Pinging back, time travel

[mrissa]

So.

Yep.

Like that, then.

Yep.

I have gotten poked/pinged by more than one person, so here I am, I aten't deed and all that.

I suspect that my unsociable period after the holidays is not over.

I also have a very strange internal feeling, like my brain is one of those puzzles where you have to make everything fit back in the same shape it was and someone has dumped all the pieces out. I feel like things are clicking around trying to find how they go together again. In the meantime it's a very strange feeling. It's not interfering with writing fiction, or taking care of the dog, or any of those things. It's just...click...clickclick...click....

I bought a new winter coat today, as the lining on my old black one was shredding, and I thought that maybe ten years was enough to expect of a winter coat. I bought -- surprise! -- another black wool coat. Somewhat different than the old one. After some consideration I did not bring home the very fetching green coat. (I already have a very differently fetching very differently green coat.) If a time traveler invites me to join them for John F. Kennedy's inauguration, I am going to regret this decision, because that is exactly the kind of coat it was.

Then again, if a time traveler showed up to ask me to escort them to an historical event, I really doubt that it'd be Kennedy's inauguration. Maybe the Trinity test, or Bobrikov's assassination, or something like that. How about you? A time traveler shows up wanting you to be their date for a very special evening, witness only, no changes. What very special evening (or morning or afternoon) is it? Or where would you take me?

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

George Washington's inauguration.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmm; some events I'd want to have been at wouldn't be all that interesting to actually watch.

For the significance, I think the ratification of the US constitution and passage of the bill of rights. Or maybe take it back to Magna Carta.

For wanting to *see*, maybe the Apollo 11 launch? Or construction of the cathedral dome in Florence (biggest masonry dome, built without scaffolding; at least two new construction machines and two new techniques were invented to do it)? Or Babbage getting the Difference Engine going? Or Galileo and that first telescope?

Or there are various biblical stories, less or more historic; I'd like to see some of them proven non-historical.

Do I get enough prep time to learn the local dialects first?

[ckd]

My first question would be whether I could bring any audiovisual recording gear, and if so, how much. Even if nobody believed me ("admit it, you got WETA to render that!"), there are many historical mysteries I wouldn't mind clearing up for my own knowledge....

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking I'd like to go back and spend some time with Saint Francis of Assisi. And Julius Caesar - maybe catch him at a time when he's chatting with Pompey before their alliance falls apart. So many choices!

Rollo's encounter with the Frankish King

[howl-at-the-sun.livejournal.com]

The even is chronicled thus:
"When it was decided that the Vikings should settle in Francia and be subjects of the Frankish king, Rollo was told that he must kiss the foot of Charles in token that he would be the king’s vassal. The haughty Viking refused. “Never,” said he, “will I bend my knee before any man, and no man’s foot will I kiss.” After some persuasion, however, he ordered one of his men to perform the act of homage for him. The king was on horseback and the Norseman, standing by the side of the horse, suddenly seized the king’s foot and drew it up to his lips. This almost made the king fall from his horse, to the great amusement of the Norsemen."

I would laugh myself sick, I think.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of simple here. Any day that my dad was still alive and healthy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's a very nice time traveler buddy you have, doing what you would want most.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, no prep time. No days or years there. Just, boom, here's somebody hauling you off to Florence/Florida/umm...I can't make the others go Fl-.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Nope, "Get your coat, we're going to see the [event taking less than one day of your time]." If you keep a camera or cameraphone or whatever at the ready, okay. Otherwise not.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I figure any time traveler who would bother to ask me to go anywhere would be me, so I figure that it's me in the future doing me-current a favor.

[redbird]

If I had/could grab a good tape recorder (video optional), the first performance of any of the lost Greek tragedies would be an easy choice. Then again, that makes sense mostly if I assume this isn't an offer a lot of other people will get, since I remember almost no Greek. (Opening night partly to claim historic significance and fit the terms of the offer.)

The other temptation would be to ask for certain things as a way of testing whether they actually happened, though that might be asking too much of the time traveler and her/his database. Would asking for "the first time a bird flew" get me anything definitive? "The impact of the Chicxulub meteorite at the K-T boundary" wouldn't actually test whether that was the cause of that extinction; we know a meteorite hit.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah, but this time traveler isn't kind enough to say, "Where would you like to go?" It's, "Get your coat, we're going to _____," and you have to figure out what _____ is likely to be in this case.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

History is full of too many options to choose from.

Ideally, there are lots of no-longer-existing places where I'd like to spend an ordinary summer's day--I'd love to wander around Pompeii before the volcano erupted, or lower Manhattan maybe back in 2000 or so, so I could visit the World Trade Center and see some other places that I don't think are there anymore. I'd love to walk around the market in some of the little Jewish shtetls in Eastern Europe before the Nazis took over, or visit Coney Island in, say, the late 1930s.

Or a night of theater. I'd love to see the Marx brothers doing live stage shows. Likewise Burns and Allen, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice...

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Maybe the coronation of Napoleon? Or Charlemagne--Christmas Day 800 is an easy date to remember. But it's hard to say. I have a feeling I'd turn down most any battle, even Badon or Camlann, for fear of becoming collateral damage, and yet, I'd most like to see those. On film.

[redbird]

Ah.

In that case, I have no idea: I'd enjoy seeing William Shakespeare on stage in one of his own plays, but the time traveller might want me at Our American Cousin.

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... OK, forget the SIGNING of the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights... I'd like to see the boys duking it out over what was gonna go into the thing and what was gonna be left out... In fact, I'd just like to see a list of items that were left out of the Bill of Rights.

"Item XXVII: And all children over the age of 13 shall be permitted 2 cookies before bedtime..."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Thomas, you can't put it in the Constitution that all buildings above 1000 sq ft and not used to house livestock have to have rotundas!"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Any reason, or general time traveler caprice?

[tacithydra.livejournal.com]

The Athenians in Sicily, making that idiotic decision to land and fortify on the plateau when they should have been hauling ass home. And watching as the bad omens piled up and they remained until they were destroyed, leaving the Athenian Empire up for dismemberment and eventual fall.

[mirrorthaw.livejournal.com]

Maybe the Trinity test

Yes, please! Also "Mike" the first hydrogen bomb test, the Castle Bravo test (another hydrogen bomb test, this time at Bikini--the one that dropped fallout all over the Lucky Dragon), and the Soviet 50 megaton test.

What? Why's everyone looking at me funny? Isn't everyone fascinated with nuclear weapons history?

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Do I get a translator? If so, I want to see Archimedes testing inventions (not in battle, by my choice, even if I could be reasonably confident of going back to my own time safely.) That pulley demonstration would be so cool. With no translator, I'd like to see a Christopher Marlowe play when it was new.

[redbird]

Mostly the latter, and some random free-association on my part.

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

"Look Hancock, we all just want to get this signed and over with too, but we'll discuss whether or not we'll all use flourishes on our signatures later. ... Yes, yes... You can go FIRST when we get to it, now shut up about the signing already!"

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

If a time traveler showed up and wanted to see something specific, their choice... I'd assume something pivotal, yes.

Possibly Trinity. (That would, certainly, be interesting, but nonetheless fails to thrill me. (Unless it were up close and we were somehow protected from harm. If it's a time traveler, I assume they have strange tech of wot we know not.) Possibly they'd take me out for dinner afterwards, though.)

More likely it would be something which is Important later on, which I would have no clue is important now.

If it were up to /me/, meanwhile, I'd want to go off and have conversations with random important interesting people from before I was born or something. I don't mind Big Events, but the everyday stuff counts, too, for me.

[ckd]

Though I doubt there was nearly as much singing at the actual Continental Congress, I recommend the movie 1776 to you if you haven't seen it already.

[ckd]

My new phone does have camera (and video and audio recording) features; I'd probably run out of storage if I wasn't careful. (I'd go ahead and erase the short movie I shot of the Kendall Square wild turkey, though.) I'd miss having a real camera with at least a flash and a zoom lens, though.

Given the time traveler's choice but assuming they had some reason for picking me in particular (based on my interests as they might know them): dd_b's suggestion of the launch of Apollo XI would probably be high on the list. (Since you didn't say "grab your pressure suit", I'm assuming that watching the landing is out.)

Other situations would probably also be history-of-transport-technology moments: flights ranging from Kill Devil Hills in 1903 to the Bell X-1; rides from Stephenson's Rocket to the first run of the City & South London Railway to the first Shinkansen; infrastructure from the opening of the Thames Tunnel to the Golden Gate.

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

I used to have the feeling and recurrent fantasy of forces striking the outer parts of my shields (back when I lived in X-Men and Japanese animation metaphors), and my psyche being split into painful shard shards, split across the floor, only to be recombined and remade another through sheer force of will. (Chris Claremont as metaphor writer? Scary."

Nowadays I am more likely to say, "I have a headache and this might be why." But the clicking around, how does this piece work into my view of myself, yes, I can identify. Do you ever meditate, or only do the working poses in yoga?

My first answer on the time traveller date:

"Why, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe," of course," so we can watch the universe head into a gnab nib, and then reverse itself for the later floorshow. In Douglas Adam's book, the restaurant was suspended before the end of the world and the beginning all over again.

If I answer a real historical event, I would like to hear one of the Buddha's speeches, in the short weeks or months after he had his thoughts under a tree. The changes would watching would affect me only, and that's be fine.

Otherwise I want to see the story that inspired "Beowulf," if there was any such real fight between a monster Grendel and a hero, and would like to meet the actual King Gilgamesh, if there was one.

Mack

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

So it would be, "Get your coat, we're going to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe," then.

I'll be grabbing my towel and staying close to my time traveller, mind you.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

If it were just me, I'd hope to go back a bit before mightyjesse's choice, to where they were deciding whether to declare independence at all. It sounds so much like my professional life, trying to figure out how to institute changes and make them stick, and they were so incredibly successfu ln such a major issue (well, other than those niggling issues that came back to bite their sins and grandsons, like slavery) that it would be enormously educational. I think a time traveler might cooperate - as a Philadelphia I've always felt a bit of ownership of that episode.

On the other hand if I were the time traveler, I'd take you to one of those very early meetings of SF writers with people like Asimov and Fletcher Pratt and Fletcher Pohl - I think their "OMG, a girl writer!" reactions would be fairly funny. (Might have interesting effects on their early writing, too.)

take two, with link

[eposia.livejournal.com]

My time traveler prefers me uncomfortable and full of thoughts, and takes me to Georgia, USA on May 26, 1838 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_tears).

However, if I were a time traveler taking YOU somewhere, we'd have a picnic dinner watching the second night of the Dallas Junior Players Guild production of Romeo and Juliet, August 1994. I played the Nurse, and we never got to see a video recording of our performance, which as I recall was rather good.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Because it's good stuff, is why.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There is no painful shards sort of thing here. It's just fiddly, not painful. And better this morning.

I do meditate sometimes, yes.

Re: take two, with link

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, good one for you.

And: heh. Neat. Shakespeare picnics occupy a very pleasant place in my past, so a pleasant place in my time-traveling is not out of the question, inasmuch as there is a question.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

My time traveler would know about my obsession with Schubert and Vienna, and take me to a Schubertiade. Though he might also take me to see Mozart and his sister performing as children in London.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Hard question. Maybe a Shakespeare play at the Globe back in the day; maybe some interesting place in the pre-Colombian Americas before smallpox, etc. started wiping out whatever existed prior to Europeans being there to record it. (Okay, so I was reading 1491 a few months ago; so sue me.)

[brooksmoses]

I closed this window, having read all the comments, and then had a sudden realization about where a time-traveler would take me. (I was thinking about the wrong question: "Where would I like to go?" And then trying to work that into "Where would someone who thinks enough like I do to want to take me on a date want to go?" But the more useful angle was: "Why me?" The time-traveler can presumably go there by themselves; the question is what they'd want to go to that would be improved for them by having me along. And, from observations of people who do take me on dates to see things, that means it's probably going to be something that I'm going to be seriously geeking out about, and excitedly babbling things like, "Oh, so that's why that's ... oh, yes, right!" while explaining stuff to them.)

It also has to be something that makes a reasonable date. Which, barring viewing things at non-normal rates of time (which isn't that implausible for a time-traveler, I suppose) means probably not something like the building of the Boulder Dam or Fallingwater or Monticello or the Great Pyramid, and probably not something like the finding of the "first" actual squashed-moth computer bug. Something that took a few hours or so.

So my immediate thought, along those lines, was something like the first demonstration of a self-propelled steam locomotive on tracks. Or perhaps the first steamboat. Or the first flight of the Wright Brother's airplane.

Or, yeah, I'd like to watch one of the Saturn V's lift off, from a vantage point next to some of the engineers who built it.

As an alternate option, though, there are an endless supply of lectures and conference presentations and the like that would make for a good date. Nothing famous comes to mind offhand, but I suspect that G. I. Taylor probably did a few lab tours in his day that we could tag along on. Or, for that matter, so did Osborne Reynolds.

I could also see a tour of the 1939 Worlds Fair, speaking of tours. That would be pretty neat.

What kinds of meditation?

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

If you get the chance, I would be interested in hearing about what you do, if you feel like talking about it. Could it be a livejournal post?

Just an idea,
Mack

(I'm sorry to hear about the trip to the emergency room. I hope there will be no repeat visits).