Did 2017 not turn out exactly how you would have liked it to? Maybe you have a regret here and there. Maybe the entire world just went crazy for the past two years but in hindsight you now know what went wrong? Maybe you just lost your keys, but you know you must have had them yesterday afternoon because you got in the house.
Well, dear friend, fret not. You can now fix all your problems and more with your very own ‘Phone Microwave’ (name subject to change). Follow these few easy peasy steps to build yourself your very own at home time machine for a fraction of what commercial time travel would cost. From the people who brought you societal breakdown in a jar.
If somehow you’ve managed to miss out on Steins;Gate in any of its forms, just go watch it now. Actually wait – build the time machine then go back and watch it earlier!
For the rest of you, maybe it’s been a little while since you last saw Steins;Gate, so here’s a little reminder of Future Gadget #8. You’ve stopped reading and are rewatching the show instead? Good call.
“Also known as the Phonewave (name subject to change) in the official English release. The Phone Microwave (name subject to change) is a Remote-controllable Microwave oven. It heats your meals while you are out, but you need to put foodstuff in the microwave before you leave, which isn’t very sanitary especially in summer. When exposed to an excess of electrons from an external source (such as the 42-inch Braun Tube TV) it can create Kerr black holes, allowing data and objects to travel back in time. However, anything other than data that goes through the black hole is ‘gelified’. Additionally, only objects small enough to fit in the microwave can use it to physically travel back in time (such as bananas). Okabe uses it to send D-Mails back in time, although the mails have a word limit and generally arrive as multiple smaller mails. After Kurisu adds equipment to the microwave to allow one’s memories to travel back in time, it is renamed the Time Leap Machine and is used several times by Okabe to go back in time and prevent Mayuri’s death. After Mayuri is saved, this Future Gadget is disassembled and thrown away, due to the dangers of altering the timeline any further.
The original Japanese translation of this gadget’s name was “Microwave Phone (temp)”.
“A microwave that can be controlled remotely via cell phone. Have food ready for you by the time you get home!
Currently under development. Not yet for sale.” In game text via Steins;Gate Wiki
For this project you will need
- A microwave with a touchpad
- A wi-fi adapter
- A cellular phone device
- Bananas
- An old-fashioned cathode ray tube television – preferably large
- Dk Pepper (note from Animated)
- A couple of genius friends
- A healthy sense of self-delusion
- A lab coat
First here’s just a bit from your new Phone Microwave owner’s manual. You don’t need to know any of this to build your Phone Microwave so feel free to skip to the steps below.
The Phones Microwave functions by creating microscopic Kerr black holes which can be used to instantly send information from one point in space/time to another.
There’s no need to worry about dangerous unexplained phenomena, Kerr black holes are just the name given to regular old Black Holes that do not have any electrical charge. Otherwise, they have the mass and spin of any regular run of the mill Black Hole, so there is nothing to be intimidated about. And best of all, the Kerr black holes created by your new Phone Microwave evaporate by themselves in a manner of seconds. No mess left to clean up when you catch up with your present self!
So how do we get rid of that pesky black hole event horizon , which would prevent the information from ever coming out again? This is why we are creating **uncharged** black holes here. By bombarding these types of black holes with free electrons, we can temporarily negate the event horizon allowing for the free flow of information both in and out!
Since the smaller at home models like this have certain limitations as to the amount of information which can be sent, and a limited transmission window, it is recommended that you decided on the data to be sent ahead of time.
DISCLAIMER – Sending direct memory associated nerve impulse patterns as data may cause headaches or mild migraines in certain users. Discontinue direct memory sending if symptoms persist for more than a few days.
Step 1: First make sure your microwave is functioning correctly. An older model is fine, you don’t need to break the bank on this one. Find yourself some cold fried chicken and warm it up as per your microwave’s suggested settings. If you end up with warm chicken move on to step 2. Otherwise, make sure your microwave is plugged in properly. If all else fails, get another one from a neighbor. If your chicken gellifies, skip to step 4.
IMPORTANT – Make sure your microwave is on a sturdy surface capable of withstanding massive weight.
Step 2: Next, open the microwaves touchpad and install a miniature single board computer such as a Raspberry PI and connect a Wi-Fi adapter. (note for Animated: Just some info: Raspberry PI Zero W is a pi that can create a wireless network if needed. If you need the name of the actual software to program the pi it is called Python.) Ask your genius hacker friend to create a short program that will allow you to control your microwave from your phone or download and install one of the many “smart” appliance apps.
Step 3: Now get a large mover to bring up that enormous tube tv in the room, or a nearby room. For our purposes image quality isn’t a big issue but if you like, maybe get an armchair in front and you can have it do double duty as a lifter and a source of entertainment. Although not crucial, you probably want to get a unit with a remote control, this will make things easier if you don’t have someone available to turn on the tv for you, if you can’t reach it yourself.
Step 4: You are probably getting a bit peckish right about now and that’s normal, you’ve worked hard! Get yourself a banana and put one in the microwave as well. Don’t just put all of them in there at once, that’s silly and wasteful. Turn on your TV to your favorite anime, and use your phone to turn on the microwave for 10 seconds. If you have a warm banana, make yourself a banana split as a consolation prize and start steps 1 through 3 over. If you have an alien banana – congratulations you are ready to start unravelling the fabric of the universe. Move onto step 5.
Step 5: Decide on the life altering tweet you want to send. You will need to craft a 36 bytes message (note from Animated: Fun Fact: I believe emojis count as 1-4 bytes) and have a recipient (phone number to send it to). It can be your own, so no need to worry if you don’t have any friends. (Nerve impulse patterns need specialized headgear to be recorded. We will get build one in future installments). Set your microwave timer for the desired timeframe, make sure your TV is on and get ready to send that text as soon as the microwave turns on. If you get any arc lightning, that’s normal you can ignore it.
And presto, see how easy that was? You’ll wonder why you didn’t do this earlier – and now you can!
For those of you who are a bit more advanced Do it Yourselfers, you can also recreate John Titor’s time machine which will allow you to bodily move through time:
Titor described his time machine on several online forums in 2000 and 2001. One of his first posts described his “stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities”, producing a “standard off-set Tipler sinusoid”.
For this project you will need:
- Two magnetic housing units for the dual micro singularities
- An electron injection manifold to alter mass and gravity of the micro singularities
- A cooling and X-ray venting system
- Gravity sensors, or a variable gravity lock
- Four main cesium clocks
- Three main computer units
These can be used to make a device which can be mounted on a car or truck for mobility.
You can find the entire how-to guide: here.
Final Step: Now that you are a Time Lord, you can take a well-deserved rest. After all, you have all the time in the world.
Have I mentioned how much I love time travel? Trick question – I mention it constantly! My friends worry about me. This is why I loved writing this post so much. However, this post has been in rough draft from for months now and I was about to give up on it when I stumbled on Animated!’s own fantastic post on the subject (HERE). This post discusses the actual real-world potential of time travel considering the modern state of the art in quantum research and compares in to in universe Steins;Gate science. It’s absolutely fascinating. You know what you should do? Use your time machine and go back to read this article first!
Animated was also sweet enough to help me out with this post by making sure I didn’t just spew complete nonsense. THANK YOU ANIMATED!
Day 6 of 12
