Louisville Process Theology Network

On the Hazards of Time Travel

Apr 15, 2010

From Page 13 ---


?“In this (theoretical) world, time is like a flow of water, occasionally displaced by bits of debris, a passing breeze. Now and then, some cosmic disturbance will cause a rivulet of time to turn away from the mainstream to make a connection back-stream.

When this happens, birds, soil, people caught in the branching tributary find themselves suddenly carried to the past.

Persons who have been transported back in time are easy to identify. They wear dark indistinct clothing and walk on their toes, trying not to make a single sound, trying not to bend a single blade of grass. For they fear that any change they make in the past could have drastic consequences for the future ...

The woman from the future, thrust without warning into this time and this place now attempting to be invisible in her darkened spot at No. 22 Kramgasse, knows the Klausen story and a thousand other stories waiting to unfold, dependent of births of children, the movement of people in the streets, the songs of birds at certain moments, the precise position of the chairs, the wind.

She crouches and waits for the stream of time to carry her back to her own time ... (Travelers from the future) are forced to witness events without being part of them, without changing them. (They) envy the people who can live in their own time, who can act at will, oblivious to the future, ignorant of the effects of their actions.?”