Time Travel – A Vlog

~The following is a transcript of a Youtube posting by Kurtis Gerrold from April 11th, 2011~

Hello, everyone. *sigh* You might remember in my last posting I suggested that there was something really big coming up. Right? Well, here it is. A couple weeks ago, one of my friends tells me something amazing…he goes to Michigan State University. They've got this really cool Cyclotron thing up there.

Point is…he was doing some research on wormhole theory. Strangelets or strange matter. He makes a lot more sense at talking about this stuff than me. But he just happened to figure out this very simple process of what he calls "Time-State Bubbling". It reminded me a lot of that indie film Primer. Total fav of his and mine.

What it does is it creates a way of moving to any point in the existence of a bubble of time. He said it would be perfect for preserving anything so long as a power source is hooked up to it. I think of it like cryogenic sleep. You're preserved in a frozen bubble of time. I dunno if a visual helps, but I could draw it like a long cat. You can travel along the length of it. You can travel in time to the future and back…

So, of course, I told him 'sign me up!'…so that's why I'm here…talking to you all. I intend to travel to the future. And the first thing I'm going to do is go and look up all the winning lotto numbers for the next thirty years….nah. Although, I am tempted.

So, you know I'm a post-grad, student filmmaker. I've posted a few of my shorts from school on here and I've gotten some very nice comments. Thank you again. Like, comment, and subscribe...as always!

But, I was thinking, why not take a camera to the future? Anyone can go to the future and bring back a story, but if you bring back raw video of a flying car, that's something else. Besides, I don't expect that I would be able to remember everything I saw on one single trip. So video makes a lot of sense.

Let me show you what I'm packing *rustles around* Okay, this here is my baby. My Sony HD MiniDV camcorder. It was a huge Christmas gift from dad from when I was back in school. There's a stabilizer and a plug-in mic, but I kinda like the one it comes with. Gotta bring my tripod and I'm also packing a lot of memory cards, just in case.

Since I don't know what kind of electrical stuff there will be thirty years in the future…that's how far I'm going…I'm bringing a lot of charged batteries. I've thought a long bit about how I'm gonna present myself in the future too. Coming up with explanations and stories to tell.

So, I have this camera, but I'm also bringing my cell phone with its eight megapixel camera. Batteries for that too. That's gonna be a bitch to record on if that's all I can use.

Beyond DV, I thought a long while about what I'd want to bring. I imagined like 'what if the time travel fries all the electronic stuff?' So I'm packing my dad's old Super 8 from when he made ads for his car dealership. I have both disposable and digital still cameras as well. And I have a huge-ass sack for just this stuff.

Then I have a journal as an extreme last resort with some pens and pencils. I have a couple bottles of water and some MREs. I want to make sure I can survive if things have gone to hell and it's like Morlockland or something.

I have a couple changes of clothes. I figure I'll look like some 80's guy would now… unless styles have come back around and the 10's are hip in the 40's. Dunno. I'm kinda on edge, but I'm really excited. I drew up a will just in case something goes really wrong too. I left it with my friend. It was kinda creepy thinking about it.

Oh and money. I have money as current as possible because I figure people still will find old old money from the 80's around on the street. Thirty year old bills won't look as fresh by then so I kinda distressed them to make it more convincing. I took inflation over three decades into account so I'm taking right around three times the amount of money I think I would need. Three thousand in mostly new twenties.

What else is there? Geez. Uh…it really feels more like an adventure right now. I dunno if I'll make it into a movie or anything. I'd love to make a vlog all that time in the future and then post it over time…over here. Then I could splice it into a documentary. But I'm looking too far ahead. Right now I really feel like I just want to get there. I dunno though.

It's exciting but also scary. I don't really want to know if my parents are dead then. I don't know if I want to know if I'm dead then. But it would be interesting to see if some famous people are dead and when. I'd need to film or photocopy some books and whatever they use for mediums there or whatever.

The future…spending a lot of time in libraries. Maybe it'll be rather boring. I mean if you went from like Back to the Future speculation to now…it's kinda disappointing in reality. No hoverboards. No flying cars. No crazy missions into deep space. No nothing really cool. But like…remember that Ray Bradbury story? The guy who traveled to the future…said he traveled to the future, but he actually faked it but then he faked it so well that he made it real for the world and he had to keep the lie up. Not saying anything about this. This is real.

But like…I wonder if my going to the future makes the future I see. My friend talked to me a lot about alternate timelines. I don't know how that all works. Maybe I can't go home again, but I step into the unknown you know…with hope and my best foot forward hoping I'll come home…or to some universe that's home enough.

Sorry. Kinda rambling, but I didn't really have a script for all this. It'll be my last vlog before I make it back. If I schedule the upload right, then I should be just about heading off when this is posted.

Thanks for all your comments over the years and your support. I hope I see you all soon. Dunno where or how, but we'll meet again. I know it.

So…gonna wrap this up as best I can. Can't wait to come back to you all with news of the WORLD OF TOMORROW. Shooting for November of 2041. But it's not too precise.

Oh and I wasn't sure what kind of IDs I should take so I had a friend make up some fake ones. I know they'll totally suck because they really look phony, but the numbers are all plausible. I definitely don't look sixty for my real ID. Although I did consider having an old makeup friend do me up to look the age I'd be by then.

*sigh* So, that's about it. It's been real. It's been fun and I hope I get to do this a whole lot more when I get there and back again. Heading off. Hoping I don't cause any nasty future paradoxes. See ya.

~Addendum – the video was later deleted on April 16th, 2011 for reasons unknown. Kurtis Gerrold's account has remained inactive ever since. All calls to his friends and family end in the same story, none of them have heard from him since the posting of the video. The friend referred to in the transcript denies the existence of a time machine. Authorities consider him to be a missing person, but do not presume him to be dead. No further information is available at this time.~