On the Intricate Topic of Time Travel

I discarded my suit as soon as I entered the motel room. It squeezed in all the wrong places and I didn’t want to have to wear it a moment longer than necessary. Leaving it in a crumpled pile on the floor, I made a naked beeline for the mini fridge, where I tossed back a tiny bottle of bourbon and then twisted open a bottle of rum that I sipped a bit more thoughtfully.

If my colleagues knew of my drinking habits they would be appalled. We’re supposed to be super enlightened and should have no need for such base substances as drugs and alcohol. But most of my colleagues do not spend time in the field like I do, and thus they have no clue as to the utter bullshit that this job entails. 

“Be a time traveler, they said” I hiccuped. “It’ll be fun, they said.” I sneered, finished off the rum and blindly grabbed whatever little bottle presented itself next.

I know you already have a billion questions, I can just feel them buzzing around in your little brain. So let me start with the obvious. Yes, in the future time travel will be invented. And yes, I am from the future, though if you saw me out of my suit you’d likely perceive me to be what people of your time call “aliens”. People in the future are tall, and slender, and yes, we have huge fucking heads. It’s to keep in all the brains.

This is why I have to wear my suit, which makes me look like a fairly normal 20 to 21st century man, albeit 6 foot 7 inches tall. I’ll spare you the details of how the suit works, but suffice to say the thing looks pretty creepy when I’m not wearing it. Currently crumpled up on the motel floor, it looked much akin to a human pelt, if that pelt was wearing a jacket, button up, black tie, and slacks.

I’m not going to tell you much more about the future because even if I could, it would create a paradox that would likely destroy the universe itself. I kid you not. But I can answer the one question I know is driving you crazy; how is it that I can even talk to you without creating a paradox?

Well, I could get into all the math and philosophy and explode your primitive mind, but instead I’ll keep it simple. As soon as time travel was discovered, fear of creating an Earth shattering paradox mounted, but it turned out to be for naught. It turns out you can’t really change anything that doesn’t want to be changed. But you can change small things; things so tiny as to seem meaningless in the moment, but things that can cause a ripple effect to make for a better future. 

That’s where I come in; I can make meaningless things happen. I realize that sounds silly, but I will have you know that it’s a lot harder than it sounds. Field agents like myself have traveled throughout many eras to influence thousands of simple changes. For example, convincing a French revolutionary to eat an apple instead of a peach one morning, or finding a way to have a family paint their house blue instead of green. Stupid stuff, but if you’re living in the future you ought to be a fan of my work. Remember that upgrade to interstellar communications last month? That was thanks to me influencing a teenaged boy to wear bell bottoms to school.

I had just arrived in the year 2021, and I already hated it. I’ve been around this timeline before and I’m not a fan of the rampant narcissism; people with limited education believing they know more than doctors and scientists, hordes subscribing to video streaming cults, general arrogance and pettiness abound. One would think manipulating such cattle would be easy, but I work with an outdated set of tools. My suit still sports a look popular during my little Roswell snafu. Yes, I am one of the so-called Men in Black, I’m not embarrassed to admit that anymore. I was also the supposed Alien. Drinking on the job should always be kept to moderation.

I’ve tried the online influencer route before and only got about 14 followers, most of which were corporate accounts, and the rest of which were likely bots. So I still kick it old school and go directly to the target; in this particular instance that target was a 24-year-old guy named Brian. The mission was to convince to Brian to swipe right on a girl’s Tinder profile. If you don’t know what I mean by any of that, don’t feel dumb (though likely you are quite dumb compared to me). I too needed to research these archaic terms; swiping right refers to approving of someone’s face on your smartphone. If you swipe left, you apparently disapprove. And Brian is hours away from swiping in the wrong direction.

Now you probably think you’re a clever little detective and you have deduced the relevance of this particular mission. Likely you think that I am acting like a gigantic, gangly Cupid seeking to pair off these two love birds to produce a brilliant gem of a child who will one day invent teleportation or some such shit. But no; these two humans are never destined to meet let alone copulate. Like I said, my job is to make meaningless things happen.

Before getting roaring drunk in my motel room, I had done some basic recon. This meant tromping about the little town where Brian lives and getting the lay of the land. Everything was as I expected; the streets were devoid of children playing, but the warm glow of electronics emanated from each window. Neighbors who were strangers stood in the same line at the same Starbucks tapping away at phone screens. As the sun went down, pretentious little brew pubs filled up with hipsters who took pictures of their food and then left bad ratings. Yah know, Norman Rockwell shit.

My suit prevents people from thinking I’m an alien, but since I’m walking around looking like the world’s tallest 1950s businessman, I wouldn’t say I keep a low profile. The further I go into the past, the more I hear corny phrases like “hey there big guy!” or “how’s the weather up there?” or, depending on the era, “you must play basketball!”. But in this time period, nobody says much of anything to me for fear of being offensive. This does not, however, stop them from trying to take a low key video or picture of me. You probably think I would use some kind of futuristic high tech gadget to delete those images, but there’s no such device, and besides, who cares about the picture of a sorta tall guy? This is not the stuff of paradoxes. Or so I thought.

After drinking myself to sleep (don’t even start with me, let’s just say in the future cirrhosis isn’t much of a concern), I woke, squeezed back into my man suit, and then hit the street. By which I mean I called an Uber. I went with the Uber XL for obvious reasons. The driver was pleasant; she chatted a little about the weather and her vehicle smelled far nicer than the seedy motel where I was staying.

My recon had given me the knowledge that Brian worked at a video game store that would be absolutely empty inside because kids in this era just download their games anyways. This is why Brian would spend most of the day on Tinder, seeking his ideal mate (or just anyone who was willing to mate with him). At this time of day, Brian would have opened the store in the dusty strip mall where it was located, chugged a Red Bull for breakfast, spent some time leaving trolling messages on Reddit, and would soon be moving onto the hunt for female companionship.

When I walked through the door he didn’t even look up from the little screen of his cellphone, just nodding a greasy mop of hair in my general direction. I pretended to peruse for a bit, strolling past video game covers largely depicting comically muscular men completing exceptional feats of violence. I grabbed a game at random and walked up to the register, timing each step perfectly.

Brian flipped back his long hair, revealing unremarkable dull gray eyes that seemed to widen upon seeing me. I looked down at his phone and sure enough, there was the target girl who needed to be swiped right upon. I glanced down casually and said, in perfect 2021 lingo, “she’s cute. You should swipe right.”

He looked confused for a moment and then flushed red. “Nah dude, she’s way out of my league.”

“You never know unless you try,” I shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. But of course I did know. She would not be swiping right on his greasy mug in return, and they would never cross paths, but in many, many years from now, a new meat alternative would revolutionize the food industry. If you prefer not to have your brain melted, don’t ask me about how these two events connect to each other.

“Sure, what the hell” he said, and he swiped right, and minutes later I was the proud owner of some stupid video game and my mission was complete.

That night I went to a Chili’s for a liquid dinner because I’d always wanted to go to a Chili’s, though I will certainly create a paradox if I tell you why. I was sitting at the bar, reveling in my intellect (and my fifth margarita), when I realized it had all been easier than usual. Almost too easy. And when something is too easy in my experience, that is when shit goes wrong.

Not seconds later someone tapped me on the back and I turned to see a young woman with a bit too much in the way of bangs smiling at me. She stopped smiling when she saw my face and then said, “OMG. I am so sorry, I thought you were someone else!”.

Frankly, I am not used to being confused with anyone. Not a whole lot of 6 foot 7 guys in business suits these days, or any days for that matter. Caught off guard I carefully said, “who did you think I was?”.

She smiled shyly and said, “oh this guy I met on Tinder today.”

I froze, my big futuristic brain already putting the pieces together. “The guy must be extremely handsome if he looks like me” I said, slowly translating my complex words into simple words for her comprehension. “Can I see a picture?”

She blushed but pulled out her hot pink iPhone and showed me a picture that sure as hell was Brian’s pimply face Photoshopped onto by tall, lean body. Six-foot-seven to be precise, in case you aren’t following. I managed a smile that must have looked frightening based on how quickly she rushed away, and then I turned back to the bar and ordered the tequila straight. I was in for a world of trouble. I would be fired. Or worse yet, I would be left here; deemed to now be a part of the fabric of this era and no longer able to return to the future.

With perhaps a bit too much liquid courage I made the call to my handlers from my motel room that night. Their ire was immediately apparent; the beautiful giant hologram head of the Chief bobbed a bit more erratically than usual as she put her frustration into logical, eloquent words.

“It is clear you made a mistake,” she concluded, and I shivered at her harsh words.

“What ripple effects have been caused by my actions?” I replied, bracing myself for the worst.

“A new breed of designer dog has appeared, and it isn’t very adorable” she responded, her tone dripping with disappointment.

My shoulders sagged. “Will I ever be allowed to come home?”

There was a long pause before she replied, “This is your second strike. As the ancients decreed, three strikes and you are out.”

I smiled, and it must have looked terrifying because she immediately ended the call.