He finished reading the chapter on paradoxes and agreed with the author. You can’t change the past. He thought again about the grandfather paradox: if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, then you would not be born, so you couldn’t go back to kill him, so you would be born, and so on. It was a paradox only until you realized that you can’t change the past.
You could go back in time, and try to kill your grandfather, but you would never succeed. There would always be something that would prevent his death, because he did not die in the past. And you can’t change the past.
Perhaps the gun would jam, or you’d think you’d killed him, but he survived, or you’d kill his twin instead of him, or the physics police would stop you, or … Or what? Suddenly, he simply had to find out.
He hopped up out of his chair and ran toward the holding port. He dashed up the ramp and dropped into the driver’s seat. After doing routine checks, flipping a switch here and there, adjusting some dials, he was ready.
He pressed the Create Wormhole button, and a flickering appeared in front of the vessel. The saucer shaped time machine pulsated, expanding and contracting, horizontally and vertically. The required electrical energy produced jagged discharges, and the mouth of the wormhole opened. He selected the Stable Exotic Matter command and chose Hawking Method from the menu. The craft rose and moved into the mouth.
He soon (by his time) reached the other mouth and landed in a quiet field some distance from the house. It was well past sunset, and he could see that the party was going on, people spilling out of the house and onto the lawns, just as he expected.
He pulled his palmcom from his pocket and pressed the Hide Time Machine button. The saucer folded itself along the one-hundred-and-thirty-seven mutually perpendicular dimensions and disappeared from view.
He made his way past the barn, toward the house, and found his grandfather in the back yard, alone, puffing on a pipe-full of tobacco.
"Grandfather!" he cried out.
The man turned to face him and his face wrinkled in confusion. "What did you call me? Who are you? Do I know you?"
The time traveler’s chest swelled. "I am your grandson. I have traveled here in a time machine and now --get ready for this-- now I am going to kill you."
The man shook his head side to side and almost laughed.
"Kill me? Ha. Surely you, a time traveler, have heard of the --
"-- Grandfather paradox. Yes, of course. Isn’t this wonderful? For both of us! I will try to kill you. Something will happen to prevent you from dying, and we will find out how this will happen."
Before the man could say another word, the time traveler pulled out a pistol and quickly pumped two bullets into the man’s heart. (The gun, of course, was silent.) Clutching his chest, eyes wide, his pipe falling from his mouth, the man uttered a feeble groan, and collapsed.
"You might not be dead yet," said the time traveler. He stepped closer, took careful aim, and emptied the pistol. Ugly work, yes, but he had to know.
What would happen now?
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
He waited some more.
The party went on, no one came near, and nothing--
There! In the sky! He watched as a long, golden tube came down toward his grandfather. As it neared he could see it was wider than his grandfather’s crumpled body.
Was this the cosmic censor? Or was it a macroscopic-sized quantum fluctuation? Or…
The cylinder continued down toward his grandfather.
No. It was aimed at the time traveler. A rose coloured piece at the cylinder’s end reached his feet, and moved rapidly side to side, and up. He saw that his feet were gone. His legs were gone. His torso and arms were gone.
Then the rose coloured piece paused a moment. The time traveler was about to exclaim something, but before he could, the end of the cylinder finished its rubbing, and there was a pop-pop-popping sound, and he was all gone.
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