Imagine meeting yourself when you were younger. What would you notice first? How fat or thin you were? How short you were? How you hadn't really changed that much? Do you still wet your bed?
Slipping through holes in the string vest of time.
Once it was a theory.
Now it was a reality.
The invention that Travel Agents everywhere had been crying out for. People were bored of brain implants. The memories of virtual holidays did fade. Virtual holidays seemed like a good idea at the time until an outbreak of virtual Legionnaire's Disease wiped out an entire virtual hotel of virtual holidaymakers. After that there was a return to the old school. Real holidays. Go to the real seaside, get really wet, get really ripped off by local market traders, get real sand in your real sandwiches.
Have a gippy tummy.
It took everyone about three years to realise, again, why real holidays were so crap in the first place. Seven years for people who went on Club 18-30 Holidays.
Time was the key. Time Travel®. Not that there weren't any teething troubles. When Time Travel® was in its infancy, travel agents (or vacation brokers as they were known) were taken to the cleaners by everyone, including the elderly and the infirm. Granted they're not the sort of people who usually top the world's most wanted lists. The papers aren't normally filled with those sorts of headlines.
PENSIONERS KILL TEENAGER FOR CONDENSED MILK?
I don't think so.
That was the beauty of it.
But pre-meditated crime isn't about ability. It's not about whether you can do it, it's about whether you can do it and get away with it. That's why anyone does it. No-one commits these days believing that they'll be caught. Anyone who says the reason the crime rate is increasing is because of a fall in family values, poor education, lack of job prospects etc is, quite metaphorically, talking out of the top of their head. Which is as strange a place as any to find someone's arse. The reason the crime rate is going up is because more people believe that they won't be caught.
Anyway, people with incurable diseases, everyone at death's door, they all started queuing up to buy time travel holidays.
Ironically, no-one saw it coming.
Put yourself in their position. You've been given six months to live. What are you going to do? Wrap yourself up in a blanket and sit tight until your number's up? No way. You're going out with a bang. For two months you live it up. Soft drugs, hard drugs, drinking binges, orgies, wife swapping, husband swapping, house swapping parties. You try casual sex, formal sex, cybersex, phonesex, textsex, faxsex. Everything goes on credit. Then, when you've not so much burnt the candle at both ends but are about to turn into a puddle of wick and wax, you do a bank job or a post office job. Next you head to your nearest vacation broker to book a holiday back to the time of your conception and prevent your own birth.
Try including that one in the latest crime figures. As soon as you prevent your conception you disappear from the future. How can you get caught if you no longer exist?
Bloody marvellous.
Slipping through holes in the string vest of time.
Once it was a theory.
Now it was a reality.
The invention that Travel Agents everywhere had been crying out for. People were bored of brain implants. The memories of virtual holidays did fade. Virtual holidays seemed like a good idea at the time until an outbreak of virtual Legionnaire's Disease wiped out an entire virtual hotel of virtual holidaymakers. After that there was a return to the old school. Real holidays. Go to the real seaside, get really wet, get really ripped off by local market traders, get real sand in your real sandwiches.
Have a gippy tummy.
It took everyone about three years to realise, again, why real holidays were so crap in the first place. Seven years for people who went on Club 18-30 Holidays.
Time was the key. Time Travel®. Not that there weren't any teething troubles. When Time Travel® was in its infancy, travel agents (or vacation brokers as they were known) were taken to the cleaners by everyone, including the elderly and the infirm. Granted they're not the sort of people who usually top the world's most wanted lists. The papers aren't normally filled with those sorts of headlines.
PENSIONERS KILL TEENAGER FOR CONDENSED MILK?
I don't think so.
That was the beauty of it.
But pre-meditated crime isn't about ability. It's not about whether you can do it, it's about whether you can do it and get away with it. That's why anyone does it. No-one commits these days believing that they'll be caught. Anyone who says the reason the crime rate is increasing is because of a fall in family values, poor education, lack of job prospects etc is, quite metaphorically, talking out of the top of their head. Which is as strange a place as any to find someone's arse. The reason the crime rate is going up is because more people believe that they won't be caught.
Anyway, people with incurable diseases, everyone at death's door, they all started queuing up to buy time travel holidays.
Ironically, no-one saw it coming.
Put yourself in their position. You've been given six months to live. What are you going to do? Wrap yourself up in a blanket and sit tight until your number's up? No way. You're going out with a bang. For two months you live it up. Soft drugs, hard drugs, drinking binges, orgies, wife swapping, husband swapping, house swapping parties. You try casual sex, formal sex, cybersex, phonesex, textsex, faxsex. Everything goes on credit. Then, when you've not so much burnt the candle at both ends but are about to turn into a puddle of wick and wax, you do a bank job or a post office job. Next you head to your nearest vacation broker to book a holiday back to the time of your conception and prevent your own birth.
Try including that one in the latest crime figures. As soon as you prevent your conception you disappear from the future. How can you get caught if you no longer exist?
Bloody marvellous.
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