A guy walks up to you and says, “If you press this button, you can go back in time.” Now, here is the setup, and you do not know this when he tells you, but you need to know it now, so things make sense in a minute. If you press the button, you can go back in time. However, you can never loop yourself. If you were destined to die one year from today, and that was your natural death date, then the farthest back you could go would be exactly one year and nine months prior to your birth. You will never be able to loop yourself. You will also never be able to go forward in time.

So you press the button and go back, say in my particular case, 112 years. I would never be able to go forward 112 years back into the future to my current time.

All right, now that we have gotten the logistics out of the way, here is my question to you. Would you press the button?

And if so, what year would you go to?

Maybe it is just the man that I am, but if a man walks up to me and says, “If you press this button, you can go back in time as far as you want,” I am absolutely pressing that button because, you know, dinosaurs.

I would be like, “Yeah, I am in. Let’s go see a living T-Rex.” I press the button, poof, I am back in time. Being fortunate enough to live in an area where a T-Rex could actually be seen as a wild animal, so I would not even have to travel. I could basically just stand there, go back to a time when it was alive, and see it. The button is smart enough to know not to drop me in some moment like 30 seconds before the T-Rex dies. It is going to put me in a time when I would actually see a T-Rex.

At that point, I would be sitting there thinking, “Well, that was pretty cool. All right, let’s go see medieval England.” I press the button, and sure enough, because of the rules of the button that I did not fully think through, I would not be able to go forward in time. At that point, I would think, “Well, let me go back to my time.” That does not work. “Let me try again.” I would keep trying to press the button to go forward in time, and then I would suddenly realize that I cannot go forward at all.

Clearly, I am thinking the button is broken. So I say, “Let me go back one year.” I press the button, and poof, I am back one year. At this point, the realization hits me. Oh no, I really messed up.

Now I need to try and remember where I am on the dinosaur timeline and which other cool dinosaurs I want to see that are still alive. All of a sudden I am like, “Let me see a Triceratops, a Carnotaurus, a Mosasaurus.” I do not know. And this is where the panic sets in.

Now I realize I cannot go forward in time. I am in a time where there are dinosaurs, and realistically, there are probably no humans in this area. Even if there are humans nearby, my ability to communicate with them is not going to be great. I could probably stand up for myself, but I do not think we are necessarily going to get along, and I do not think they are going to keep me alive long term.

So I sit there and think, “Okay, I want to see the creation of the universe.” Well, I do not know if you realize this, but at the moment of the creation of the universe, you would die. You might see it for a very brief second, but then you would die because you would be in space, not on Earth. That is for one of two reasons. First, Earth has been moving since the beginning of time, so it would not be in the same location. Second, who even knows if Earth exists yet when you go back to the creation of the universe.

Now, me being the godly, religious person I am, I would realize that heaven exists, and I would go to heaven.

I like to think that heaven is linear. Much like time on Earth, if a person dies today, they are in heaven today, not at all points forward and backward in time. So I go to heaven, and I am the first guy there.

I see God, and I am like, “What’s up, dude? I like what you have done with the place.” God looks at me and says, “You messed up. You pressed the button too many times, didn’t you?” I look at God and say, “Maybe.”

Now the realization of my mistake really starts to sink in. It is going to be millions of years before people start showing up in heaven. Let’s assume Adam really did live to around 900 years old. I am going to be sitting here hanging out with God, like, “So what do you want to talk about?” And God is like, “Bro, I am busy. I am being God and stuff.” And I am like, “No, no, it’s cool. I just figured it is you and me up here. We could have a little chat.”

So God is sitting there, and then he makes Adam and Eve. I am like, “What?” All of a sudden, I realize humans are eventually coming up here. But again, Adam has to live 900 years before we are hanging out with him up here.

So I am up here playing checkers with God, and I am like, “Can you just let me win once?” And God is like, “Sure, I will let you win this once. Just kidding.” He still does not let me win at checkers. And I am like, “Okay, fine. Let’s play. How many numbers am I holding behind my back?” And God, being God, is like, “Three,” every single time.

Then I say, “Okay, I am thinking of a number between one and a billion.” God looks at me and says, “514.” Really, what I am saying here is that God is omnipotent. He knows exactly what is going to happen, what has happened, and he has mastered the universe. He just knows everything.

Finally, Adam shows up. God has been really cool, and in heaven, everybody speaks the same language. So I am like, “Dude, what’s up?” Adam is like, “Hey man. Are you the first human and God’s first child?” I look at him, all shy and bashful, and say, “No.” He looks at me and says, “What do you mean? Where is everybody else?” And I say, “No, I am just the first one here.” He goes, “Oh. Well, how old are you?” I tell him my age. He asks, “So how did you die?” And I say, “Well, I pushed a button.”

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