, uh, cropped and lightened the image.

Ryan: I thought it was kind of derivative.
Esposito: Like a mash-up of 12 Monkeys and Terminator.

Laney’s brows scrunched together. She glanced at her surroundings. She was inside a cramped old-fashioned coach of some sort, and the windows were wide open, sending in thick clouds of dust. She stared out at the passing landscape. Evergreens and prairieland as far as she could see. Not a hint of a skyscraper of road anywhere.

No, I’m not okay. I’m stuck in the same day, and it’s a fucking hell that you can’t even fathom, and it just keeps happening. I wake up, life kicks the shit out of me, and then I have an orgasm, and then I live the same day all over again.

Rachel: What’s that?
James: Huh? Oh, nothing.
Rachel: Sure it’s not a One-Minute Time Machine?

“And then I’ll be a proper early-twenty-first-century girl?” I ask. I feel like crying. I don’t want to be set.”

Mr. B. invented a camera that takes pictures of the future.

We came by the raft dishonestly. We’d only meant to do a little fishing. It was cool and nice under the big willow with its whips trailing over the water. Christ, it was a scorcher of a day. The whole town must have fallen asleep, along with Jim and me. When we finally did wake, if we ever did, the raft was too far along in space and time to return it. We could no longer reverse ourselves, our motions in all five dimensions, than fly to the moon.

Sheman was supposed to keep the time machine secret, but he broke the rules. He took his friend Penny back in time to ancient Egypt.

The cape was in the trunk. When I put it on . . . It’s hard to explain, but it was as though I had been transported to another time and place.

Kirk and Spock travel back in time to 2014

It’s 1814: They’ve never seen fashion styles like ours before.

He glanced around at his unfamiliar surroundings. He was in a parlor of sorts. A short table stood a few feet away from the sofa on which he sat. An oddly-shaped lamp hung from the pastered ceiling, and Gabe squinted his good eye. It was a rather plain-looking, milky-colored dome attached to a wooden support, along with what looked like blades that reminded him of a windmill that was hung on its side. He’d never seen an oil or kerosene lamp like it. Perhaps it wasn’t even a lamp, but some ornate decoration.

Wells: Yes, it’s possible, but problematic. Assuming you could create the conditions necessary to take that journey, that journey would then be fraught with potential pitfalls: the Novikov Principle of Self-Consistency, for example.

Joe: Wait—the what, now?

Barry: If you travel back in time to change something, then you end up being the causal factor of that event.

Cisco: Like . . . Terminator.

Joe: Ah!

Wells: Or is time plastic? Is it mutable, whereby any changes in the continuum could create an alternate timeline?

Cisco: Back to the Future.

Joe: Ah, saw that one, too.

AAPL, AMZN, GOOG, NFLX

About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]

So, Lou was killed in our present, which means that here in the future, he should still be dead. Well, clearly he’s not fucking dead, because he’s sitting here, still bothering me. So what that tells me is we’re in a completely different future on a completely different timeline. [. . .] Anyway, the repairman said that the past is actually the future of the present that we’re in right now. So I think what that means is the killer is from the future. So clearly, someone from 2025 will go back in time and shoot Lou.

Tell me something I can hold onto forever and never let go.

“Don’t you see?” says Terry. “We’ll just travel back in time and get a permit for the treehouse.”

Neil [wavinghand]: Let the explosion never to have happened.

No, that’s not how it works. In our timeline, Barry’s mother’s already dead, and her death is a fixed point. And nothing can change that.

Rule 3: Owner will be sent back to the present after 5 minutes are up.

We’ve been running simulations to resolve the Grandfather Paradox, and we experienced an unusual electromagnetic pulse at the school that was triggered remotely. We were able to locate the source, but I suspect someone may have taken our simulations a step further. . . . The equation in your daughter’s thesis notes may have actually solved the paradox. But they’re untested and now they’re missing, and you said Charles has been absent. Could he have taken them and induced an entanglement?!

All of them except Luke Denton and around a thousand other souls who’d been left behind whilst the rest of the human race were evolved against their will, by a force conspiracy theorists around the world had put down to anything from governmental to extra terrestrial tinkering.