Wasted Trips

A David Sands Competition story by John Currier

Sep 17, 2025

An entry in The Sands of Time Writing Competition

Wasted Trips by John Currier

I'm not entirely sure how I did it. I haven't been able to re-create it. Maybe it had something to do with the location, or with the radio transmitter station that sat outside my back fence. Whatever it was, I can't recapture it. I brought all my equipment with me and even tried to reposition it all, just as I remembered it, but no luck.

Even if I never get it to work again, at least I can say I've actually traveled in time. Not many people can say that. I can even prove it. Or I have some pretty good evidence, anyway.

Time travel was never the goal, you understand. I was just killing time. I was right out of college, looking for something to take my mind off a dead-end job. Being a delivery boy is okay, but it's not very fulfilling. Not much room for advancement either.

I was playing with some electrical equipment I'd scrounged up--some wire, an old oscilloscope, radio tubes, a transformer and such. I didn't even know what I was going to do with it all. Well, I had something of a plan.

I should add that this was back in the 1980’s. I was trying to create a stereo speaker that didn't need actual woofers and tweeters. I wanted to come up with a way to produce an electronic field around the listener, around me, which would allow me to shut out external noise; hear perfect sound, unhindered by the limitations of speaker materials; and do it in such a way that it couldn't be heard outside of a specific, and very limited, radius. You could say I wanted to create headphones without the need for headphones. Pretty ambitious for its day I suppose, and I had no clue how I might go about it. I had just enough electronics savvy to be dangerous. In fact, I probably could have killed myself. But I didn't. I traveled in time!

Actually, I was pretty stupid about the whole thing. I'm more and more convinced about my lack of brains now that I find there's no way to make the journey anymore. I could have seen great events in history, met famous people, changed the outcome of battles. God! Who knows what I could have done? But I, in my adolescent short-sightedness, decided to play games.

By accident, I found I could make controlled leaps in time and get back to the present (thank God for that). It was just plain strange. I got set up for my first attempt at EFS--that was my name for it--Electronic Field Sound, and flipped the switch and boom, I was in the past. God, it was weird. It took me a while to figure out what had happened. I'm just glad I had the volume set low. That's what determines how long your journey lasts. It was the wave-length of the signal that determined how far back you go. I guess how far forward too, though I'm not sure that would work. I used a pretty short wavelength--I was working with pure tones, not a jumble of musical signals--and I learned that the shorter the wavelength, the closer to the present you'd wind up. I can't see how you could get sent into the future. That may not be possible.

When I figured out how the timing worked, I decided to settle a question I'd had ever since I first read "The Time Machine". Could an item really exist alongside itself? I though the redundancy was impossible. I was wrong.

I had a dollar bill sitting on my dresser. It had been there for a day or so. I picked it up and sent myself back in time. Just a few hours. When I arrived there, sure enough, the dollar bill was still in my hand and there on the dresser was a dollar bill with the same serial number. I left the bill on the dresser and returned to the present, fully expecting to see two one-dollar bills on the bureau. There was only one.

I was confused for a minute, then I sorted it out. There was only one bill on the dresser because I had taken the one from the present to the past and left it there. So, I thought, there are two bills on that dresser in the past, but now, after I removed one from the present there was still only one here. I concluded that this dollar must be the duplicate. Just to be sure, I tried it again. It was a simple procedure, except when I went back this time, I ran into myself putting a dollar bill on my dresser. I was watching my first experiment!

I'm not sure why it is, but though I was aware of him, that is, me, he wasn't aware of me. What I mean is, for some reason, maybe just for sanity's sake, you can't relate to yourself if you go back in time to meet yourself. Well, sort of, you can. It only works one way. The first trip I made, I appeared to be alone, and maybe I was. But the second trip was different. On that trip, even though I couldn't talk to the other me, I could see me. I wonder if, even now, as I scribble these notes, if I'm not watching me as the result of some future trip to the past, my present.

I don't understand it all, but I know I didn't care for being in a room with myself. It was just too much. I decided to avoid that confusion from then on.

I put my dollar bill down after the first time-traveling "me" had faded back to his present and hoped I'd be done with this trip before another me followed. I looked at the three dollar bills on the dresser, the original, the one from my first trip and my latest addition. When I returned to the present, I imagined, there should be two bills on the dresser. My trip ended with that thought and suddenly I was back to my time. I went to the dresser and, sure enough, there were now two identical bills.

"This is great!" I shouted. I realized a guy could get rich doing this, but then a case of rational thinking hit me. How long could I do this back and forth stuff--bumping into myself--before it would get unmanagable? Honestly, I thought I might lose my mind or something. Besides, who would believe I got rich legitimately when they saw my money was all in one-dollar bills, all carrying identical serial numbers? I'd be in the clink before I could get change.

I had to think this out. Then it hit me! I COULD pull this off! I really could!

You see, I remembered that I had this ring, a gold ring. My uncle told me it was gold, and he's a jeweler, so he should know. It had been sitting in my general junk drawer for over a year. I even remembered the date, June 26, 1986. I knew the date because it was the same day that Marsha Mulletson broke up with me--plus, it was my birthday. It was my birthday and she broke up with me! What a jerky thing to do! Anyway, I was at her house to visit when she dropped this bomb on me and I just couldn't believe it. So I left to walk home, taking the long way.

On the way, I swore and stomped and kicked, and in the course of all that, I determined that an old beer bottle was Marsha's butt. I gave it a good swift boot. After the dust cleared, there it was, this dirty old ring. It looked like a man's wedding band, and, as I said, it was gold.

Well, I don't have to tell you that I saw some great possibilities here. I didn't want to screw it up, though. I sat down and started to calculate how I was going to go about this venture.

I decided to play the same game, but with more precision. I didn't want to meet myself again, so I plotted some travel times that would put me at the dresser only when I, in my past, had been at work or asleep.

I gave myself five minute intervals. All I was going to do was put my ring from the present next to the ring in the past. I just hoped my past self wouldn't discover what was going on. I couldn't remember going into that drawer over the last year, but you can never be sure.

It was incredibly easy. I was lucky. I never had looked in that drawer in the past year--well there was once, but at the time, the rings hadn't multiplied much, so I didn't notice anything odd. If I had only known!

It went on for months--going and returning and opening the drawer and closing it and taking a ring from the present and leaving a ring in the past--all the time watching the rings add up in my general junk drawer of today. I got smart, too, finally. The drawer actually got full at one point, and I wasn't sure where to go with it all, so I decided the past was a good place. I emptied the present-day drawer and then started going back to the night before to add buckets of rings. Going back to a time when I was aware of my experiment, I thought it wise to leave myself a note explaining what was going on. That was pretty neat, getting a note from my future self. Anyway, the rings really started to add up now.

Yes, it all added up and now I'm a very rich man. I wonder if Marsha Mulletson knows what she did for me. I'll never have to worry about money again. When I decided I could easily afford it, I moved into a new place. It was then that the journeys stopped. The old place changed hands and was torn down. After numerous attempts at re-establishing my time traveling capability, I re-bought the land in hopes of being able to regain the elements necessary to time travel. So far, though, nothing has worked.

Now, don't take this next thing wrong, because I appreciate the money, I really do. But I feel like those trips in time were wasted. I'd sure like to see Lindbergh landing in Paris, or watch the attack on Pearl Harbor, but I missed out. Who knows, maybe it was impossible to travel beyond the room my equipment was in. I never so much as tried. How stupid!

I'm going to keep plugging away at it, but until I get it all figured out again, I'm stuck here, in the present, with my comfortable life, my hodgepodge of electrical equipment and my two identical one-dollar bills.

Wasted Trips

A David Sands Competition story by John Currier

Wasted Trips by John Currier

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