Time travel is generally regarded as impossible.
This is wrong.
Time travel has been invented at least a hundred times since the discovery of electricity.
So why don't more people know about it?
Well, it is because there is a problem with it. And everyone who discovers it falls for the same trap.
In order to travel in time, you need to be able to detach yourself from your local frame of reference. This is easier to achieve than you might think.
Once detached, you can travel back and forth in time freely, safely contained in whatever life support system you have devised. You can even snatch small items from the static times, and collect air and water - all without reconnecting to a local frame.
And that is the problem.
Reconnecting.
This requires much, much more energy than disconnecting. And the amount is exponentially affected by the amount you have travelled from your local frame.
Not how far you currently are from your local frame, but how far you travelled from it in total.
If you travel a single minute, you will need approximately twice the energy it took to disconnect. Two minutes, four times. Even if you travelled one forward and one back, that is still two minutes, and takes four times the energy. And it is proportional to the mass of the object being returned.
Most time travellers try for at least ten years for their first trip.
Exponential growth is a bastard of a thing if you are at the pointy end of it.
On the positive side, those of us who have made this mistake can communicate and interact. There are lots of us, really, but none of us have the energy required to get home. Or anywhere but where we are. Outside of time.
We have learned that we do not age out here. And we keep meeting new people. Maybe at some point we will find the people who can undo our mistakes. But it will probably take all the energy of our universe to do it.
Delivering this message took nearly the effective output of two megatons of TNT. And it consists of a handful of electrons. I'm sure you can do the math.
Please, do not follow us.
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. "Aqua City".
