Tinfoil and timelords

We're not timely in discussing this. But then, what is time?

The Time Traveler Convention

May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)

East Campus Courtyard, MIT

3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142

42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W

(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

At this late date, none of us are going (at least in the present time), but we can dish. I bet between us, we've read hundreds of different sci-fi stories dealing with the issue of time-travel. What do you think will happen at this convention?

a) Nothing - oh, except lots of MIT kids will get roaring drunk in their tinfoil costumes.

b) Time-travelers will appear but, upholding a strict code never to reveal the secret of time-travel to an unsuspecting past, will pass themselves off as 21st c. citizens. Refer to a).

c) Time-travelers will appear but, because the future is so grim, there will be bootjacked Time Police on hand to arrest anybody who tries to alter events of their past at the convention.

d) Time-travelers will appear and give us all the goods, i.e., cures for diseases, the shoe size of Christ, the Bombadil scene, etc.

e) Other? Discuss.

Comments

[Snow]

I've voting for the Time Police. There's got to be some sort of Paradox Prohibition of the future. People from the past can probably only come as tourists, not participants.

I'm pretty sure Jesus was the one who invented Birkenstocks, wasn't he?

[Jo]

I'll be there! Over, and over, and over!

[pam]

Another thought: inter-temporal stealth sightseers who like to swipe souvenirs. "The evening's festivities were uneventful, except the mysterious disappearance of every swizzle stick in the room ..."

[Snow]

That could explain a whole lot of what we blame on The Borrowers at our house. Not that I can imagine why anyone would want to be stealing souvenirs from my house. UNLESS this is proof that one of my children really does become President someday and change the world for the better!

[Anthony]

Has it occurred to any of us that a huge percentage of the world's population may in fact BE time travelers who have come back to observe us, only to find that at any given moment the present day world is just one huge TT tourist convention? So all those seeming MIT kids will be a small percentage of authentic students and the rest will be TTs looking around in disgust thinking "dude, most of these people are so 34th century"!
As for the Bombadil scene--apparently, according to my loose-lipped sources from TommorowLand, in the future, huge amounts of computer time will be spent "recreating" the Bombadil scene based on frame by frame analysis of the surviving Peter Jackson movies (he made/will make close to 15 blockbusters, most of which will be stolen by a future cult who believes that the key to all existence lies in them) leaving "us" (ie, the non crank future) with only 3 films to watch: "King Kong", "Shirtless" and what has been described as "his favorite" film, a 545 million dollar remake of "The Abyss" filmed two miles below the surface of the Atlantic.