By Lisa Kaczke

Austin Powers has done it. So have Bill and Ted. And Marty McFly. But at the Time Traveler Convention at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on May 7, actual time travelers were no-shows, despite MIT students creating a landing pad for them.

Although the organizers were not expecting any time travelers, Amal Dorai, the mastermind behind the convention, took the precaution of asking for proof if time travelers were going to attend. “We welcome any sort of proof, but things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty, or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated,” according to the convention information on Dorai’s Web site, www.web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler.

Dorai was not giving interviews due to needing to study for his finals. But those from the present, who were asked to register and were placed on a guest list, packed the Hall in the Walker Memorial Building on MIT’s East Campus. As students squashed into the crowded lobby waiting to get blue wristbands allowing them to enter the hall, several people with signs were yelling “Future people, go away!” and “Future people, don’t take our jobs!” to the amusement of those waiting.

With the exception of a few non-MIT students who were turned away, everyone who wanted to attend could, said Erin Rhode, who was in charge of the guest list and correspondence. After the hall was filled to the 465-person capacity, the overflow of attendees were able to watch the convention on television as it was happening in an upstairs room of the building, said Rhode. There were few incidents involving the guest list, although one man not on the guest list thought he should be admitted because he had invented a time machine, Rhode said. He brought a book that he claimed he had written and pointed out a complicated blueprint to Rhode, saying that it was plans for a time machine. Even though he was placed on the waitlist, he stayed at the front of the line and was eventually admitted, Rhode said.

Although most who attended were from MIT, four students drove the three hours from Yale University to attend. They had heard about it through the Cat and Girl Web site, www.catandgirl.com, the comic strip that inspired the convention. To kill time before the convention began, the group juggled pins in a corner of the hall.

“Our finals are over and we were bored,” senior psychology major Melody Lu said. “I’m looking for someone to do something weird.”

Dressed in a white shirt, blue skirt and red shoes, Boston resident Erika Hutchinson believed she was Dorothy Gale from the “Wizard of Oz.” “I stepped out of my house and I was here. Maybe someone will help me find my way home,” Hutchinson said.

The audience was entertained by speeches from MIT professors and those who claimed they had traveled in time. During a speech by physics Professor Edward Farhi, who has tried to build a time machine, Farhi received an unexpected cellphone call from Albert Einstein, currently living in the center of the galaxy. During his chat with Einstein in front of the audience, Farhi received some disturbing news.

“What?! Relativity is wrong?!” Farhi asked. He then joked that the laws of physics had changed and that the theory of relativity was no longer right. Joe Gibbons, a visual arts professor at MIT, revealed to the audience that he was a time traveler.

“I thought everyone time traveled,” Gibbons said.

He was sad that time traveling was used for entertainment value. “It’s not all fun and games,” Gibbons said.

He brought a small inflatable dinosaur because he felt that if he had brought the real thing to prove that he was a time traveler, humans would domesticate it like a house cat.

But Gibbons did impart some knowledge from his travels. He said that there will be a time of peace that will last 50 years, where there will be no war and disease will be eliminated. But because people will not have anything to do, they will become bored and miserable, leading to murder being legalized. The popularity of the convention was due to a major publicity campaign.

Those who volunteered to publicize were asked to write down the details on acid-free paper stuck into obscure library books or carve them into clay tablets, according to Dorai’s Web site. Dorai also asked that when they spread the word, to include the latitude and longitude of the location of the convention so those in the future could find MIT after it has disappeared. For the MIT students living in a hall, called Putz, in the present time, they started advertising the convention by posting ads on Craigs List (www.craigslist.org) and other Web sites. But it wasn’t until the Weblog, “Slashdot,” picked it up that it started gaining momentum, Rhode said. Slashdot calls itself a Weblog that covers “news for nerds,” according to science.slashdot.org. The convention made the front page of the New York Times and was mentioned on the Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live,” Rhode said. They were hoping to get a mention on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” but to their sadness, they didn’t.

The convention didn’t fail to have its opponents. The Australian group Destination Day Bureau, who claim people of the future are already here, were angry with those involved in the convention because the Bureau was not acknowledged to have done a time traveling convention first. In an e-mail to the convention’s address, they requested that the convention only be about Destination Day, which takes place each year on March 31 and began this year.

“The Bureau knows who you are. The Bureau knows where you live. I hope we have made ourselves clear,” the e-mail concluded.