Unfortunately, I ran out of money before I could get all the kinks out.
Right now, it will only take you back in time 100 years or less. And it will automatically return you to the present in 20 minutes. Once. After that, it’s burned out.
So how can I use this to get lots of money to continue my research and fix these flaws? It goes without saying that I’m not going to announce this discovery to the world, where it will be stolen by evil corporate powers. No, I need to make my money by actually using the machine.
But how could I make money, given the limitations I describe? What’s the best way to leverage my few remaining dollars now and my one-shot time machine?
Do some very detailed research into corporate and stock market history. Hop in your time machine and go back to the depths of the Great Depression, c. 1932. Go to Wall Street and give a lengthy “buy” order, along with undated gold ingots, to a broker you know to be impeccably honest. Have him buy you a lot of stock, dirt cheap, in companies which will later boom. Come back to 2006 and cash in.
Yes, this was inspired by the Van Damme movie Time Cop. You gotta problem with that?
But I think you are not quite appreciating the problems I have in making any money out of that statement. For example, if I go back to 1906, I have 20 minutes to find a stockbroker, set up an account, and buy stock. And what money do I give the stockbroker? The new $10 bills just came out – they look nice, and would land me in jail for passing phony moola but for the fact that I will have vanished long before the cops arrive.
And even if I DID manage to set up an account… how do I collect on it in 2006?
It the time machine portable, or (alternatively) can you select the physical spot in the past at which you will appear?
Because if the answers are “no” and “no”, and the machine is (presently) in your basement in Virginia, you’re going to have a hard time following the first two suggestions. (Unless you had a brokerage account with assets in the past, and those assets could be liquidated and reinvested with a phone call, showing up in your basement in 1980 with a wad of pre-1980 currency isn’t going to do you a lot of good, if your goal is to buy Microsoft stock.)
Can you use your alive-in-1980 self as a co-conspirator? That might solve the problem, as you’d only have to mail the cash and a convincing message, and that could be done in 20 minutes.
Gold was $20 per ounce in 1932. It’s about $550 today. So I’m spending $550 today to get $20 then. Is this really the most efficient method?
And how, exactly, am I going to claim my stocks in 2006 after being completely incommunicado for 74 years? “Yes, I’m the owner… I just look young for my age; I’m 108.”
This is so freaking easy: Get the power ball numbers for a huge jackpot that was not won. Go back in time to that date and play the winning numbers. When you come back, you’ll be set.
Wait til’ there’s a $200 Million jackpot. If nobody wins it, go back two hours, drive to the Kwik-E Mart, buy a ticket with the numbers and bang you’re done.
I’m worried about using my 1980-self as a partner. If I get ultra-rich in, say, 1990, I won’t have a burning desire to invent a time machine! My paradox-damper will protect me from most indirect problems, but a direct change to ME in my early life might be too much for the damper. (Another problem I hope to fix in v. 2.0).
This would seem to work. (although he wasn’t first past the post, Pete’s answer is better, because a long-ago Powerball win isn’t going to be useful. How does Bricker claim the jackpot? There are time limits for making claims. So the win would have be recent, or current, so the claim could be made in the present-day.)
Buying stock won’t work for various reasons (for instance, starting an account without old ID) but principally is just because you and presumably anything you brought with you would be sent back to the future after twenty minutes. That would include any money you brought with you.
Possibly you could arrange some form of a bet. Look for some long odd horse that one once and go there then. (Assuming you can bet within twenty minutes of when a race finishes and still have time to collect your winnings.)
Probably better would be to determine some sort of unanswered mystery that happened in the last hundred years, where everyone knows when and where you would need to be to learn the answer (safely) and where that answer could be translated into money. Nothing is currently coming to mind though that would have a high enough success probability.
The lottery would have to be a recent one: many lotteries have a time limit on how long you can still claim the prize.
Alternate suggestion:- Transport yourself to Fort Knox, present day, with a big sack. Steal as much gold as you want. When you get sent back, destroy the time machine. Wait an amount of time. Return the gold when a high reward for information is announced.
Even if they have your face on camera, or if guards see you, you have the perfect alibi - you were on the other side of the country, and couldn’t possibly be there at that time. As long as you have prints/evidence of your being at your other location, there’s reasonable doubt.
You could also plan a robbery that just involved moving the money to some secret location that only you know. Then you would pick it up when you got back to the present.
