Welcome to The Birth of Time Travel.
It is now 09.22.2019 & you are located in Stockholm, Sweden.
This trip has a Paradox Risk of 3.1.
Since most people of this era are always looking at their phones, it is relatively easy to remain unseen.
Look to your right & observe as The Mother of Time Travel, Dr. Såma Bekas,
runs after "Det missade tåget som förändrade världen" or "The Missed Train that Changed the World."
Of course, Dr. Bekas currently has no idea that she's the Mother of Time Travel because she hasn't discovered it yet.
And even though she's a mere 6 minutes & 56 seconds away from making her revolutionary breakthrough & changing the world forever...
...at the moment, she believes that her entire life may have been a big waste of time.
Move to the metro map in front of you to get the best vantage point of Bekas as she checks the time tables.
Just a few hours prior, Dr. Bekas' lifelong dream of proving the possibility of time travel
seemingly came to an end when she was fired by her university after nearly 25 years.
It had been concluded by her superiors that Dr. Bekas' time travel research was
"science fiction that had been entertained for too long"
and "proven unworthy of further funding or scientific inquiry."
Like most people of this era & prior, they believed that time travel was impossible
simply because they'd never met a time traveler who came back to tell them otherwise.
Of course, we know that this is the only thing impossible about time travel.
The only way that we can visit the Past is by always following the AVTs & leaving the Past exactly as it is.
If we were ever to disrupt even the smallest detail, let alone make anyone from the Past aware of the existence of time travel,
it would cause the Course of history to come crashing down & paradoxically prevent us all from ever being born.
Follow behind Dr. Bekas at a distance of 4.3 meters.
Yet before Dr. Bekas' revolutionary breakthrough in 5 minutes & 44 seconds...
people seemed unable to imagine any use for time travel that didn't involve destroying the space-time continuum.
The concept of time travel was virtually always depicted as some sci-fi fantasy adventure about changing the past.
Common tropes like going back in time to kill Hitler were seen as extremely heroic
despite the fact that altering any moment of Hitler's life would be more murderous & destructive than 100,000 Holocausts.
Hide behind the statue now as Bekas glances back for no reason
and remain here until the woman is done taking selfies.
But up until this moment, mankind had no proof that time travel was possible
and therefore had to cope with the psychological trauma of living a completely chronological existence,
knowing that they would live & die within a narrow sliver of history, watching every moment pass with no hope of finding it again.
So from Ancient Egypt to 2019, humanity naturally developed the same collective delusions
to keep themselves oblivious to the obvious realities of time travel that were right in front of them.
Potential continuity error detected.
Please check your surroundings & undo any interruptions that you may have caused.
--Pay attention!
Stay close to your escort for the remainder of this trip to avoid further interruptions
and make sure to always stay aware of your surroundings.
Even the Mother of Time Travel herself had a delusional understanding of
the breakthrough she's about to give birth in 3 minutes & 30 seconds
which is why we can so freely observe this historic moment.
-Hey, there wouldn't happen to be a bathroom anywhere around here...?
After moving to Sweden as a 24-year old single mother from Kurdistan,
Såma Bekas first discovered time travel when she went to see the 1989 American sci-fi comedy film
"Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."
She immediately became fascinated with the idea of building a time machine,
which led her to study physics & eventually become a professor at Sweden’s top scientific university.
But from that Stockholm cinema through the next quarter-century of fruitless, lonely research that was considered crazy by most of her peers,
the one thing that kept her from giving up & brought Dr. Bekas to this very moment
was a silly, childish fantasy about going back in time to prevent the deaths of a few friends & family members.
And yet Dr. Bekas somehow remained in denial of the glaring paradoxes of this fantasy all the way up until making her revolutionary breakthrough...
...and sadly, for many years after.
Continue down the platform to observe the losing lottery ticket that will inspire Dr. Bekas’ famous formula.
But that’s the tragic beauty of the Course...
The Past that our Present is built upon is a messy place,
full of delusional beliefs, clumsy mistakes, failed dreams, & unimaginable suffering.
Yet every moment & minutia is an equally essential component of this fragile, spectacular masterpiece that props up the Present
and whose endless wonders we explore today.
Even something as arbitrary as a piece of litter could have the power to change the entire Course of history,
like the losing lottery ticket that’s laying on the platform in front of you.
This Triss brand lotto scratcher didn’t have enough matches to win any money for the drunk homeless man who dropped it here 12 minutes ago.
But it did contain the perfect combination of numbers that were randomly arranged in just the right pattern
to inspire Dr. Bekas to finally crack her revolutionary time travel formula.
Yet if she hadn’t started walking this direction in 2 seconds on this particular platform to stumble upon this exact lottery ticket,
it’s impossible to say if Dr. Bekas would have ever fulfilled her dream of discovering time travel.
But she is here right now because of a train that she narrowly missed because she was distraught about her university foolishly giving up on her research.
And she had only spent the last 25 years of her life researching time travel
because of a delusional fantasy about changing the Past to save a handful of people’s lives.
-This is it, right?
But it’s all led up to this very moment, when Dr. Såma Bekas mindlessly picks up the “Triss That Turned Back Time” to check if it’s a winner.
And though she’ll soon realize that this lotto scratcher isn’t going to make her rich,
we can watch as she notices something else in its random numbers that’s more valuable than all of the money in the world
and has a revelation about the scientific formula that she’s been grinding away at for years.
Watch as Dr. Bekas hurries to find her notebook & start writing down the revolutionary breakthrough that made her the Mother of Time Travel
and made it possible for us to visit historic moments like this today.
It’s a pretty complicated formula that will take her a few moments to fully work out
so feel free to quietly approach Dr. Bekas to get a closer look.
Don’t be afraid to observe from right over her shoulder, as she’ll be completely distracted and in her own head for quite some time.
And though Dr. Bekas will spend the rest of her life struggling to fully understand the true reality of her discovery,
the sacred sequence of numbers, letters, & symbols that she’s scribbling out now will open up an entirely new dimension of possibilities for mankind
and spark the most spectacular revolution in human history.
When humanity finally set aside its petty differences, short-sighted concerns, & egotistical delusions
to come together as a global community with the responsibility to preserve the Course
so that we can collectively explore its endless wonders.
And now, observe the moment that we’ve all been waiting for…
when Dr. Såma Bekas puts the finishing touches on her revolutionary formula
after decades of hopelessly searching for something that the whole world told her didn’t exist
and becomes the first person in human history to discover undeniable proof that time travel is indeed possible…
In 5...
4...
3...
2...
...1.
And there it is...
"The Birth of Time Travel."
Congratu-fucking-lations... you finally did it.
You finally fucked it all up...
Does it feel good, you silly science bitch?
Well I got news for you... it's not what you think it is.
Never has been. Never will be.
-What the fuck are you doing, man?!
I'm just letting her know she's not gonna fix anything.
You hear that shit?! You're never gonna fix anything!
-Don't listen to him. He's crazy. He's drunk. He's on drugs.
Don't you know I could've threw you in front of the train like everyone else did?
You're never gonna save them! You're never gonna fix anything!
It was all just one big fucking waste of time!
Whoa...
Very pink.
-Varsågod.
Thank you.
First time, huh?
You're gonna love it!
"The Birth of Time Travel" is so inspiring and at the same time, so heartbreaking...
Cool...
Hey, did that guy run to the bathroom or something?
Cuz I kinda need to go, too, if there's time...
Oh, him!
Yeah, he was actually flagged as a potential Paradox Risk for this specific trip.
So he's stepping out on this one. It's no biggie.
I'll be tripping with you now.
Cool... um...
-So... you good to go?
Yeah, but can I maybe go to the...
...bathroom?
What is that?