Occasional Tales

Why use a machine when boredom and anxiety will do the job nearly as well? Dr Wenn now unveils a machine which can stop time and does (through the agency of the mischievous Lucy) for a thousand years. Of course, nothing has changed and Lucy is, again, unimpressed. Dr Wenn says that the time machine can be used in conjunction with the time stopper. Lucy asks about travelling backwards in time, but Dr Wenn says that it’s not possible because the past doesn’t exist. Lucy disagrees. Dr Wenn explains that the past is a memory of present moments, and the present is infinitely small. He thinks that the only thing which is real is the future, which ceases to exist the moment you arrive. Lucy continues to play the sceptic. The present exists and even although it’s infinitely small, it adds up to something, which is the past. No one would get very far trying to deny past indiscretions. Who’s right? I was thinking that we travel through time all the time. I don’t mean with regard to two or three ...

Or was it? Dr Wenn tries to get his assistant, Lucy, to hang around in a box for a week on a brief one-way trip through time, although she can’t come back. Ever. Lucy isn’t too impressed. (“Worst mad scientist ever,” said Lucy.) Well, we’re all time travellers so long as we’re going forwards, but by the time the future arrives, it’s already the past because we’re too slow to perceive the now. Or perhaps you could say that we always perceive the past, never what is now, and can only know that we’re entering the future. Dr Wenn wants to stop time tomorrow. I have a theory – superboredom. But I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.

And how we can use them as bargaining chips. A terrorist is threatening to detonate a bomb, but his identity is discerned, and it’s found that he has two children. President Settee threatens to imprison and interrogate them, but the terrorist tells him to do his worst. Nonetheless, a voice analysis reveals that the man is worried about his children. The president’s advisers think that if they harmed the children, the terrorist would compromise. Why not send him a video making it seem that one of the children is being beheaded? Why not send him a video of it actually happening? President Settee doesn’t find this idea to his liking, but the advisers notes that the children of terrorists go on to become terrorists themselves. If people could go back in time and stop dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, surely they would? Prevention is better than cure, isn’t it? This is like Minority Report or various episodes of ST: Voyager when the Federation of the 29th century went nicking people ...