3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years (The Time Traveler's Passport)

by John Scalzi

Theory is almost never practice.

We did it anyway, because humans can’t not stick their fingers into wall sockets

A scientist, however, knows that initial conditions are everything, and that small differences at the outset make for huge differences in results down the line. The observer and the observed always interact. Everything changes.

If the cost was a millionaire spending three days in the Chicago of the Roaring Twenties, drinking bathtub gin and trying to make time with a flapper, that was fair price for progress, especially when the price would be paid by an entirely different reality, not ours.

For his sake, I hope he was indeed eaten by his preferred dinosaur. It would be terrible to plan one’s own death between the jaws of one of the most fearsome predators to live, only to trip 24up and be consumed by something less majestic.