Feedback competition results 2008: gifts from future time-travellers
“HELLO, I’m from the future,” the creature announced as it jumped out of the Large Hadron Collider. “After the Bad Thing happened, life was pretty bad, but we’ve invented this thing called Fire and now life is pretty good. So I’ve brought you some Fire.”
The second time traveller, as David Malarkey tells it, announced that “after the Bad Thing and Fire we were very happy except for carrying heavy things. So we invented the wheel and now life is almost perfect. So here’s a Wheel.”
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And the third declared that “life was almost perfect, but we still had to work. Now we’ve invented something to abolish work, and it’s called Money. You just pass it round, and apparently, if you can pass it quickly enough, it grows and grows and grows all by itself and nobody has to work at all. So I’ve brought you some Money.”
THIS, regular readers will have deduced, is one of the winning entries in the 2008 Feedback competition. Given speculation that the switch-on of the LHC might attract visitors from the future, we asked: what gifts might three such time travellers bring? The other winning entries follow, ordered only by theme.
ENVIRONMENTAL foreboding was, naturally, at the front of many readers’ minds. Thus Jonathan Lotz describes visitors bringing one polar bear, with engineered gills and flippers; one eight-year-old bottle of “Chateau DuRant” Antarctic Pinot Rouge wine; and a letter from His Greatness, Emperor Bush IV, telling us not to worry: “There’s still loads of oil to be found.”
“Research project title of the week, if not the year: “Study of Dust in the Old Library (SOLD)” at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.”
DAVID HALL’s gifts are a pair of breeding Dodo birds, a pair of breeding passenger pigeons, and a pair of intelligent breeding Homo sapiens. Thanks, David.
THE mechanics and consequences of time travel and the LHC were another recurring theme. The “Prime Directive”, in Star Trek, is not to interfere with alien civilisations – and to Julian Moore’s visitors we seem to be fairly alien. The first brings the gift of an instruction: “I can’t say anything specific, but whatever you were about to do, don’t!” The second appears, opens its mouth to speak, and disappears. The third comes with a large party of noisy schoolchild entities and declaims: “And this is the very day on which they did… Or didn’t… Be careful what you say… Do… Y’know… That thing we’ll have talked about next week.”
MICHAEL PETRASCHECK wins prizes for suggesting that the first visitor will be less careful, bringing “a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets that immediately shut the Large Hadron Collider down”.
The second, shortly thereafter, brings – quite implausibly, as commentators were agreed beforehand – a Wall Street crash, followed by a long-lasting worldwide recession that makes it impossible to come up with money for the repairs.
The third arrives, as time travellers are wont to do, out of sequence, with a golden plate inscribed with the words “Under no circumstance switch the Collider on, ever.”
THEN there are contrasting attitudes shown by different groups of time travellers. Bob Steeper describes a European research consortium – predominantly Scandinavian, French and German – bringing a visitor from the future, who provides clear guidelines for good humanitarian social development and in return takes a small quantity of seeds and environmental samples to aid future research.
An American project brings a horde of visitors who extract large quantities of minerals from present-day Earth, leaving bright trinkets with selected tribal leaders.
Both the Europeans’ visitor and the Americans’ bring news that the UK will dither over which research project to join, before finally making a brave choice to go it alone. Despite funding cuts, the equipment will be about to have been completed, and the UK’s visitors are out there, somewhen.
PRACTICALITIES of visiting the present concerned some. Clive Bashford’s visitor brings a valid ID card, a work permit and a birth certificate: treats for early-21st-century bureaucrats.
ALSO bringing shiny beads are Justin Arthur’s visitors, plus a mirror and a magnet. “They’ll think we’re wizards,” one is overheard whispering, “Wizards!”
HAVING studied our most advanced communications, Edward Howell’s visitors know what we like: “a herbal remedy to improve length, circumference and performance; a guaranteed natural weight-loss pill; and a letter from an unfortunate chap who genuinely does want to transfer his millions into your account, if you’ll send him your bank details first.”
FINALLY, Mike Fawcett’s visitors bring Jesus’s genome, Mary’s genome, and the genomes of all the men that Mary knew.
FEEDBACK sends you seasonal greetings, a belated “Eid mubarak!“, and best wishes for the atheist day of celebration of your choice. The winners will receive Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku and 51¶ŻÂţ goodies, including Last Word books.
