The True Story of the Time-Traveling Islands
August 12th 2008 01:14
I find that nothing lifts the mood more than the impossible becoming possible. That is, the sudden discovery that something extraordinary and brilliantly impossible has just taken place. No doubt, you're surely thinking, this sudden revelation of a deeper truth has been evoked by a specific example, and one that I'm about to give. You are, as always, completely correct.
The Phoenix Islands sit comfortably in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They were part of the British Empire's final attempt at colonial expansion. They sit in the middle of 410 500 square kilometres of protected marine waters, the largest in the world. A 2005 census puts its human population at forty-one.
Oh yes, and it has traveled in time.
No, it actually has.
If you somehow got hold of a time machine, and was able to resist the temptation to (a) go back to 1970 and copyright the words and lyrics of "Imagine", (b) invest in Apple shares, or (c) become your own uncle, simply because that takes so much more planning, you might want to consider setting the controls for: Phoenix Island, December 31, 1994. The time machine would most likely break, take you to completely the wrong place, or suddenly cause Deutscher to beat Keith in the presidential election.
Whatever it would do, it would have an impossible time location Phoenix Islands at that time and place.
It's the same for the Line Islands. Program in "Line Islands, December 31, 1994", and suddenly smoke is rising from the time rotor, and IT support is telling you to turn the thing off and on again.
Why you'd want to visit the Line Islands instead of the Phoenix Islands, incidentally, is a little beyond me. Sure, the Line Islands appear to be more habitable, what with the extra nine thousand people living on it, but there's something a little less grand about it. Okay, it's resplendent with reefs and lagoons, and if my choice was just between going and not going I'd pick going, but in this hypothetical my time machine can take me to the Phoenix Islands, so that's my port of call.
I mean, you can go to Birnie Island (part of the Phoenix clan), and see the entire island around you. It's fifty-seven hectares, half a kilometre wide, and grassy. Fair enough, there's no drinkable water there, but you can pretty much stand in the middle and look at every single coast! Who'd need water? You'd have ocean sunrises and sunsets every single day, and crystal clear moon rise/sets every night.
Even better, you can go to Orona island, which is more like a bagel than an island, being as it's a narrow strip of land surrounding a massive lagoon. There are cocoanut trees, so you could probably live off cocoanut daiquiris. There's also evidence of prehistoric Polynesian habitation, as an ancient stone marae sits on the eastern tip of the island.
Or you could go to the beautiful Nikumaroro island and search for Amelia Earhart's plane (it was commonly considered the place she might have crash-landed, though no expedition has uncovered any evidence of the wreck).
Phoenix Islands is definitely the place I'd go to, though I'm not sure I can be bothered learning Gilbertese, its native language spoken by only 105 000 people. On the other hand, I'm probably being a bit too harsh on the Line Islands. It's not like it doesn't have anything extraordinary to offer. It is, after all, the place in the world that is furthest ahead in time.
In fact, that's how the time traveling took place. In 1994, the Line Islands switched from UTC-10 to UTC 14, and the Phoenix Islands switched from UTC-11 to UTC 13. The Line Islands became the earliest time zone in the world, but in the process, both islands missed out December 31, 1994.
Missing this date meant they had (and, presumably, still have) no idea that performance artist Leigh Bowery and actor/sports star Woody Strode both died. They'd also miss the huge time travel trade of tourists for that day in time, which might not seem like a lot of money, but it's an average net loss of fifty thousand quatloos. It does, however, mean that everyone on these islands looks a day younger, and will for eternity.
If none of this amazes you, if the fact that a whole collection of islands leaped forward in time back in the 90s does nothing for your imagination, then I simply leave you with an old Gilbertese saying: "I wish we spoke English. Who the fuck speaks Gilbertese?"
The Phoenix Islands sit comfortably in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They were part of the British Empire's final attempt at colonial expansion. They sit in the middle of 410 500 square kilometres of protected marine waters, the largest in the world. A 2005 census puts its human population at forty-one.
Oh yes, and it has traveled in time.
No, it actually has.
If you somehow got hold of a time machine, and was able to resist the temptation to (a) go back to 1970 and copyright the words and lyrics of "Imagine", (b) invest in Apple shares, or (c) become your own uncle, simply because that takes so much more planning, you might want to consider setting the controls for: Phoenix Island, December 31, 1994. The time machine would most likely break, take you to completely the wrong place, or suddenly cause Deutscher to beat Keith in the presidential election.
Whatever it would do, it would have an impossible time location Phoenix Islands at that time and place.
It's the same for the Line Islands. Program in "Line Islands, December 31, 1994", and suddenly smoke is rising from the time rotor, and IT support is telling you to turn the thing off and on again.
Why you'd want to visit the Line Islands instead of the Phoenix Islands, incidentally, is a little beyond me. Sure, the Line Islands appear to be more habitable, what with the extra nine thousand people living on it, but there's something a little less grand about it. Okay, it's resplendent with reefs and lagoons, and if my choice was just between going and not going I'd pick going, but in this hypothetical my time machine can take me to the Phoenix Islands, so that's my port of call.
I mean, you can go to Birnie Island (part of the Phoenix clan), and see the entire island around you. It's fifty-seven hectares, half a kilometre wide, and grassy. Fair enough, there's no drinkable water there, but you can pretty much stand in the middle and look at every single coast! Who'd need water? You'd have ocean sunrises and sunsets every single day, and crystal clear moon rise/sets every night.
Even better, you can go to Orona island, which is more like a bagel than an island, being as it's a narrow strip of land surrounding a massive lagoon. There are cocoanut trees, so you could probably live off cocoanut daiquiris. There's also evidence of prehistoric Polynesian habitation, as an ancient stone marae sits on the eastern tip of the island.
Or you could go to the beautiful Nikumaroro island and search for Amelia Earhart's plane (it was commonly considered the place she might have crash-landed, though no expedition has uncovered any evidence of the wreck).
Phoenix Islands is definitely the place I'd go to, though I'm not sure I can be bothered learning Gilbertese, its native language spoken by only 105 000 people. On the other hand, I'm probably being a bit too harsh on the Line Islands. It's not like it doesn't have anything extraordinary to offer. It is, after all, the place in the world that is furthest ahead in time.
In fact, that's how the time traveling took place. In 1994, the Line Islands switched from UTC-10 to UTC 14, and the Phoenix Islands switched from UTC-11 to UTC 13. The Line Islands became the earliest time zone in the world, but in the process, both islands missed out December 31, 1994.
Missing this date meant they had (and, presumably, still have) no idea that performance artist Leigh Bowery and actor/sports star Woody Strode both died. They'd also miss the huge time travel trade of tourists for that day in time, which might not seem like a lot of money, but it's an average net loss of fifty thousand quatloos. It does, however, mean that everyone on these islands looks a day younger, and will for eternity.
If none of this amazes you, if the fact that a whole collection of islands leaped forward in time back in the 90s does nothing for your imagination, then I simply leave you with an old Gilbertese saying: "I wish we spoke English. Who the fuck speaks Gilbertese?"
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