Suppose you’ve invented a time machine that works with the following constraints:
[ul][li]You can travel to any time preceding your own birth.[/li][li]The time machine does not transport you geographically, but is sufficiently portable that you could leave from anywhere you can get to presently.[/li][li]After a six-hour excursion you are automatically returned to the present.[/li][li]You can take nothing with you aside from period appropriate attire.[/li][li]You cannot bring back any physical objects.[/li][li]You can only make one trip.[/ul][/li]
I’m sure there are all kinds of incredible things you could learn with this device, but your mother severely needs an expensive operation. What actions would you take during your trip to make the most money while minimizing the possibility of creating a causality paradox that threatens the integrity of the space-time continuum?
Before I left (sometime in the late 30’s), I’d do some research and figure out what would be the most valuable baseball cards and comics of that time. Get a brand-spankin’-new Action Comics Superman #1 or something of that nature. Also before I left, I’d find an area around me I know to have been undisturbed for most of the century… perhaps somewhere in the woods. When I get there, I’d probably have to steal the items in question (if I couldn’t sell the coat or hat off my back to a stranger) and bury them at the predetermined location in whatever waterproof container I could get my hands on. If resourceful enough, you should be able to pull this off in 6 hours or under. The more items of this you can obtain… the richer you’ll be when you sell or auction them to some serious collectors. Mom is saved!
One easy way would be to time travel back and buy stocks that are going to turn out just great. I would have to research the best time to go back to but, unlike regular investing, you only have to buy a single stock based on the analysis. The problem would be to get a stock account set up quickly and get the stock bought under a suitable identity. I wouldn’t worry about that much because I have just the person to help me.
Hmmm…
My great-grandfather was a bastard of monumental proportions but he bought investments his whole life basically as a game. He didn’t even care about them himself. I recently found out that his sole child, my grandmother has a worth in the 8 figures now because of his early investments.
I will make my pick. My great grandfather died in 1972, a year before I was born. He had slowed down by that time by that time but the time-frame for this fits well. I would go back to late 1970 before he got sick and tell him to buy shares at the IPO of a little Arkansas company called Wal-Mart. $10,000 worth or even less would be enough to land me many millions today. He would definitely do it because that time of thing was all he really cared about. He could put it in a trust the gives part of it to me, his first great-grandchild that he finally got to meet. He could buy some for the rest of the family to if he is sufficiently convinced by a time-travelling great-grandchild that he never got to meet.
I’d call up Ten and his sonic screwdriver for a mad shagging party…
Okay, okay, fine. I’d go back to 1598 and tell a young William Shakespeare–or anyone in possession of a copy–to store their Love’s Labour’s Won in a very, very safe place.
Because my mother needs the operation:
I’d go back and do some research on stocks that did well, then advise my parents (as an unknown financial assistant) to invest wisely in those…
Why is everyone assuming you can only go back? I can make a lot more money, a lot more quickly, and a lot more inconspicuously, by going forward a mere day. I jump forward one day, and see what the winning lottery number is. I spend six hours staring at the newspaper to be sure I’ve memorized it, then I jump back and buy the ticket.
Or, if you’re going to insist that it’s past-only, then I spend today sitting around in the living room, waiting for me to arrive. When I do, I ask me for the number. I then go out and buy a ticket. Then, tomorrow, I check the winning number, go back, and tell it to me.
With collectables, there’s always going to be the problem of proving their authenticity, and answering questions about where they came from. With huge stock deals, you’re risking paradoxical market disruptions. But random schoes win the lotto all the time; is there any reason it shouldn’t be me?
Why stop at lunch? Kidnap him as a youth, stake him out in the desert to be eaten by jackals when night falls, return to the present, call up the pope and ask for ransom. A MILLION dollars will buy the pontiff a map of Jesus’ location and the keys to your time machine.
Now God will surely bless the pope’s rescue mission, and ensure the integrity of the original timestream. So, if you can just figure some way to keep Him from turning you into a pillar of salt when caper’s done, your mom can go ahead and have that operation.
I’d sit in at the Last Supper and keep a real close eye on where that silly cup ends up.
Then everyone would realise… it’s just a cup. However, I may run the risk of becoming worshipped, since I’d be the one that was able to tell everyone: “Dig here.”
This is the only one so far that would really work, since you only transport with the clothes on your back, no money. My first thought was stocks too, born in 1962 I was thinking IBM.
I guess you could use some great invention, say Velcro or something, go back, meet with someone who could make the idea fly, sign an air-tight contract to secure your part of the profits, even if you disappeared for 40 years or so… 6 hours would be tough tho.
Yeah, I think being turned into a pillar of salt might end up being the least of my troubles. Then again, they say God has an odd sense of humor. Maybe he’d take it all the right way?
In the cathedral in Valencia. Promise. It was not so much a cup in the modern sense (bowl, stem, foot) as a bowl and plate; in the Middle Ages it was used to craft a modern-sense cup, where the bowl is the bowl and the foot is the dish.
And yeah, it’s just a cup. None of the bishops who’ve ever drunk from it started floating around or lived beyond 100.
In the present, go on a tour to some big landmark (or something) that would have had the same amount of visitors and the same architecture as the time I’m traveling to. Something like the floor of the U.S. Senate, or opening day at the Statue of Liberty, or an Olympic stadium.
Go back, loudly announce to the (undoubtedly bemused crowd, if they didn’t see me arrive), “Your attention, please! I have invented a time machine, and I will now travel to the year 2007!” right before I disappear back into the present. Try to get photographed, and/or leave some physical evidence behind. (Fingerprints, blood stains, etc.)
Appear back in the present in front of the group of people that will undoubtedly have gathered at the anniversary of the bizarre “time-man incident.”
Rake in profit from the talk-show circuit.
(Of course, I could probably just sell the time machine to someone in the first place, and not have to make a trip myself.)
Or I could go to James Randi and claim to be a wizard who’s powers are almost gone—explaining to him the limits of the time-machine with a pseudo-mystical cover story—and that I’d like to take him up on his Million-Dollar Challange. We hammer out details of a test that would satisfy him that I could really go back in time—I dunno, maybe I’d go back to when his house was being built, and paint Ranchoth the Great from March 1, 2007 A.D. was here, July 6th, 1955. The headline of my time’s current New York Post is as follows… on the inside of a wall—get back to the future, and get him to cut me a check once the test checks out.
