Time travel and sex.

[squarejohn]

This came out of the blue.

A guy is tinkering in his garage and accidentally/inadertantly builds a time travel machine instead of the complicated project he started with. When he gets used to using it, he journeys to different periods of time where he practices a different sexual kink in each period of time. When he goes into the future he discovers new forms of sexual gratification due to advances in technology, such as, say, a futuristic holographic chat room in which he can not only see, but experience the orgasms of the other participants.

The problem I have, is that I don't believe time travel is possible. But I willing to be convinced otherwise. I'd welcome any time travel or not-yet-invented sexual action suggestions. I'd even welcome someone saying that this has been overdone and show when and by whom. Anything to get me over the hump of disbelief.

 

[cloudy]

If you think of time traveling in a straight line, then your disbelief is understandable, however, if you think about it for a sec, when does nature ever move in a straight line?

It doesn't. It cycles. If time follows the same pattern, then time travel is certainly possible.

That help?

 

[sr71plt]

It's fantasy and fiction. It wouldn't matter if the mere fact of time travel is believable or not. State it as a premise of the storyline, don't bother to give physical details of how it happens, and get on to the juicey parts of the story.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Check out the film 'Primer' for an interesting slant on the guys-build-a-time-machine-in-their-garage premise.

 

[SweetMerry]

It's fantasy and fiction. It wouldn't matter if the mere fact of time travel is believable or not. State it as a premise of the storyline, don't bother to give physical details of how it happens, and get on to the juicey parts of the story.

I agree. Each era of time had it's own particular "kink" that could be fun to play with. Chastity belts belts in medieval times, for example.

I liked the idea about the hologram that allowed participants to experience each other's orgasm. What about clothing or toys with AI? They could learn what you (and/or your partner) liked, and please you in just the right way.

 

[squarejohn]

It's fantasy and fiction. It wouldn't matter if the mere fact of time travel is believable or not. State it as a premise of the storyline, don't bother to give physical details of how it happens, and get on to the juicey parts of the story.

I wasn't intending to get into the physical details of travel device. Over the years I have pondered about time travel. There were several times when I heard it stated by real scientists that time travel was mathematically possible.

I'm not a mathematician but I know enough to agree that some people can believe it is mathematically possible. My problem is that, either I do know enough to disbelieve it, or do not know enough to believe in it. Since my own reason and intuition tells me it isn't possible, for the sake of this story, I want to believe, but cannot. So I can't get started.

The juicy details are not the problem. My own belief system is

I'll crank out a couple of thousand words on this and maybe something will change my mind.

 

[sr71plt]

I wasn't intending to get into the physical details of travel device. Over the years I have pondered about time travel. There were several times when I heard it stated by real scientists that time travel was mathematically possible.

I'm not a mathematician but I know enough to agree that some people can believe it is mathematically possible. My problem is that, either I do know enough to disbelieve it, or do not know enough to believe in it. Since my own reason and intuition tells me it isn't possible, for the sake of this story, I want to believe, but cannot. So I can't get started.

The juicy details are not the problem. My own belief system is

I'll crank out a couple of thousand words on this and maybe something will change my mind.

I don't understand your issue. It's fantasy and fiction. I don't see why you think it has to be believable to you. You just set it as a premise and go on from there. You do understand what fiction and fantasy are, don't you? Perhaps you aren't meant to write fiction.

 

[TE999]

I wrote a few time travel stories a few years back as part of a Chain Story started by slyc_willie. I have no problem with the concept, but I write Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories quite often, so credibility's not an issue with me.

 

[Weird Harold]

Since my own reason and intuition tells me it isn't possible, for the sake of this story, I want to believe, but cannot. So I can't get started.

Perhaps your unintentional inventor hasn't invented a time machine, but a cross-dimensional transport -- parallel dimensions are often indistinguishable from time traveling in Fiction but if you can believe in a multiverse more than you can in time travel, you can write the story(s.)

 

[DeeZire]

Expanding on WH's idea, what if this time travel machine only worked at the exact instant that the sun peeks over the horizon in the morning? The idea here is to distract the reader with a detail that looks like a logical explanation for the feasibility of time travel. This sunrise moment could also explain how he accidentally comes across the mechanism for time travel - he's been up all night, working on his apparatus when the first rays of the sun peek through the window, piercing a hole in the plane that divides the dimensions... It would also give him a convenient excuse to leave the bedside of his latest conquest - "Sorry Babe, gotta catch the sunrise so I can get back home." Needless to say, it would be wise for him not to travel back in time to Seattle - he could be stuck there for months.

 

[amicus]

If I may offer a somewhat different perspective, squarejohn...we already have time travel...in our minds. Of recent, I have been having what they call, 'lucid dreams', not 'lurid', I have those also, but lucid dreaming, by some mechanism of the mind and the memory and your imagination, one can transport ones self, with all the accompanying sensual delights and trauma's possible.

Personally, and I have read every new theory published, science and math, and it is my conclusion that actual time travel is an impossibility as a contradiction of the basic physics of the Universe. I am not easy with that as I find the K, the Constant of the speed of light, a total hindrance towards man's exploratory nature and there are just so many Stars out there, ("So Many Stars") another Brazilian song I love.

Ami

 

[sr71plt]

The time travel machine isn't the story, gang. There have been time travel machines in fiction for a century. Just do the travel and get to the story.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The time travel machine isn't the story, gang. There have been time travel machines in fiction for a century. Just do the travel and get to the story.

I clocked in to say the exact same thing.

 

[squarejohn]

Perhaps your unintentional inventor hasn't invented a time machine, but a cross-dimensional transport -- parallel dimensions are often indistinguishable from time traveling in Fiction but if you can believe in a multiverse more than you can in time travel, you can write the story(s.)

Bingo! A multiverse fits right in with my belief system. Thank you!

 

[squarejohn]

Expanding on WH's idea, what if this time travel machine only worked at the exact instant that the sun peeks over the horizon in the morning? The idea here is to distract the reader with a detail that looks like a logical explanation for the feasibility of time travel. This sunrise moment could also explain how he accidentally comes across the mechanism for time travel - he's been up all night, working on his apparatus when the first rays of the sun peek through the window, piercing a hole in the plane that divides the dimensions... It would also give him a convenient excuse to leave the bedside of his latest conquest - "Sorry Babe, gotta catch the sunrise so I can get back home." Needless to say, it would be wise for him not to travel back in time to Seattle - he could be stuck there for months.

I like your idea; it has a flavor of mysticism that is very attractive. That comment on Seattle gave me a much needed laugh. Right on the money.

 

[squarejohn]

I don't understand your issue. It's fantasy and fiction. I don't see why you think it has to be believable to you. You just set it as a premise and go on from there. You do understand what fiction and fantasy are, don't you? Perhaps you aren't meant to write fiction.

I guess I should have mentioned that I believe time does not exist. Well, it does in our reality, but in actuality, it does not. That is my belief, and I have faith in that belief.

 

[sr71plt]

I guess I should have mentioned that I believe time does not exist. Well, it does in our reality, but in actuality, it does not. That is my belief, and I have faith in that belief.

It wouldn't have mattered, because I don't think you are focused on the story--and I would be. I found your story idea interesting. I find your focus a little weird. But, then, I'm not a mathematician.

 

[squarejohn]

If I may offer a somewhat different perspective, squarejohn...we already have time travel...in our minds. Of recent, I have been having what they call, 'lucid dreams', not 'lurid', I have those also, but lucid dreaming, by some mechanism of the mind and the memory and your imagination, one can transport ones self, with all the accompanying sensual delights and trauma's possible.

Personally, and I have read every new theory published, science and math, and it is my conclusion that actual time travel is an impossibility as a contradiction of the basic physics of the Universe. I am not easy with that as I find the K, the Constant of the speed of light, a total hindrance towards man's exploratory nature and there are just so many Stars out there, ("So Many Stars") another Brazilian song I love.

Ami

It is true that we can travel to the past and future using memory and imagination. The question is: Is it really memory and imagination as in lucid dreaming, or is it...what? Perhaps lucid dreaming is a brushing together of reality and actuality. I was a lucid dreamer for years, years ago. It can be addictive as drugs, if you really let yourself go.

The speed of light constant works with Relativity, but experiments in Quantum physics have shown particles moving faster than light. In effect, the particle arrived at its destination before the experiment began. I know that's like saying the horses crossed the finish line before the gate opened, but that isn't the only incredible thing on finds in Quantum physics.

 

[DeeZire]

The time travel machine isn't the story, gang. There have been time travel machines in fiction for a century. Just do the travel and get to the story.

Believability is important to some readers. When an author has to gloss over a major plot device at the beginning of a story, that has a tendency to make me lose interest. Perhaps I'm in the minority, especially considering the success of Harry Potter and the Twilight series.

 

[Weird Harold]

Bingo! A multiverse fits right in with my belief system. Thank you!

You're Welcome.

It seems to me that most time travel stories wind up in, or creating, alternate timelines anyway -- usually to explain away the paradoxes and anachronisms.

It might be relevant to your story concept that your inadvertant inventor believe he's traveling in time rather than being a "demon' (a la Robert Asprin's 'Another Fine Myth' and sequels.)

 

[sr71plt]

Believability is important to some readers. When an author has to gloss over a major plot device at the beginning of a story, that has a tendency to make me lose interest. Perhaps I'm in the minority, especially considering the success of Harry Potter and the Twilight series.

I repeat, time travel machines have been invoked for a hundred years and more in fiction. Readers of fantasy are long past the need for believability in how/why this works. They are focused on the worlds traveled to. If there's a story, that's where it is.

If you're heavily invested in believability, anyway, you shouldn't be in the fantasy game--as either writer or reader.

 

[1sickbastard]

Believability is important to some readers. When an author has to gloss over a major plot device at the beginning of a story, that has a tendency to make me lose interest. Perhaps I'm in the minority, especially considering the success of Harry Potter and the Twilight series.

Hence the concept of 'Willing Suspension of Disbelief'. That's why it's called fiction.
If it were true, it would be called current events, history, news, or whatever.

Don't take it to seriously, jusr enjoy it for what it is.

 

[xssve]

It is true that we can travel to the past and future using memory and imagination. The question is: Is it really memory and imagination as in lucid dreaming, or is it...what? Perhaps lucid dreaming is a brushing together of reality and actuality. I was a lucid dreamer for years, years ago. It can be addictive as drugs, if you really let yourself go.

The speed of light constant works with Relativity, but experiments in Quantum physics have shown particles moving faster than light. In effect, the particle arrived at its destination before the experiment began. I know that's like saying the horses crossed the finish line before the gate opened, but that isn't the only incredible thing on finds in Quantum physics.

The problem isn't time, it's mass: Neutrinos travel faster than light because they have no resting mass, only relativistic mass, imparted by their high rate of speed.

By the same token, for a photon, traveling at the speed of light, time does not exist for all practical purposes, which is why in experiments, deflect a photon at it's source, and it's destination is instantly altered: as far as the photon is concerned, it's leaving and arriving at the same time.

Everything with mass other than a photon, is subject to time, because as Einstein observed, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”

A bit disingenuous, as it implies some plan, rather, it's a function of relativity, e=mc2: i.e., time, like gravity is a quality of mass.

Thus, for all practical purposes, you could build a telescope that looked back in time, and in fact that's what all telescopes do, it takes time for a photon to travel a given number of light years, even though, for the photon, it's doesn't.

It a fucking mind bender, no question - the real paradox is how time and no time can exist at the same, uh... time - I'm not a physicist, but I suspect that's where multidimensional theory comes in.

The upshot from a theoretical point of view, is that in order to physically travel through time, one must shed mass, time is relative to speed, and faster you go, the more mass you acquire - it's why FTL is problematic: it requires infinite energy to accelerate a given quantity of mass to the speed of light, because the faster an object travels, the more mass it gains, requiring more energy to continue acceleration, etc., to the point it acquires infinite mass, requiring infinite energy to accelerate further.

the only way around this is to shed mass at the point of departure, and regain it at the destination - how that is possible is a while 'nother question, though presumably, some sort of quantum computer at either end could transmit the information - how to reconstitute the information into a new mass is a little trickier.

The simplest solution is that if the human brain functions as a quantum computer - quantum computing requires a fluid medium, which the brain is, it should be possible to transmit a pattern of consciousness from one mind to another, and in fact this may be partially how a hive mind works, and it's unproven, but if there is a mechanism along those lines, space or time should be no obstacle.

No question it would work as a literary device, though clearly not easy, and it would likely have some limitations, i.e. focusing, etc., the will of the person one whom you are attempting to impose you consciousness, you try to imprint on Francis Bacon or Da Vinci, they might end up imprinting on you if they catch on - you'd probably have more luck with an idiot, but then you'd be... an idiot (it would make for some interesting conflicts however...), i.e., not enough neurons in the receptor to form the pattern, and likely, there is going to be some loss anyway, i.e., presumably it would take a lot of neurons, and tremendous powers of concentration to keep that much information organized in a tight enough focus, for an extended period.

And even then, presumably, the effects would be temporary, more like a dream: the patterns of the brain, what we call mind, an actual physical pattern of "channels" in the neurons, is formed over a lifetime, and not easily "overwritten" - that would take time, the actual bio-electrical adaptations of the receptor, even though the transmission aspect doesn't, i.e., there might be only a partial transfer.

And, in the end, even if 100% successful, you would essentially still have Two discrete organisms, separated by time and space, connected by a matrix of tangled pairs.

How's that for a plot bunny?

 

[stephen55]

When H. G. Wells wrote The Time Machine over a century ago, I doubt anyone really bought into the idea that such a machine was possible. It was still a great read.

Go for it.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I repeat, time travel machines have been invoked for a hundred years and more in fiction. Readers of fantasy are long past the need for believability in how/why this works. They are focused on the worlds traveled to. If there's a story, that's where it is.

If you're heavily invested in believability, anyway, you shouldn't be in the fantasy game--as either writer or reader.

Or, possibly, erotic fiction, which is generally pretty much wish fulfillment...