Time Travel Machine

[dotinthesky]

From sushidog:

You have a time machine, in which you can make three (and only three) trips. You may use one trip to change something in your own past, one trip to witness a past event, and one trip to change the world. No cheating, any attempts to game the system will dump you in a primaeval swamp with no way back to the future. What do you do with your three trips?

My first trip would be to São Paulo, 1982, September - the month my youngest brother Nicholas was born.  I'd try to stop my parents from giving him the vaccine for whooping cough - the vaccine that gave him a brain lesion and made him a fully disabled person for the rest of his life.  I've always wondered how Nicholas would have turned out if he'd been "normal".  What kind of person would he have become? What kind of profession would he have followed?  And how would that have affected us as a family?

The second trip would be the hardest for me to choose.  Would I travel to The Smiths' first gig? Margaret Atwood's first public reading in a Toronto poetry evening? The arrival of Europeans in the Americas? (Wouldn't it freak them out if they saw me there, standing on the beach beside the natives?) Or perhaps I'd visit one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I'd probably just let the time machine decide for me.

For my third trip, I'd try to stop Archduke Franz Ferdinand from getting killed.  In theory, that would stop World War I happening as we know it (though maybe war was inevitable?), and consequently Hitler wouldn't have gained the ground to take power, World War II wouldn't have happened, etc.  But, knowing we humans, something as equally as terrible would have taken place and we'd still be in a mess today...

Comments

[millionreasons.livejournal.com]

re: 3. I wonder if it would have been better if Germany had won WW1 – i.e. no Hitler and the Ottoman/German empire would have crumbled eventually, just as Britain’s did.
On the other hand, if England & France had had to pay reparations, communism and fascism might have risen here and there instead of in Germany.
There’s been a few novels written about Germany winning WW2, but none (that I know of) imagining what would happen if they’d won WW1 .

[picosgemeos.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point - I'm so used to thinking of the Germans as the baddies, but what if we were all more organised, taller and blonder these days?!

[millionreasons.livejournal.com]

I would be quite happy for them to rule us, apart from the sausage obsession.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

If you have time on your hands I recommend the Hardcore Histories podcasts about WWI - there's four so far I think, and each is about three hours long. The impression I got from the first one is that, if Britain had been clear to Germany that if they invaded Belgium then Britain would declare war, then the whole thing might not have happened. There were good reasons for Britain not to get involved, it already had world trade stitched up, and the Kaiser was Victoria's grandson. But no-one knew what they'd do so the invasion went ahead and it all went downhill from there.

But yeah, it's an interesting series, even if I have to try not to think about the presenter's politics and the fact he keeps quoting Niall bloody Ferguson.

[picosgemeos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip, I'm always looking for good podcasts!