Objects that were never made

Cafe Society
1

I’m looking for examples of objects that were never made in sci/fi time travel stories.

For instance…

In Somewhere in Time, Christopher Reeve is given a pocketwatch at the beginning of the movie by an old woman (Jane Seymour). He proceeds to take it back into the past and gives it to her before returning to the present. This same watch is then kept for years by her to give it to him and start the whole cycle again.

Or in the book The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison, the main character is about to admit defeat when another version of himself appears and hands him a piece of paper with the answer to his problems. Then later, he goes back in time and gives himself the same piece of paper. No one ever draws the diagram on this paper.

Any others?

2

SkyNet - In Terminator 2 we find that the inspiration for the SkyNet computer was the chips and arm they found from the original Terminator that was destroyed in Terminator 1.

3

The classic Heinlein story “All you zombies” is about something that created itself…

I’ll leave exactly what and how unsaid, for those who haven’t yet read it.

4

ISTR that the Triluminaries in Babylon 5 had a similar origin. Wasn’t it passed down from Valen, who…

turned out to be Captain Jeffrey Sinclair. He took at least one Triluminary with him.

I think Star Trek IV implied that McCoy’s antique eyeglass frame has the same origin.

5

There’s Lester Del Rey’s classic time travel story “. . . And it Comes Out Here.”

[spoiler]The narrator shows up in a time machine and begins telling his younger self what is going to happen. He will go to the future and brings back a device that creates cheap power and become known as the inventor of that device. Both the time machine and the device have no actual origin.
[/quote]

6

David Gerrold’s novel The Man Who Folded Himself is basically one big paradox, with the “time belt” being such a never-made device.