Dear Dr. Eldritch,
I recently received my doctorate in physics, and am working in a top-secret research facility, funded significantly by the government. I can’t tell you what we’re working on, but if you made some high-odds bets that time travel will be available soon, it would be safer than the stock market, if you know what I mean.

But this isn’t what I’m concerned about. All of my colleagues tell stories of how their life’s work manifested in something going horribly wrong, and the results threatened to destroy them, their families, the country, or even the whole world. Like the time some super-intelligent prairie dogs escaped from a secret government lab near a missile silo and almost started World War III. Every crisis so far has been averted at the last moment, but I’d hate to be responsible for the one that didn’t get stopped.

It’s not like I’m blinded by hubris or anything. I just know that we’re close to making the world a much better place in which to live. Any advice on how to avoid having it all go wrong?

-- Apu in Massachusetts

Dear Apu,
Zanthor save us from well-intentioned scientists! Did you know that the inventors of the ballista, dynamite, the modern helicopter, and nuclear bombs all predicted that their inventions would render war obsolete, because it would be just too horrible? This tells me that Men of Science have no clue about how Men of War think. You envision elevating Humanity to near-godlike heights. Generals also desire rising to those same heights, to drop things on people they don’t like. The more horrible the better, according to them. History has effectively demonstrated that there’s no limit to the atrocities military-minded humans will inflict on each other, so stop looking for an upper boundary. But I digress. Let’s get back to your question…

So, you want to avoid having your Life’s Work threaten the world? Well, you can’t. Wait, I take that back; maybe you can if you give up physics and spend your life doing something obscure and harmless. Like researching the life cycle those tiny fish who live in underwater caves. If you insist in pursuing your leading-edge theoretical research, it’s only a matter of Time (Ha ha! Science joke!) before your brilliant breakthrough bursts out of control, is defiled by the warmongers, or both. All scientific inventions by geniuses go down this path, so don’t feel bad. Just hope that you’re not around when the chips come tumbling down like radioactive hailstones.

I could put you in touch with some guys who have a time-travel device that was sent back from the future, but I think it best that I don’t. Your Defense-Department masters would just want to use it to go back and wipe out potential enemies before they realized they wanted to attack us. That would tear huge rips in the Time-Space continuum and threaten the existence of the entire universe. Wouldn’t it be ironic if this was the apocalypse that couldn’t be stopped at the last moment? You’d do better with the fish.

Good luck, and let me know how it comes out!

-- Dr. Eldritch