Interview from ‘Extraordinary Stories’ Magazine, Issue 34, March 1979
I know what everyone says about me, that I’m crazy or a liar or just a bored housewife making up shit to pass the time while my husband is out, but you know what? I don’t care! I know my story is true and if your readers want to hear it, then I don’t care if they are just laughing at me or actually taking it seriously, I’ll get paid either way and know someone out there might just be able to help me…
Alright, so it all started one day when I got a call from my friend Dave. Dave’s an inventor, real smart guy, always coming up with these wild things that would blow everyone away, like a special modification to your car that lets it run on water and these little food pills that make you feel like you just ate a four course meal! I mean REALLY out there, sci-fi stuff! So when he calls me up asking if I want to check out his new time machine I’m not even questioning it, you know? Cus if Dave says he’s figured out time travel, then he has, end of story!
So I drive right over to Dave’s place and find him hard at work in his lab, worrying over some data he had apparently pulled out of his new invention. I say hi and ask about the time machine, but he just frowns and says, “Martin, I might have been a little too hasty calling you over. I’m going over the results from what I thought would be my last pre human trile, but something isn’t adding up about it.”
“How's that?” I asked. “Did something go wrong?”
“Well,” He looked back at his data and started to really frown at it. “Well that’s just the thing, everything appears to be fine, but I am afraid something… Feels off.” He looked back at me and out of nowhere asked the most insane thing. “Do you know what the first high definition footage ever taken was?”
“What?” I asked, confused as all hell. “No? The… Washington speech?”
“That’s right.” Dave said and tapped his chin. “We all know that the first ever high definition footage recorded was of George Washington at Valley Forge, but no one knows who created the camera that was used or why it took so long after that initial recording for the technology to be rediscovered, but EVERYONE knows that George Washington was filled in crisp, clear video back in 1777.”
“So?” I asked. Honestly I had no idea what he was on about at the time since, I mean we ALL know this stuff! It’s first grade history, but he was acting like it was this whole big mystery.
“Well the thing is,” He said and turned the computer screen towards me so I could see all the meaningless numbers it was flashing up. “My last test was going to be sending a camera back in time to film a major historical event, but when I was about to do it, I remembered that Washington footage and changed my plans. However, the more I think about it, the more I worry that… I DID actually try to send a camera back in time to film Washington, only to have someone discover the camera and change history in such a way as to make it so that it had always happened and I would have no reason to bother sending my camera back in time in the first place!”
“But you didn’t.” I pointed out, which at the time seemed really obvious. “You did a different test and it worked and everything was fine, so what’s the big deal?”
Dave sighed and gave me this look like I was being a real idiot. Then he says, “Okay think about it this way. Remember in Back To The Future when Eric Stoltz's characters parents almost didn’t hook up and that would have made him stop existing? Think that, but it works on everything. If something changes the past it MIGHT alter the present in ways we can’t even begin to comprehend! If that is the case, then I might have just gotten lucky with the camera that it didn’t do any sort of REAL damage!”
I’ll say this about Dave, he had a real shitty taste in movies, but he knew how to break down a complex problem in such a way where it actually made sense. Unfortunately, I didn’t really understand just how serious what he was talking about was and so I did something very, VERY stupid.
“Well if you think changing something in the past would change the future… Why not just send someone back to change something really, really small and then when they come back, they will know what they did and can tell you! You might think that’s just how it had always been, but you could write down that you were doing this sort of test so you would know to believe whatever they told you, even if it was weird and out there!”
“That’s… Actually a really good idea.” Dave said and began making notes. “If you were sent back, not too far, just far enough to make some minor change to the world that would not throw everything off, but would have enough time to make ripples... Then we could know for sure if the universe is actively working to prevent time paradoxes! Then we could determine how to avoid them and insure safe and functional time travel!” He looked back at me and in that moment I thought he was the smartest man in the world, totally one step ahead of whatever anti-paradox shit the timeline could throw at us. “Can you do that? Go back in time for twenty four hours to make some alteration before the machine pulls you back automatically?”
I told him that of course I could.
Turns out, both of us underestimated how much the universe REALLY hated paradoxes.
Dave told me that traveling through time might feel weird, but he had NO idea, I mean, who else, but me could?
I don’t even know if I can really explain it myself… It was like being squeezed through the world's longest tube of toothpaste, where everything just seems to get tighter and tighter the further you go. All the while your being… Bombarded with these flashing lights and stage visions, like you're seeing little snippets of time, but they are all so small and jumbled that all you can really make out are impressions of places and people.
But the strangest and most upsetting thing of all is none of what is their and more what ISN’T there. See I don’t know how long I was traveling for, ironically time traveling sort of makes you lose track of time pretty quick, but for however long it was I was totally def. There wasn’t a single sound in that place, not a crackle or hum or even the sound of my own heart beating! It was like being in one of those sensory deprivation tanks, but it's just your sense of hearing and everything else is overloading you with more feelings than you can handle!
It was a nightmare, the worst thing I had experienced up to that point in my life and I only wish now that it had stayed that way...
See when that nightmare ended I felt myself laying in this nice warm bed, covered up in sheets and surrounded with all this girly shit that looks like it came straight out of my grandparents old house. Naturally, I was confused because I assumed that when I came out of the time stream it would be like that OJ Simpson movie ‘The Terminator’. You know… Well you don’t yet, but he arrives in the past but naked with his dick hanging free and the first thing he has to do is get clothes. I figure… I could handle that. But instead I’m waking up in a weird old bedroom like I’m just some normal person and not a time traveling badass.
Wanting to know what the fuck had happened I looked around and saw a calander on the wall with a date circled in red marker with a bunch of hearts doodles all over the place, like something from a mushy chick flick… And then I realized I recognized both the hand writing and the date and suddenly everything started falling into place in the worst possible way!
Now you have to understand, whatever you think of me and how I look right now, I’m a MAN! Like not a boy, not a guy, not some sort of schlubby nothing who works at a desk all day, I mean a REAL MAN! When I look down at myself I expect, no I DESERVE to see rock hard abs, chiseled pecs, twelve inch pythons and a dick so big you’d think it was a third leg, cus I EARNED all of that! I worked my ass off to look that good and so when I looked at my body after getting out of bed and saw… This soft, weak body and these… Breasts! And that empty space between my legs!? I almost passed out right then and there!
And that wasn’t even the worst part if you can believe it!
Because that date that was marked on the calendar, the one with all the X’s leading up to it so I knew it had to be today? That was the date of the senior prom where my parents hooked up, the day they got a little too busy and forgot to pick up a condom and thus… The reason they stayed together and raised me!
And right now, I was stuck in my mother's body for the next twenty four hours covering my own conception!
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