Time travel was invented in the year 4 ever when Crodunk the Clumsy accidentally set a mysterious meteor on fire. Time travel was invented in the year 5349 Post Reconstitution when it was the only thing left to invent. Time travel was invented in 1985 CE when a disgraced nuclear physicist drove a car too dang fast. Time travel was invented in 6495 Before Reconstitution when scientists built a time machine through very careful and meticulous trial and error and a strict following of the scientific method and then some punk named Connor James showed up, stole their machine, and spiked it like he’d just scored the final touchdown in a Super Bowl. Time travel was invented in 54 BCE when a wizard looked into a crystal ball and saw that in the future we’d have skateboards and he thought that was rad. Time travel was invented in 2018 CE when the psychic fish looked into the future to see how it’d be invented and directed modern day scientists to invent it first. Time travel was invented in Year Zero when Dr. Bill Timetravel DDS discovered the blueprints for a time machine mysteriously tattooed onto the roof of one of his patients’ mouth. Time travel was invented in 2497 CE when Mason Starr read about Stephen Hawking’s 2009 time-traveler party and thought it sounded like a good time. Time travel was invented in 2007 CE when the spirits of dead dinosaur mages bestowed a magical amulet onto Leon Von Iguanodon which gave him the power to summon time-displaced dinosaurs. Time travel was invented in 2017 CE when the Very Angry Very Confused Time-Displaced Pirate was examined by scientists and the time-stream residue he was covered in was reverse-engineered. Time travel was invented in 1600 CE when somebody used the first time machine to travel back in time and invent time travel earlier.
If any of this sounds confusing to you it’s because the nature of time travel is that it doesn’t make any goddam sense. Once time travel is extant at some point in time the rest of time pretty much just turns into jelly. All of a sudden this rigid, structured, sequence of events can be molded and altered any which way by any bozo with a flux capacitor. It’s really stressful actually. But, just for you guys, in celebration of both our birthday and our 100th post Howtohero presents:
#100 The Essential Guide to Time Travel!
Time Machine The first thing you need when you plan on zooming through the time stream is a time machine. Sure, there are plenty of ways to travel through time without a machine (running really fast, running really slow, magic, inborn metahuman abilities, freak lightning storms, certain types of birds {or certain types of Bat-Fish-Giant-Bird-Wing People}) but for the average person on the street, you’re going to need an actual time machine if you want to be able to practically ponder philosophical quandaries or cheat the lottery. Some of these time machines are nothing more than large portal generators and traveling through time is presented as no different from traveling through space. The only major difference is the color of the swirly vortex. Space vortexes are generally various shades of red or black while time portals are usually made up of an assortment purples or blues. Both kinds of portals though, make for very cool backdrops for Instagram photoshoots. Other time machines are more akin to vehicles (though usually they have more room inside) that the time traveler flies, drives or sails through the time stream in. When designing a time machine you’re going to want to make it look super mundane. I understand that your gut extinct will be to make it look super cool and flashy but that is dumb, you will get caught. Time machines should resemble things that would not look out of place in the era you plan on traveling to. Things like large shrubs or trees are pretty good templates, as they can commonly be seen in a variety of time periods and a variety of locales. Other common time machine templates include telephone booths, police boxes, and old cars, all of which are only practical for certain time periods. If you can get some kind of cloaking doohickey fitted onto your ship then you can pretty much make it look like whatever you want! Just make sure to remember where you’ve parked. Maybe write it down on your arm or something. If you forget where you’ve left your invisible time machine, you’ll be left stranded wherever you are unable to return home. Unless you’re stuck in the past in which case you can just wait until your home time comes around. You can also try etching a message into something you think your friends are likely to come across in the future/present. Then they can try to come get you. (Note: Most time travel navigation apps come with a “remember where I parked” feature so this may be a problem only for time travelers from time periods that still had to use time maps to get around, or time periods from after this whole apps fad faded away.) Other time machines come in the form of handheld devices or can be worn in some manner. Time machines that resemble watches are especially common. And there’s not really any reason for it beyond “haha watches are how you tell time!” Ok, I guess it could also be for easy carrying, access and disguise, but let’s be honest, it’s probably because “haha watches are how you tell time!”
Proper Time Travel Decorum When you arrive in a new time period do not run over to some random passerby and ask them what year it is really loudly. First of all, they can hear just fine, there’s no need to shout. Second of all, you should know what year it is, you’re the time traveler. Presumably you had a destination in mind. It’s not like when you disembark from a plane you run over to someone and start shaking them by the shoulders while asking what country you’re in. Third of all there are plenty of discrete ways of ascertaining when and where you are without announcing to the world that you’re a time traveler. Just pick up a newspaper or something. And if there are no newspapers in your time period, try looking it up online, or hey, maybe check the timometer on your time machine. Again, you should know where you traveled to. Generally, you want to keep the fact that you’re a time traveler on the DL (that’s “down low” for all you abbreviation junkies). If that news gets out you know a bunch of people you never met are going to ask you for time traveler favors. Or they might try to burn you at the stake. Or they might use that information to blackmail you into breaking into Hell and stealing a soul for them. So make sure you’re dressed appropriately and are aware of the relative current events and slang people are using. You should also come up with a fun codename for yourself. This doesn’t really have anything to do with hiding the fact that you’re a time traveler, it’s just a fun thing you can do. Try going for something subtle like Mr. Tyme or Dr. Timetravel or Clocky Clockerson. Something that will get a smirk out of people who are in the know but that won’t immediately out you to random civilians. If you’re planning on taking up permanent residence in another time period -for example, some people go back in time in order to become powerful superheroes or supervillains using their futuristic technology in lieu of actual powers- then you also want to not broadcast that. If you’re going to be a superhero in an earlier time period, then you need to keep both the fact that you’re a time traveler and your true identity a secret. If your enemies uncover that information, then they can defeat you simply by going after one of your ancestors and killing them. And by “defeat” I mean completely erase you from the timeline, which brings me to my next point…
Paradoxes When traveling through time you need to avoid causing any paradoxes at all costs. Some general rules for avoiding paradoxes are as follows:
Don’t sleep with anybody: Time travel makes people super fertile so you’re pretty much guaranteed to end up siring a time travel baby. These babies are almost always going to cause some pretty major paradoxes no matter which time period you place them in. Also, an astounding number of time travelers end up having sex with one of their ancestors. Making them their own ancestor. Which is a paradox. And also probably not great for the genepool. So let’s try to keep time stream excursions business only.
Don’t kill anybody: If you kill someone in the past you could irreversibly alter the future to the point where a paradox is formed. Some time traveling bounty hunters are equipped with special scanners that can determine a person’s significance to the time stream. If you have one of those then I guess you can kill someone if they don’t matter to the rest of time. But don’t tell them that that’s why you’re allowed to kill them! That’s a super disheartening thing to hear.
Don’t interact with yourself: Interacting with yourself is the easiest and quickest way to cause a paradox. Our interactions with the people around us always affect who we are as people so of course an interaction with yourself from a different time is going to have profound effects on your past and future. Obviously you should never go back in time to try to change your own past. You’re almost definitely going to make things worst for yourself. Our old pal Half-Face McGee tried it once, to save the other half of his face, and when he came back to his home time period he discovered that he was now No-Face McGee. Which is worse. He had to go back in time like eighteen different times to fix that mess. This rule is also especially important to keep in mind if a past version of yourself travels to the future and wants to talk to you. You need to avoid them at all costs. You should never meet your past self. They might think you’re lame or a jerk and resolve never to become like you. Which in all honesty might be great for them (past you) they’ve probably learned an important lesson about friendship and love or something. They’ll go back to their time and change their ways and everyone will be happier for it. Everyone except for you! The grumpy future version of you! Who will now cease to exist. So just never meet yourself. It’s just a headache waiting to happen.
Paradoxes are the best way to get yourself wiped from existence, so it’s best to avoid that. Thankfully, the time travel vacation industry (which allows patrons to spend a relaxing couple of days in the time period of their choice, though honestly, their aim isn’t great and a lot of people accidentally end up on the Titanic or in inside Tyrannosaurus stomachs) has actually developed a clever workaround to the whole paradox issue. Paradox-locks, or Paralox™ as some goon in marketing came up with, allow a time traveler to travel back in time without the possibility of irreparably messing with the timeline. When a time traveler travels using paradox-locks they can do whatever they like and anything that results from it will have already been destined to happen. But be warned you might end up accidentally becoming responsible for something you hate. Like you’ll accidentally compose that annoying commercial jingle you’ve always hated. Or perhaps you’ll be the one who gave your fiancé that stupid hat that inspired him to become a hat-themed vigilante as a child. Or maybe the massive influx of accidental time travelers will cause the Titanic to sink... Only you haven’t really caused anything, these things had all already happened before you went back in time. It’s like a perfectly closed loop. All novice time travelers should travel with paradox locks their first few times. They’re like time travel training wheels. Remove them only when you know how to carefully manipulate time without erasing anybody from existence or shattering the whole shebang.
Breaking Time Every couple of days a time traveler irreparably damages time. That’s a fun little statistic we had our interns crunch the numbers for (we don’t have interns, please stop sending us job applications). “Breaking time” is the catch all term for any catastrophic damage a time traveler causes to time and it includes (but is not limited to): creating alternate universes as a result of branched timelines, creating aberrations or anachronisms across time and accidentally causing an apocalypse. Then there’s stuff like trapping yourself in a time loop or accidentally causing time to reverse itself, both of which are more accurately described as spraining time and can easily be reversed by a more experienced time traveler. Breaking time can be caused by even the simplest action on the part of an unwitting chrononaut so you always need to be super careful. The tiniest action can cause a crazy ripple effect all across time and space and completely alter your world. It’s something scientists I like to call the “Butterfly Effect” because the example I always give is that if you punch a butterfly in the face in the past when you eventually journey back to the future that very same butterfly will be there only now it will be called Evil Butterfly and it will take a preschool hostage [I don’t think that’s how it goes]. If you’ve found that you’ve accidentally broken time (great going by the way, I just love this barren hellscape that we all live in now) we’re going to help you fix it. If you’re smart you’ve taken a copy of this blog, or at the very least this post on time travel, with you when you traveled through time. So even if you’ve broken time so badly that I haven’t written it, it should remain unaffected. You and the things you have on your person or in your time machine will remain unaffected by the shattering of the time stream for a short period of time. See, like we said before, once time travel enters the picture time becomes kind of… gooey? It can be changed and sculpted and this mean it can take a bit before it solidifies into any given shape, even if that shape is a bunch of broken apocalyptic shards. So for a brief time you’ll be able to remember everything from your old timeline. You can also remember what you did to break time and when you did it. This is about the only time you’re allowed to go and interact with yourself during these excursions. You need to go back to before you decided to unleash a time demon or have a gun fight in the time stream and stop yourself from doing it. This will definitely cause a paradox but that’s ok, that’s just where we’re at now. You need to weaponize that paradox and use it to undo whatever you did and set the timeline back. This will probably cause you to be erased from the timeline but the past you will survive and not make the mistake that caused time to splinter or implode which will save quintillions of lives. So that’s something.
Oversight Due to the massive amounts of time travelers mucking about through the past, present and future at any given time there needs to be some kind of oversight (uch lame). Some type of council or parliament (an alarming number of time travelers are British; I don’t know why that is. Personally, I think most of them are faking it because they like the accent,) of scientists, historians and time masters should be formed to monitor time travelers and intervene if anything sketchy is going down. A group of watchmen so to speak. There should also be a special time-police division set up and run by this council. These agents of time can be sent to different time periods to collect future tech that was left behind or erase people’s memories of things they shouldn’t have seen. They can also track down and capture rogue time travelers intent on going back in time to become rules of the universe or to kill a superhero in their infancy. This organization should operate outside of the constraints of time by setting up shop within the time stream itself. Just beware that there are other creatures and characters who reside their too and whom you’ll need to make arrangements with for a peaceful coexistence. There are old-timey robots and temporal-phantoms and more British people??? My god did the British Empire set up a colony in the temporal zone??? What’s going on here?
[Disclaimer Potential side effects of time travel include but are not by any means limited to: disjointed and disorganized syntax, backwards walking, visions of alternate timelines, rapid aging, rapid deaging, speaking a different language, new memories, missing memories, being your own grandparent, exploding head syndrome, blinking out of existence every Groundhogs Day, having only six days in a week, being able to taste sounds, extreme sweating, emotional trauma, incontinence, déjà vu, Presque vu, jamais vu, déjà vu, sleep apnea, the bubonic plague, velociraptor flu, extreme nostalgia, the uncontrollable urge to burst into song and heart failure. Time travel is not for the faint of heart or the megalomaniacal. Pregnant people, amnesiacs and infants are advised against time travel. Please consult with a medical professional and ask them if time travel is right for you.]
So there you have it! Now you have everything you need to go out and start collecting temporally inconsequential knick knacks and ignoring everything here to try and drastically and unilaterally change time. Stay tuned for a master post of links for the past 100 posts as well as a few other big announcements that should be coming later today. Special thanks to my editor and girlfriend @empresschana (don’t bother checking out her tumblr, it’s empty, she made it only to be my first follower because she’s the best) for all your help and support and inspiration. Thanks to Ian Schafer for letting me use Connor James’ story in the intro, check him out on YouTube and subscribe to The Jimmy Network. I’ll be starring in one of his videos later this year. And last of all thank you to all my fans for all the likes and reblogs, if there’s something you’d like to see here or if you just wanna chat hit me up in my inbox. Here’s to another hundred posts of sagely advice, wacky adventures (But none more wacky than Jerry’s Homegrown Condiment Jars! Please think of Jerry Jarman for all your wacky adventuring and jarring needs! {Ok, what the hell!}) and general tomfoolery!