Time Travel

       Time travel is a fascinating topic and i never lose a chance to read it, watch it or even talk about it. Last time i was watching a lecture video by Dr Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical physics at the city college of New York and co-founder of String theory. During the lecture he narrated a time travel story about a girl named Jane. I found the story very interesting so i decided to share it on the blog. This is only the short version. You can find the original in the Sci-fi novel written by Robert A. Heinlin, ''All You Zombies".

       The year is 1945. A stranger emerges from the darkness carrying a baby girl that he leaves at an orphanage. Well, the nuns find this baby girl, they don’t know where this baby girl came from, so the nuns call her… Jane. So Jane grows up at the orphanage wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”

       When Jane is seventeen years old, she’s a beautiful young woman and finally has her first boyfriend  A drifter comes drifting into her life, but it just wasn't meant to be. They quarrel. She argues with her boyfriend. It’s a very sad story. First, she finds out that she’s pregnant. Her boyfriend has left her. She’s abandoned and pregnant. She’s rushed to the hospital 9 months later and she delivers a beautiful baby girl. But somehow, somebody breaks into the hospital that night, kidnaps Jane’s baby girl, and vanishes into the darkness. Wait, it gets worse. Jane is bleeding very rapidly and death becomes a real possibility. The doctors must perform an experimental emergency operation. They have to change Jane into Jim. Well, Jim wakes up the next day with a huge headache and he’s told the bad news. First, the boyfriend left her pregnant, somebody stole her baby, and now she’s not even Jane anymore!   She’s… Jim.

       So Jim grows up to become a bar room drunk. Every time someone asks, “Who are you, Jim? Where’d you come from? Who’s your mother or father?” He just didn't know.Finally Jim one day is once again stone drunk at the floor of the bar right after a bar fight. The bartender comes up to him and says, “Jim! Jim! Wake up! Hey, guess what? You see, I’m not really a bartender. I’m actually a time traveller. Let’s step into my machine and see who this Jim/Jane is.”So they go back into the past. Poor Jim, he doesn't know where he is in the past. However, he meets this beautiful seventeen year old girl and it’s love at first sight. But it just wasn't meant to be. They quarrel. Then Jim finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant. Jim says to himself, “Holy crap. History is repeating itself! This happened to be me! Well I’m going to make sure that my baby gets the best education possible.”That night, nine months later, Jim goes to the hospital, breaks open the window, and kidnaps his own precious baby girl. Then Jim, holding his baby girl, goes back into the time machine back, way back into the past until it’s 1945.

        It’s a dark and stormy night. Jim comes in from the darkness carrying his precious baby daughter and drops her off at an orphanage.Well, the nuns don’t know what to do with this baby girl the next day so they just decide to call her Jane. And Jane grows up wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”Anyways, Jim finally gets it together. Well, I don’t want to be a drunk for the rest of my life. So Jim decides to join the TTC, or Time Travelers’ Corps. So Jim has many wondrous exploits in the annals of time.Now Jim is an old man. He thinks to himself, “I've had a good long life. But I want to give myself one final mission. For my last mission, I’m going to go back in time, put on a wig, and impersonate a bartender. To meet a certain bar room drunk who just got into a fistfight because someone said, “Who are you Jim? Who’s your mother? Who’s your father?”