User blog:ThothDjehuti/What Was Dalton Really Up To? Part 3: The Realm of Time

In case you missed Part One and Part Two of this series of blogs, I'm basically arguing that Dalton Teague created OmniPark to help humanity reach some kind of enlightenment. Yeah, it sounds crazy. Read the other two posts and catch up, then you can shittalk me.

Okay, now it's time to dive into how Dalton tried to achieve this in The Realm of Time... which was always one of my favorites! I mean, I don't know how anybody else would have gone where Dalton went with this idea. The attraction, of course, was the the Time Tunnel ride. Which was sort of Steampunk before anyone knew what Steampunk was. And of course it was VERY loosely based on the H.G. Wells novel "The Time Machine." But as usual, Dalton had something different to say, beyond that story's scope. So in one sense, Time Tunnel a pretty straightforward dark ride, right? You get to see Eloi and Morlocks, and then travel further Into the the Earth's future where you see these weird life forms like sentient octopi that climb trees, and giant penguins that breach like whales, and of course that huge mantis shrimp creature everybody loves!

And that's kind of the scope of the H.G. Wells story.

But Dalton doesn't stop there, does he???

No because after you escaped the snapping mouthparts of the mantis shrimp creature, the vehicle flips around. And you're pulled deep into the past. That's not in the book. That was all Dalton.

And what happens as you're pulled into the past? You're basically Free-falling back through the formation of continents and life on earth, and the formation of matter and energy itself. Ultimately you're confronted with this moment of: "What came before the Big Bang?"

You know, it's extraordinary that in 1977, Dalton and his team of Technosophers were deploying this vision of how the universe itself came to be. I don't even know if Stephen Hawking had written his book at that time. I don't know if anybody was talking about space-time in popular culture in that way.

And here's Dalton, building a ride that rockets you billions of years into the future...

Then billions of years into the past...

Which invites you to consider this extraordinary idea:

What was there before the Big Bang?

Talk about your ultimate numinous mystery.