I’m finally going to do it: I’m going to be the first time traveler in history
The first human time traveler, anyway: those pesky quantum particles already beat us to it, but my achievement’ll make up for that in scale.
Don’t laugh in your self-satisfied derision: I’m deadly serious in my endeavor. Sure, I never did well in any of my science classes; OK, I never had any interest in quantum physics until just now, when I’ll be working all Thanksgiving weekend and spending that time wishing I was a kid on school break again; all right, I’m taking a totally unscientific approach to the whole thing; but really, when has anything great ever been accomplished without a whole lotta heart, plus a whole dose of gut feeling? Did human beings make it all the way to the Moon using dry old MATH?!
They did? Onward.
My method is simple: no fancy machines, no complicated serum, no incomprehensible formulae – just simple, exact duplication of events as they previously occurred. Once that is achieved, the Brain will take care of the rest.
I concluded the best way to do this is through film, since it’s one of the few media that fully immerses the senses of sight and sound, if you have either or both; touch, taste, and smell usually then can be overridden and therefore ignored.
Since nostalgia is the current zeitgeist, the local cinema is showing a classic from the way-back year of 1995, now 25 years ago (?!) in our present day of garbage. I was a preteen at the time, but this go-around I’ll have to drive myself to the movie theater, `cause my Mommy’ll be out with her friends and refuses to give me a ride.
To prepare, I found the movie’s original trailer online (thanks, technology!) and watched as if I was seeing it on television for the first time.... Hey, spoiler alert, they totally showed the spaceship getting blown up and that was a huge deal in the plot! I mean, it happens so far away from the camera you can’t really tell it was that ship unless you’ve already seen the movie, but still! Why would you put something that dramatically pivotal IN THE TRAILER?!
The theater itself has been remodeled several times in the intervening decades, so the experiment will have to begin after I’m seated and the lights have been extinguished. I’ll also have to resist the temptation to recline the comfy seat, since 1995-era theaters were slight-tilt, hard-cushioned affairs. Again, the sense of touch will be overridden: fortuitously, the same background popcorn smell forever remains.
The lights dim; the screen shifts from soda commercials to present-day trailers – too modern! Experiment on pause for the next 20 minutes… 30 minutes….
Car commercial… soda commercial again… ooh, 25th anniversary retrospective, neat!... So that’s how they filmed the crash sequence, I never realized…. Yes I know they didn’t crash an actual spaceship on an actual alien planet, I just wondered how they did it without so much CGI…. Huh. Now the effect’s slightly ruined for me for all time. Didn’t expect that to be one of the outcomes from all this.
OK! Studio’s logo is up on the screen [Checks watch for start time] – music begins – opening credits – here we go! Time travel commencing in 3 – 2 – 1 –
Aw, I forgot that actor’s dead now. And so’s that one. And so’s that one. Oh, that one had a stroke recently, that’s a shame. And that one’s had a nice career comeback, in music though. And that one….
Hm: special effects’ve held up pretty well, but I can tell now that background’s totally a matte painting….
Ooh, I love this part coming up! So emotional…. [Sniffs] The noble self-sacrifice gets me every time....
Wow, this takes place in the future but those shoulder pads sure do scream `90s….
I wonder if everyone else on set knew that one was a creep while they were filming this, or if they were all shocked when the truth came out 15 years later….
Oh yeah, I was completely swept up in this B-story – too bad it all comes to nothing in about 20 minutes….
Aaaaaaand here’s the spaceship crash…. Oh wow, the exterior shots really are just models and miniatures. The editing and directing are fantastic, though….
Didn’t realize that dream sequence was so short – felt a lot longer the first time I saw it….
And that’s it, it’s over, bit abrupt – [Checks watch] – the whole thing was less than two hours?! Talk about economy of storytelling.
The lights flare on again, the rest of the audience leaves, and I remain in my hard-cushioned, non-reclining seat, reviewing the outcomes of my time travel experiment.
Result: Failure.
Conclusion: Despite external stimuli, the Brain was too much in the present to travel to the past. However, there were brief moments of near-success, where the present self lost track of time and the sensations of 25 years ago were almost-duplicated.
New Hypothesis: Discover method of total immersion in external stimuli to force the Brain into a past state.
Should only take another 25 years to figure it out.
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