Re: Faust's Gambit

[michael gilson <mgilson@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anonymous Coward:

> Faust's Gambit
>
> Let us assume that you have The Object and it is a time travel device with but three constraints:
>
>         1) The Object has two charges. A charge is expended for each person transported in time.
>         2) The second charge must be used within 4 hours of the first.
>         3) The exact date and location of the destination is required to operate The Object.
>
> What would you do and why? Defend your answer.

The answer is obvious. Go back to Page's house in Windsor late in the evening of September 24, 
1980, stick around for 3 h 59 min and make sure poor Bonzo doesn't
shift in his sleep ... or maybe wake him up and make him throw up into a bucket (sorry for 
the graphic description). Then come back to the present. (I don't think
any defense of that answer needs to be given; it's fairly obvious.)

But that would give rise to the classic time-travel conundrum: the fact that I'd changed history 
and ensured the survival of Bonzo and Led Zeppelin would mean
(assuming FBO would have still been created) that you would not have had cause to post this 
question, ergo I would not have traveled back in time, and we'd be stuck
in some sort of infinite loop.

Alternatively, I would go back to the precise date and location that The Object was programmed 
as a time-travel device and change its parameters so that an infinite
number of voyages, of unlimited duration, were possible. Then I would get a DAT machine and start 
going back to my favorite shows and taping 'em, returning each time
just long enough to furnish the fine folk of FBO with a new set of seed disks.

Unless I decided there was something more important I could do, like ensure world peace.