Stories of a Time Traveler

Eric Morin was the toughest kid in school. When the kids played football everyone wanted to be on his team and no one wanted to be on the other. On my first time playing I was unlucky enough to be on that other team. Since I was one of the fastest runners in school I was picked to be a blocker. Since neither team was particularly good at throwing, the majority of the offensive plays were usually runs. The problem with that was I was positioned right in front of Morin,the quarterback, and he was not one who asks people to step out of the way. As he charged at me I squinted. The reason for doing so was because I was about to go over the peak of Disney World's fastest roller coaster. Down I went though spirals loops and banked-turns. When the ride ended I felt about ten pounds lighter. I had actually been scared at one point because three years ago at the section of the track where the ride reversed, the brakes had failed sending the car and its ten passengers into the river below. So it goes. As I stepped out of the car I found that my feet were wet and that I was no longer wearing any shoes. I was  on a camping trip with my friends in Alberta, three years ahead in time and the three of us had sneaked away from the camp to the swimming hole. I was gently floating on my back. My friend Josh asked me why I was looking so dreamily. I replied,"Well, time traveling does take it out of you." He grimaced at me and said,"Good luck with that." With that he jumped off the shore and landed next to me sending up huge waves. I found myself in Japan, 8 months later....

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.", Kurt Vonnegut

The idea that by the very strength of one's thoughts an object could be moved has lingered since almost the dawn of humanity. Yet through all of those years there has not been a single incident of this mental prowess. This, however, does not mean we should give up and disbelieve this theory but rather try harder to achieve it. Research shows that the average human uses only about ten percent of his brain which means that we have not even tapped our mind's potential. Vonnegut is asking too much when he demands the instantaneous display of telekinesis. We, as a race, are still ridiculously young when compared to the world around us. With all the technological advancement that has occurred this past century, I daresay even this past decade, we have no idea how far we can progress. Telekinesis may come tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe one hundred years from now. The fact of the matter still remains that we still have a lot of discovering to do.

Freedom or Fate?

In our existence is everything we do really based on our own decision or is everything, including our thoughts, completely influenced by outside stimuli, unchangeable? Are we fated to follow a predetermined path or are our decisions really our own to make? I personally believe in the concept of free will because there is always that aspect of the human mind that has a limitless number of ways of looking at any situation. One may argue that the way we think is completely dependent on past experiences, but at the end of the day we are the ones who decide what to do with our prior knowledge. Billy Pilgrim may have a firm belief that our fate is set in stone but if what he says about being unstuck in time is true at all then he is contradicting himself. If one can agree on the fact that once something HAS happened it then becomes unchangeable, then when Billy is looking around at his life he is looking at past unchangeable events.

Which begs the question: Is Billy Pilgrim dead?