Back to the Future

I could count on the fingers of a thousand hands the number of movie characters I wish I’d been.

From Jefferson Smith to T.E. Lawrence, Philip Marlowe to Ferris Bueller, Indiana Jones to Scrooge McDuck, under my sheets in bed at night, I’ve done them all.

But I’ve always had a particular penchant for Marty McFly, hero of the time-travel trilogy Back to the Future.

Part of me will never be satisfied ‘til I’ve switched on the time circuits, checked the flux capacitor, head-butted the steering wheel, accelerated to 88 mph and travelled back in time to screw up my parents’ marriage.

Ever since reading H.G. Wells’s awful novel The Time Machine as a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the space-time continuum. I once tried to chart it on my bedroom wall, but I had a small bedroom and I ran out of space.

I even tried writing a book, Build Your Own Time Machine the Doc Brown Way, but my parents grounded me for two months when I poured plutonium into the tank of their Citroen 2CV and crashed into their gazebo at high speed. “Great Scott!” they cried as I crawled out of the radioactive wreckage. “Woh!” I said. “That’s pretty heavy!” “Heavy?” they said. “What’s weight got to do with it? Are you having another one of your “moments”?”

I wasn’t, and I never lost my fascination for time travel. The prospect of knowing the future is just too big a pull. Imagine! As a journalist, I’d be able to name my price.

Which is why I’m writing this column. Last week, I visited my friend Professor Ivor Clue, deputy-head of the Faculty of Futurology at the University of Central Tasmania. (Don’t laugh. Good advice is hard to find. The future, as Clue is fond of saying, is a cut-throat business.)

When it comes to what’s coming, Clue is your man. All seventeen of his degrees were awarded in the 22nd century. The walls of his office are lined with digital certificates.

When I asked him to fill me in about the future, he fixed me with a knowing look and suggested we grab a drink. Apparently, the future held a Bloody Mary, and I was paying.

After a few rounds and the disappearance of my credit card, Clue started to outline his philosophy. If the seas rise, he said, the swimming pool business is finished. The next Messiah will wear Nikes not sandals. And watch out for caterpillars. They’re gonna be huge.

“As for 2004,” he shrugged, when I tried to get something more concrete out of him, “five big stories will dominate the news.”

I got out my notepad, sharpened my pencil, and started to drool tomato juice.

1. Men are from Mars

In March 2004, NASA’s Opportunity rover will make a discovery certain to rewrite the history books (especially the ones with poor sales figures).

Scuttling like a Jack Russell across the deep red bedrock of the planet Mars, Opportunity will sniff something (don’t ask how) and start digging. Two minutes later, astonishing pictures will be beamed back to Earth of what appears to be a human fibula, a fraction of a large human skull (believed to be that of an early homo erectus – the species, not the movie) and a pile of dirty laundry.

This find will be taken as proof that men and women descend from different planets and will result in a proliferation of women-only bars in downtown areas.

2. Olympic trial

Two weeks before the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games, the Greek government will demand the return of the Sydney Olympic stadium.

Sceptics will conclude that this last-minute request is proof of the Greek Olympic Committee’s failure to build a stadium of its own. The Greek government will deny this and submit evidence that the Sydney stadium was built by Poppilopidous & Sons, a Greco-Australian contracting firm, and is therefore rightly the property of the Greek nation whereto it must immediately be shipped in time for the first track and field events.

3. Dean there, won that

After failing miserably in the primaries, wannabe-US President Howard Dean goes back to his Governor’s mansion and receives a call from Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani. “You’re a real hit over here,” says al-Sistani, in his irresistibly seductive manner. “Ever thought of running for Saddam’s job? I’m hearing there’s a vacancy.”

Dean takes his anti-American message to Iraq where he romps home in a landslide, forcing an American military withdrawal. In his victory speech, Dean rolls up the sleeves of his robe, and screams, “Come on! Yeah! No way does this stop at Baghdad! We’re going to Tehran, then Pyongyang, then Islamabad, then Mars! I’m king of the world! Yeah!”

4. WHO you calling fat?

The US, humiliated by the Dean factor, lashes out against an easy target and launches a pre-emptive attack on the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“Not on my watch!” says President Bush about WHO plans to wage war on global obesity. Colin Powell takes the case to the UN with a slide presentation of anorexics. A buxom pre-Raphaelite nude is covered up to avoid embarrassment. France condemns American actions, and in a moving speech Dominique de Villepin suggests that the world lines its stomach with lettuce before eating the meat course. There is widespread confusion about whether this is meant as a metaphor.

Operation Soft Drink (as it becomes known) is run from the studio of Fox News by Don “Rummy” Rumsfeld. Rummy responds to the charge that the military op. – catchphrase: “We smoke-out so you can Coke-out” – is a poor excuse to test new Pentagon weaponry with a wry smirk and a wink of both eyes. A resulting nine-month search for slim people comes up empty.

5. Ivor Clue’s ship comes in

On 14 October 2004, Professor Ivor Clue of the University of Central Tasmania will be given the freedom of the Playboy mansion. In a special ceremony devoted to Clue’s legacy, Senator Hugh Hefner will present Clue with a golden master key that gets him into every bedroom. Standing in a silk paisley robe, Clue thanks the audience of screaming bunnies...

I left Clue at the bar and took the next available bi-plane out of Tasmania. Two days later I received an email from the Professor dated 22 July, 2036. “Our relationship,” it said, “is history.” I couldn’t resist raising a wry “Rummy” smirk.