[Scene: The Hen Tie park theater. Gurio Umino and Eleanor Heltry are watching the last few minutes of the movie 'Back to the Future'. Or trying to, because the person sitting in front of Eleanor is talking on his cellphone.]
Umino: Could you keep it down? We are trying watch the movie.
[The guy stands up and turns to reveal 6'3" of pure muscle]
Guy: Did you say something, Pipsqueak?
Umino: Errr...no?
Guy: That's what I thought.
[He goes back to talking on his phone until El boots him in the back on the head]
El: Yes, he said 'Shut up, Jackass!'
[The man turns and stand and El jumps to her feet, getting in his face and snarling under her breath]
Guy: Damn. You're lucky you're cute. [Turns off his phone and sits down. El and Umino watch the rest of the movie then file out into the park then head toward the nearby Gelato stand.]
Umino: Will you allow me to buy you a gelato?
El: [scans board in the far distance] Lemon Oreo.
Umino: So...um... [pulls up the sleeve of his coat to read his wrist] What did you think of the movie?
El: I liked it. That was a good movie.
Umino: Oh, um... [checks his forearm] ...what did you like best about it?
El: I liked the fact that the father character was a social awkward creep, but he managed to find love anyway.
[Umino's jaw drops]
Umino: Are you sure you're real, and not some robot girlfriend prototype from Japan?
El: Are you saying I act like a robot?
Umino: No...I...um...it's just you're too perfect...I mean for me... I mean..not for me...I mean...You're tall and you're beautiful and you stand up to bullies and you design lasers... and...I... um..I better stop talking before I get myself into more trouble...
[El chuckles under her breath as Umino order. A cone with Lemon Oreo for her, and Chocolate Caramel with Gummi Worms for him.]
Umino: Um...looks at his arm...how is your gelato.
El: It's really good. Want to try some? [hold out the cone to him]
Umino: [red in the face] You'd let me lick your icecream?
El: How else are you going to taste it?
Umino: Don't you think that's a little gross?
El: [rolls her eyes] Honestly. What is the difference between this? [licks Umino's gelato] And this? [tries to kiss him on the lips]
Umino: WHOA! [backs away and tries to keep from fainting] I AM NOT READY FOR THAT.
El: What? It's just a kiss. I told you we aren't getting any farther than that.
Umino: Wow, you are like the creepiest girl I've ever met.
El: Is that bad?
Umino: Not to me. But I'm starting to realize what Naru meant when she complained about me all these years.
El: [grins] You really like her, don't you?
Umino: Yes, but I like you more.
El: [frowns] Don't say that. You don't have to like some creepy girl you barely know just because she asked you out of a date.
[Umino goes silent and eats his gelato, lost in thought]
El: So what did you think of the movie?
Umino: I couldn't get into it.
El: What! That was a classic feel good comedy! Lighthearted and fun. Nearly perfect. I give it five stars!
Umino: There were too many anachronisms and it just ruined it for me.
El: We just watched a movie about ordinary flesh and blood mortal humans folding and tearing their way through the interdimensional temporal fabric of the universe by driving an automobile, and you are hung up on things like what year Jonny B. Goode came out?
Umino: Um...that is a very oddly specific description of time travel...But in answer to your question, yes. Time travel, is impossible, so it doesn't bother me since it is complete fantasy, unlike the set pieces, which are real and easily researched.
El: Oh, really? Time travel is impossible? You seem oddly sure of yourself.
Umino: If time travel were possible, someone would have done it already.
El: How do you know they haven't?
Umino: Because if they did people would be going back and changing things constantly introducing paradoxes and everything would go haywire. For example, if I could travel back in time, what's to stop me from rewriting the Harry Potter series before J. K. Rowling and becoming a billionaire?
El: First of all, you can't travel through time because you would need to convert all your matter to energy, which you can't do, not without dying. Second of all, time travel requires godlike power, which you do not possess. And thirdly, if you did possess godlike power, I can't believe you'd waste it just to steal a bunch of children's stories away from their rightful creator.
Umino: [sweatdrops] I didn't say I'd do it. I was just throwing that out as an example.
El: Ok, what would you do?
Umino: I'd travel back to save the Great Library at Alexandria.
El: [chuckles] Now that would be a wasted trip.
Umino: Why?
El: Even if you figure out when exactly it burned, one lone teenager, unfamiliar with the landscape and language verses an entire army? It's just going to burn down anyway. People had been setting fire to the place for centuries. Arson was written into its destiny.
Umino: Destiny?
El: Destiny is like the gravity of time...(how do I put this into simple terms)...[sees a stream trickling nearby] Think of time like a river. It flows and ebbs but it doesn't not change it's course, since the river has carved itself into rock and soil.
Umino: The Butterfly Effect-
El: A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil starts a hurricane in Texas? That is complete and utter nonsense. Time is a force of the universe, and forces of the universe are never fragile. You stand at a river and throw in a rock. The river swallows the rock and ripples a little. Maybe. But the rock just sinks like it was never there. You push in a boulder. Maybe you can see the boulder, but the river rushes around it, so its still the same river, but with a boulder in it. If you want to change the river you really have to do something major. Something the river just can't correct. But even then, you can't control the river, so more than likely, you and everything you care about will be swept away. Especially since its is against the laws of physics to be two places at once so you can't travel within your own lifetime. That is why the few beings who are capable of time travel simply don't bother.
Umino: You seem to have thought about this a lot.
El: I...write a lot of science fiction.
Umino: I'd like to read one some your stories.
El: No you wouldn't. My stories are not nice.
Umino: Oh. I still would like to read them. You have some interesting ideas.
El: Since we are speaking in purely hypothetical fantasy, if you could go back in time, and assassinate one person, who would you kill?
Umino: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.
El: [smiles] I'm impressed. Most people would say Hitler.
Umino: Without Kaiser Wilhelm II setting the stage for him by orchestrating the horrors of WWI, Adolf Hitler probably would have probably spent his life painting landscapes in jail. I would have said his Grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, but I couldn't bring myself to hurt a woman. Not even hypothetically.
El: But suppose you could. Suppose, you had a chance to make the world a better place by killing Queen Victoria and preventing her legacy of terror...
Umino: Um... I ...
El: Now imagine Queen Victoria is your great-great-great-grandmother.
[Umino looks at her and sees her face is deadly serious]
El: Imagine that stepping outside your timeline to stop her reign of evil will erase you and your brother completely out of existence.