716: Time Machine
Time Machine |
Title text: We never see any time travelers because they all discover it’s a huge mistake. This is also why your friend at the lab suddenly looked a year older recently. |
Explanation
Rob is about to discover time traveling but a future version of him comes back in time and hits him with a baseball bat before he can actually build his time machine.
A common theme in time travel fiction is going back into the past to fix some mistake or stop some tragedy before it happens. In this comic, it is implied that Rob's time traveling turned out to cause a tragedy of some kind, so in order to stop it, Future-Rob must go back in time to stop himself from time traveling in the first place. The last panel supports this by suggesting that at least once a month somebody discovers time travel, but inevitably ends up going back in time to prevent themselves from doing so.
The title text suggests that this is why we never see any time travelers since they would have stopped their own past selves from time traveling. After getting rid of their past selves they would assume their place in the timeline, hence why a friend would suddenly look older: they have aged, just in another timeline before returning to the past.
Transcript
- [Rob is working at a workbench. Future-Rob appears out of nowhere with a baseball bat.]
- Future-Rob: Hi, Rob.
- Rob: Whoa, you're me!
- Future-Rob: You're about to have an idea for a time machine.
- Rob: I am?
- [Future-Rob hits Rob over the head with the baseball bat.]
- WHAM
- [A friend approaches Future-Rob working at the workbench, with Rob nowhere to be seen. The baseball bat is stashed behind it.]
- Friend: Hey, Rob. What's up?
- Future-Rob: Nothing.
- This happens somewhere roughly once a month.
Discussion
Isn't this a paradox? 188.29.164.36 11:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
- Yes, the grandfather paradox. However, a number of solutions have been proposed for it, which are also described on the linked page. NealCruco (talk) 22:32, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
The blood on the bat doesn't really imply Rob dying, he could've been bleeding from a head wound and not actually died. 173.245.55.24 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
<<ooh woo! You said Ro-ob!
I've come here from January 2015 to tell you Cueball has a real name.
I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 10:58, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Is there a category for named versions of Cueball? I can think of at least three now where he’s called Rob. Besides this one, there’s 782: Desecration and 1168: Tar. 162.158.146.94 00:45, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I think one interpretation of the comic is actually funnier than the one given here, and might have been Randall's intention. I think he's referring to the retro-suicide paradox variant of the Grandfather paradox, and solving it so that present Rob was killed by future Rob, and thus future Rob's last memory is from that same moment, which is the moment when the timeline was affected. Once a month, he suddenly finds himself in a situation where he has the corpse of an unexplained perfect copy of himself and a baseball bat in his hand, and has to cover it up, and doesn't know why. Implying that the first time he invented time travel, he knew that would kick off a chain reaction in time like this, and went back and started the cycle. Each time after that, as soon as he invents time travel, he realises what must have happened, and thus continues the cycle. Drkaii (talk)
Hey whoever added the link to qntm.org, thank you from the bottom of my heart for introducing me to my new favorite website ever. I am a kid in a time zone store. Take The A Train To Watertown (talk) 04:27, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
There's also an X-Files episode from 1997 with basically the same plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrony_(The_X-Files)
I always interpreted this as Future Rob going back in time to make Rob have the idea for a time machine by hitting him with the bat, as Rob would want revenge, and invent time travel to take that revenge. The explanation here makes more sense though. -- Random user 5,000,000,000 (talk) 15:30, 3 June 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)