We
finished our breakfast and were sipping on our coffee. It was mid-morning and
the lunch crowd was yet to start drifting in. No one was sitting close to us so
were free to continue talking about things that if said aloud in an everyday
crowd would land us in the loony bin.
I
asked Lighty, “Who saw the first mushroom cloud?”
He
said, “It was me. I was just coming around the dark side of the moon when I
spotted it in the southwestern part of your country.”
“Did
you know instinctively, or did you have to learn more about it?”
Lighty:
“We can detect certain elements from a long way off. Radioactive uranium is one
of our favorites.”
“So,
you’ve been hanging around on earth ever since just waiting for the “Big One”?
Lighty:
“Now you have to understand. We don’t promote nuclear war or do anything in any
way to incite war of any kind. But we’ve noticed, and I don’t think you’ll deny
this, you humans rather seem to enjoy war. I’ve spent some time in libraries.
My research has taught me that if a human invented a weapon, he eventually used
it. Rocks, spears, knives, bows and arrows, swords, pistols, cannons, rifles,
machine guns, poison gas, fighter airplanes, battleships, etc. Should I go on?”
“You
made your point.”
“So,
if it happens, and earth destroys itself in a cataclysmic nuclear holocaust, we
want to be there. Like I said, there is something about incredibly hot
temperatures and the resulting melting of elements that we find irresistible. For
creatures like us, it’s like cascading through a supernova.”
I
began to put the pieces together. The upcoming Cuban Missile Crisis will excite
the FTLs, but when nothing happens, they’ll be deflated. They wait around a few
more years (36 to be exact), then get tired of waiting and decide to visit
other parts of the universe.
I
ask Lighty, “How do you feel about your new assignment?”
LIghty:
“If what you say is true, and we leave earth in 1999, then dropping back by
here from time to time after 1999 doesn’t bother me. I don’t mind working
alone. The leaders tend to look down on some of us. To be honest with you, I
get more respect from humans.”
I
was a surprised by what I then said, “I like you, Lighty. And I wish you the
best. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.
Was
my mission completed? If it was, why was I still in this time period? Once
again, something wasn’t adding up. Let’s review the following passage from a
previous chapter:
Why
did it take so long to develop time travel? The basic technology had been
available since the late twentieth century. Technicians were in the right
ballpark when they figured out how to integrate and overlay the videotaped
version of one person into the videotaped (I’m using videotaping as a generic
term for any system or method of audio-visually recording) version of another
person, e.g., injecting Jerry Seinfeld into a scene from a Humphrey Bogart
movie. The step that was missing was to make it a 3D experience. That happened
sometime in the 25th century.
But
how do you videotape all of human history and then put it in comprehensible
compartmentalized chunks? I can’t answer that. But obviously someone or some
group figured how to do it.
But
why do it? Because it had to be done. Humanity was on the verge of being lost.
Most humans were not reprehensible or unredeemable. Given the right
opportunity, most humans would lead productive, non-violent lives.
I
want you to especially look at the second paragraph in the above passage. How
did they videotape human history? How do you videotape something that has
disappeared in the mists of time, something that has no reality, virtual or
otherwise? Once again, I have to say I don’t know. But if you pressure me to
speculate, I will. When we look at a star a thousand light years away from
earth, we’re looking at the star as it looked one thousand years ago. We’re
looking (seeing, viewing, visually absorbing) the past. So, the answer from a
non-physicist such as myself would be we would have to go somewhere in the
cosmos where we would be seeing earth as its past unfolded. If you want to
record the last six thousand years of human history, then go out into space six
thousand light years from earth.
But
the time period I was working in seemed to be limited to 1920-1970. As far as I
could ascertain, after my death in 2030, I had been taken about a thousand
years into the future where I had been re-integrated and enhanced and then sent
back into the past. That means the time period I was assigned to had to be
videotaped from a distance of at least a thousand light years. But for that to
work, the recorder would have to be able to travel almost instantaneously from
earth to a point where the recording machine would be operated. The other piece
of technology that I realized would also be needed would be a telescope so
powerful it could see people on earth going about their everyday tasks. It all
sounds impossible but something like that had to be in the realm of reality.
And I would say, that by definition, reality is real, whether we believe or
not.
Who
knows? Maybe the videotape machine was a super-telescope that recorded the
whole earth in minute detail as it rotated on its axis and as it revolved
around the sun. Then the tape would be taken back to earth where it was processed
into compartmentalized, comprehensible chunks. Then the 3D process and
integration of agents such as myself into the chunks.
Maybe
that’s how it works. I’ll say it again. I don’t really know how it works. I
just know it works. But no matter how it works, one factor seems to be
paramount and sui generis to the whole concept of time travel: superluminal
speed.
If
my sponsors had access to superluminal speed, why did they send me back to the
past to make sure they would have it?
They
already had it!
But
the reason they had it was because I had convinced the FTLs to stay in touch
with earth after 1999.
We’re
going in circles. It’s time to take a mental break.
But
the story’s not over yet. I’m still circulating in a fifty-year span of time.
It’s
1941. A war is going on in Europe and East Asia, but America won’t be
officially in until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. From the color of
leaves on the trees, it’s sometime in the autumn, late October perhaps. I’m no
longer near the coast or a swamp. The landscape is rolling hills and as I walk
my boots attract red clay. North Georgia?
In
a grove of trees, there is a small cemetery with a metal fence around it. I decide
to take a closer look. A large grey headstone seems to have a magnetic quality that draws me to it. Two names are on it. Husband and wife; man and woman. The man died in
1882. The woman a year later. A poem entitled ‘Falling Star’ is inscribed below
their names:
It was a falling star
She saw out the window
And she told him
It was meant for them
So the night would
Be remembered
And the feelings returned
Into his heart
And there they lingered
And he knew there would be
Always a memory
Of that night
Of the falling star
The
only horizon we never want to see or reach is the final one.
For
some reason, reading the poem reminded me of something the man and woman of the
future said just before they sent me back into the past. At the time they said
it, I found it totally puzzling. I still do. It seems the exact opposite of
what one would normally think. It went like this: “We won’t leave earth because
we have to; we’ll leave earth because we don’t have to.”
How
many humans will live on earth before mankind begins its journey to the stars?
Fifty billion is a nice round number. Is
it fair that only a minute percentage of those humans will have the chance to
visit Mars, the center of the Milky Way, Andromeda Galaxy? Who in the universe,
appreciates the universe the most? You have to be conscious to appreciate
something,
Space
needs more molecules. They don’t call it empty for nothing. Humans can fill the
void. I would say it’s our destiny but that would be assuming too much. Let’s
just say it’s our hope and aspiration.
Immortality
without infinite space to explore means eventual boredom and dissolution. We
may not die but we might as well be good as dead.
I’m
beginning to wonder if my sponsors will be give me some new guidance. Or will I
be spending eternity in a fifty-year loop? The answer will, hopefully, come
sooner than later.
Meanwhile,
it’s time to resume whatever it was I was now doing.
Leaving
the small cemetery, I head north by northwest.
Someday
the sun will quit shining and the earth will die. Then Humanity will have to
move on, whether it wants to or not.
After
a few days of aimless wandering, I see two people standing under a tree. The
tree sits alone in the middle of a pasture. Behind the pasture low hills
accumulate toward the western horizon. It’s high noon and smoke from what must
be a small campfire rises and filters through the leaves and branches of the
tree. As I get closer, I see that the two people are my sponsors, the man and
the woman from the future.
Savory
meat is being cooked on the campfire. They invite me to dine with them.
The
woman speaks first, “You have to try and understand. We can’t explain
everything at once.”
I
respond, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the last few days and I’ve come to
that same conclusion. This is a complicated business. May I ask when you two
were originally born?”
The
man, “You saw our graves with its headstone a few days ago.”
So,
the man and the woman of the future were really the man and woman of the past.
The
woman added, “Everything happens in the future. But the future is reliant on
the past. Our job is to make the past fit the future. We utilize people such as
yourself to assist in our endeavor.”
I
said, “Where does God fit into all this?”
The
man, “God works through humans.”
I
replied, “But the problems seem insurmountable.”
The
woman, “We only deal with good problems, not bad problems.”
I
asked, “What’s a good problem?”
The
man, “A good problem is one that you can eventually solved. Thankfully, most
every problem is a good problem. If it wasn’t, we’d be in the wrong business.”
I
said, “I sense there’s a catch.”
The
woman, “It is. You’re never through. But that's also the glory of it all”
The
man, “Every solution is a temporary solution. It’s ironic, of course, but every
solution usually leads to a new problem.”
I
laughed, “Well, you’ve got job security.”
We
then ate. It was a rather cool day so sitting around the campfire was a
pleasant experience,
There
was still a lot of explaining that needed to be done, but now was not the time.
Before leaving the woman said,
“We
take a novel approach to history. From our bird’s eye view of earth from
thousands of light years away, we are developing and implementing a plan to
send all humanity to the stars. We call it the ‘Great Preparation.’ We won’t
leave earth until the plan is achievable. Until next time.”
Obviously,
I still had things to do. But not in 1941. It was now 1959.
