Chapter Seven

On 15 July 2001, Josef6 broke his silence.

Hi! -- He wrote -- I can see there’s been a lot of talk and speculation about my last post. Unfortunately, problems related to my mission and certain family issues have rendered me unable to respond as I would have liked to. I can say that I’m very gratified and kind of shocked at the outpouring of interest in what I’ve posted here. I guess its understandable and I should have expected it, but its sometimes difficult for me to keep in mind that things which are commonplace -- or at least accepted as fact -- in my time period are completely unknown in your time line.

I want to say a few important things right off the bat: first of all, some of you are placing a spiritual or moral import on these things. I have no such intentions -- or pretensions. Its not that I’m not flattered, but I’m not a prophet or a guru and definitely not a messiah. I’m just a soldier doing his duty. Believe me, I’m really not that interesting. I don’t know much more about this technology than you do, and in some ways its equally impressive and unbelievable to me. I think somebody once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to the primitive mind -- not that any of you have primitive minds, don’t take me the wrong way, I’m just trying to bring a few of you back down to earth where all of this is happening. Sorry to burst your bubble, but its just physics! Nothing magical or divine is happening here. I actually believe in God in a sort of vague, non-formalized way, like a lot of people in my time period -- we’re more religious but less dogmatic -- but I can assure you that no spiritual intervention was necessary to get me here and wont be necessary to get me back to where I came from.

The second thing is very important to me personally, and has been causing me a lot of conflicted emotions over the past few months, which is one of the reasons why I haven’t been in touch with you. Some of you have expressed the opinion that I am here to warn you or to push you towards actions which will change the future to which I will return. I think I made it pretty clear that any changes you could or would make in this time period would be unlikely to effect any outcome in my time period, unless there are serious unknown factors in terms of the compound nature of the multiverse, which is definitely possible. In any case, the possible outcomes of your timeline are as infinite as any other, so both you and I are basically powerless to influence the course of events in either continuum.

Having said this, I have been forced to reconsider some of my assumptions regarding my mission. It’s a pretty accepted theory in physics that just by observing certain phenomenon you change them, and I’ve done much more than simply observe all of you. I thought at first that I could engage myself anonymously with your time period through the medium of the internet while maintaining a safe distance. Now, I think that might have been a way of evading responsibility. I’ve been wondering if I have certain ethical responsibilities towards you as much as to my mission. For better or worse, I’ve made contact with you, and now I have to accept certain moral consequences just as you do.

The point I’m getting at is that even though it is probably pointless to reveal things to you about the future, it may not be. I’m not sure I have the right to withhold certain information from you if there’s even the possibility that it could change things for the better. On the other hand, I have to balance any information I might give you with my military and ethical responsibilities to my time period.

So, I’m going to confine myself to a few simple words of advice. I can’t reveal anything more than this, so please don’t ask me to.

There will be a major event on the east coast of the United States in 2010. You might want to be elsewhere.

If at all possible, acquire a water purification system and start storing your own water supply.

Learn how to shoot and maintain a weapon. I know this may be difficult for some of you, and I hope it wont be necessary, but if your timeline does end up following mine, it will be an absolute necessity, both for hunting your own food and defending your property.

I would get out of the stock market by 2005 at the very latest.

That’s all I can comfortably tell you right now. I’m keeping a close watch on certain developments in this time period -- mostly considered unimportant by your media -- and if I think it becomes necessary I may reveal more. For the moment, this will have to do. I hope you appreciate the dilemma I’ve been facing and the reasons I have for withholding -- for now -- any further information.

J6

The first response was, as should have been expected, from survivor69, and read as follows:

I TOLD YOU!!!!!!

Jennieruptha was on it a moment later.

Josef, I just want to say on behalf of those of us who care about and admire you that we totally understand the soul searching you must have been going through over the past few months, and we appreciate your taking this chance. You did a really beautiful and amazing thing today and we won’t let you down.

Bourbonstreet5 was conciliatory but triumphant.

Its nice to be vindicated, but I want to express my apologies to Josef if he felt in any way pressured by some of the things I posted here. I was wrong in assuming that he was really here to warn us in order to change his time period. I see now that the situation is much more complicated. I hope Josef will forgive me if I contributed to any conflicted feelings he might have had recently on this subject and thank him for this incredibly altruistic act. NOW ITS UP TO US PEOPLE!!!

Prettycrazygirl sounded the only note of concern.

Obviously, I’m as astounded and moved as everyone else about what Josef has told us. But we should remember that this is pretty scary stuff, folks. Stay away from the entire east coast in 2010? I don’t think we can have any doubts about what that means. Its the date of the Chinese nuclear attack. Everything else he’s telling us is how to survive after it happens. Is it inevitable? Are we totally helpless? What can we do to stop this before it happens? I think I speak for a lot of people here when I say that I’m more confused and frightened after reading this message than before it. I know Josef is only trying to help, but how can we even begin to deal with this kind of information? And according to him, its only the tip of the iceberg! Can you imagine if we knew everything he knows?

Jennieruptha was, as always, on hand for reassurance.

I understand, pretty, but remember, he’s telling us this because he thinks this may have a positive effect. In other words, he thinks this may be enough for us to make some real changes for the better. We can work with this. None of the terrible things Josef has told us about and warned us about have to happen. That’s exactly why he’s telling us these terrible things. I believe that if we band together and believe that we can change things for the better, we’ll succeed. This is the only thing that has ever changed things for the better. Josef knows this too. That’s why he’s taken such a risk in revealing these things. We should be grateful, not frightened, that he trusts us and believes in us enough to take that chance.

Jennieruptha, you see, was sure that she could read the mind of God.

Chapter Six

Someone once wrote that men would rather be equal as slaves than exist in a hierarchy of free men. Accordingly, we sat in a semicircle. Each of us looking into each other’s eyes as though our gaze were egalitarian. In fact, each one of us all dutifully surrounded jennieruptha. Or Jennie Ruptha, as she was in the threadbare world of the non-virtual. Jennie was resplendent in her cascading dreadlocks, her unshaven armpits, her braless sagging breasts. When she spoke her lips pulled at the ends of words as nails tear with slow derision into black graphite. Two enormous hoop earrings, each in the shape of an Egyptian ankh -- the talisman of a long dead fertility cult -- distended her earlobes. When she turned her head the red flaps of skin hurled themselves in the opposite direction and the cartilage at the bottoms of her ears turned to corpse white.

She began by revealing to us that her name was not her name. She had been born Virginia Peasley in East Waukheegan, New Jersey, but had escaped in search of adventure, love, beauty and the meaning of life. Adventure was tiring, love was fleeting, beauty was fading, and the meaning of life had thus far eluded her. She was sure, however, in the power of those who took other names. Of those who placed upon themselves a literate symbology of their essential selves and merged with their presence as a word. She had a faith in words she herself did not recognize. It was unconscious. Unconsidered. As are all true faiths. And all the truly faithful.

She sat cross legged in a high backed wooden rocking chair. A pink shawl was wrapped around her neck, as an executioner might wrap a lover’s noose. As one might engineer the most adoring act of autoerotic asphyxiation. When she spoke, the vivid pink fabric would vibrate to the tremor of her vocal cords.

We were all here, she told us, because of Josef. And because of what Josef had to teach us. Josef was from a different time. But a time that could be ours. A time that was ours. It only waited for its moment to come. For us to reach the essential median between the past and the future. The dying moment of the present that never exists.

I paraphrase. She was incapable of such poetry.

All oneness, she suggested to us, was achieved by the realization of oneness. Josef was teaching to us that the unity of all thing was not only of the now. Of the hear and now. Of the day to day which is the fetish of all decadent spiritualists. It reached across time. It taught us that time was one. That the oneness of existence reached across time. Asian faiths, she told us, revere their ancestors. In this way, they fulfill a responsibility to the past, to the dead. Now there was an even more extraordinary prospect. The fulfillment of our responsibility to the future, to the not yet born. And this fulfillment was not longer mere sanctimonious moralizing on the holiness of children. It was real. It was here now. Talking to us. We were no longer required to relegate the future to the abstract, over against the unbreakable concrete of the past. The future was speaking to us through Josef6, and it was carrying dire portents. There was no longer any need to predict. Now we knew. We knew the possible outcome of our everyday movements. The plentitude of sins we were daily committing against the innocents of Josef’s time. We had to believe that this voice which was whispering to us from across the quantum spectrum was here for a reason.

The tyranny of the gathering was at the height of its powers.

A bespectacled man with a trimmed beard and a semi-castrato voice expressed his sympathies with Jennie. He began to talk about the exigencies of his upbringing. His insoluble conflict with his father. The necessity of finding wholeness in a world driven by consumerism. This led to an earnest exchange regarding organic farm products.

I felt the conversation was drifting from its original intent.

That was when Riverrain spoke up. Riverrain was the scion of a commune dedicated to the healing possibilities of primal scream therapy. She barely spoke above a whisper. Her jet black hair was pinned backwards with a violence which was shocking in its chastity. Black eyeliner encased the sockets in her skull, the flesh of which was rendered a porcelain white through the fervent application of powder and foundation.

She was born, she told us, in late 1977. Given the confluence of dates, she was certain that Josef6 was actually her father. It explained, she told us, everything.

This was the low point of the evening. But it served, at least, to lead us back to Josef6.

Jennie announced that we would go around the circle and announce our opinion of why Josef6 was here and what we should do about it. A few people twisted uncomfortably in their seats, but the totalitarian presence of others was enough to coax a reply.

The bearded man wanted to work for peace and harmony.

Riverrain wanted to file a palimony suit.

A black woman who was roughly three hundred pounds overweight was sure he was Jesus.

A white woman whose body was made up entirely of toothpicks covered with ulceritic flesh believed he had come to teach her how to eat again. Halfway through her three sentences she coughed and blood was glimpsed on her lower lip.

A young man in a black bandana was deeply enthusiastic about the anarchistic possibilities presented by Josef6’s prophetic statements. He was of the personal opinion that nuclear war could present a magnificent opportunity for human freedom.

A portly accountant in a suit and tie announced his intention to become a ballet dancer.

Jennie looked disapproving. Which was eminently understandable. To her credit, the exquisite veneer of perfect calm never left her face. Her eyes, however, did grow slightly wider. And at one point her pupils were clearly dilated.

After the confessionals were finished, she looked down at the floor for several minutes in complete silence. My studies had long since convinced me that this was a regular and generally successful practice for gurus in training. The calculated use of silence, or any such premeditated manipulation of inscrutable or disconcerting behavior, was essential to focusing the attention of the otherwise easily distracted. In order to bring the imagination to bear on the state of lucid dream required by the semi-mystical experience, it is first necessary to disturb the cognitive expectations of the initiate. This is accomplished by the use of bizarre or confusing patterns of behavior which confound the standard mores of human interaction. The classic case being the Buddhist master who leaves his student to sit outside in a driving rainstorm and only admits him into the monastery when he has stripped himself completely naked and spent several days squatting in a peat bog.

Jennie, it was clear, was a natural.

When she raised her head after a long interval, it was to suggest that we all say a prayer of her own composition. Each of us stood and took the other’s hand. The raw discomfort of personal contact simultaneously bonding us together and causing us to loathe the very sight of our opposite. Several people were clearly deeply unhappy with the partners with which coincidence had presented them. Shifting one’s position in the circle was, of course, impossible by this time. It would be an unequivocal statement of rejection which, in the face of all these watching eyes, would probably cause irreparable damage to the recipient.

People, generally speaking, only refrain from being cruel out of shame. This is, I suppose, one of the advantages of collectives.

Not that this motley collection that constituted ourselves was anything but a cursory attempt. A brief and barely comprehensible sketch of a collective. Nonetheless, there we were, all of us in each other’s hands and in the hands of Jennie Ruptha, who, for the first time that evening, smiled something that resembled an expression of genuine happiness and contentment.

The smile, through sheer chance, fell on Riverrain, who blushed so intensely that the crimson could be glimpsed under her layers of whiteface. Those paying close attention no doubt also saw the indulgent expression of compassion and affection which crossed Jennie’s face and allowed Riverrain to regain her composure without public remonstrance. It was a generous act on Jennie’s part. If her hair had caught fire and burned the top of her scalp to a black crispy mane of bubbled flesh I doubt Riverrain could have been more embarrassed. There are certain people who retain a default position of embarrassment. An all purpose capacity for mortification. It has only one setting, and eliminates completely the possibility of embarrassments of varying magnitude. It is, I suppose, a fairly effective defense mechanism. Although it contains, of course, the ever present threat of profound overreaction. The inevitable price, I suppose, presented by the possibility of indifference to infinitely more horrendous traumas.

With this momentary expression of compassionate exchange finished with, Jennie bowed her head and spoke in an assumed baritone drawl. Her prayer was as follows:

Josef, grant us the wisdom to perceive the present, to erase the past, and to bring a more beautiful and united future. Give us the strength to change and to commit change. Make a gift of your wisdom to those of us who believe and want to believe. Heal those of us in pain. Feed those of us who are hungry. Make peaceful those of us who are at war within ourselves. Make one the world and the world one. Amen.

After we had all intoned the benediction in a low, somewhat dissonant drone, there were smiles on all the faces and a profound look of peace in several sets of eyes. People shook hands, exchanged numbers, made brief conversation, and then left with their heads held slightly higher than when they came. A few took their exit together, their heads turned towards each other in energetic conversation.

I took my leave alone, to return to my studies and my twin unknowns. As I did, I paused in the doorframe and looked back.

There, under the migrainic fluorescent lights, were Jennie, the bespectacled man, and a smiling Riverrain, their mouths moving swiftly and their heads nodding in obvious and total consensus.

Chapter Five

The blueprints appeared on 22 May 2001. They were uploaded from an unknown IP address and consisted of two .jpg files of particularly high resolution. Two photographs appeared twenty-four hours later.

The blueprints showed an oblong object in three sections, each divided from the other. The front section, which sat at the top of the sketch, was the cockpit or a variation thereof. The second contained the two micro-singularity generators and the plutonium based power source which was divided from the cockpit section by a lead barrier of considerable width and stamina. The back section was an exhaust chamber or sorts, but rather than venting the radioactive waste from the vessel the chamber apparently stored it in isometric tubes at a temperature of negative 562 degrees Celsius so as to avoid any possible contamination. The notes at the bottom of the image claimed that the vessel’s waste product was slight in comparison to its output and the material was reused when the vessel returned to its initial time period. The entire structure was roughly the size of an average four-door automobile.

The blueprints were, of course, largely unintelligible to the layman and thus caused only a slight consternation among those who were eagerly awaiting new revelations. The possibility of micro-singularity generators and the practical implications of liquid nitrogen storage tubes for plutonium byproducts were issues of interest only to specialists and the professionally skeptical.

Because of this, it was the photographs that drew the most concentrated and sustained attention.

The first purported to show the control panel and pilot’s seat of the vessel. It resembled a car dashboard and was a light navy blue. The control stick, or what appeared to be a control stick, was covered with yellow and black stripes. It is a well known fact that the most striking of all color combinations is that of black on a yellow background. There appeared to be no window, windshield, portal, or other means of viewing the outside world directly. The size of the “cockpit” was impossible to gauge due to the lack of any reference for scale. If one judged its dimensions by comparison to the blueprints, however, it appeared to be considerably smaller than the cockpit of an average jet airplane. None of the screens, dials, buttons, or other assundry diodes and unknown switches were alight or in the process of manipulation, so the general effect was one of surprising banality. One could easily be looking at the dashboard of a small car.

It was the second picture which was truly astounding.

It also showed the cockpit of the vessel, but this time it was only background, and glimpsed through an opening in the side of the vessel which seemed to be the means of entrance. In the foreground was an unidentified hand which protruded from a navy blue sleeve. It was wrapped in a thick woolen glove of a distinctive matte black coloration. The gloved fingers gripped a small, flashlight sized object.

The object emitted a long stream of red light, clearly translucent, which shone into the interior of the vehicle. As it crossed the threshold of the vehicle’s hull, it bent in a slow arc until it was a monochrome rainbow disappearing at the bottom of the frame.

Underneath the photograph was the following text:

This demonstrates the effect of the artificial micro-singularity generators on a beam of light. The hand is my own.

I cannot express the degree to which this single photograph annihilated any possibility of anything except objective, absolute truth in the minds of everyone who saw it. For the first time, Josef6 was corporeal, concrete, ecstatically alive. He had stopped being a cipher and had become a disembodied hand. And not only a hand. A hand capable of manipulating light itself. Of moving the primordial creations of nature according to his will. That simple phrase, those tiny words, elegantly plain, made for us a world: The hand is my own. A collective, electronic gasp burst across the binary synapses. Here was the unmoving hand and the bending wave. The very particles of the universe bowed before Josef6.

They were, at last, convinced.

They had appeared convinced before. They had acted as if convinced. They had written as if convinced. They had worn the masks of true believers. But this belief, in truth, was an expression of hope. An expression of love. They needed the belief because they feared their unbelief. They lived in terror of the emptiness without faith. Their gods had all abandoned them. Here was the promise of a fresh revelation. Impossible to disappoint, because it promised so little. Promised, at best, apocalypse itself. Here was hope without risk, love without pain, worship without death. Where and how far could they go? Only as far as the binary ether would take them. Only to the borderless hinterlands of the virtual itself. In the virtual was the possibility of infinite masks and infinite revelations. Of infinite mes blasting out into the unknown. Seen by a billion anonymous eyes. Recognized by no one. They were on the same sea as Josef6. They sensed that he had made himself extraordinary by announcing himself as extraordinary. There was no proof required to be extraordinary. There can be no proof of the extraordinary. There mere fact of the eyes, of those watching and reading billions who knew and knew not simultaneously, was enough. A billion minds in simultaneous cognition of something. The cognition was real. Undeniable. Impassable. Concrete.

And yet. And yet there was always the knowledge that madness can speak. That men can hear madness and become mad themselves. Humans can share their dreams as easily as they can share their waking life. Another’s brazen windmills become the arching passion of a multitude. The Holy Grail. The Philosopher’s Stone. The Unspeakable Name of God. The Voynich Manuscript. Truths buried under avalanches of time and memory. They were tortuous because of their possibility. Because of their discreet promise of their opacity, their resistance to touch, the dusty odor of the lost thing. Could this too be lost forever? Could this too be another promise which would be buried in a tomb of no one’s making? Except this time the sediments would be made not of dust and sand and time and death, but of the inchoate pulses of information which formed the surface of the invisible world. Time had stopped. Ages now passed in a microsecond. A single transistor held wisdom greater than all the libraries of Alexandria. The quest, once lost, would be impossible to find again. Under sands, there is the possibility of a momentary shift in the wind and the firmament. The chance movement of tectonic powers that pushes the past up through the ruins and into the unforgiving light. There to be dissected, reduced and reappropriated for a separate, heretical age. But this. There was no hope for this. It was here for this moment, for this instant in the global deluge of pixels and codes. A moment lost, and it was gone forever. A thousand times more fragile and weightless then the most ancient of artifacts. Such was the threat, the menace that existed behind their desperate hope for Josef6. Their despairing, tender belief in his purity and the beauty that sprang from his purity. He was virtual, and thus, not mortal. He was more delicate than flesh. If he left them, there would be no bones, no remains, no marker to proclaim his passing. Everything would be lost. And they needed him to tell them that it was not so. That there was weight behind their exultations. That somewhere there was a body with arms, with hands, with fingers that could wear sleeves and wrap themselves in black gloves. A creature who, like them, required protection and disguise. A creature who manipulated machines and allowed machines to manipulate him. A creature who was opaque, and reflected light, and was resistant to touch. Here, in the digital mosaic, they finally saw him.

There were a few doubters, still. They came and went early. They noted that the photos in and of themselves proved nothing. The objects glimpsed in the cockpit indicated no specific use and could easily have been constructed of spare parts. The hand with its bending light could be doctored with the greatest of ease. There was no point in belaboring the issue. The evidence presented was simply no evidence at all. It was of no scientific value and was therefore worthless. They had many questions for Josef, but thus far he had declined to provide any substantive answers. They would reserve judgment and maintain their skepticism.

They were almost entirely ignored.

The most popular reaction to the new postings was, as usual, typified by jennieruptha.

Oh. My. God.

Prettycrazygirl responded in kind.

Ditto.

Even the relatively sober eekthecat was thunderstruck.

Wow. Well, all I can say is that if this is a fake it’s the best I’ve ever seen. I’ve always said we should wait and see what Josef has to show us. Looks like he has.

Survivor69 went directly to the source.

Ok, Josef, you sold me. All I want to know now is what your specific recommendations are regarding survival in the conditions of your time period and a vague idea (no specific dates necessary) of how long we have to plan and prepare. I know you mentioned problems with potable water supplies and the need for subsistence farming skills, but that’s got to be just scratching the surface. I don’t think you’ll be violating your ethics if you help a few fellow human beings to maintain their existence in the face of what’s coming.

There was no immediate reply. Wwj6d45, clearly already an avid fan, was on hand to fill the gap.

I’ve been studying all of Josef’s previous posts, and I really don’t think we should be demanding anything of Josef right now. He’s taking a big chance showing us this stuff and I’m sure he’s watching our reactions and thinking about whether to contact us again. I think it’s obvious from his prior communications that there is something much bigger going on here than just friendly exchange of information and the search for an old computer chip. I think ewallis was on the right track, but we can’t know that for sure yet. Maybe Josef is here just to find out about the past, but it looks to me like he’s recruiting. He’s trying to find the right people to entrust with the knowledge of what’s going to happen in the future and how to prevent it from happening. Now, he’s mentioned some pretty heavy things, but he hasn’t given us much detail or any real advice on how to deal with it. I think he’s throwing this information out there to find out who he can trust and who can handle it in a mature, open-minded, creative way. He’s looking for people who will be able to UNDERSTAND and MAKE USE of this information. Hang tight, guys! Its gonna be interesting!

Ewallis was magnanimous in victory.

Thanks for the kudos, ww! I hope were both right! Even if we aren’t, just being able to interact with Josef and see these amazing images is reward enough!!!

Bourbonstreet5 was not satisfied.

I share everyone’s happiness and excitement about this incredible stuff we’ve just been handed, but this is no time for sitting down and waiting!!! We’ve just been given THE DEFINITIVE PROOF people!!! We can’t ask for anything more! We KNOW that what Josef has been revealing to us is a very real and possible future for us and this planet! We ALSO KNOW that we have very limited time to act on this information!!! Political and social change is a slow process. I’ve been in the activist game for years and you have to start early and KEEP AT IT to get anything done. We have to START NOW, with what little we have, and let Josef guide us as his communications (hopefully!!!) continue. If we sit on our asses and do nothing, we’ll be sending our world right to the place that Josef is trying to steer us away from!!! We know we have to make a change and the change must begin with US!!!!!!!!!!

Bourbon’s impassioned plea did not fall on deaf ears. Although Josef6 himself remained, for the moment, silent, jennieruptha picked up the gauntlet within forty-eight hours.

This is a message for any and everyone who wants to meet and discuss Josef and his message. A group of us from the San Francisco area are getting together at six o’clock on Friday evening at…

Here the name of a local YMCA was mentioned.

…in order to meet, organize, and put together a plan of action. All people who are interested and concerned about Josef’s message are invited. We hope to see as many of you as possible!
Love,
Jennie
WWJ6D

And that, of course, is how all the trouble started.

Chapter Four

The first image consisted of a series of interlocking lines arranged in spiral formation around two isosceles triangles which met at their lower right and left corners, creating a tetrahedron. It bore some resemblance to Hindu fertility symbols. Underneath, Josef6 had written:

This is my military insignia. It is standard issue for all officers involved in time displacement missions. I will post again shortly.
Josef6.

For roughly twelve hours, there was only a stunned silence, as fingers paused on keyboards and eyes stared in attempted cognition of the enigmatic lines and bizarrely simple but nonetheless disconcerting angular formations.
Jennieruptha was the first to seize the moment.

I think this clearly has some kind of spiritual significance. The triangle, as Whitley Strieber has written, is one of the most ancient symbols in human mythology, and has represented the idea of balance and integration since the beginning of time. The square formed by the interlocking lines would seem to indicate stability or creativity being a product of balance, and the outgoing, curvaceous lines would indicate an outgoing creative force. There is a strong feminine aspect to the lines because of their curves, which echo ancient fertility statues from the pre-patriarchal era of human civilization. Josef may be indicating to us that, even in the military, the age in which he lives has developed a greater appreciation of the feminine and the ideal of wholeness.

Prettycrazygirl answered in kind.

Wow. Jennifer is definitely on to something. I really want to say something important, though. Whatever Josef’s mission may be, we need to be respectful and patient about how we react to it. I think all the posters here make some really good points, except for the close minded trolls we should all be smart enough the ignore. If Josef is here for some motive he hasn’t revealed to us, that’s his business and not ours. He has responsibilities we can’t even begin to understand. He’s already given us some pretty reasonable limits on what he can tell us and there may be other pressures on him that he chooses to keep for himself. We should all remember that Josef is a guest here and we need to treat him like one. I’m sure that when the time is right, he’ll tell us whatever we need to know. If he really is trying to help us avoid his future, he’ll give us the information we need when we need it. I agree with eek, everyone needs to chill out a little bit and be respectful!

Saintmobius chose another subject.

I want to say something real quick about jennie’s comment. As a professor of syntactic structures I do a lot of work on the basic underpinning symbologies involved in primitive art and languages. Her statements about the triangle are true, to an extent, but while the triangle is one of the most basic shapes in human history, it is not the only one. The circle, for instance, appears somewhat earlier. However, the equation of the curve with the feminine is not necessarily uniform. The cave paintings at Tertaux, for instance, use the curve to indicate the legs of horses and the bending of the hunters bow. In the same way, the triangle can represent the traditional arrowhead or spearhead. In other words, the attribution of a feminine essence to the symbol in question is not necessarily accurate. The use of the triangle and the curved lines could just as easily be basic symbols of the warrior ethos. This seems very likely due to Josef’s open admission that the symbol is military in nature. More to the point, the return to basic primitive symbology would seem to be likely given the post-apocalyptic nature of the future Josef describes. I’m afraid that masculine domination of the psycho-social paradigm is quite typical of primitive societies, which would be the paradigm of a society which has broken down socially and technologically.

Jennieruptha was quick to take exception.

“saint” mobius is typical of the patriarchal revisionism that destroyed the feminine essence of the original human societies. Apparently, the very possibility of a return to the feminine after the inevitable self-destruction of the patriarchal system is too much for some men to handle. Everything about the society which Josef describes, the return to subsistence farming, the lack of a central power structure, the end of mass, corporate industry, indicates that the structure of domination on which patriarchal power and oppression bases itself has been destroyed and a return to a Gaianic principle of Mother Earthism has taken its place. Maybe “saint” should try to be a little more open minded before he shoots his mouth off.

This was more than saintmobius could take.

I’ve gotten used to being abused by self-appointed internet pontificators. I was expecting something a little better from a forum such as this. We’re all involved in a guessing game here and there’s no need for abuse on the part of anyone. All I did was state my opinion on an issue in which I some expertise. I’m sorry if this offends you, but that’s really not my problem.

Prettycrazygirl was determined to keep the peace.

OK guys! Chill out! Isn’t it up to Josef to tell us what all this means? On his own schedule??? I think jennie’s take is really cool, but I don’t KNOW if its true or not, and neither does mobius or anyone else. The only thing we can do is wait for Josef to clarify things. Lets try and keep our heads together people! This is something of historical significance and we’re not going to figure it all out in one day.

Jennie took exception.

That is such typical submissive-female bullshit. Some guy comes in and shoots his mouth off and all you can do is lie down and take it. You probably love being date-raped too.

Mobius:

Are you comparing me to a rapist?

Jennie:

You ARE a rapist!!! Reactionary patriarchists like you are the reason that the female principle has been ignored and erased in establishment anthropology and linguistics. Your phallicism has not only led to the genocide of matriarchy but to war, oppression and the rape of this planet’s natural resources!!! Josef is trying to tell us that a better future is possible and of course that’s just TOO much for you to take! The violence of penetration expresses itself in every facet of patriarchal anthropology and your attempted rape of Josef’s message is no different!!!!!

Saintmobius did not reply. Nor did he ever post again on the TimeLords site. Discussion of the gender implications of Josef6’s post effectively ended. Josef himself did not comment. The possible conclusions to be drawn from the symbological syntax of the image was, however, taken up by bourbonstreet5.

Jennieruptha has brought up something very important. I think we can use the general information given to us by Josef along with the symbol in question to draw certain inferences about the time period in question and how we can help to prevent it. Obviously, this will not necessarily help us to change our own timeline, as Josef has pointed out. The problems of temporal displacement are obviously an issue about which our time period knows almost nothing and we won’t be able to deal with them without more information from Josef himself, should he choose to give it. However, IMHO, he’s actually given us quite a lot to work with. He’s told us, for instance, that the civil war here will be set off by a general nuclear exchange with China over Taiwan. Obviously, this is a major issue RIGHT NOW, in this time period. Accordingly, those of us who have been made aware of the implications of this issue by Josef can lend out time and energy to PREVENTING hostilities between us and China over the issue of Taiwan. The peace movement is already on top of this one, but they don’t know what we know. Our knowledge, whether we want to reveal its source or not, gives us an edge that others lack. WE KNOW what the stakes are! WE KNOW what will happen if we fail to prevent war between the US and China on this issue!!! What this means is that WE CARE MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE!!!! In politics, caring about the issue is the most important thing. The great enemy of political change is apathy, and we know -- thanks to Josef -- that we can’t afford apathy.

Jennieruptha was gracious in victory.

Thanks bourbon! Its nice to see a smart male in this forum for a change.

Here, she typed in a smiley face.

I’m totally with you on the advantage that Josef has given us in revealing these things. Makes you think it might not be a coincidence, doesn’t it? Well, time (wink wink) will tell…

A new arrival, survivor69, went even further.

I don’t know about you all, but I think there’s a lot more here than just macro-political issues. There’s a lot we can do on a local, even personally level. Like the song says, “inch by inch, row by row.” We don’t have to influence geopolitics to make a serious change in the world. It has to begin with us. For instance, Josef talks about the return to subsistence farming. Well, that’s something anyone can do! Up where I am, all our food is grown in our greenhouse, totally organic, without any dependence on the agribusiness corporations that are destroying the world and -- as Josef tells us -- will eventually be destroyed themselves. Josef also mentions that the biggest problem in his time period is a lack of potable water. So, start stocking up people! I’ve been storing the water from our well in a sealed cellar for over ten years. If you start now, you can put together a supply that can last you for years. Which isn’t to mention what you can do if you build a distillation apparatus to distill rainwater. It’s easy and requires no electricity if you use natural compounds like phosphorus and zinc. Another thing: think about the implications of what Josef has told us in regards to the economic system. Obviously, nuclear war is going to seriously shake up the stock market. So cash out now, people!!! What’s the safest place to put your money? Gold! Gold has been a means of exchange since the beginning of civilization. Its easy to store and it cant degrade. Sell the 401K and invest in Kruegerrands. And even if all monetary exchange breaks down, you’ll still have the food in your greenhouse and the water you’ve stored to barter with. That’s survival, people! There’s no time to waste!

Jennieruptha, once again, took exception.

While I’m in complete solidarity with the previous posters re: peace and organic farming, I’m not sure this is the true interpretation of Josef’s message. If Josef’s only intention was to get us to change our politics or our behavior, he wouldn’t have sent us this beautiful, enigmatic symbol. I think Josef is trying to influence our consciousness. He’s trying to get us to think about the future on a spiritual level, so the corrosion of our souls which caused all the death and chaos in his time can be healed. The only real way to change humanity and the future of humanity is on a spiritual level. Josef is not talking to us about organic farming, that’s just a detail. He’s trying to tell us about he feminine wholeness of all things. The birth-giving essence of the earth and ourselves as children of the earth. If we allow ourselves to heal spiritually, we won’t have to worry about the details.

Prettycrazygirl was deeply moved.

Wow! I think I get why you were so angry before. Your beautiful post just makes me wish that the president and all the generals and governors could read Josef6’s message and come to the kind of understanding you’re talking about. I never realized that in all the doom and gloom that Josef is talking about, its really a message of hope! I mean, if there wasn’t any hope, why would he bother to talk to us at all??!

Josef6 had become hope.