Time Travel: A Cautionary Tale

Dear Friends, 

Malcolm is smitten with theoretical astrophysics and takes it upon himself to educate anyone who will listen about black holes. I find it quite charming, at least until he drops the word "space-time." Because that's just taking unrelated concepts (space and time) and pretending that the intervening hyphen turns them into a single concept. I guess that's what makes it theoretical physics. Standard high-school physics teachers would never try to attribute observed phenomena to vacuum-topography-chaos-velocity or friction-adjacent-parallax-bureaucracy. 

The Hard Taco song for December, "Inverse Chinese Finger Trap," showcases just how little I actually learned from those conversations. 

What I was really hoping to learn is whether black holes prove that (A) time travel is possible, and (B) I could use one to go back and prevent my dog from chewing the eyes off my most precious stuffed animal, Opus. 

As a child, I related deeply to this little penguin's optimism, hopeless naïveté, and body-dysmorphic disorder. We even posed together in my high-school senior portrait. 

A boy and his penguin. A penguin and his boy. 

This delighted the folks at Worzella Photography; up to that point, no teenage boy had ever chosen a pose other than their standard three offerings.  

Approved Teenage-Boy Portrait Poses: 

(A) Scowling While Leaning Against a Brick Wall,

(B) Scowling While Sitting in the Wheel-well of a Monster Truck, 

(C) Scowling While Trying to Break Out of Minimum-Security Prison. 

Worzella Photography was so proud of the Opus picture that they featured it in their brochure the following year, along with the only other creative photo they had: Girl Scowling While Leaning on the Ruins of an Enemy Shrine.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if a black hole would take me back to 2023 so I could counsel myself to keep Opus on a high shelf so that Ozo the Labradoodle wouldn't rip the poor penguin's eyes out. 

Unfortunately, knowing my 2023 self, I would insist that 2025 Me say nothing. "The consequences could be disastrous," I would warn my future self, "Telling me to put Opus on a higher shelf (or why) could cause a chain reaction that could unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!" 

So, I would take matters into my own hands, safely tuck Opus into a closed drawer, and return to the present, only to discover that Ozo the Labradoodle had instead ripped the noses off my other two precious stuffed animals, Winnie the Pooh and Fievel. 

With warmest regards,

Zach