How To Meet Yourself (Today)

Today I woke up and I decided to change the world.

I'm going to prove time travel will exist in the future.

It's pretty simple. In the future, time travel will be invented. It will be illegal, however, to go back in time and meet yourself, for pretty obvious reasons: if someone burst into your room claiming to be you in the future, you'd either beat them up or call the cops.

So the plan is simple: I write a message to future-Sam telling him that at 4:00 PM on August 31, 2008, I will be expecting him at this address. The plan is a little tricky to enact, though. I doubt the post office will delay a letter 50 years, and I'm not reliable enough just to remember the time, date, and location. While I might be able to send myself a wake-up call in the future, I have no way of knowing what phone number I'll have or if phones still exist.

What remains?

Email. I'm going to have to email myself.

I use Google Calendar to create an event for August 31, 2050, and add a brief description as a reminder to myself:The trick here is that I might not be using the same email address. Sure, the possibility exists, but you can't be too sure. I have to try some obvious email addresses relating to my profession or my family. I decide on five of the most likely:

1. My current email address (most likely)
2. sam@MYLASTNAMEfamily.com (in case we're one of those families that get our own domain)
3. vp@whitehouse.gov (obviously Jeff will be the president, but he'll have added me to the ticket so women will vote for him)
4. supremeoverlord@theworld.gov (obviously)
5. sam@crayola.com (I guess they read my crayon post)

I add those names to the guests (in this case I haven't yet added the first and second addresses, as I don't want people to know my current address or last name):Now, for the big finish: an email reminder. I chose a 7-day reminder so that my future self would have plenty of time to alert the media and the authorities, get the proper permissions, and still be able to leave on the exact time and date (which I figure will make the time trip more ceremonial and hopefully easier.That's it! I'm all finished. I just have to create the event, and in 42 years I'll get an email reminding me it's okay to visit myself. I hope I'm still as desperately handsome, though I guess it seems unlikely I would be picked to be Jeff's running mate if I was anything less than incredibly good-looking. I'll probably be fine.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm expecting a guest.