-Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
Josef6 made his first posting on the TimeLords message board at 11:36am EST on 21 October, 2000. It read as follows.
Josef6: Hi! I am a time traveler from the 2075 who is currently residing in your era. I am interested in dialogue and virtual interaction with people from your time period. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have for me. I will post further details about my journey, as well as photos and schematics of my temporal warp vehicle, very shortly on this site. Thank you, Josef6.
P.S. For the purposes of anonymity, whose necessity I will explain soon, I am using the pseudonym Josef6. This is, in fact, my military designation, but this can have no meaning for you in your time period and therefore can be safely used. You may refer to me as Josef, Joe, Josef 6, Josef Six, Josef the Sixth, or any other non-abusive variation you choose. I hope our dialogue will be a fruitful one. J6.
Immediate reaction was subdued. This is understandable. The TimeLords had been conned before.
The site itself was founded in 1998 as a free, members-only forum for discussion of time travel related issues. The topic was much in the news at the time due to the recent publication of two papers by MIT physics professors F. Lawrence Graves and Cecil Martine that posited a theory of temporal paradoxes inherent in the singularity event horizon. The professors suggested that it was entirely plausible that manipulation of the energy emitted by black holes -- a phenomenon discovered by reknowned physicist Stephen Hawking -- could result in controlled distortions of the temporal place of space-time. On a theoretical level, this made time travel a practical endeavor, although the technology for such a manipulation did not currently exist and -- admitted the authors of the study themselves -- might never exist. Most intriguingly, however, the authors noted the theoretical exist of observable particles which existed at the event horizon of the singularity -- commonly known as the black hole -- which appeared to travel both forwards and backwards in time simultaneously. The observable presence of naturally occurring temporal paradox confirmed beyond any doubt that time travel could, on a theoretical level, be contained within the realm of currently understood physical laws.
Within six months of the paper’s publication, over a dozen time travel themed websites appeared. A few of them were academically oriented forums for professional physicists employed in academia and government service. They were rife with debate on the Heisenbergian implications of even horizon phenomena and Klepler’s unreliability on the question of quantum paradox, rendered in the mostly indecipherable scientific patois that was typical of specialists. The proliferation of dialects among the sciences was a lamented but little studied phenomenon of the late twentieth century. The multitude of Englishes proliferated to such an extent that entire academic disciplines had rendered themselves completely incomprehensible not only to the layman but to one another. This is, of course, a natural tendency of language, thought the demarcations were at this point, unlike in the past, based around regions which were, by definition, entirely virtual. That is to say, they did not, in fact, exist.
The laymen’s sites were diverse and, more often than not, highly colorful. They consisted of enthusiastic amateurs, a few highly talented science fiction enthusiasts, hobbyists, casual observers and, of course, assorted lunatics, hoaxers and frauds.
Of all the non-professional sites, TimeLords.com was the most non and the least professional. As a result, it was by far the most widely trafficked. Josef6’s choice of forum could, if one were credulous, be ascribed to the understandable desire of a man with a story to tell to seek out the widest possible audience to which to tell it. The other side of the proverbial -- that is to say, virtual -- coin was the aforementioned credulity, something at which the denizens of TimeLords.com were particularly adept.
The very name of the group indicated an outlook closer to science fiction than science the banal and factual. The peril of science fiction is that it attracts the worst kind of lunatics -- those prepared to believe not only their own delusions but each others. The frenzied construction of delusional architectures of thought is a fascinating talent, and one which reached its pinnacle in the late twentieth century. Combining the capacities of individual human creativity with the crystalline expansion typical of the collective. The relative size of the mutually agreed upon fantasy is generally parallel to its essential comprehensibility and clarity. The latter being generally the inverse of the former. The greater a delusion’s popularity, the more simple and, simultaneously, the more dissonant it becomes. As a rule, the affection towards a certain architecture of belief was equal to its capacity for madness. In that day and age, however, madness was a relative term, and most people had simply given up trying to define it.
One can blame Mister Einstein for that, if one wishes to, but the simple physical fact of time not existing in absolute terms should not blind us to the absolute nature Einstein ascribed to the speed of light. His relativity demanded an absolute barrier. The architectures of thought, sans barriers, absolutely, are always constructed ad hoc. As needed. There is really no one to blame.
TimeLords.com took its name from the designation of a popular science character who traveled forwards and backwards in time by means of an enormous vessel contained, thanks to dimensional relativity, in an English phone booth of mid-twentieth century vintage. Typically, this ironic joke, adopted as a result of budgetary restrictions, became an enduring trademark and hotly debated issue among fans. People will never lack the capacity to waste their time.
The first posted reaction to Josef6’s message was from elvira16, an insurance agent from Nebraska with a shocking case of eczema, who wrote:
i want to believe u. can you give us proof??? like can you predict an event that will happen soon??? will u post some details about your device???Notice the use of the term “device” and not “time travel device” or the even more appropriate “time machine”. Like discussions of sex, the subject itself is almost never mentioned. It is far too painful.
The second post was from eekthecat, a forty-five year old unemployed English teacher from Wisconson who somewhat resembled his namesake in appearance. He wrote:
pls send description of life in the future. where r u from? wht is yr job? y ru here?The third, posed anonymously, simply read:
who will win the bears-packers game next week?What followed was a deluge of similar postings that almost crashed the TimeLords server. They included questions on global warming, near future etiquette, possible variations in the stock market and world currency rates, the progress regarding a cure for cancer and the unknown gamma ray output capacity of a quantum micro-singularity.
Josef6 knew the value of silence. Nothing more was heard from him for three days. Just as posts began to appear dismissing the whole affair, he chose to astound everyone.
Hello -- he wrote -- I’m amazed at the volume of response I’ve received. I guess I should have expected it. I’ll start with the most important questions first. Unfortunately, I can’t reveal my real name, but I can provide you with most of the essential details of my life. Since I won’t be born for another twenty years, they won’t mean anything to you in your time period.
I was born in 2022 in the Pacific Northwest, where my family still resides. In my native time period, I spend most of my time in Washington DC because of my military obligations. The world I live in and the America I live in are very different form yours. In 2012, America got involved in a shooting war with China over the issue of Taiwan. This eventually led to the deployment of nuclear weapons. As a result of the damage this caused, the American government broke down and a civil war broke out. Most of our major cities were destroyed, but its important to say that the Chinese suffered a great deal more than we did. There are now only five hundred thousand people living in China, if this gives you an idea of what I mean. The United States is also far more sparsely populated than it is in your time period, though the civil war has ended now and we are well into the process of reconstruction. The union has been reconstituted under somewhat different lines than before, with more power in the hands of state and local governments and less concentration on the role of the federal government. Electricity is widely available, but is now generated on small, local grids instead of large industrial power stations. Big corporations in general basically no longer exist. Industrial agriculture was largely destroyed in the nuclear exchange, so people grow their own food, sometimes on small cooperative farms. Our produce is completely organic, and this caused me a lot of problems when I first arrived in your time period. I can’t believe some of the things you put in your food! Unfortunately, the lack of potable water is a major problem due to the radiation, but we are making great strides in decontamination technology.
My device is a proto-singularity propulsion unit manufactured by the government in a plant in southern Virginia. I am not a physicist, but the theories of quantum micro-singularities are at the basis of its operation. I will post photographs as soon as I can. I can also provide basic interior blueprints, but I think they will be mostly incomprehensible to scientists of this time period. I am also happy to answer any technical questions you might have as best I can, but I have to emphasize that I am a soldier and not a scientist.
Obviously, I can’t answer all the questions posted here, but I will try to give some general, comprehensive answers. For those of you who asked about who will win the Superbowl or other sporting events: I have absolutely no idea. Memorizing fifty years of football statistics was not part of my mission training. For the same reason, I cannot answer personal questions such as when or how you will die or if you will win the lottery. I don’t see how this information would be of much help to you anyways.
As to the nature of my mission, I have been sent here to acquire a T-1175 microchip, originally manufactured by Bell Labs in the late 1960s for use on the Apollo moon lander. As a result of the war, the designs and specifications of this microchip were destroyed and its original designers are all deceased. This has had far-reaching and totally unforeseen consequences. The T-1175 was included in many of the first personal computers and was widely used by the government, especially by the Defense Department of your era. Much of this technology is still in use in my time period. However, due to a flaw in the original design, all T-1175s will crash in 2056, bringing all systems that use the chip down with them. Not unlike your Y2K bug. Since one of the imperiled systems is the US nuclear defense grid -- what’s left of it, anyways -- I was sent back to retrieve one of the original chips. The military scientists of my time believe that analysis of the original hardware will provide a solution to the problem. For this reason, my first jump was to the year 1977, in order to retrieve one of the original chips in the manufacturing phase. I have stopped in your time period for personal reasons, the nature of which I prefer not to disclose. I can say, however, that I have been spending a lot of time with my grandfather.
Some of you have raised the question of temporal paradox. Like, what if I went back in time and killed my own father? This is impossible due to the compound nature of space-time, a concept which I think is only beginning to be understood in this time period. Essentially, the theory of a multiple and divergent spectrum of possible time lines -- possible futures, if you like -- is correct. I don’t know this for a fact, but I believe that scientific thinking in my time period consider this spectrum to be essentially infinite. Your scientists’ current speculations about the “multiverse”, an infinite number of simultaneously coexisting universes, each with slight variations in their respective physical laws and their outcomes, is only the tip of the iceberg. This is one of the reasons why I am not worried about making contact with you or others in this time period. No matter what happens here, the “present” I return to will be essentially the same as I left it, with only minor variations due to the inherently unpredictable nature of the micro-singularity. The time period to which I will return will be only .00005 percent different from the one I left. The timeline you life out could be of infinitely greater variation. Obviously, there are many timelines which could be canceled out by temporal paradox, but since these would obviously cease to exist at the moment of paradox and be instantly replaced, they really aren’t a concern. In other words, its not like it is in the movies.
I look forward to continuing this exchange. I have always been curious about history and about life before the war. However, I am going to have to lay down a few ground rules. Call it the time traveler’s code of ethics. These rules are essential to safeguarding my mission and my military obligations, as well as the well being of me and my family. Some of them are also basic moral principles which I do not feel comfortable violating.
First, I will not give you any personal information about my family in this time period and I reserve the right to withhold whatever information I choose about my time period. Second, I will not give you predictions or any other information about possible near future events. As I said, giving out such information will not effect my timeline, but it could drastically effect yours, something which would violate my military oath of non-interference. Third, I will not give you any information to make you rich or otherwise increase your worldly position or material wealth -- so, no stock market tips, sorry. I consider such behavior unethical. Fourth, there may be scientific information about my device and its operation which I will be obligated to withhold from you. I ask you to respect these obligations.
Within these rules, I am ready to answer any and all questions you may have. I am not looking for money or fame, or even for you to believe me at all. I am interested only in satisfying my curiosity and, if you like, yours as well.
Thanks. Josef6.
