You Can't Change the Past

I miss math.  The kind if coding I do, which is literally shoveling shit back and forth between a database and your screen, offers nothing in the opportunity to do math.  I’ve forgotten most of what I had learned because I never use it.  So, I decided to get some practice. 

I pulled out all of my math textbooks from college classes: five calculus courses, differential equations, probability, and statistics classes.  I started going back through it all.  Some of it came back rather quickly.  Other items were a struggle.  I found, though, that when I had a goal in mind, I did much better than when I was just answering the questions at the end of a chapter.

One thing I recalled from my physics classes, especially quantum mechanics, was that there were alternate, equivalent ways of expressing the same thing.  Do you want to write something using matrices or operators?  It’s the same thing.  Math is a language, and needs to be taught that way.  It’s a language of logic, though, so there’s no, “Me llamo Greg,” to teach people, but there is “1 + 1 = 2.”

I started looking at all of these formulas I had to remember or derive in classes.  I tried writing them in different forms, translating them into other notations, just to see if I came across anything interesting.  Generally, I did not.  The ones we were taught in class were usually the simplest form, the easiest to work with and understand, at least conceptually.  Other transformations led to some really trivial statements.  There were, however, a few intriguing formulas and they all revolved around time.

I went over and over these formulas, because they were just too simple.  I was convinced that I had made a mistake somewhere, but I could not find one.  So, I decided to be an empiricist: if my equations were correct, I could travel in time.

I spent this past weekend building a simple time machine.  I had it complete by about the third quarter of the Denver/Kansas City game last night.  I fired it up to see what happened.  If I was correct, I’d be transported back to Friday night and have the whole weekend ahead of me.  If I was wrong, nothing would happen and I’d have wasted a weekend tinkering.

Well, it worked.  I was a little off, though, by about seven hours.  So, I spent the weekend refining my models and rebuilding my time machine.  When I say I spent the weekend, I mean that to you, November 16 and 17 was a normal 48 hours.  For me, though, I spent four months perfecting my time machine. 

Knowing the final scores of all of the college and pro football games of last weekend, I was able to fund my project through gambling.  Using Groundhog’s Day-style trial and error, I was able to get anything I needed through repeated attempts.  Ultimately I had a viable machine.  Now, what would I do with it?

All of the normal ideas popped into mind: go back and kill Hitler before WWII.  Find out who really killed JFK.  See exactly what happened at Roswell, NM.  But I decided on something more personal for my first attempt at altering the past.

I thought the 2011-2012 New Orleans Saints had the best chance of bringing a second championship to the city.  Despite their defensive flaws, the Saints had an amazingly potent offense.  Everything was going their way until the met the San Francisco 49ers in the most compelling football game of my lifetime.  The 49ers won on a late touchdown pass from Alex Smith to Michael Crabtree in the back of the endzone.  Crabtree was hailed as a hero and his catch, dubbed “The Catch II,” was compared to the Dwight Clark catch in the back of the endzone which beat the Dallas Cowboys in the 1981 NFC Championship game.

I was crushed when I saw that play.  Tracy Porter, who was covering Crabtree on the play and was the hero during the Saints Super Bowl XLIV run, just missed making the pick.  I was going to go back in time and correct this.

So, I went back in time and spent weeks bumming around New Orleans.  I found the clubs the players frequent and started hanging around.  I was “that guy,” the one always in the crowd, the one always at the party.  I made sure Tracy Porter always saw me: at the bar getting drinks, passing each other coming in and out of the restroom, wherever the action was, and he was, I was there too.

He started recognizing me.  At first, it was a nod, then an occasional fist bump.  Eventually we started exchanging a few words as we passed.  I spent weeks choreographing my meeting with Porter, trying to build up enough trust to have a conversation with him.  Finally, it happened.

I talked to him about the upcoming game.  I tried to convince him that I was from the future and knew the outcome.  Of course he didn’t believe me; not until I showed him the clip of “the catch” on my smart phone and the ESPN analysis of the play.  Then he started to listen.

I didn’t want to give anything else about that game away.   I figured that altering that one play, from a touchdown pass to an interception, would be enough.  The Saints would then host the NFC Championship game against the New York Giants, whom the Saints had destroyed in the Super Dome several weeks earlier.  The Giants were the Super Bowl winners that year, so I assumed that if the Saints got past the 49ers, they’d have won it all.

So, Porter and I discussed the play.  He was prepared to bait Smith into throwing the pass then he’d pick it off.  I was ready to cheer on the Saints to yet another victory.

The day of the game came and I watched it from a barstool in a New Orleans bar.  The game unfolded exactly has it had nearly two years ago: the injuries, the turn overs, the lead changing hands time and again.  Finally the moment came for that fateful play.  Everyone in the city of New Orleans was tense.  The 49ers were already in field goal range and were poised to win the game.  I, thinking I knew what was coming, was cool as a cucumber.  I was ready for Tracy Porter to make yet another remarkable playoff interception, to cement himself in New Orleans Saints lore.

I watched the TV, cameras focused on Alex Smith as he dropped back to pass.  His arm went back, and then he let the football go.  I watched the arc of the pass as I anticipated what I wanted to see happen, the past I had orchestrated. 

Instead of heading toward Crabtree and Porter’s miracle pick, the pass went to Vernon Davis at the goal line.  Davis caught the pass and scored the touchdown.  The rest of the game completed exactly as I has seen it years ago.  The Saints lost.

Vernon Davis became an instant hero in the Bay Area.  That play, also referred to as “The Catch II,” was compared to the Terrell Owens catch which beat the Green Bay Packers in a 1999 wild-card playoff game.

That minor change, from the Crabtree catch to the Davis catch, was the only difference in what was to happen.  Everything else in the world seemed to go exactly as it had before I tried to alter the past.  The universe corrected itself. 

I don’t think that the past can be changed.  It has already happened.  I’m not really sure what use it would be to travel back in time, then, since you obviously can’t make a change to what has already happened.  I guess I have a lot more to learn about time before I try to go tinkering with it again.  Maybe it’s truly a futile endeavor. 

I know all of you will think my story is bullshit.  I wouldn’t blame you.  In your timeline, it was always the Vernon Davis catch which beat the Saints in that playoff game.  But me, I’ve seen the Saints lose that game twice.  It was heartbreaking both times.