Everything is relatively, nothing much.
Except if it matters to you.
It was the dawn of a new century. All over the world, people assumed and feared the worst. A century had passed, the new age was to take over from the old. Amongst the joy and celebrations, fears and worries,time moved towards the next milestone.
But, the protagonist of our story was far removed from all of this. He was too absorbed, in the soft melodious tunes that a violin was producing. He was no master, but in his amateur efforts, one could see the spark of a genius. For him music was comfort, for on his musical autopilot, his mind could wander amongst warped and contorted spaces wherein lie his passion. He could think and ponder and understand while his music played. And today in particular he was indeed thinking really well.
Our hero was young, all of twenty one, mature enough to understand and young enough to rebel. It was perhaps a fine combination of these qualities that allowed him to calmly react to the shining apparition that seemed to have materialized out of his music. A man rather oddly enough seemed to float in the air in front of him. The air around him shimmered and danced, a mirage of extreme clarity. Al, the nickname we shall know the hero of our story by, not knowing what to do, rose and politely waited. The man in the mirage motioned for him to move into it. Al, brave as he was, refused to budge. The man then reached out, held Al's hand and yanked him in.
As he was falling through into the mirage, Al wondered. "How could this be a dream ? And what is this odd feeling that I experience in every iota of my body?" As he landed on a carpeted floor, he had already begun to question. Since he did not recollect a carpet in his room, this was not his room. "Elementary, my dear Al", he said to himself. Then, proceeding on the line of thought, if this wasn't his room, there where was he? More importantly how did he get there?
The man seemed to read his mind. "Forget those questions," he said, "they will all be answered at the appropriate time." "The time has come", he said, "when your thoughts will influence the course of the destiny of our race." "Today was that opportune moment when your thoughts on the nature of things have come to their logical conclusion."
The man paused and seemed to draw strength. "Enough, no more" he cried out,"for what has been done already must be destroyed !". "Why ?", spoke out Al, "what wrong have I done? I have done nothing except connect the variables coherently." The man smiled wanly at what obviously seemed to be a witticism. "Connect the variables,indeed ! The effects of your present research will take another century to understand and reach it's final result."
Al's heart leapt within himself."I am right then", he trembled,"it is possible. There is no falsehood in my numbers.....no falsehood in my equations". The man shook his head in resignation,"There is no falsehood, no untruth. For what you have seen in your thought's today is how I am here." Thrown into a vortex of confusion, Al struggled as the enormity of the blow struck him. The room seemed to spin around him as the thoughts in his mind logically connected.
"That means you are... you cant... you must be.." sputtered Al. "Yes, I am indeed what you think I am" said the man with quiet soberness. "Then why must I stop, why must I destroy ? Why must I change what will so obviously be the greatest advance the race has known ?". Al's mind was filled with thoughts that he could not control. Anger, resentment, pride and yes indeed that hint of ego. "Why me?", his mind cried. "Why me?"
The words "Why must I destroy" echoing in his mind ,the man paused, selecting his words."For it will destroy free will.And even though it is not obvious now, free will is nothing but the finest expression of God's control over man. In the guise of free will man seems to do whatever he wants to, when it is all really nothing but the direction of God. But, what you will do, is to alter all that. It will give man the ability to play God. To do things that for generations has been the preserve of the Gods. And when man turns into God, this Earth turns into Hell."
The man's voice began to rise as he continued, trembling with emotion "A Hell without a God to look up to. When man loses his Gods, he loses himself. His existence is unfulfilled. His normal chain of existence is altered. In the end all that is left is a void. An emptiness of the soul, far more agonizing than any physical end. It is to cripple, but not to kill. It is to wound but not to sever, it is to suffer for all eternity."
The man overcome with his thoughts, shook, "The only thing I can ask of you is to use your free will. Ironic as it is, for if you do, our race will live to see the end that our Maker has destined for each one of us. You can't take ourselves away from us. You don't have a right to." With those words the man began to sob with a grief pathetic in it's nakedness.
His quicksilver mind working out options, Al decided. Those words of description were enough for him. He could now more clearly see the implications of his work. The pain and the agony was too much for him to think about. More importantly, he would carry the quilt and the pain forever with him. He held the man by his shoulders and shook him gently.
Much in the manner of a father speaking to a child, he spoke with quiet control, "Yes, it shall be done as you desire. I shall not work nor think of this again. It shall be closed forever for my mind. But, how shall this event be prevented from happening in the future? How can I prevent someone else from going through the guilt of this discovery?". The man looked up, his expression that of a condemned man being given his freedom. "It can be done",he said. His spirits rising, he outlined the single change to the interpretation of the equation that would set the entire race on the right path. A path that could not lead to this situation again. A path that itself was fraught with danger and death. But, a path that was essentially human. A path watched over by the sheperd who guides each man to his rightful destination. A path that was the path of God.
Al, understanding the concept that the man proposed, smiled at the brilliance.The man vanished, back into the air that he came from. Al, found himself in his room once again his music as his only accompaniment. "Did I dream all of that up", wondered Al. In any case, he was now sure that that equation looked much more sensible. It was all a figment of my imagination, he believed as he went to write down his formula. The fact that this new formula was what almost directly lead to the entire world being destroyed is the subject of another story.It is now a part of history.
In any case it was only five years later,in 1905 that Albert 'Al' Einstein first publically displayed the equation E^2=m^2c^4+p^2c^2. This equation can be used in many places. When talking about time travel, you need to talk about light. And, since obviously, the rest mass of a particle of light is zero as first stated by Einstein, this evaluates into E=mv^2. This means you need to possess infinite mass. Which as everyone knows is quite impossible. This, therefore implying that time travel is impossible. I wonder as to how people actually conceive of the concept of time travel. Very improbable, wouldn't you agree?