Welcome back to Time Travel Wordcraft. This month we’ve moved out of the writing lab and into the first Starbucks that ever was, located in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Actually, the first Starbucks was a few blocks away, down the street on Western Avenue. But I think this is the first location where they brewed and sold coffee drinks to the public. The other location sold only the roasted beans. Anyway—this is considered the first Starbucks. That’s 48 years of coffee drinking history, and it all began here.
We’re going to be relying on YouTube clips for today’s column, so I’ve brought along an iPad. Let’s see if we can get a good Wi-Fi connection…. Things are looking good! So, we’ll start with a YouTube clip about Starbucks.
Ada and I are conducting some time travel paradox experiments today, and you’re here to witness it all. We’ll get more into that later. For now, let’s get into today’s topic: Paradox.
Paradox is the heart of any time travel story. So, this month we’re doing a very visual review of some popular time travel paradoxes. Let’s start with the do-over loop paradox. The do-over loop is basically when your characters find themselves reliving the same day or event over and over again. This was portrayed magnificently in the film, Groundhog Day.
Next up…something a little more serious. The film, Source Code. This is only the preview trailer, but it gives you a good representation of the do-over paradox.
Now, let’s move on to something a bit more complex: the causal loop paradox. Quoting Wikipedia, it’s “A paradox of time travel that occurs when a future event is the cause of a past event, which in turn is the cause of the future event. Both events then exist in space-time, but their origin cannot be determined. A causal loop may involve an event, a person or object, or information.” The causal loop paradox is also known as the bootstrap paradox.
The following clip is a bit long, but it’s a great explanation of the causal loop/bootstrap paradox.
Time travel paradoxes can get…complicated. The film Looper is a perfect example of that. Time travel storytellers can easily end up tripping over their own narrative, their own paradoxes or their own rules. This next clip illustrates how that happened in Looper.
Let’s move on to the grandfather paradox. I could explain it, but this clip sums it up in a hot minute!
Okay…now that we’ve covered some of the basics, let’s go to a popular time travel theory: the multiverse or parallel universe. For this, we’re going to have to rely on some actual science for a primer. So, here we go….
Could one of these parallel universes be where an alternate timeline for our planet exists? Sounds plausible to me.
Oh…I have a text message from Ada. I want you to stay focused on the iPad for another minute, so I’m going to play that first YouTube clip over again…the one about Starbucks. While you’re enjoying a replay of that, I’m going to read Ada’s message….
Hmmm. Okay—yes…it looks like everything has gone to plan.
Earlier, I mentioned that we were doing some time travel experimentation. Well, it’s no coincidence that we’re here at the first Starbucks, because this place is the origin story for Starbucks.
As you can see, the Starbucks clip we looked at earlier is suddenly no longer playing.
Now, look around you…we’re not sitting in a Starbucks any longer. Okay, sit back—breathe—remember, nothing in your life has fundamentally changed. Relax. As you can see, the familiar green of the Starbucks aprons, the signage and logo has been replaced. We’re sitting in a Ron’s Coffee, and yellow and brown are the predominate colors in this space. Look at your coffee cup!
While we were busy looking at all those YouTube clips, Ada surreptitiously traveled back in time, three months after Starbucks served its first cup of coffee to the general public. Ada found a way to shut down the coffee supply chain to the store, effectively canceling all the Starbucks coffee shipments for three months! Starbucks had established a small clientele, but with no coffee on hand and no prospect of coffee shipments, the small business failed. One of the Starbucks employees—named Ron—took over the space. Ada then lifted the embargo she had devised, and Ron then had no trouble setting up the shipments of coffee. In fact, the very same coffee that would have gone to Starbucks went to Ron. Experiment complete!
I’m texting Ada to confirm that we did it—it worked! We eradicated Starbucks from the face of the earth. I’m going to send her this picture.
Of course, we can’t leave things like this. We have to go back—back to when we started our conversation, before all the YouTube clips. We can’t risk….
Here…take this. I’m sure it looks familiar to you.
You know the procedure. On the count of three, press the image of the moon on the charm. We’ll be transported back to the beginning of our conversation at the Pike Place Market in Seattle at exactly the same spot where we started….
Ready to go back to a world where there’s a Starbucks every 40 feet?
Okay, ONE—TWO—THREE….
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