The time traveler

A biker's guide to the absence-of-time-travelers argument

Michael straddled his two-stroke, 250cc dirt bike and kicked himself over the chasm's edge.

He free-fell down the ten-foot vertical drop along the rim of the gorge. He gunned his throttle to gain speed once the ground's angle sloped in his favor. The high-pitch whine of his engine buzzed like a swarm of angry wasps. A mixture of gas and oil burned in his nostrils.

Gravity and horsepower launched Michael further into the earth's core, his yellow leather suit streaking through the desert brush. Rocks and sand tossed the motorcycle's tires to the sides. He stood on the motorbike's pegs to better absorb the shock, steering a furious series of minor adjustments to prevent the bike from fishtailing.

A flash of tumbleweeds flew by on either side of the route, threatening to seize his wheels and slam him to the earth if he strayed off course. Tracks from previous riders snaked in the path before him, and he strangled the handgrips to keep himself on the trail.

The earth's gravitational pull clutched Michael as he entered the nadir of his descent, dragging him down and making him twice as heavy. He continued wrenching the right handgrip back, flooding his motor with fuel. The dirt bike's banshee-like screech wailed through the canyon as he maintained his speed up the opposite side of the trench.

The incline steepened as he soared up the earthen wall, racing toward the mouth of the abyss. He anticipated the thrill of launching up the vertical face, shooting into the air above the crevasse, and landing on a wheelie of death-defying victory next to his friends.

The handlebars lurched at him as he hit the bottom edge of the ninety-degree finish line. He adjusted his stance to compensate for the new slant. The angle kept increasing, though. Ninety-one. Ninety-five. One hundred. The bike's tires gyrated into emptiness as the wall sheered and crumbled away, throwing him back into the ravine in an avalanche of toppling rocks and soil.

Michael clung to the motorcycle, suspended in a cloud of debris, panic ripping through his mind. The rear tire banged into the solid ground a moment later, tossing him backward off the motorbike. He crashed to the earth in a tumble of terrain, cracking his helmet on a rock on his way down. Pain exploded in his chest as the impact smashed his innards against his spine. The wet crack of snapping tree branches echoed from within as bones shattered.

He slid to a stop near the bottom of the chasm, face down, his mouth full of dust and weeds. The motorcycle slammed onto his back a moment later, burning his leg through the yellow tatters of his leather suit. The bike's engine pooped a few more rotations and died.

The sun draped over him, bathing him in warmth. The wind whispered through nearby weeds. A grasshopper pelted the earth with a soft thump in front of his face. He tried to lift his head and blow the insect away but passed out instead.

Boop . . . boop . . . boop...

Michael moaned at the noise, willing it to stop.

Boop . . . boop . . . boop...

He groaned louder.

The electrical cadence continued, unperturbed. He raised his eyebrows to drag his eyes open, but they weren't long enough. He rolled his eyes beneath the stubborn skin, but the lids held fast. He willed his brows and eyeballs to join forces and opened his eyes with an audible pop after some exertion.

He blinked the crust from his eyes and stared at the grid of speckled drop-in ceiling tiles above him.

Boop . . . boop . . . boop...

"How are you feeling?" a voice said over the electric pulse of the heart monitor.

Michael considered the question. He felt smashed, broken. Medication dabbed at his agony, making him dizzy. He envisioned the drug as a gnat spanking the titanosaur of his suffering into submission.

I feel like bug guts on a windshield! he thought, but only managed a weak "Merrr."

"Sounds about right."

He tried to turn his head, but something pinned his skull in place.

"Don't try to move. You have a cervical fracture, so the surgeon immobilized your neck."

He peered toward the voice. In his peripheral vision, he caught a blur of someone rocking in a blue Naugahyde chair beside him. The older man's white hair and milky, long-sleeved shirt swayed in an odd rhythm with the heart monitor.

"Wwww . . . wh . . ."

He licked the dryness from the roof of his mouth.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Carter," the man said. "I volunteer here."

Boop . . . boop . . . boop...

Bags, tubes, and electronics crowded the bed on the right. A cool stream flowed into Michael's arm from a transparent bag hanging above him. An octopus of wires crawled through the neck of his gown and sucked onto various parts of his torso.

He squeezed his eyes shut and drifted with the drugs.

"What happened to me?"

"Motorcycle accident. Don't you remember?"

"No."

He listed to the side like a sailboat rolling in a sea of syrup. He opened his eyes again, and the room snapped upright.

"How long have I been here?"

"Don't know," Carter said. "I only got here myself a while ago. The higher-ups told me you could use some cheerin'."

Michael hoisted his hands above him. An IV tube stuck out of his right arm, and surgical tape swaddled an oxygen sensor against his index finger. A metal rod held his left hand in place. Clamps and screws bit through his flesh at intervals from his mid forearm down through the fleshy skin between his thumb and forefinger.

"That's the best offer going at the moment," he said, resting his arms on the bed. "I'll take it."

"What're you called, son?"

"You can call me Michael, which, coincidentally, is also my name. At least, I think it is."

"Reckon it'll do as well as any, 's long as you're happy with it."

Boop . . . boop . . . boop...

"How old are you?"

"I imagine I'm a year or two younger than you."

"Gimme a number," Carter said, grinning.

"Twenty-one."

"Darn shame, it is. Happenin' to someone so young. Still, tragedy can guide you to glory if you let it."

Michael coughed. Pain rang through his head, splitting it in two. His lungs collided in his rib cage. He choked and started coughing more. He tried to push his feet against the bed and roll onto his side out of instinct, but nothing happened. Fear punched through his ribs and crushed his heart. He wiggled his toes, but nothing moved.

"I . . . I can't feel my legs!"

"Sorry, son," Carter said. "They came 'n changed the dressin' on your back while you were still out. I hoped for the best but feared the worse."

Michael fastened his eyelids and denied the news. It could be temporary, couldn't it?

"Anything I can get you?"

"Uhhh! Can you invent time travel for me?"

"Well, isn't that an interesting request?"

The older man stopped rocking, stood, and shuffled towards the bed. He towered much taller than his blur suggested earlier, more a Goliath than a David.

"Fascinating, indeed," he said, leaning over the injured youth.

He pressed his calloused thumb upward against Michael's eyelid, forcing it open.

"Look at me."

He gazed into Carter's emerald eyes as the man moved his head back and forth, glancing into the younger man's pupil as though studying his soul. The man let go and pushed the other eye wide.

"What would you do if you could travel through time?"

"I'd go back and sell my dirt bike, for one thing."

Carter studied the right eyeball, shifting his head again in contemplation.

"You're mistaken, of course," the man said, pulling away.

Michael blinked and rubbed his eyes with his good hand.

"What do you mean?"

"For one, you can't 'invent' time any more than you can gravity. It's somethin' you discover, like falling for the first time. It's a law you live."

"OK. Can you discover time travel for me?"

"Second, you're thinkin' about it all wrong," the old man said, standing upright as if victorious in some significant debate.

Boop . . . boop . . . boop...

"Since traveling through time isn't a thing, though, it doesn't matter much, does it?" Michael asked.

"Who says it isn't . . . 'a thing'?"

"Well, the wheelchair dude, for one. Stephen Hawking,” he said. “We watched a show in school when I was a kid. He said he planned a party and sent out invitations after the fact. If time travelers existed, they would have known about the event and attended, but nobody came."

Carter ambled to the end of the bed and folded his arms in front of him. He lifted his right arm and propped his chin against his knuckles, pacing.

"Hawkin' was a smart guy, but he Hollywooded his thinkin' there, the same as you've done," the older man said, stopping and pointing his forefinger in the air to punctuate his point. "You're lookin' at time as a straight line as if you could pull yourself out of today and jump back to 1955. That's silly."

"How else would it work?" Michael asked.

Carter stepped to the side of the bed and leaned on the safety rail. A tuft of white whiskers bristled from his unbuttoned collar. His size made him appear more mighty than a typical octogenarian, and his bleached hair and shirt gave him an angelic appearance.

"You ever play Monopoly?"

"Only once, thank heaven."

"Good enough. Let's pretend you're the shoe. You start on Go and travel straight toward the jail in one direction, right?"

"Yeah."

"You can't turn and go backwards," Carter said. "You keep goin' clockwise around the board, stompin' past the railroads, free parking, and so on. This linear movement is how time works."

Michael shut his eyes and visualized the game's playing area. He scribbled out jail and replaced it with the word hospital. He filled in the orange square with IV bags and heart monitors and an illustrated man with wavy lines for legs.

"Yes!" he said. "And I want to travel through time, back to Go, and buy a hammock rather than a dirt bike. I can't, though, because the absence of time travelers argument proves it is impossible."

Boop . . . boop . . . boop...

Carter stood back up. He grabbed the top corners of the blue chair, wrestled it beside the bed, and sat down. The can light in the ceiling next to the gurney reflected on his white hair, making it glow.

"People discover time travel all the time, son."

"That can't be true. We would know if people traveled through time," Michael said, twisting the palm of his unbroken arm up for emphasis. "Think about it. If the last person on earth discovered time travel billions of years from now, they'd come back. They'd teach other people, and we would have encountered time travelers. The fact we haven't proves they don't exist and never will."

Carter rocked back in the chair, cupping the back of his head in his hands and blowing air through his lips.

"Interesting logic, but you're still thinking like the shoe, son."

He leaned forward again and scooted to the front of the seat.

"You're right. From the shoe's perspective, it is impossible to travel through time. But what if you were the player?"

Michael's eye muscles hurt from straining to see the older man, so he looked away and massaged the ache from his eyes.

"What do you mean?" he said, looking back at the visitor. "Are you suggesting I become someone else? A full me transplant?"

"No, I'm sayin' you have to change your point of view."

The old man held his palms up, facing each other, and angled his hands to stare at Michael through the space between them.

"The shoe can only travel one way through the neighborhood. It must obey the game's rules," Carter said, waving his fingers in parallel to emphasize his argument, "but the player can see everything. He lives outside the game. Monopoly laws don't apply to him. He can interact with the board game in ways the shoe can't. He can also toss the game and do something worthwhile."

The older man gazed at him, nodding as if trying to coax something from him.

"Think it through, son. What effect might your perspective have on time travel?"

Michael's brain felt as bruised as the rest of his body. He didn't want to think about anything. Why was he having this conversation? He rubbed his forehead and stroked his temples with his fingertips. Exhaustion smothered him, and he wanted to sleep.

"I'm not sure. I'm too tired to think."

Boop . . . . . . . . . boop...

Michael closed his eyelids. His pupils drew a street with colorful houses and shops inside his lids. He stomped down the avenue, past the brown bungalows and blue bi-levels. He peered into the boutiques peddling chests and chances.

He limped into the entrance of a new hospital at the end of the lane and rolled out the exit a short time later, confined to a chair.

He wheeled down a neighboring boulevard lined with Painted Lady properties of pink and orange toward a free parking lot.

As he bumped across the railroad tracks, he lifted from his seat and floated out of the wheelchair. He grappled for the armrests to hold himself to the ground but missed. Inch by inch, foot by foot, he flew ever higher above the street, a nascent fear of falling clawing at his mind.

The Monopoly logo came into view beneath him, and cards of chance loomed on the horizon. Soon, all the colorful properties lining the game's streets sprawled out below him, so simple and small. So irrelevant.

Boop . . . . . . . . .

He glanced at his hands, liberated from tubes and screws. He wriggled his feet. They moved! Anxiety fled his thoughts, and he kicked his feet, swimming through the air toward the other side of the board.

He waved his hand at a dog sniffing the base of a light pole, sending the canine running backwards up the street. He willed the shoe from the town and back into the box. Every choice and consequence of the game stood present before him. The board itself moved at his command. He could grab all the wealth and have his victory, but none of it mattered.

Michael laughed, his bosom brimming with joy.

"I get it!" he said. "I understand the presence of time. I know why time travelers never come back!"

"Why don't they return?" asked a voice filling the universe.

"Nobody wants to be the shoe."

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Carter stood up and smiled. He touched Michael's face and caressed his cheek with his thumb.

"That's right, son. Well done."

He walked around the bed, flicked off the heart monitor, and faded away before the nurse rushed in.