Time-machining through...Well, TIME I guess

Buttons are pressed, levers are pulled, the whirring of gears and motors, the flux capacitor, reaches a crescendo. Lights flicker, from white to blue, to green and back...A shudder almost forces me to shift slightly to prevent falling over and then the cacophony subsides, the lights stay white, gears whining more slowly as they wind down to a complete stop and then silence...I look around me with a degree of trepidation then with a shrug move forward pushing the door open before me to step tentatively into...The past...

A couple of days ago the highly esteemed and venerable @honeydue wrote a post about going places and more specifically, where she wanted to go. It's worth a read, as is all of her work, so do yourself a favour and check it out here after you have finished my post...Or right now I guess; The choice is yours.

It made me think about where I would go, where I wanted to be and, probably more specifically, when I wanted to be.

After first reading her post I thought about all the places I could go...Spain, Africa on safari, the States to see the wilds of Alaska, The Canadian Rockies, Mayan ruins in South America, deserted tropical islands, Prague, the South Pole, St Petersburg...Of course the list is endless and I want to go everywhere. I thirst for knowledge, for understanding and am fascinated by history. Visiting these places brings me all of those things and answers many curious questions I have...But raises others.

I've travelled reasonably extensively in my time and have seen and done some truly spectacular things. Just thinking about it makes me smile...The places I've been and the memories I have created I mean but there is somewhere I have not been to date and I'd like to...The past.

Where exactly in the past? Well, just like my list of places I want to go in the present so it is for the past...Everywhere. I want to see how people lived, how they died and why. I want to understand, through experience, not guesswork how the pyramids were constructed, to learn where the dinosaurs went and why, and see for my own eyes the momentous, and mundane, happenings of the past.

Could you imagine if my opening paragraph could come true? What if I could stand witness to the event that ended the dinosaurs or stand over the person aiming the rifle that shot JFK right before he pulled that trigger? What if I could experience the panic in Pompeii as the volcano erupted and spewed forth it's red-hot lava covering everything but me, the silent witness. What if I could observe that moment when Adolf Hitler (purportedly) ended his life in that bunker in Berlin April 30, 1945, or that moment when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1879 changing our lives forever.

I could go on and on of course. Right throughout history there have been countless moments or events; Some earth-shatteringly momentous and others just mundane and unremarkable although still events or moments in time that contributed in some way towards the future. I find it fascinating that a small shift, a slight change in our present or past, could have a massive implication later. Imagine for a moment that Adolf Hitler was not born at all. Imagine that he was still-born on that 20th April 1889 in Austria and was buried that day. Would the atrocities of the Nazi death camps during World War Two still have occurred? Would the war that changed billions of lives have even started?

To me looking backward on the past offers interesting and valuable insight into the world, human beings and of course the success and failure that humans create for themselves. There's a lot of lessons to come from the past. I mean, isn't the wisdom a person gains simply experience garnered from the past? Yes, of course it is. No one ever gained experience from something that hasn't happened yet.

This brings me to the future; Also a place I want to visit. I'm not sure why, maybe just to see how things turn out for the planet and its occupants. I'd also like to see the end of all things. You know, sit on the edge of nothing and watch the earth cease to exist. I think it would be a spectacular show. But let's not end on that note ok? Let's contemplate this...Who would I bring back from the past with me...Hmm, I pose the hard questions huh?

Ok, so I think I'd bring...Hmm, this is a tough one...I think I'd bring back the dinosaurs, and every single extinct species! Those bastards got a bum-steer first time around so I think they deserve a fresh start. It might not go so well for us of course, but I, and my people, would be ok because I have a time machine! Let me know if you want to get on the list ok?

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