Hollywood 1978 –

The trio retired to a large penthouse in downtown LA after their dinner with the cast of Star Trek. “That was the best thing to happen to me, ever,” Amanda said as they all sat down on the various couches that lined the living room of the palatial abode.

“I told you I’d take you places,” James jested.

“Time to charge them up people,” Tommy said. The pair pulled out what looked like thick cell phones and handed then to him. He walked over to a cabinet, opened it and hooked them up to an extension cord. Then he pulled out his own device, it was twice as large as theirs but of the same basic design.

“One thing that I have been meaning to ask you,” James said. “We can travel a lot faster in our time, so why go back and then do it?”

“We don’t age in the past, remember? So, wasting time traveling here isn’t a big deal, besides we can take side trips and see all the things. I would rather take a leisurely stroll in 1978 than a concord in our time.”

“Well we are on that topic, I still can’t believe that I am traveling through time, seeing and meeting people that I never thought I would, more than that, having dinner with. I want to know more about how you did it,” Amanda said.

“I really don’t know how. Do you know the basics of super positioning and the uncertainty principal?”

“Well, physics is one of my classes.”

“Basically, in quantum physics, the location and state off a particle can never be known. They think that they blink from place to place randomly to include parallel universes, different times, etc. Though no one knows for sure. So at least I can say for certain now they defiantly go to different times.”

“So, you have solved for it then?”

“Hell no, all I did was figure out how to move them around, at the subatomic level. That was part of my graduate studies. What I did from there was figure out how to do that on a macro scale. The math is crazy, but it works. On paper it shouldn’t I just had theories. Then I started to test it in my lab one day and poof, time travel.”

“I still don’t get how whatever we do we aren’t affected by it, as in remembering things that in our timeline never happened.”

“Think of it like this, an oyster that gets an irritant creates a shell around it. That enables it to continue on doing what it does.”

“At least they get a pearl,” James said.

“Right and in our case, time is the oyster. The shell around us enables us to interact with the oyster but a barrier of sorts protects it from us. I mean it adapts and goes on like it should, but we are in that barrier and protected.”

“So, you are saying that no matter what we do we will be who we are?”

“Yup, I think if I was to go find my younger version right now and kill him, I would still exist. I wouldn’t create a paradox. The fact that I have this barrier means I could go on as long as I have it.”

“But if you returned to your actual time?” Amanda asked.

“I would probably cease to exist, since I disrupted my own timeline.”

“So, you can do whatever you want and retain the memories even if you return to your time as long as your personal timeline remains at least reasonably consistent?” James inquired.

“Pretty much. I mean I am not going to test that theory. I like where I am.”

“Makes me think things like Back to the Future was a bit darker than it was,” Amanda said.

“How so?” James asked.

“Well, Marty goes back in time and changes things. When he gets back to his time he has the whole new life that he doesn’t remember. So, what happened to the version of him that lived it?”

“It changed the timeline sure, but the way they present it he is almost erased from existence. And on tip of that it is taking its sweet time to do it. As far as I can tell, once I make a change it happens. With the way it really works, he would have been fine until he returned to his time, then he would have blinked out because the universe would have put him in the protective barrier,” Tommy explained. “Furthermore, the way they did it he killed his alternate self when he returned, he should have remembered both timelines.”

“How do you mean?” James asked.

“When he got back he didn’t know what was going on, I mean why not? So the point is where did the Marty that lived those first years of his life go? Memory is a physical thing, if he was going to be erased from the timeline because of his mistake, thus establishing that changes in history would effect the physical attributes of a traveler then they should have been consistent and changed his memories as well, at least making so he remembered both pasts.”

Amanda seem to dwell on this a moment, “That does make sense. But why are we debating the hypothetical time rules of a movie?”

“I am just big on rules in any kind of setting, book, movie, or what not making sense. I mean the real world does it, even if we don’t know all the rules. That is how we figure out new ones, by using the ones we do know as the starting point. Take Dark Matter, we know it is there because of how the cosmos acts. It should act a different way based on what we know, but it doesn’t so they know something else is there. Thus, the theory of dark matter.”

James was looking a little confused at this point. “I have an idea of what you guys are talking about, but a lot of it is escaping me. I have heard of everything you are talking about, but besides that it kind of throws me for a loop.”

“Well, when we need to know about the markets and economics of things, you can stump and confuse us,” Amanda said, “but I am tired as hell. It was such a good day I don’t want it to end, but it has too. So might as well go out with a bang.” She gave James a lustful look, Tommy saw it.

“The last room on the left down the hall,” he said while pointing. Then there came a knock at the door. Tommy went to answer it. It was Dolores. She came in and handed Tommy a stack of papers and mail. He set it on a table in the entryway, then he took her hand and headed down the hall himself. “Don’t worry about keeping me up either. So, you kids have fun.” The pair went down to the last door on the right and entered.

James grabbed Amanda’s hand, “When in Rome….”