![Earthling's "Space Slug Bad Touch" Is Destined For Cult Status](http://cache-05.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/03/126x100_earthling-poster.jpg "Earthling's "Space Slug Bad Touch" Is Destined For Cult Status")
![In "Ugly Americans," New York Is Full Of Monsters](http://cache-07.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/03/126x100_custom_1268854750368_picture_46_01.jpg "In "Ugly Americans," New York Is Full Of Monsters")
![Caprica's Esai Morales: "We Don’t Know When We’re Going To Get Picked Up"](http://cache-08.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/03/126x100_custom_1268846335859_picture_43_01.jpg "Caprica's Esai Morales: "We Don’t Know When We’re Going To Get Picked Up"")
Enter your username and password.
Timecrimes appears to have a refreshing take on time travel (though it obviously wouldn't work for an ongoing television series)
I've been thinking that a sort of 'Memento' meets 'Quantum Leap' form of time travel would be a quite creative (and to my knowledge, unused) format:
You can rewind your life to any given point, but you only have about 5 seconds of "future memory" before the timelines synchronize, and you forget everything that happened beyond the point you just reset to.
Of course, to any outsider, it'd look like you had Tourette's syndrome, and were given to periodically shouting to yourself or scribbling cryptic messages in a pocket notebook. But it would only take you one or two jumps before you won the lottery, and could be as eccentric as you wanted. The only question is... then what?
Oh yeah, and you can only do it so many times in rapid succession before it starts to seriously hurt. So you can't use your power in a fight to predict every move your opponent is going to make, and you can't give yourself multi-part messages. You also can't use it when you're unconscious or dead. (so no guarantees of survival if you decide to walk into the middle of a gun fight or across a mine field)
You can, however, preempt your previous jump as often as you want, but all you'll be doing is resetting your previous reset. Not especially useful, except if your past self "didn't get it" the last time, and you want to try rephrasing your message.
Now, 5 seconds isn't a lot of time (especially if you count the second or two it'll take you to fumble out the pen and paper), but once you've gone through a few resets, you'll inevitably end up developing a system of shorthand that allows you to "chunk" more and more complex pieces of information.
I envision a guy living in a mansion with an enormous Dewey decimal system-style collection of index cards, containing all sorts of crazy scenarios and generalized messages to himself.
Reply
@bluehinter: Okay, but what does the guy want? Once you've hit the Irish sweepstakes and bought that island in Costa Rica, what would motivate you to go back and undo it all?
Reply
@Palliard: Catching an STD from one of the many many sexual partners you would have after becoming filthy rich.
Reply
@Palliard: Not much at all, unless you get extremely bored or have a particularly strong sense of altruism.
I thought about it a bit more last night, and figured this power would be far more interesting if multiple people had it, and they policed their own (a bit like the "Jumper" series, but hopefully less lame).
It's perfectly acceptable to win the lotto once, maybe even twice if you don't push your luck. But if you start calling too much attention to yourself, the older rewinders (remember: the older you are, the further back you can go.) will just go back to before you were born and either have your mom killed, or, (if they really hate your guts) sleep with her themselves!
A war between two rival factions of time-reversers would be a bit like watching a chess match where the size and shape of the board and position of the pieces change with each and every move.
Reply