Man by nature has the spirit of adventure at the core of his soul. Way back in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Christopher Columbus felt compelled to sail the ocean blue in three little boats. In the 1960s, President Kennedy set a goal for the United States to land a man on the moon and bring him safely home before that decade was over. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton had his own adventures involving little men in boats and pocket rockets. Mankind as a whole, it seems, just gets restless without an adventure looming.So what are the great new adventures for our times? While space exploration holds a universe of potential for mankind’s wanderlust, it’s rather frustrating for any single individual. In days of yore a man with a strong back and a saddlebag full of courage could set off to tame whatever the “wild new territory” of the moment was. Mars and galaxies far, far away, unfortunately, are a bit tougher to take on alone.
One of mankind’s oldest hankerings has been to conquer the problem of time travel. Not too long ago, I was surfing the web and I happened across a web site that posed an interesting premise: “Imagine, for just a minute, that time travel will some day be possible. . .If time travel will be possible within the next 50 or 60 or 70 years, I will force it to happen on August 3, 2002. It’s as easy as this: I will get a tattoo on my arm that reads “August 3, 2002. Empire State Building. 4pm.’ I will then commit myself to the following: If I ever have access to time travel in my lifetime, I will go back to the time and place that I have tattooed into my arm. At this point, all I need to do is be in front of the Empire State Building at 4pm on August 3rd. There is a very good chance that I will appear from the future in front of everyone on that street corner.”
This idea caught my interest because of its simplicity. Here was a straightforward idea that would allow an average person to step up to the ranks of Christopher Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan. Or, on the other hand, Douglas Corrigan, who in 1938 filed a flight plan for California, took off from a Brooklyn airfield in a tiny single-engine plane, then arrived in Ireland 29 hours later, claiming his compasses had failed. The beauty of this new time-traveling plan is that it only requires a tattoo, airfare to New York, and a bit of Wile E. Coyote, sans the rocket-powered roller skates.
I contacted the person who came up with this ingenious plan and asked him a few questions. Here are excerpts from our interview with Bill Rigby — Potential Time Explorer:
Creative Loafing: Who are you and how did you come upon this idea of time travel?
Bill Rigby: Unfortunately I can’t get too specific as to who and where I am. I’ve received dozens of e-mails from individuals who think I might destroy the universe (!) by meeting my future self, and a few of them have threatened me with bodily harm if I choose to go ahead with my experiment. But I will say this: I am real and not an urban legend, as has been suggested in various corners of the Internet. I’m a 25-year-old male from the New England area. I have a respectable full-time job, and I consider myself intelligent and clear-minded. I am by no means mentally unstable, as some have suggested. Most people have seen movies such as Back To the Future and have been conditioned to think of time travel as science fiction, or fantasy. For a great while I was one of them. One day while eating lunch, I asked myself a simple question: What if? What if it were possible? What if I had access to time travel? Will technology ever evolve to the point where time travel will be possible? And then I asked myself, why not? From there, my experiment blossomed. If time travel will be possible in my lifetime, then it is possible for me to trick it into occurring right now.
Do you think your future self would be in even greater danger than your present self? After all, he’ll have very valuable information in regards to future events as well as answers to pressing questions like whether the Red Sox will ever win the World Series.
If my future self appears on August 3rd, it is possible that he will face some danger as well; he will surely have information about future events that some would consider invaluable. It’s possible my future self could be kidnapped and tortured for information. I do worry about this, but by worrying about this now, I can be sure that my future self takes some caution when appearing in the past. Being a time traveler is clearly a very dangerous profession, and I have a few more months to prepare for the possible consequences mentally and physically.
Why did you choose 8/3/02 at 4pm?
August 3rd has no particular significance. I wanted to give myself approximately six months to completely flush out the idea, and prepare myself for what may or may not occur. I posted the idea on a personal web site (http://www.bobbysboxof pain.com ), to see what kind of feedback it would generate. The result startled me. First of all, word of my experiment started traveling around the web. I started getting e-mails from discussion groups, who were actively discussing my idea, and the possible consequences. I was happy to see that a large percentage of the feedback I received was positive — people were excited to see what would happen on August 3rd, and many people have already arranged trips to New York City to be there for the event. A smaller percentage of the feedback was startlingly negative — individuals who had been studying time travel, and firmly believed that my experiment could work, and that if it did work, I would cause a time-space paradox that would destroy the universe, and everything within it.
Have you considered getting Geraldo or someone at FOX to cover the event live?
The motivation for performing this experiment is simply my own curiosity. I’m not looking for publicity. I would love for the media to take an interest in my idea, and not me specifically. You mention Geraldo — Geraldo certainly would not cover the event on August 3rd, because if I don’t appear from the future, he’ll have another “Al Capone’s Vault’ fiasco. Or will he? In my opinion, if nothing happens, it will be almost as historical as if something did happen. I will be able to say, with 100 percent certainty, that I will never have access to time travel in my lifetime. How many people can scientifically predict the future, without knowing anything about it?
What will you ask yourself on August 3rd?
I will not have to ask myself anything, because my future self will already know what I desire — to travel through time. If I appear from the future, I will invite myself into the time machine, and the two of us will travel together. I don’t have a destination in mind but I’m open for suggestions.
Would you mind asking your future self to bring back the Powerball Lottery results for me? Trust me, I won’t tell anyone else until after the drawing.
This is why I have tried to keep my identity ambiguous. I have received about a hundred e-mails from individuals specifically requesting lottery numbers and sporting game results. They have attempted to bribe me, or trick me. Some have claimed to be third cousins. If I appear before myself on August 3rd, I would have hit the ultimate lottery. Here is something else to ponder: If I manage to travel through time, will the lottery system crumble? How can the lottery commission be sure that winners did not have prior knowledge of the outcome? As soon as I appear from the future — that very moment I appear — it is no longer possible to calculate the odds of any game. The house has to assume 100 percent in favor of the player. I might be singularly responsible for the fall of gambling.
Do you have a twin brother by chance?
I do not have a twin brother. I know what you’re getting at, and no. . .This is not a stunt, and I do not plan on having a “stunt double” appear from behind a dumpster declaring himself from the future. I do, however, have a safeguard to keep myself from being duped. I’m getting a second tattoo on an undisclosed part of my body. If a future Rigby appears, I will look for this second tattoo on him.
How much therapy do you figure you’ll require if at 4pm on August 3rd your future self appears on 5th Avenue itself rather than on the sidewalk and you see yourself getting hit by a tour bus filled with Japanese tourists?
Your question is more interesting than you know. This is the type of question that gets most Time Travel researchers bitter with confusion. If I appear from the future and get killed, what happens? My current self will have witnessed my own demise on 5th Avenue. I will then automatically know that I should avoid 5th Avenue, or re-adjust my machine so that I do not appear on 5th Avenue. By doing this, am I re-writing history, so that my future self now doesn’t get killed on 5th Avenue? It would appear that way. But how can this be? My future self has already died. This is where the real Time Travel geeks start talking about alternate dimensions, timelines, and universal paradoxes. Immediately after, they usually end up threatening me with bodily harm. This one could quite possibly be too complex for the human intellect to grasp. This is why I believe my experiment is so interesting. It is simple, has only two variables (date and time), and there is at least a shred of possibility that this thing might work.
Do you think the success of this experiment will provide you with a means towards physical immortality? If so, would you want that?
This is a great question. I do believe that if I have access to time travel, I will have access to physical immortality. If, at the age of 75, I develop a terminal illness, I could travel back to when I was 25 years of age. I could take my 25-year-old self ahead to the future, and begin life again from the age of 25. This means that every 75 years or so, I can reset myself back to age 25! I could only imagine how much knowledge my 25-year-old self would have in the year 3000, after meeting and re-meeting my older self, and continually passing down 75 years of knowledge to my younger self. This is incredible! I hope your readers are stimulated by my idea, and are there with me in New York City on August 3rd.
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2002.
