A Matter of Time

Did you ever feel like there was something missing in your life? I have, but more to the point, I think I am beginning to understand what that something is: Time Travelers.

My understanding of time travel.

Let me talk about how all this started. So the other day I was watching reruns of Smallville, (judge me accordingly for admitting that, but) the episode I was watching was 8x11 Legion. It takes place much later in the Smallville mythos (Once Clark is through his angsty high school years and Michael Rosenbaum has left the series for promises of a mediocre film career.) The episode revolves around a time-traveling trio from the future, (Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl.) If you know anything about DC Comics you will recognize the names from the 31st century's Legion of Superheroes. They arrive in the Kent family barn to save the pre-Superman Clark and to help him stop Brainiac in order to ensure the continued existence of the future which they come from.

Of course, this also gives the writers license to play with the characters and leads to all the obvious cliches and plot points you would expect in an episode about time-traveling superheroes who land in the Dawson's Creek-esque atmosphere of Smallville. Among other things the three time travelers ask the questions that most fanboys were asking for eight years (Where is his cape? Where are the horn-rimmed glasses? Why can't he fly? Who the hell is Chloe Sullivan?), but most importantly they mention to Clark a hint of his future. They talk of a man who will not only inspire the world but the destiny of humanity for centuries to come.

This leads to me to a very important question of my own, Where is my time traveler? Clark Kent gets three (albeit stupidly named) visitors, John Connor had the Terminator, and even Bill and Ted had George Carlin. So where is my future-man who will come back to save my life so that I can one day go on to be a man that will inspire millions of people and save the human race from annihilation? I mean shouldn't that have happened by now? I'm 28 years old and according to my research most time travel experiences happen in a person's early to late teens, certainly no later than 22 or 23.

Despite the optomistic view of the future this movie took,
Alex Winter's destiny was bleek and Keanu Reeve's fate
was even bleeker.

You would think even if I am not destined to save the world, the least the time traveling community could do for me is to send my future son back in time to ensure that I meet the woman of my dreams (A sexy lingerie model with a 160 point IQ and a passion for Star Wars.) I mean its 2011, Emmett Brown invented the time traveling Delorean back in 1985 and the time traveling steam-powered engine (for some reason) in 1885... so where is my future progeny? The only explanation I have is that maybe my son is just too busy. I suppose being a famous novelist/starship captain must really put a constraint on one's time.

Or, it could be something else, entirely... I mean I could wait around for someone like the Doctor and his TARDIS to come and whisk me away through time and space (it would have to be David Tennant, I'm still not entirely sold on this Matt Smith character,) or maybe we all can't wait for our time traveling children to do all the work for us. After all whenever you look at anyone who has a had time traveling experience, Clark Kent, James T. Kirk, Marty McFly, any of the Doctor's companions, I think it is implied that these people already had something special about them even before their eponymous journeys, (in the case of Bill and Ted, maybe they were just special.)

So maybe the solution to what lies ahead is not in a traveler from our future, but from our belief in our own futures. Also who really wants to put up with all the rigors of time travel and paradoxes, and possibilities of making out with your teenage mother. So maybe its not so much about what I am destined to be so long as I understand who I am today. After all, Doc Brown and Natasha Bedingfield said it best, The future is unwritten.