CULTURE/SOCIETY, ENTERTAINMENT and SCIENCE: Follow-Up on the Time Travelers Convention

Time Travelers Welcome at MIT
By Mark Baard

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- The convention, which drew more than 400 people from our present time period, was held at MIT's storied East Campus dormitory. It featured an MIT rock band, called the Hong Kong Regulars, and hilarious lectures by MIT physics professors. The profs were treated like pop stars by attendees fascinated by the possibility of traveling back in time.

East Campus housemaster Julian Wheatley, also a senior lecturer in Chinese at MIT, wore a name tag suggesting he had come back from 2121 to attend the convention.

"East Campus is known for taking a certain kind of zany approach to science," Wheatley said.

Centrally located on the MIT campus, the East Campus dormitory houses students with a reputation for turning out offbeat inventions, such as a person-sized hamster wheel and a roller coaster built from two-by-fours.

The East Campus dorm's peculiar reputation and the Time Traveler Convention's far out theme may explain why so many people made the effort to travel in driving rain to a two-hour event.

MIT's Dorai gave interviews ahead of time to major media outlets to ensure that no one in the future missed his invitation: to share chips and soda with people sporting tweed jackets and canes, and those dressed-up as their favorite science fiction and fantasy characters.

But when attendees gathered outside for a raucous countdown at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, nothing appeared on the makeshift landing pad at the coordinates Dorai set for the time travelers.

Fog from an aqueous smoke machine rolled across the empty landing area, which lay at one end of a sand volleyball court in the East Campus courtyard. One person in the crowd shouted, "Happy New Year," while another suggested the time travelers may have mistakenly set their watches for Central Standard Time.

A group of students then raided a plate of treats set out for the time travelers, while others snapped pictures of the scene with their cell phones and digital cameras.

Shauna Anthony and Sara Moore, the New School University graduate students, also fretted over what might happen if they got what they came for: a visit from their future selves.

"What if the future Shauna came back with just one leg?" asked Moore. "We'd spend the rest of our lives worrying about how and when that would happen."

LINK TO COMPLETE ARTICLE
OFFICIAL TIME TRAVELERS CONVENTION WEBSITE