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1. Embed this notice
   rdm (rdm@aus.social)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:14:28 JST rdm

   Time travel is generally regarded as impossible.

   This is wrong.

   Time travel has been invented at least a hundred times since the discovery of electricity.

   So why don't more people know about it?

   Well, it is because there is a problem with it. And everyone who discovers it falls for the same trap.

   In order to travel in time, you need to be able to detach yourself from your local frame of reference. This is easier to achieve than you might think.

   Once detached, you can travel back and forth in time freely, safely contained in whatever life support system you have devised. You can even snatch small items from the static times, and collect air and water - all without reconnecting to a local frame.

   And that is the problem.

   Reconnecting.

   This requires much, much more energy than disconnecting. And the amount is exponentially affected by the amount you have travelled from your local frame.

   Not how far you currently are from your local frame, but how far you travelled from it in total.

   If you travel a single minute, you will need approximately twice the energy it took to disconnect. Two minutes, four times. Even if you travelled one forward and one back, that is still two minutes, and takes four times the energy. And it is proportional to the mass of the object being returned.

   Most time travellers try for at least ten years for their first trip.

   Exponential growth is a bastard of a thing if you are at the pointy end of it.

   On the positive side, those of us who have made this mistake can communicate and interact. There are lots of us, really, but none of us have the energy required to get home. Or anywhere but where we are. Outside of time.

   We have learned that we do not age out here. And we keep meeting new people. Maybe at some point we will find the people who can undo our mistakes. But it will probably take all the energy of our universe to do it.

   Delivering this message took nearly the effective output of two megatons of TNT. And it consists of a handful of electrons. I'm sure you can do the math.

   Please, do not follow us.

   #SF #SFF #SciFi #TimeTravel #microfiction #microfic #tootfic #IAmWriting

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Ada Palmer (adapalmer@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:14:27 JST Ada Palmer

     in reply to

     @rdm For a classic and fabulous golden age short story on this same theme, see Alfred Bester’s “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed.”

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Clifton Royston (cliftonr@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:15:57 JST Clifton Royston

     in reply to

     • Ada Palmer

     @adapalmer @rdm

     I love that story! The little bits of the math and physics folklore about the absent-mindedness of the great mathematicians and physicists really tie the whole thing together.

     I was trying to find it to pass to one of my kids, only to find I no longer had the Bester collection which it appears in. Books just seem to evaporate sometimes.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     ranjit (ranjit@friend.camp)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:16:08 JST ranjit

     in reply to

     • Ada Palmer
     • Clifton Royston

     @CliftonR @adapalmer @rdm I'm impressed that your book collection is in such a state that you can confidently state that you no longer have the book! If I couldn't find a book I knew I had, I would assume it was probably under something, or behind something else.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Clifton Royston (cliftonr@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:16:29 JST Clifton Royston

     in reply to

     • Ada Palmer
     • ranjit

     @ranjit @adapalmer @rdm

     My visual memory for books, their covers, and their contents is sometimes a bit too good.

     It's possible that I misremembered *when* I last had the book, and it ended up with my ex in the Great Division of the SF Collection when we divorced almost 30 years ago. That's happened sometimes.

     But I *think* I kept this book and reread it more recently than that!

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Clifton Royston (cliftonr@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:16:30 JST Clifton Royston

     in reply to

     • Ada Palmer
     • ranjit

     @ranjit @adapalmer @rdm

     There are definitely books in that state, especially in the living room, and sections of our bookshelves which are completely unorganized.

     However the SF & F & horror section in the back den/office area is alphabetized by author, and I think it's been remaining in a fairly consistent state.

     (Obsessive? Obsessive about books? Me?)

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Lot⁴⁹ (12thrits@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:17:10 JST Lot⁴⁹

     in reply to

     • Ada Palmer

     @adapalmer @rdm Ah, now I remember: the android gets murderous when it's too warm, thus the story is "Fondly Fahrenheit." Lots of great point-of-view trickery.

   • Embed this notice
     Lot⁴⁹ (12thrits@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:17:11 JST Lot⁴⁹

     in reply to

     • Ada Palmer

     @adapalmer @rdm Nobody was better than Bester at his best. "The Demolished Man," "The Stars My Destination," "The Pi Man," and one whose title I can't remember wherein the protagonist gets his consciousness mixed up with that of a murderous robot he owns. Just wonderful stuff.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Urban Camera (uc@mastodon.scot)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:17:45 JST Urban Camera

     in reply to

     @rdm

     We've got quite a few time travellers here, too. Recently, they took control of key parts of government and even ordered individual street cobbles to be replaced in a village.

     They're easy to spot, and labelled as either CDU or AfD, and have travelled back to 1933, even though they are still here.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cavyherd (cavyherd@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:19:00 JST Cavyherd

     in reply to

     • Ada Palmer
     • ranjit
     • Clifton Royston

     @CliftonR @ranjit @adapalmer @rdm

     Or maybe it was nicked by one of those tricksy time travelers

   • Embed this notice
     Isaac Ji Kuo (isaackuo@spacey.space)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 07:21:22 JST Isaac Ji Kuo

     in reply to

     @rdm Flying is easy. It's the "landing" that dissuades repeat attempts.

   • Embed this notice
     Martha Bridegam (mbridegam@federate.social)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 08:13:04 JST Martha Bridegam

     in reply to

     • Urban Camera

     @uc @rdm

     We have time travellers in the United States too. They are trying again to stamp out government of the people, by the people, for the people. As always happens with such attempts, already we are in need of some memorial cobblestones for our cities and towns and we are at risk of needing more.

   • Embed this notice
     Ernst Greiner 🇪🇺 (ernstgreiner@techhub.social)'s status on Monday, 28-Sep-2026 09:04:41 JST Ernst Greiner 🇪🇺

     in reply to

     @rdm
     Everytime you look in the mirror, you see your past.
     Just sience without fiction, sorry...