Unexplained Time Travel Methods

Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

“Perhaps I ought to explain,” he continued. “You see, I’m a clockwork man.”

Past, present, future—all one. And we, moving along the dimension called time, intersect them. I can’t grasp it. But I can’t deny it. If only there were proof—

“Great Snell!” he gasped. “So that was it! I ran into a temporal snag!”

Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.

It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother.

The discovery of negative entropy introduces quite new and revolutionary conceptions into our picture of the physical world.

How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?

Within this five-foot circle, time is speeded up to an almost unbelievable pace. But the world outside the circle remains unchanged.

I have come out of the dim past to bargain for those hands . . . and take them back with me . . . they are too beautiful for this age.

I can be the biggest! I can rob, murder . . . do anything! Then all I have to do is jump on my bike an’ presto, I’m 40 years in the future.

You’ve got to stop the bus . . . turn around or we’ll all soon be dead of old age!

We received a note telling us that unless we paid the sum of three million dollars this great city would be taken back to prehistoric days.

Kerry: Then it is from another world?

Coach Trout: No, from our world, centuries in the future.

Somewhere in the future, a postal error had been made and a package destined for a yet as unborn grandson had been lost in time and delivered to this house!

It looks like there was something about that swim in the river that threw me back ten years!

I’ll marry you, Everest! But first may I go on a short time-vacation?

I am a scanner, a man whose job it is to scan the past, to find any small occurrence which might change the future world!

I saw this move somewhere . . . If I could just remember!

Your work, this house, everything must be destroyed!

Now we will see into the coree of the atom . . . the core which is the basis of all things! We will be able to produce life in the test tube, blow up the world with the touch of a finger!

Time for listening to the oracle is past; you’re beyond the stage for omens, you’re now headed in for the kill, yours or his; superstition has had its little day for today; from now on, only this windy nerve of yours, this shakey conglomeration of muscle entangled untraceably beneath the sweat-shiny carapice of skin, this bloody little urge to slay the dragon, is going to answer all your orisons.

Three times I have come to give warnings—to help you, and I have been treated with scorn and ridicule!

I know you’ve come from a long way from here . . . a long way and a long time.

There’d be no wolf packs converging on a single ship, Major Devereaux. The principle of the submarine pack is based on the convoy attack.

Willoughby, sir? That’s Willoughby right outside. Willoughby, July, summer. It’s 1888—really a lovely little village. You ought to try it sometime. Peaceful, restful, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his live full-measure.

Laura! The freshest, most radiant creature God ever created. Eighteen when I married her, Marty, . . . twenty-five when she died.

Sleep, chick, sleep deep! You will like go into another world. A world without squares. A world where everyone is like real sweep people!

Nervously fingering his narrow lapel, he broke the silence, saying, “I’d like to tell you some things . . . Totally outrageous things. You have to promise me just one thing first.”

Am I supposed to tell you a lot of diverting stories? Will I have to serve you six months out of the year, forevermore? Is there some precious object I’m obliged to bring you from the bottom of the sea? Maybe you have a riddle that I’m supposed to answer.

And the interview was a great success. The old master used the hundred or so questions as takeoff points for truly masterful illuminations. It really was the archeological-historical coup of the century.

This was the message received by a dozen or so experts in the "time attempters" field:

"I have succeeded in establishing a creeping time-satellite or time-shuttle at my estate of Moonwick near Lunel in the Herault Department of the Peoples Republic of France. If you are really experts in your field, you will appreciate the importance of this. From this time-shuttle, which is just beyond the ‘shoal’ of all of you to whom I am sending this message, it will be possible for you to launch genuine time probes. I am sending this to a dozen or so and I hope for acceptance from at least five. I must have a matched set of at least five. Some soon. A very little bit after ‘soon’ will be too late for me to transmit the shuttle to you. Bring ideas only. Everything else for frugal and break-through living is provided. You will receive various transportation chits and enabling papers. Peter Luna.”

The World Courier Service (“No questions asked. Messages carried anywhere or anywhen in the world”) delivered these messages to the dozen or so persons who were experts in the time field. And some of the people gave assent and some didn’t. So, the next day, the Courier Service delivered airline tickets, train tickets, and International Taxi Coupons to five of the experts who had agreed to go to Moonwick.

Ray, help! Larry! It’s me!

Trentatré, trentatré e trentatré!

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Thirty-three, thirty-three, and thirty-three.

Ralph? The bully. When I was a kid, he used to wait for me on the corner every day.

“I said, have you got something going,” she repeated, still with the accent—the accent of my own time.

It should have ended there, Gordon knew, but it did not end. Where are you, Anna? he thought at the world being swampted in cold rain. Why hadn’t shecome forward, attended the funeral, turned in the papers?

So this will be the last time we do Groundhog together.

“It didn’t seem a good show,” Anna said to Mrs. Streichman. “A comedy and not very funny.”

Mrs. Streichman twisted into the space next to her. “That was just a rehearsal. The reviews are incredible. And you wouldn’t believe the waiting list. Years. Centuries! I’ll never have tickets again.” She took a deep, calming breath. “At least you’re here, dear. That’s something I couldn’t have expected. That makes it very real. [. . .]”

The doors opened and students backed in, pointedly not looking at Bob as they took their seats.

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.

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?

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.

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

Now prepare for a heaping helping of quick-dry tartar sauce!

“I’m maintaining the Quo,” he says simply.

Chloe, you have to believe me. I’m here to help you help me . . . help us!

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?

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.

“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.”

Kirk and Spock travel back in time to 2014

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.

Once, we flew back in time . . .

Peering into the murky abyss, Spock saw something he had never seen before: a window, a portal to that other world, not a vision, not a light, but a feeling, a feeling he didn’t understand—wonderment.

I just googled woolly mammoth, babies, clones . . .

Yup, this woman was talking on a mobile phone—in 1928—decades before they were invented.

It’s not anything fatal. You know it can’t be anything fatal, because if it was, then there would be no future self who could be sent back to warn you.

Later on, Ugo developed a theory about it. He said that in reality everybody Leaps all the time. The proof? Déjà vu. The feeling of having already experienced what is in fact happening for the first time was for him the ultimate, definitive evidence of Leaping. The only difference between Ugo and everyone else was that he remembered, while we don’t.

“And the year?”

You got me. I’m an android sent back from the future.

They told me that she showed up at their house yesterday, completely frazzled, telling a wild tale about a week that was repeating over and over again.

Could the elevator have been, like, a time machine?

We did not lose the Time War

He chuckled and shook his head. To think that he’d wanted to ruin his brother and the ranch at one time. Because of his misguided need for revenge, he’d ended up in the future. Meeting Morgan and her son had been the best thing that could have happened to him. Although he missed his simple life in 1872, there was much to like about modern times, too.

We meet by chance one autumn evening

This isn’t Germany. And this can’t be 1924.

Plus, if you shut down the time machine and never came into the future, you would never do all the great things you have already done in your life. We wouldn’t be standing her right now if you went back in time and convinced your parents to dismantle the project.

He’s destroying my world!

Okay, so in order to run a reverse dimensional location search, I need to know what the interdimensional VIN is on your computer.

You were wrong about my age, though. In the sixteenth century, I’m an adult. I am physically mature and able to bear children, and that’s all that matters. No one cares about the completeness of my frontal lobe.

My target is a few blocks from here, which is why the Department of Temporal Enforcement chose me for the assignment. Proximity is important. The less you move around, the less likely the time stream gets fucked up.

Young Pike: How am I supposed to believe . . . ?
Old Pike: . . . that I’m really you?
Young Pike: You ever gonna let me get a word in edgewise?
Old Pike: I knew you were gonna say that. Does that help?

But I heard everything, and I followed what was happening in the world.

Mi pare ovvio che tu non abbia la più pallida idea di come funzionino i viaggi nel tempo.

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It’s obvious to me that you have no idea how time travel works.

Why do you have to leave me? Why now? Her lips move, a gentle separation, but hold a wordless tenure.