Stipulations:
- You cannot die and are immune to disease
- You cannot alter the future such that you change the world from your point of origin. i.e. You cannot become so famous that future people recognize you as immortal.
- If you vary the timeline too much you will cease to exist.
I wonder how many people in this thread have read/seen 11.22.63 before.
Without some amount of preparation, I think I’d just end up mostly working for cash and living out of a van for most of that time, or otherwise staying off-grid. There’s a surprising amount of paperwork involved in legally existing as a person.
Also, since memorizing statistics is not one of my hobbies, I’d want/need some kind of written ledger to have an edge in back-alley sports betting.
Just for fun’s sake though, I’d try my hand at writing professionally again, as a novelist, but just ripping off the plots of movies and TV shows that haven’t been filmed yet. Self-publishing everything under pen names of course, to preserve my anonymity.
I stay in my same body, at the same age I am now, keep all my teeth, etc? I am nearsighted, it’s gonna be difficult.
What happens when I pass the day I am born, though? Are there 2 of me?
I don’t think I’d change the timeline much anyway, it seems hard to. Though I’d love to become a lawyer and advise Al Gore against conceding the election he won. Even if I ceased to exist that might be worth it.
Im assuiming doctor who rules where just dont interact with yourself
I’d assume Harry Potter time turner rules, where there were always two of you when you were growing up, because future you had already gained immortality and gone back in time. But you never realized there was a second you when you were growing up, because future-you actively avoided interacting with past-you.
It also resolves a lot of the “what if you accidentally change the timeline and prevent yourself from ever being born” types of paradoxes, because you were already born which means anything your future-self does will automatically resolve with you being born.
How will I survive if I cannot die? I just will
The challenge is in not erasing yourself by the rules, by being famously immortal. Presumably, you also don’t age. So you just have to move around every decade or two.
I move to a country where you can have quality of life at very cheap costs. One of the larger Greek islands maybe. I try to live healthy even despite the “immune” feature because life is better then.
Make a fortune of course from knowing the future but keep it secret. Remain unknown to the greater public.
Buy a little house and a patch of land to grow my vegetables. Learn languages. Make friends.
Try to do ‘good things’ with the money (find out what good things are…).
It’s gonna be tough being a queer POC but I’d probably just be a sidequest queen and travel the world doing random shit, trying not to stay in the same place for too long and not return until i can reasonably claim to be my own child
I have a feeling you would have more fun in Paris than other places
a lot of indigenous cultures have really interesting cultural perspectives on gender. i think id enjoy traveling and connecting with people all over the world and immortalizing their stories in me
So you just get a normal job and get to live through one of the greatest economic booms of American history where you can raise a family of 5 with one singular income?
Literally just go to work for 40hrs a day 5 days a week and you could have damn near anything you want as long as you’re white?
This is a dumb “what if”.
as long as you’re white
And male, cis, straight, Christian, etc. You could fake some of those things if needed, but that’s generally a crappy way to live.
Also, assumes American.
Yeah you right. I made that assumption but the premise didn’t give you much to go on.
Plus this would be right as ww2 was ending so you’re relatively safe either way unless you’re black in the south. Again in America
Well if you want to be boring with your answer and not have fun thinking of other interesting ways to solve this problem then yeah it’s dumb,
Fuck it dude, I’d just go bowling.
I would have said start betting like Biff Tannen, but that probably will end up changing the timeline “too much”.
But if I can’t die and am immune to disease, I guess I exploit that. Can’t drown so I’ll hop in an ocean and go somewhere. No need for food or lodging. I’ll just wander for the next 100 years and peoplewatch.
Why did you make it so easy? Throw someone back to 10,000 BC. If its just ~80 years thats easy. You can’t die. Just go make a little place to hang out in a cave or somewhere extremely remote. You dont even need food or water.
Boredom. Imagine how boring it would be to just hide. I was hoping for some creative ideas.
Are you looking for ideas on things to do? When are you going back to 1945 and what part of the world would you be in?
NYC, just after the war ends
You said you can’t change time or you cease to exist. What else are we supposed to do? You can’t exist and not change time.
You cannot change it so much that you alter the future. Doesn’t mean that you can’t live a fulfilling life or run things from the shadows.
But the catch is I dont know what will change time a lot or a little. If I get in an elevator and shit my pants in front of Utada Hikaru does she never write Simple & Clean? I simply cannot know, so with those rules I have to isolate.
She would certainty nor say that simple and clean is the way you are making her feel.
Why not operate under the assumption that your future self has already gotten away with everything? Taking advantage of the bootstrap paradox. Like Bill & Ted, everything around the dad’s keys. Might at least be fun, that way.
Living in a cave for 10,000 years without seeing someone is the best environment to discover new hobbies.
immortal
looks inside
how do you survive?
Hide in a cave for an eternity then. If no one knows I exist, then I live forever.
Booooo! Boring!
Sit around and wait. I’m immortal.
“Hey this guy has sat here for 30 years and he hasn’t aged one bit!”
* ceases to exist *
Sleep it off in a coffin like a vampire? They didn’t say you could starve.
How do you survive until modern day?
I just do … you literally said I cannot die.
There is the caveats they put in that you’ve got to make sure no one finds out how immortal or you’ll just cease to exist and can’t change history in any significant way or be met with the same fate
What happens when you get to your birth date? Do you stop existing as a time-traveller and start being a baby? I was born in 1952, so I’d get less than seven years of time travel. Hardly worth the effort, especially if I don’t remember it.
This was a bad question, and you should feel bad
