A time travel paradox
 

"A baby girl is mysterioulsy dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. "Jane" grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for Jane, a series of disasters strike. Firts, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery, doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they are forced to surgically convert "her" to a "him." Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room.

Reeling from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, "he" becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has also lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop's Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and abandonde, on the condition that he join the "time travelers corps." Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the drifter in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant.

The bartender then goes forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop's Place in 1970."

"The question is: Who is Jane's mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, son, daughter, granddaughter, and grandson? The girl, the drifter, and the bartender, of course are the same person. These paradoxes can make you head spin, especially if you try to untangle Jane's twisted parentage. If we draw Jane's family tree, we find that all the branches are curled inward back on themselves, as in a circle. We come to the astonishing conclusion that she is her own mother and father! She is an entire family tree unto herself."


Interesting... :)

I like that story. It's like a loop within time that will continue on for eternity.

That is cool. Makes you wonder what would happen if the chain got broken.

thats a cool story really weird that his/her's farther and mother is him/her

he/she really must love him/her self to be attracted to his/hers past self

H
 

Cool story

The drifter disguises himself as the bartender, goes back in time, takes the drifter to meet the 'original' Jane, takes the baby back in time to 1945, brings the drifter forward from 1963/4 to 1985. Then what does the bartender do? Does he go back in time and become the orphanage propriator or does he disguise himself as a midwife and deliver Jane's baby? Give me some help, here.

Ok...its a decent story until you start doing stuff like that Max...leave it alone...step away from it...away Max...away.

Sorry, sorry, I'm backing away. Still backing away.

But what does the bartender do after bringing the drifter forward? I assume that he stops 'meddling' with time because everything if fulfilled. But if he had a child after the whole ideal, how would that fit onto the family tree? No, okay, I'm backing off.

I like thinking about it. It's a calming idea. Jane has an end but no start.

Wait, if Jane is her own mother and father over and over, does the genetic sequence begin to break down over 'time'? It would explain how she has both male and female organs.

Well, how did the first time go? Before she travels through time, there is a point were he/she hassent traveld through time. Then that time, how did it happen.

An example from Star Trek:

The Enterprise D crew go to Earth where Data's head and a stopwatch are discovered in a cave. The story plays through, it's not really important, suffice to say they end up bringing Arthur Conan Doyle (I think, it's not really important) forward in time to the Enterprise. While there he picks up his stopwatch, assuming he'd dropped it before leaving.

But then when he goes back to his own time, he intentionally leaves his stopwatch in the cave to be discovered centuries later. But surely, when its discovered, it will be about 600 years older than it was 'last' time it was discovered.

In which case, doesn't it stand to reason that this watch is infinitely old, like eternal?

In the same way, it's always Jane and he-Jane that give birth to baby-Jane. It makes you wonder how it all got started. Thinking it from Jane's perspective her/his family is in fact immortal.

Oh no, here come the temporal investigators. I should have listened when you told me to back off.

And Ron_Rancor is sobbing into his hands as he realised what he has started.

I shouldn't know this, because I'm no longer a Trekkie, but it was actually Samuel Clements (IE Mark Twain). I still have detailed memories of when I was a nerd...

Here's a shorter paradoxical idea that I thought up a while back:

Suppose you were to go back in time and visit a famous writer. Let's say J.R.R. Tolkein (at the time I thought it up, I though Shakespeare, or Homer, but now I realise that neither of those would work, because they both adapted existing legends instead of direct writing). You visit Tolkein when he was young, before he began thinking about Middle Earth, and tell him about this great idea you have for a story that he should write. You tell him the plot of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (and all that other shit). You get him to make detailed notes as you speak. You insist that he passes the work off as his own. You even dictate a few passages, so that he gets the feel of the atmosphere. Then, you leave him, and return to our time period. As far as History is concerned, nothing has changed. For all we know, that may have been the way it had happened anyway...

The question is: Whose idea was the Lord of the Rings? Tolkein got the idea off you, but you only got the idea from him in the first place, but then he got that idea off you, etc...

cool story, i like it :fuzcool:

Things like that that are why the campaign for real time was started. one question, where did the first jane come from? obviosly there had to be a first one but to have the same genetic make up it would have to be the same people theirfor they are not exactly the same and in fact becoming gradually less and less like thier actual parents.

HG Wells' Time Machine - at least the updated stupid version - looked at the impossibility of changing the past. Certain events have to take place in order for you to actually time travel in the first place. Does changing them mean you never could have gone back in the first place?

Unless time travel had a delay, in that the consequences of changing the past didn't take place immediately, it would be logically impossible to go back and kill your own parents. You'd have to trust that the past would somehow prevent you from actually doing it.

Still, if Blackadder taught us anything, it's that time travel exists solely for the purpose of going back far enough to punch the crap out of Shakespeare. I'm sure that's something we've all wanted to do at some point.

Well, some sci-fi would have us believe in time lines - go back in time, change stuff, go back to your own time line having created an alternative one. Similar to the 'there's an infinite number of universes where every reality is played out' idea.

I suppose it could all depend on how fast time travels. Surely it travels the speed of time, which is about 60 second per minute, methinks. So it all depends how long you take getting back to your own time.

Except shouldn't your own timeline be being eaten away slowly? In which case, would your own timeline's history alter itself, or would nothing happen until eventually the 'temporal horizon' burns its way past you? And then, would you die or would you simply be altered and converted into this new time line?

Oh, and if you go back in time and killed your younger self, when you died would there already be one you in Heaven already?

Okay, so none of this is really relevent to Jane's family tree, but it provides sufficent paranoia about what will happen when and if humans invent time travel. Tra la la.

I hope you're not implying that all Star Trek fans are nerds.

I hope you're not implying that non-nerd Trekkies exist.

If you went back in time and killed yourself as a baby...you would die at that instant. Just fade away into nothingness as your existance does not exist...right?

Dunno. Try it and find out. :fuzwink: Nah, I'm just joshin'.

Well, if you went back and killed yourself as a baby, then the baby you would die, obviously. But if you died at that instant as well, wouldn't you both go to the afterlife (assuming there is one, obviously)? Or would only one of you get to the Pearly Gates?

And when you time travel, do you actually move through time, or do you simply get there in an instant. 'Cos if you actually moved through time, then your time machine would have been in that same position for all that time. Excpt back...okay, this is where I quit.

Two entities going to Heaven? No...ill try and explain and shtuff.

Baby X
Man Y

The same person. Man Y goes back in time and kills himself as Baby X. Baby X' soul goes up to 'Heaven'. Man Y doesn't exist whatsoever and thus disperses into nothingness...his all entity was Baby X which is dead and in Heaven. Thus...Man Y technically does not exist.