Time Humor
This sums up my basic objection to time travel.
To be clear, I do not object to time travel stories, which are always clever attempts to make an Eischer drawing look like it could exist in three dimensions. I object to time travel in reality.
Whenever I see a time traveler, whether it is my future self or my grandchild Warlord Wright the Wrathfulgant, or my great-greatgrandchild the Cyber-bishop Metatron Wright or anyone else, I immediately call the TIME TROOPERS, fearless protectors of the integrity of the timeline!
They issue from the year 4000 A.D. and materialize here and now to prevent the interruption of time from ever having had taken place!
Out they leap from the rainbow-blazing chrono-vortex, time-guns blasting, ready to halt retroactivity any miscreant or chronic scofflaw creating a time paradox, by shooting the perpetrator as young child long before he commits the time crime.
“Stop! In the name of Time!” They shout in ringing voices. “Time paradox is strictly forbidden by the LAW OF TIME !!” And violators of the law of cause and effect quail and quake, or would, if they had not already been deleted from reality.
The main foes they are called to halt, of course, is a mad gang of child murderers who leap out of swirling time vortexes to gun down small children and unfortunately midgets with blazing time guns! The remorseless fiends! Only retroactive annihilation of their parents, long before they are born, can atone for such a crime!
This, of course, immediately eliminates the set of events which leads up to me calling the TIME TROOPERS fearless protectors of the integrity of the timeline, and, in fact, prevents the discovery of the secret of Time Travel in the year 2121 A.D. which leads to the Jonbar–Gyronchi wars of 3033 A.D. from whose postwar years detente the Ouroboros Authority was formed and founded by someone named Felodese Lemniscate Wright, Infiniterrific Lord Horologue and Supreme Master of Time.
From the whispered legends surrounding this august figure, like me, he will prove to be a paragon of logic, and share my deep rooted hatred of time travel.
His is the peerless organization by whom the Time Troopers, fearless protectors of the integrity of the timeline are genetically engineered, raised from birth, and rigorously trained.
So, unfortunately, they erase themselves from existence each time I call them. Stupid, stupid Time Troopers!
If only the Time Troopers existed, they could put a stop to all this annoying time travel!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
