Time Travel For Dummies

Time travel is pretty complicated no matter what Mike says, man.

That's why there's like, all these goddam yellow and orange post-it notes all over the console.

Yah, the important stuff is supposed to be on these orange ones.

Well, Mike says the yellow ones are important too, but he says we can just skip those in an emergency, y'know.

And Mike's dead, as usual, so I figger we can just skip those.

Hell, I ain't got time to read half the goddam orange ones he wrote, either.

Anyways, it really all just boils down to putting in the right coordinates.

But it gets complicated, 'cause like, nothing is as easy as it seems, when yer just hanging out on planet Earth, there's all this stuff that's actually going on, like, behind and scenes and whatnot.

See, the Earth is spinning around the Sun, and its always moving, and at the same time, the Earth is like, rolling like a bowling ball through space, too.

And at the same time all that is happening, the entire Solar System is moving around the center of the galaxy and rolling like a bowling ball.

And the galaxies are all accelerating away from each other.

So computing the place you wanna actually go in space and time, when you just wanna have it seem like you went back a couple minutes, y'know, as if you didn't even move at all on the surface of the planet, is totally complicated, there's all these things moving around at different speeds like a big ole crazy merry-go-round.

If we went back in time a couple minutes without changing anything else right now, we'd be out in space somewhere, and good ole planet Earth would be a couple minutes behind us in its orbit.

Naw, it wouldn't smash into us, we'd be moving ahead of it, sorta, see, if we don't change nothing, we keep whatever speed and direction we were heading in when we left, that's the second part of the coordinate system, see.

Yah, and we'd be outside the gravity and friction of the surface of the Earth, so we'd be like, zooming off at some weird angle, I think.

Plus the solar system is moving too.

Well, whatever, it'd be bad, y'know.

And you can't really go back in time like that anyways.

Naw, see, the time machine can only go forward in time.

Yah, like, super fast, to the end of time, to the Big Bang, and then back through the beginning of it all, all over again, until you get to wherever ya wanna stop at, in what seems like the past to us.

Yah, that's the next part of the coordinate system, the time coordinates, referenced from the point of the Big Bang.

Well, the coordinate system for our three dimensional location is referenced to the Big Bang too.

Yah, the Big Bang is position zero-zero-zero time zero.

Yah, and that next part is a point in space that like determines your speed and direction by the length of the line between your position and that point or something.

Yah, that part makes my brain hurt, but you like, gotta match speeds with the surface of the Earth as it moves along through space or you'll totally crater the time machine, trust me.

The computer figures that out for you as long as it knows what yer talking about, but you can also just land the time machine from somewhere in space if you are going somewhere really weird.

And then the last part is which parallel universe you wanna go to.

Yah, the Big Bang is always zero for that, 'cause there was only one universe when it happened, and everything started diverging from there.

Well, actually, Mike says there's like, the other possibility, that there wasn't a Big Bang, and so there wasn't a universe, but that doesn't count, or something.

And there's a single end to all the universes too, but they're all different lengths, even though they end up at the same place, uh, somehow.

Yah, all the universes are curved around, or something, so all their ends meet at the exact same place, I think.

But whatever, you ain't supposed to mess with universe zero.

I dunno, its just a Time Traveller Rule, its like, everything needed to happen the way it happened in universe zero or none of the other universes could happen right, or something like that, I dunno man, that's what the stuff on the yellow notes are all about.

Anyways, there's millions of other universes we can mess with, but we're from universe 41 and up, and sub-universe whatever, sub-universe doesn't matter, there's like an x-y-z coordinate system to parallel sub-universes or something, that's more yellow note stuff.

Well, there isn't even an Earth in universe one through fourteen, and none of us even existed until Mike messed something up in universe 40 on accident.

Yah, Mike's from universe 40, and we're from universe 41, we don't exist in any universe lower than universe 41, only 41 and up.

No, we could go to any universe we want, but we don't wanna screw up anything in universe zero to 41, really, or we could erase ourselves, or something, I dunno.

Actually any of the subuniverses in universe 41 should be okay besides zero-zero-zero, and all the subuniverses that happened after Mike messed up whatever subuniverse he messed up in universe 40 that created us should be okay to screw with too, but why take chances, I just stick with 42 for everything.

Yah, universe 42 is a fricking train wreck, haha, its all fucked up now.

Anyways, all we gotta do is press this thing to save the place we started at, and we come back here anytime we want later, easy peasy.

Then we put in one of these coordinate thingies on the orange notes.

And then we press this thing to create the Unified Field that sorta drops us out of the universe so we don't get wrecked, and we accelerate up to the speed where we don't age while everything else goes whipping past us on the outside of the time machine.

And then you get the kewlie sound effects and all the beer cans in here float around 'cause there's like no gravity and stuff.

And then eventually we'll end up wherever we're going, and when all the beer cans come crashing down to the floor, we'll know its cool to open the door.

Easy peasy.

Oh wait, I think we're supposed to add a couple meters or something on to our X every time we use one of these orange note coordinates.

Or mebbe its the Y or the Z, I dunno.

Yah yah, see how there's all these little slash marks?

Well, we're supposed to make one of those slash marks every time we use one of these coordinates, so we don't end up materializing on top of ourselves.

Yah, 'cause that would be bad.

Man I hope I remembered to make a slash mark the last time I did this.

Where is that fucking pen?

Okay, so like, we gotta, count the slash marks, and mutiply it by, uh, the width of the time machine, plus a couple meters, and like, carry the, uh, something.

Man, what the fuck is a meter in these stupid-ass Big Bang coordinates?

Goddam I hate this shit, I wish Mike hadn't got killed again, this is such a pain in the ass.

I swear, once we pick up a fresh Mike, we gotta get him to make some new post-it notes with some good coordinates all figured out ahead of time and shit, ones we ain't been to a bunch of times.

Yah, well, if we manage to land at this place without materializing inside another copy of us, there's gonna be like twenty other copies of ourselves there.

Yah, see, I use the coordinates on this stupid post-it note to pick up a fresh Mike whenever he dies all the time heh.

Goddam this is getting ridiculous.

Alright, when I get out to snag us a fresh Mike, you stay in here, y'know, so I can find my way back to the right time machine.

Yah, I don't wanna end up accidentally getting into a time machine with the wrong post-it notes like last time and have to do this whole Dead Mike thing all over again.