I had a dream that I had travelled back in time and wound up in a tiny, non-descript bar populated with unremarkable people without any concerns about giving contextual clues based on their dress, hair styles or otherwise. The bar itself was void of newspapers, posters, vending machines, branded taps or bottles and of course, this being my dream, I knew that I needed to identify the year I was in without letting on I was a time traveller. So what do you talk to the patrons about?
“Hey, how about that president huh?”
“We don’t talk politics since Kennedy.”
Well, we’re past 1960. It’s a little unfair that I wasn’t giving myself more information for what I believe is a top tier time traveller question but so be it.
“Fair enough, you folks interested in the space program?”
“Lost interest after the landing.”
Why would that be a reasonable second conversation thread to start? The president question was gold, but this was just silly. My unconscious brain should really be better than that, for one thing, I only really know that NASA was founded in the 1940’s, landed on the Moon in 1969, Pathfinder landed on Mars in 1997 and then anything modern is all SpaceX. Good enough I suppose, I guess it’s some time past 1970.
“OK friend, tell me about that Apple company huh.”
At which point I woke up. No one was sitting at the bar on their phone, so perhaps that wasn’t the smartest question to ask. But in waking retrospect, I’m fairly happy with my choice of questions given the ridiculous parameters my subconscious mind presented me and the sullen, unhelpful chap I was talking to. I can’t help but wonder though, which is less likely, time travel or finding a bar that didn’t have someone who wanted to express their political opinion.