Bathroom Monologue: Rent-a-Time

But we know the process doesn't work like that. You can't change the past and you can't listen to me when I say that. You want to save your girlfriend, so you lie to me that you're just going to say goodbye that morning. You insist you won't do anything to upset space/time continuum. And I know you're lying, but in saying that I just get us into an argument about me trusting you and you wanting your safety deposit on the time machine rental back. It's non-refundable, by the way. I'll waste the next hour trying to steer the conversation back to the fact that you literally cannot save her. You could rent a bulldozer and park it in front of her garage that morning, and she'd just catch a ride with someone else and that car would be hit instead. Tie her to the bed and she'll still die that morning, that same minute. Maybe an aneurysm. The driver will, too. Maybe a second aneurysm. He'll still crash, because you can't stop any of the major things from occurring. She dies, the driver who hit her dies, and his car is wrecked. If you believe in Quantum Economics, then you believe the city will wind up spending the same amount of money to clean up the wreck whether she's in it or not. Ah. It doesn't matter since you're not listening. Your eyes have glazed over. You're going back in time no matter what. You can't bring her to the present, you know? There's a safety on our time machines that makes them return to the present, ditching the patron in the past, if there's any threat of a paradox. But you're not listening again. You see the inside of this time machine as the only place you can sit down, because the only other place you'll sit today is at her funeral, and you just can't have that. Now son, we normally have a seventy-day waiting period after a tragedy before we rent one of these out. But I can see how this whole thing's going to go. I've been in the business long enough to recognize inevitability.