Context: He’s in the files
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Now, I’m speaking hypothetically, legally, and for educational purposes only… you fast-forward a few decades and suddenly certain names appear in court documents and flight logs, not convictions, not proof of wrongdoing, just… associations. Enough to make a careful chrononaut say, ‘You know what? I’m not popping back in time to shake hands and eat shrimp.’
The absence at that party wasn’t evidence that time travel failed. It was evidence that it worked, and everyone who could come already knew how the story looked later.
History doesn’t just judge actions. It judges proximity. And no self-respecting time traveler shows up early to something that turns awkward in hindsight.
The issue for me is that, let’s say that one day a magical device does allow time travel, it would also have to do teleportation relative to some point since everything is in motion. What would all of time and space use for a relative location? Can’t be the earth or sun since those are moving. Even our galactic cluster is moving. So if you went back in time a year, the earth wouldn’t be at the same point in space even though it’s done a full revolution. I’m no space scientist but I don’t imagine we have a solution.
That ‘everything’s moving’ argument is a convenient shutdown, not a dead end. We already track motion precisely, GPS corrects for relativity every second. That means relative positioning isn’t unsolved; it’s restricted.
You wouldn’t target a spot in space. You’d target a worldline, like Earth’s continuous path through spacetime. Same path, different point.
Saying you’d end up in empty space assumes a cartoon machine that only changes the date. A real device moves you along spacetime itself.
So when people say time travel is impossible because there’s no reference frame, what they really mean is: you don’t have access to the frame that works. Not impossible. Classified.
More pragmatically, time travel for a casual party would be risky because you’re carrying germs many generations apart. Time travelers would wear full-body suits or risk dramatically altering history. They could not drink or eat anything.
Finally. Thank you. Someone thinking past the punch bowl.
Forget paradoxes, pathogens are the real problem. You don’t need to step on a butterfly to wreck the timeline; you just need a 21st-century rhinovirus and a handshake. Entire villages, gone. History rewritten by a sneeze.
Any responsible time traveler would be sealed head to toe. No exposed skin, no shared air, no hors d’oeuvres. Certainly no cake. You don’t know what yeast does to medieval Europe when it’s had a few centuries of upgrades.
