Time Travel
The history we know all about, the history in our encyclopaedias feels kind of ‘fixed’ doesn’t it? Committed to the pages of a history text book, you get the feeling that the events of the past that lead us right up to today could really only have happened this one way. But in actual fact, we should really think of our history as just one way of telling the story. Much like the way a joke can circulate around a playground or an office and end up being told in a variety of different ways (some ways funny…other ways, not so).
Lets imagine for a moment that we can do it, that we can go back in time, go back and see things and perhaps, foolishly change them to see what affect it has on the present. You can go back in time…I’ll stay right here in 2010 and tell you if I notice anything different.
First stop; Germany, 1941, Berchtesgaden – Hitler’s winter home. Hitler sits beside a crackling fire in he main hall, flanked by his Generals as he plans the deployment of his forces ready for the assault on Russia. But you arrive with a puff of air. Before he can summon his guards you warn him that Russia is too big a bear to wrestle. You warn him that by the end of 1943 the German advance will have stalled at Stalingrad. Hitler strokes his chin…
And here in 2010, all of a sudden, history ripples and over-writes itself. The street signs outside my window have a Teutonic font! They’re bilingual – in German and English. On the radio, I hear a band called Snow Patrol playing traditional marching songs. And outside, I see a traffic warden in Gestapo black taking the number of a van.
Second stop…you travel back to the summer of 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg. The night before General Lee orders his Virginians to march on the dug in union forces. You warn him the march across open fields will falter and fail, his Virginian army will never recover from its losses and the civil war will be lost.
And with a ripple of changing reality in 2010, things are different once again for me. A billboard outside that five minutes ago was trying to convince me to watch Celebrity Big Brother on C4, then, changed to a giant swastika…now promotes a range of hard-wearing cost effective clothing ‘for your household slaves’.
Your time machine now takes you back to the dawn of man, 45,000 years ago. To the freezing windswept plains of a place that will one day be called ‘Israel’, and you encounter a small wondering band of savages. They’re the first homosapiens emerging from Africa. In sign language and with a few grunts, you advise them to turn back. The land north of them – Europe – is already inhabited by a similar, but a more rugged species who look very dangerous. By doing that…I wonder if you realise how much you’ve changed mankind?
All of a sudden, in 2010, I feel reality changing again…Good grief! I’m growing thick black hairs on my arms! My…my jaw’s extending!…My brow’s…thickening! My fingers…it’s getting too harb to type! The builblngs are vanishinh!!!…and my mind is regressing…my minbh…my m$%d….Jpjn xlx f[kmr #7fghe4 =m,n ; ym]####………….
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Uggg. Grunt. Ug, Ugg.
Ugg.
Ug.
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