The Trouble with Time Travel

Photo by Court Prather on Unsplash

I’m youngish but not culturally hip. I’m on the upper end of Generation X. The extent of my experience with video games was down at the local pizza place as a kid, playing Super Mario while the scent of rising dough wafted from a wood-fired oven. If I turned my head to the left while playing, I could see the raw pies skimming across the chef’s knuckles, growing stretchy and thin. Mario’s struggles in the virtual world barely made a dent in my consciousness; he was only a distraction while I waited for life in the real world to hit “done” so I could savor its goodness and move on into the next moment.

Now, though, I have a stepson (my boyfriend’s son) who’s thirteen. He’s a great kid, very patient with un-hip me, and willing to let me stumble around on his game controls for the sake of watching me crash a race car or sink a pirate ship. I’ll call him W. So I’m getting up-to-date on where video games have gone in the last thirty years. Newsflash: people don’t “play” video games anymore, they “game.” And the more the game looks like reality, the better.

Yesterday, W put his virtual reality headset on me. “Where do you want to go?” he asked. It wasn’t a game; it was Google Earth. He said I could go anywhere. My first thought, randomly, was Turkey. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go. But it turns out Google hasn’t driven around Turkey that much — imagine! — so there…