Bright Shining

Pre-Cycles:

I stood on my bed, staring out the window of my bedroom, looking across the dark empty field to the highway beyond.  I could see endless dots of light, red dots going north to Chicago, white dots coming south to Normal, where I lived.  I was nine years old, and wondering what each of their stories were.

I thought of the stories our family had, where we went, what we did, where dad worked, where mom was from, the time my brother had to be in a body cast, the school of my brother and I, our church, my grandparents in England, the ones down in Springfield, my mind whirled trying to encompass all the varied things of our family.

And each of those pairs of dots was a family, or at least one person who had a family, or was part of a family.  What was his story?  Her story?  Their story?  I wanted to be able to ask them.  To somehow run across the field, out to a particular set of lights I was following, and find out, who were they, what were they all about, what did they think about or dream?

I thought to myself that even if I got out the window and ran across the field, it would take too long.  The headlights I was focused on would be gone, were in fact disappearing out of my field of vision as I thought these thoughts.

That set of headlights gone now.  I would never be able to know, ever.  I knew sometimes I could learn a thing later if I wanted, from books or asking my dad, or a teacher.  Mostly books.  But it always struck me, that here was something I could not know, not even later when I was older and better able to discover things.

That pair of headlights, and whoever was within the car, was gone and I'd never know what they'd been doing or where they'd been going.  I got a certain feeling in that moment, that I usually only got when looking at the stars.

When it would get dark, the stars would be out, but mom hadn't called us in yet, as we were only in the fenced backyard.  I'd lay down on the grass and look up.  So many stars.  Billions I had heard.  And each star might have a planet.  Was there another child, on that planet, of whatever race or type, looking up at the stars and seeing our star?

Did he wonder like I did?  Was he wondering, right now, whether I was wondering if he was wondering?  I knew I'd never know that.  Then I'd contemplate what I'd contemplated from the age of five or so.  The why did there have to be something instead of nothing question.

Why was there a universe, why not nothing?  But since I could imagine that "nothing", why did there even have to be a "nothing"?  I tried to envision a "nothing" so "nothing" that it could not presume a before or after of something.  Yet here I was, an existent now, so such a "nothing nothing" could never have been, because here I was.  Why had there had to be a be, at all?  My parents said "God".  But I knew my question subsumed even God, and why he'd be instead of not being.

It seemed important that there be an answer, the why of whys, but I never found one.  I found that philosophers had thought of this for centuries.  And the college textbooks had the dumbest of speculations.  That nothing might nothing itself, thus bringing about an existent, forgetting that to the extent it could "nothing", that was an action, which presupposed an entity acting.  In other words, a "something".

In time, I'd learn to ask it less and less, as the feeling it gave of futility was, unpleasant.  Well, sometimes I sought it out, to remember what it felt like, but the older I got, the less I sought that out.

Those headlights, gone.  But dozens of more behind it that I could see, and hundred, thousands, more that could come.  Coming and going, each forever lost, no why that I could ever know for sure.  I could speculate, but it meant nothing.

I always felt very lonely doing that, and yearned to not be a child any more, to be free to go out there, and to be the driver, and perhaps a child seeing my headlights would wonder what adventure I was going on.  Perhaps I could be about such adventures as were already going on.

That was over sixteen thousand years ago.

**********

My first seven years of life were uneventful, save for one trip to England.  My mom was from England, my dad met her when he was in the Air Force.  In the nineteen sixties.  Vietnam era, though there were never many Cong around Bentwater Air Base in England.

We were poor.  Like renting half a house in the crap area of town, poor.  My brother and I once found a dead rat under the porch to play with.  And there was a scary dark hall on the second story, that went around one bedroom to get to a second bedroom.  My brother and I never went down that hall, we knew it was haunted.  

The white trash kids and the black kids in the downtown school got a kick out of my British accent.  Or rather, got to kick me for having one.  That started a being bullied trend that didn't end till I graduated from University High School.

**********

We always went to church.  I think this separates the poor who will rise from the poor who never will.  From Mrs. Riebes Sunday School Nursery to High School Senior Year, I'd always attend Sunday School and church service and choir and later Youth Group.

Whenever I travel back in time it's to the age of six and a half or seven.  When my brain was sufficiently grown to accommodate “me”.

I wished I could be sent back to age 11 instead.  Or better yet, 21.  But 11 would have sufficed.  Being in a pre-pubescent body with adult knowledge and memories is disorienting.  And a case where physiology dominates.  I could clinically know what women were for, but till 11, have no desire to do a thing.

It was in Mesa Junior High School that I saw a girl sing "O Holy Night", practicing for an upcoming Christmas Pageant.  No, it wasn't a solo, she was in the school choir, I was there because I was in the orchestra.  She was the first girl I ever looked at with desire.  I never hear that song without briefly remembering how transfixed I'd been by her.

That girl singing - I never knew her name.  And so, like the folks in the cars on I55 that random night, and other random nights, with me looking out the window at the age of nine, centuries back, she is lost.  To quote Rutger Hauer from "Bladerunner", "...lost in time, like tears...in the rain."  What an evocative phrase, and one he apparently came up with himself.

**********

I read many, many books as a child.  One to two per day.  All of Asimov, of course.  Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, all the classics.  And science books.  Leaning on Astronomy and Physics and Math.  I believed that if you never read any fiction books then you only lived once.  Though in my case that is irrelevant now.  

I never dated in High School.  At 13 I detasseled corn.  At 16 I worked for Hardees.

This is coming across poorly,  the tale of a child prodigy, but boringly told.  It's just that these are memory fragments.  I was thought of as a prodigy, I didn't think so.  I knew I wasn't great at chess, that was an indicator.  I wasn't a whiz at math, another indicator.  I could read and absorb and retain very well.  I could memorize the brain teaser books and old tests and have the means of seeming smarter than I was.  I could memorize pi to fifty places, and various Shakespeare quotes.  

I wondered if that was all any smart person ever did - but no, I could see by the books that some were true geniuses.  I was starting to think they must be a real rarity, like maybe no more than a dozen or so per century.  I didn't disabuse anyone of my savant reputation, it's why I went to the trouble of memorizing pi to fifty places in the first place.

A nerd who's not a genius is just a dumb dork.  I'd rather be a nerd.

I graduated at 17 and entered the Air Force as a policeman.  At 19 I met my first of several wives, a pretty 17 year old named Trish.  Who I married for her breasts, her kissing prowess and her inability to say "no".  

**********

Out of the Air Force, I worked as a Security Guard, for a company that had contracts with my dad.  Not that it wouldn't have been a cinch to get anyway.  Unarmed security is easy work, especially if you enjoy reading.  Must be boring for most of the usual guards, then.  Soon after, I got a job at State Farm, merit, of course - ha, ha.   No, while my way high up father only ever promised someone an interview, it would have took an HR man with far more courage than that breed usually has to have turned me down.

That year was kind of lousy.  Married to a vapid slut, working a job from my dad that sucked, still no one liking me, and really, why should they?  I'm old enough to be honest.  And then some.  I have two unforgiveable flaws at any job, undertaking, task, or chess game, that I've even been in.

One, I was the typical "absent minded professor".  In chess, I could see a fantastical strategy that would utterly defeat the other.  A thing of beauty.  One for the record books - and it'd be real.  But I would start then by moving a Queen or Rook forward...to have it took by some random pawn I'd overlooked.

For work, this would mean random instructions or routines overlooked.  Resulting in a series of minor infractions and errors.  Which might have been forgave...but for my second flaw.

Because for two, I could unerringly always see the deficiencies and inadequacies of others.  I could spot the flaw or injustice or inefficiency in any plan or project you could name.  And who was responsible.  And the probable reasons as to why they were doing it that way.

And what was worse, I would be right.  Ask me if that made me any friends.  Only with time did I learn that my hypocrisy of wishing mercy for myself and justice for all others was...well, hypocritical! 

So all jobs I had were pretty much foredoomed to be short.  With me quitting in frustration at their ineptitude or malfeasance, or they getting tired of my blunders and my mouth.  I can't recall holding a job for longer than two years, and most were for less than a year.  Not till I finally worked for myself, which meant I had a very forgiving boss.  Who knew what a great guy I was!

After I quit State Farm, a thing that few are dumb enough to do, I worked some random cleaning job.  I remembered when back in high school my dad had been yelling at me about not doing my homework, and he asked sarcastically if I wanted to be a gas station attendant when I grew up.  I remember thinking, "Sounds good to me, if I'm fed and can be left alone to read."

Later, I was pleased to read Thoreau, not his dippy nature stuff, but "Civil Disobedience" and "Life Without Principle" and see my wisdom in that thought.  Still later, after quitting State Farm, I discovered Ayn Rand.  Always good to see in print a great explanation of why you can't hold a job.  Yep, I was "Going Galt", long before that phrase was coined.

Oh, it was true in a way.  My ennui and ojida and angst was in a large part for two reasons.  My knowledge of the vastness of the universe and the ultimate meaninglessness of it all.  And the terrible social structures that existed over all of Earth and for all of history, that were all hypocritical and designed to justify bullies holding power.

But let's be honest, the not getting laid very often and not being able to make real friends were probably the real two reasons.  But one always assigns the reasons for their actions that let's them get a good night's sleep.  And it's easier to blame the world and the universe then your own failure to get your act together.

So Ayn Rand was a real find, her errors and flaws and meth abuse notwithstanding.  And she had errors, but come on, she made a lot of good points, too.  Like Edmund Burke.  A thousand truths in pursuit of a falsehood.  Ayn Rand was actually the most benevolent Statist of all time - though I won't bore you with why.

In 1989, I had discovered some kids I had known in high school.  I became the friend of a pretty and popular woman, who had her own house her parents bought, and there were nightly parties.  I hung out there almost all the time, I was the pet nerd, every college age party group/place should have one.  When the Berlin Wall fell, I persuaded her to pay for me to fly over and bring back some of the Berlin Wall to sell.

She did.  I did.  It was a great weekend, a true moment of history, crowds in the street, re-unification not yet, but coming soon, East Germans discovering what real chocolate tasted like, for only ten times the proper price of it.  Made back the trip costs and $800.  It was great.

Drank a lot at those parties.  And dreamed of having a girl like her as more than a friend.  The usual tale of the nerd in the "Friend Zone".  Or wait, that's not a phrase yet, is it?  It will be.  You already know what it means.

I had another lady friend later, JoEllen.  I lived with her and her sister, we went to the same college.  Just a two year college.  I who never did my own homework thoroughly enjoyed doing homework for others.  A fast way to make friends.  I was also in the friend zone with them.  C'est la vie.  It was still the heyday of cocaine parties, so that was fun.

I knew I'd have to buckle down.  Get a job, get a life.  It had been a few years, I was long since divorced, six months after Trisha had bore a son for me.  I knew I was to be excited at having a son, but I can't say I was.  Oh, I didn't mind.  Cool enough.  But I didn't feel as excited about it as it seemed everyone else felt about their sons.

I only had him that first cycle.  Though it's not like he's not living on, in a meta-sense, still in what I would think of as Reality Prime.  That first reality, the main bubble, the universe that was 15 billion light years in radius and 15 billion years in duration.  Roughly.  I know some of you are calling out "13.7 billion".

Was what Ayn Rand said true?  Could any succeed, starting from anywhere, with gumption and hard work?  Well, it was discover that, or get a normal job and live a boring life.  So I figured, let's see if that was true.

I've an obviously more jaded view of what counts as "success" among our random species on a random planet of a random star of a random galaxy of a random "Known Universe" of a set of alternate and breakaway bubbles so vast that even "infinite" does not do it justice.

But at that first go around, I wanted to know what "success" as commonly defined took.

**********

I sold all I had - a computer, back when such had 64k of RAM whether you needed it or not - and well, that was about it.  I had a big party with JoEllen and her sister, and took a bus to LA.  I arrived with only the clothes on my back and zero dollars in my pocket.  I went to the Santa Monica pier.  Looked at the ocean.

Spent the night at a shelter.  By day thirty, I had a job already at Pedus International as a Security Officer at ABC Entertainment Center in Burbank.  I "rented" a couch in a tiny efficiency.  How that worked was that a disabled youth got subsidized on a $700 a month efficiency.  He slept in a refrigerator box on the floor, he liked that.  His GI Joe dolls were in there.

The couple that negotiated the deal with me paid the second largest amount, they were two runaways who rented the one bed.

Me, I paid the third largest amount, $100, and had the couch.  Other runaways and twenty somethings rented floor space for nightly fees.

By the end of the second month, I had a suit I had bought, and was taking Audry, the girl who had sponsored me to Berlin who lived in Burbank, to Spagos.  A fancy restaurant where Tori Spelling sat at the table near us.  Later, we went to one of those clubs where you had to know where it was, it didn't advertise, and pay a $20 per person door fee to get in.

I paid it.  While wearing my fancy suit.  Audry, a gorgeous girl at my side.  I had a silver cigarette holder with clove cigarettes and a derringer lighter.  We sat at a table.  Sting came by.  He said quietly, "You're sitting at my table."  We got up and moved.  Our brush with fame.

But yes, Rand was right.  If you're up for working, you can get pretty far in a short period of time.  Oh, not exactly rags to riches, I was broke the next day.  But still, that was kind of epic.  I was still in the friend zone with her.  If I cared about ego any more, I'd could say I laid her.  But what ego can I have, after all this time?

I had so many adventures over the next few years, hitchhiking all across the country, back and forth.  New Orleans, then I hung out with the Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  I got laid by a woman in her forties there, her husband sleeping in the same room.  I guess in some ways I was quite immoral - amoral?  Study ethics for awhile - and me - before you say for sure which.

Mostly, I didn't get laid, as I wasn't trying.  Had I known yet how easy that could be, I'd have probably tried, but 12 years of indoctrination as to my outcast status meant I hardly bothered.  I could look back, even during my original life, and see the opportunities I'd wasted in my twenties.

I went to Boston after being with the Amish.  Six months I spent there.  Reading, reading, reading.  I had a job at Northeast Security.  Guarding a women's college.  I lived at the Pine Street Inn, on Harrison Street.  Don't ask me.  I don't name shelters.  I worked evenings, so I spent my days in the Boston Public Library reading books in their inner courtyard.  The library covered a block and was several stories high.

Or I'd buy some book and sit at a sidewalk café most of the day, reading that book, sipping coffee, then later maybe a beer or wine.  Meals easily affordable - I lived at a shelter.  Or I might spend the day window shopping, seeing all the wonderful things available to be purchased.  Or tour historical areas, which is all of them.  Or hang out in the Boston Commons, where street preachers and activists would hold forth, like it was Speaker's Corner in Hyde's Park.

I remember sitting at a park bench in Boston Commons.  Each morning I'd be sitting there, having just left the shelter, and drinking some coffee, and talking with Art - pronounced "Aht" - a twenty something burglar.  He worked the midnight shift, obviously.  He would share with me his tales of jobs he'd pulled.  I'd share with him funny anecdotes from the women's college.

Or I'd sit on that park bench all day, pondering what I'd do with my life.  Who'd have thought that I'd turn out to be as pivotal as I did?  Not me, I can assure you.  Nor anyone else who knew me.

"Going Galt" suited me to a tee, as I still did not like working for those in authority.  I'd work on any project for anyone, just not if I had to.  I could tolerate security jobs, as it was mostly being left alone to read.  But I'd inevitably get bored and move on, or get bored, write up a scathing analysis of the total lack of cohesive security procedures, be let go/quit, then move on.

I tried crack in Boston.  It was great.  Looking back on it later, I could see I got royally ripped off, price-wise.  But that's kind of common.

So I had sex on my journeys, but not so much as I could have, I didn't know how easy it would have been at the time.  And I did drugs.  And partied, in California.  I always dressed in nice jeans or slacks, a button down, I was young and clean cut.  Which let me crash a party at a beach house one time, some young adults using the house of parents who were away, but then after the party lasted till 3 or 4, everyone just kind of slept there.

As did I.  And then when they woke up, some were going off elsewhere, and I found that if I made "good acquaintances" with two or three of them, they'd invite me to the next place.  And the next.  Not always the same folks.  Not always the same "friends" I tagged along with.  I rode that "party train" for a bit over a month, basically free drugs, booze, food, showers, place to sleep...and it got old.

But other stuff never got old.  I was done for the day hitchhiking once, and having no food, saw a gas station/convenient store near a bridge over the interstate.  I went there, asked if I could sweep and mop for whatever deli sandwiches needed to be thrown out.  He agreed, and let me have a soda, too.

I went and camped under the bridge, the traffic passing beneath me now and then, the sun setting, reading a John Grisham novel and eating my dinner.  I was as free as I had ever been, or would ever be.  Another time I ate a can of baked beans on my first freight train ride, looking at the scenic beauty of the Northwest, and tickled that I was actually "riding the rails".  I chatted with Harvard students, at an open air café, pretending to be one of them - easy as I often sat in on some of the classes.

I could give you more details, but I don't have all the memories any more.  My neural net, my mind, my personality or "spirit", can cycle and cycle, but it only brings so much to each new 7 year old me.

I hedge this by writing out my memories - something like this book, if by that I mean "exactly" like this book.  Then I go over it at 47 and really study it.  Then when I'm seven again, I'll write it out, first thing, from a pen that I always know exactly where it will be in my mom's purse while she takes the nap that she's always taking when I arrive.

By now, my "memories" of that first life are mostly from this book.  Hence the distinct lack of enthusiasm in relating it.  And yes, I have heard of whatever "new" memory technique you read of.  Ask me if they work.  No, don't.  I get too many cranks trying to meet me as it is.

**********

I will skip lightly over much of the rest of that original life.  Years in Alaska, having a great deal of fun, camping and fishing and even attending school at UAF for a year, where I mainly rabble-roused as a student activist.  Worked as a bank guard, driving armored trucks.

Had actual friends, of a sort, good ones, though I wasn't mature enough to recognize that so much at the time.  Had I known then what I know now...but I didn't know then what I know now, and in these endless cycles, it doesn't work out that you get much in the way of second chances on various personal life details.

Saw a lot more of Alaska than most.  Two weeks in the bush village of Ft. Yukon as an acting cop.  Trips to the arctic circle, Circle Hot Springs, the Yukon river.  Lived in Fairbanks mostly, but also had a cabin outside the Village of the North Pole for a year with my friend Hugh.  Worked the canneries one summer, on Kodiak Island.  Lived in Anchorage a year.  And Butte.  Saw Juneau.

Dated and lived with a mostly recovered heroin addict.  I helped her run a grow operation.  Pot.  I hate that stuff myself, but she was a real stoner.  Got married to a normal woman.  Who had two very spoiled early teen sons.  I adopted them.  That was probably silly.

Our arguments were mostly over their upbringing.  Not that I wasn't cheating on her the whole time.  I've cheated in every relationship I've ever had.  As I said, once I did discover sex, I tried to make up for lost time.  No, never really meant to hurt anyone, but knowing that it would hurt them if I was caught, I still did it.  I'm not the hero of this story.  Not sure there are any.

Eventually got divorced.  Moved out.  The woman I was pursuing fell through, but the internet was more than a few years popular and accessible to the public by then, and I knew plenty of women online.  One, a housewife in New Jersey, flew me out to "rescue" her.  She said from abuse, I was debauched enough by now to know it was just a rescue from boredom.

Drove across the country, hotels and sex and restaurant meals.  When her hubby finally cancelled her credit card, I determined that she was too crazy for me to stay with.  So I left her, and took a bus to another woman, again from online.  Stayed with her in Washington for a couple of weeks.  When that didn't work out, took a bus to another woman, also married, who said she'd leave her hubby.  Stayed with her for seven months, but that didn't work out.

Hubby was a doctor, so I should have known that even though he worked out of state, leaving us the whole house to play in, that she'd never really leave him.  Still, debauched or not, that was the last time I was yet barely innocent enough to hope she would.

I found myself driving away from her in my beat up RV.  Sioux Falls, South Dakota behind me, nothing really in front of me.  In Nebraska, I ran out of gas.  I looked at my cell phone.  I realized that with this choice and that, mostly not mature or appropriate choices, though admirably suited to not working or buckling down and growing up, I had no one to call.

At all.

It was a deserted road, in the middle of nowhere (which is all of Nebraska) and not even the solace of cornfields, but only the stubble of such.  I'd put off for years now, the decision on what to do with my life.  I was in my late thirties.  I had no where to go.  No one to see.  I had been told that the reserve tank was empty, when I bought the RV.  But no harm in trying.  I tried.  It worked.  Got to the next town, pawned a flat screen TV and a DVD player and got gas to drive more.

I aimed towards Springfield, Illinois, only because I was born there.  It was a destination with at least some semblance of a reason for going there.  I got to Litchfield, ran out of gas again.  Called churches from a phone book at the gas station, and almost at once, someone came out with $20 to help me.  Churches are such an under-utilized resource for most.

Got into Springfield on fumes, parked at a church downtown, the same denomination as those that had aided me.

I know, I know, get to the good part already, huh?  I know you're impatient.  From my perspective, everyone is impatient.  I guess that if I only had 80 years or so to expect, I'd be impatient, too.  True, you have less than 41 years to exist, but I know that most people - save that one cycle when I really made an effort - don't usually believe this, or if they do, they figure they'll just "wait and see".

Then the moment I leave comes, and when the next moment does not, there is no one "there/then" to say, "Hey, he was right!"

You are living in a micro-bubble that broke away from our particular "Known Universe" bubble that first time.  That giant Known Universe bubble had an infinite number of alternate reality bubbles superimposed on it.  And the micro-bubble that split off where we're in has an infinite number of alternate reality bubbles superimposed on it.

But each subsequent cycle I go through splits off another tiny micro-bubble.  And each are only 82 light years in diameter.  Each are only 41 years in duration.

Not the 13.7 billion years in duration and counting that you are thinking it is.  And yes, yes, I know that light takes so many years to reach us, so the stars you see must have started shining more than 41 years ago.

This micro-bubble was created already aged, the light you see from stars is just what was already on it's way.  There are no stars behind the star light, not in this micro-bubble.  And if that answer is unsatisfying, take it up with whatever deity you blame for such things.

**********

Random memories:

On the Weschlers IQ test I got every question right except the one about where turpentine came from.  I complained, as at 10, I’d never been taught that. 

I used to hide books on me so that I could read any where I was. I read during classes at school, and even in Air Force basic training.

Two adult friends of mine committed suicide, Lance Fitzgerald and Hugh Cleary. I was not there for them, and I should have been.  

I drove my friend JoEllen to a concert in Kentucky so she could hook up with the drummer from Extreme.  He rejected her and I had to convince her on the way back that she really had dumped him.  

**********

I did rise from rags to riches, once I settled down in Springfield.  Or comparative rags to modest prosperity.  Another four marriages in that ten years, two to the same woman - the triumph of hope over experience, and showing that hope is over-rated.  I was more thoroughly in the bottle now, I had started regular drinking before my last cross country sex adventures.

I had come out of a terrible marriage to a crazy woman named Robin.  And I now had a house, and was married to a good woman, Katie, and was trying to start a non-profit foundation.  My first thought was to have it be one for preserving books for 10,000 years, an obviously laughable project given what was to happen to me.

Still, it interested me, and there's a lot more to that then you'd think, as 10,000 years is a long time for anything to be preserved.  It would take metal plates, that wouldn't corrode, or be so valuable as to be worth melting down.  Micro-engraving to fit all the knowledge of mankind on.  I had to select what would count as that, and settled on the completely Eurocentric "Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge" and the much spoke of 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I studied and worked on that for at least a couple of years, but my alcoholism overtook me, and eventually I shifted gears.  My wife aided me in my recovery, that and job loss and several stupid misdemeanors, some from ages ago - though those were alcohol related, too.  Building back up to normal sobriety, and well familiar with shelters and halfway houses that I'd stayed at all over the country in my travelling days, I decided to have our non-profit be for running sober living homes.

We were able to buy the house next door.  The house we were in, I'd bought condemned and fixed up, now we did the same with the second one.  We took in those who had just got out of rehab, or otherwise gave up drinking, and gave them a safe environment.  They paid seventy dollars a week for a bed, they got all utilities, food assistance, internet, washer and dryer on site.  A good deal.

We got some doozies of guests.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  I had done that a few years, when I was finally 48.  Working with those at the bottom, and having been at the bottom in my travels, I know how such are treated by the "real" people.  Like cattle, at best.  And as I was to more forcibly learn, like experimental animals at worst.

I had been the subject of medical experiments for pay in my travels, where some hospital or research facility will pay the young, the poor and the hopeless a few hundred bucks to be in such a tests.  Once, $2,100, for Hoffman-LaRoche getting to run tests on me involving a new weight loss pill.  Those could be a good deal, and were mostly pretty safe, as they had to do a lot of tests before getting to experiment on volunteers.  By the time we'd be tested on, they'd have already tested it a dozen times on third worlders and convicts.

One of the guests, middle aged and quite as work averse as I'd ever been, got wind of one in Chicago.  I'd not done anything like that for a quarter of a century, and this non-profit I ran kept the lights on, so I could just work running this non-profit.  I was happy to give him a ride.  That's how I got roped in.

And yes, on more than a cycle or six, I've quietly had those who ran it killed.  And on other cycles, been their friends trying to perfect their research.  And on still other cycles, funded their schooling and research from the start, in a vain hope to solve this.

**********

I drove up to Cyberdyne with my guest, not because that's what they called it, but because later, that's what I usually - not always - had it called when I was actively interfering in it's development.  Because I'm still a nerd.  And don't give Northwestern University grief, they've not done any of this yet, and didn't really sanction what was done the first time.

The money offered was good, $3,500.  What they said they wanted was to take a mental map of the subject, and see if they could get a complete representation of all your thoughts and motives and dreams and drives.  I thought that perhaps this was one of those "Transhuman" projects that the net is full of, where they want to create digital immortality by uploading your brain into a computer.

It would involve having a special helmet put on your head, and the whole process, from intake to forms filled out, to interviews, to tests, to having that helmet placed on your head, would be but a day.  It would start at 9am tomorrow, though we'd stay there for the night if we agreed, and we'd be done by 5pm.

They assumed I was interested, too, and by now I was.  $3,500 for the day?  But I wondered, what could be the catch?  That $2,100 study I'd done had involved 13 days, confined to one floor of a hospital.  I asked what the catch was.

"No catch", he started - which is what is always said before they say the catch - "It's just that it's only $500 for that day, only if you qualify to do additional tests, and agree to them, do you get an additional $3,000."

Still, both of us thought that sounded fine, $500 for a day wasn't bad, and who knows, maybe the extra wouldn't be too bad either.  I called my wife to let her know I'd be staying overnight, and that we'd have some good money coming out of this.  I read a paper they gave me that evening, all about the history of the late seventies and early eighties.  They said it had to do with testing memories before and after.  

The next day, they did everything they said.  We were not together, though, so I never learned what became of the second guy.  With me, they had me sign the applications, the confidentiality forms, the non-disclosures, the waiver of liabilities, all pretty normal.  There was a lot of background data got, and a lot of tests, but I passed well enough.  IQ tests they seemed, and to gauge general educational background.  It was all like a very long job application, and they knew all they needed to know about me by the time it was done.

The helmet part came only at the end, around 4:30pm.

I was still strapped down, which isn't entirely unusual in some medical experiments, not enough for me to have squawked, anyway.  And it was Northwestern, really, why would I fuss?  With the helmet still on, they said I was all mapped out now, and I did qualify for more.  But that they were really trying to do a temporal experiment, where they could send a mind back in time by means of placing that mind map they'd took of me on faster than light particles. 

Theoretically the mind might be caused to hitchhike back on those FTL particles.  It would then "land" on an earlier me, my younger brain being similar enough to my older brain to accommodate it.

I asked, "You want to do this with the copy you took of my mind?"  Yes, I was still that naïve.  No, one of them admitted, while they'd scanned my mind for abnormalities, this wasn't really about mapping the mind, that they still could not really do.  It was really to see if my actual mind was suitable to do this.  It looked like it was.

They explained I'd be seven.  Roughly.  Not my exact birthday.  But plus or minus six months.  They said that if it worked, I'd be rich.  They said that they knew I had the competence to parlay future knowledge into wealth, and to please fund their studies, if it worked.  I wondered if they understood that if it worked "they" would not be there, at least not the "they" they were used to.  I mean, I knew the "many worlds" theory, either it was false, and I'd change time, and they'd not be fully how they were now...or I'd just be in another bubble of probability, an alternate reality just as large, but separate and distinct from this universe.

I only considered the "alternate" option, I did not think of the possibility of a completely new micro-bubble splitting off from the main Known Universe.  Nor had they.

It seemed weird that I'd not heard of this research.  I don't keep up as much as I used to, Science-wise, but I do a bit.  I asked if it had ever worked.  They said it had not, the subjects were unharmed, just nothing happened.  I would learn decades later that not all minds could have this done to them.  Dumb students.  As I learned those same decades later, this wasn't even official, they had just caught on to the possibilities of their Prof's experiment, and wanted to test it out on an alkie before making their own leaps to fortune and fame themselves.

Perhaps they even did, I later mused.  I would obviously never know for sure.

I was tempted by their offer.  When I had ever turned down a road trip?  Never.  But I was in a good place now, my own non-profit, comfortable, good wife...I could hardly leave her abandoned, with the tragedy of me being a mindless vegetable in this reality, could I?  With some regret, I said, "No, thank you."  I never loved Katie as much as I did in that moment.  Knowing that she - with depression, agoraphobia - would die without me, I gave up on what I figured was the opportunity of a billion lifetimes.

But they were rogue students, and this was not sanctioned.  I heard one say, "What, we're to interview another two dozen low life shits?  Fuck that, and fuck him.  I saw his tests.  He'll succeed.  And the splash he'll make, we'll know it!"

A switch was thrown, as I was about to talk my way out of this, and -

**********

Cycle 1:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  We never took that route, as it was pitch black, no windows or lighting.  We'd go through the one bedroom to get to the other one.  We had figured there were monsters in the hall, or at least there might be.  I hadn't thought of that in years, but I remembered at once when I found myself there.

I looked at my brother.  So small.  As was I.  I had always felt bad for my brother, it could not have been easy growing up with me.  But while those mundane thoughts did flicker through my head, the overarching thought was of disbelief.  It is trite to think, "No way!  This can't be!" but yeah, trite thoughts like that were what I was thinking.

I briefly wondered how they could have pulled this off.  But the University had plenty of resources, they were apparently just using more of them for this experiment than I had realized.  How could they detect, let alone harness, FTL particles?  I wasn't sure that was possible.  Then I chuckled, though it came out as a giggle.  What I was perceiving was an observed fact, I knew that logically no explanation is needed for such.  I did not want to be like the country bumpkin that author Robert Heinlein once wrote of.  Who upon seeing a giraffe in the zoo the first time said, "Nope, there ain't no such animal!"

Somehow they had sent me back.  I would make it a point to learn how later, but meanwhile...oh my gosh, I was seven!  Youth, health, and a lifetime before me!  And I knew everything that I'd learned in near a half a century of moderate knocks and a very well traveled and adventurous life!  I could not only avoid all my mistakes, but - wealth?  Fame?  Wealth, maybe.  Wasn't sure I was up for the spotlight.

Or rather, I figured that while a spotlight might be okay, it would be better if it was for me being a child prodigy than a time traveler.  If I announced I was that, the government might want to seize me and do all manner of tests.

It was also already occurring to me that those kids uptime hadn't really known what they were doing.  Any change I made - and I could not help but make some change, even if I tried not to - would ripple out.  Those who had sent me would be different.  Especially if I took an interest in them, or more like it, their research.

Two young men.  They'd had name tags, but I hadn't paid attention.  I'd set that aside for now, they'd not yet be born.  And at this time, I thought this was a one shot.  That I'd now live out my whole life in this new timeline.  And who had time for revenge?  It was done, I was here.  Let's make the best of it, was my thought.

During the day, presumably age seven, mom taking a nap.  Saturday?  I wasn't in school, and if it was Sunday I'd be in church.  Wait - Easter decorations, so Saturday, or Monday.  Should I wait, stay undercover and have fun in school?  Let them "discover" a child prodigy?  That might yet be slower than I cared for, and in spite of any silly fantasies that I'd daydreamed of as a kid, I had no urgent desire to mess with the teachers or the bullies.  Not much of one, anyway.

My brother, concerned, was asking me what was wrong.  I ignored him, what would there have been to say?  Oh, yeah.  Halfway down the steps I turned back and said, "I'm sorry, everything will be okay, tell mom and dad not to worry."  I knew they would, I said that only to temporarily soothe him.  I left quietly through the front door, and could hear my brother scampering to my mom's room.  Ahh, yes, he was annoying that way, I'd forgotten.  It was rare in our youth for he to be able to get me in trouble for all the crap he witnessed me pulling.  He'd not pass up, even at five and a half, the opportunity to stir up mischief.

Didn't matter.  The house was near the downtown, I knew where I was going, my mom would not.  Nor would she do much till she looked about the house, looked around the house, then called my dad, then called the police, and then they'd dilly dally, I had easily two hours.  Speed was of the essence, though. 

**********

My dad had, would have - that is, "would have had" - a lawyer friend in church.  He taught our Sunday School class ten years from my now.  He was middle aged, then so he'd be in his thirties now.  Not green, but not so well off that he might not mind an interesting finder's fee.

I found a newspaper vending machine and verified it was March 31, 1975, a Monday.  I found a phone booth, which also confirmed I was in the seventies by it's existence.  I looked up the lawyer, yes, his office was still downtown, though not in as fancy a building as I remembered.  I didn't call.  No quarter.  I needed to visit personally, anyway.  

I told the receptionist that I needed to speak to my father, Mr. Levine.  That never fails to get a man's attention, that will get you a drop in meet with almost any man.  He came blustering in with, "See here, young man, what's this all about?" but kind of trailed off when he saw how young I was.  I said quietly and clearly that I needed five minutes of his time, and it would be best in his office.

He told his receptionist to hold his calls, and walked me in.  I got up on the chair across from his desk, my feet dangled.  He sat down, and said the obvious, that he was unaware of me, and was not aware of any circumstances in which he could be my father.  I found that unlikely, but I wasn't there to needle him.

"Sir, I'm not your son, I just needed five minutes of your time, and you struck me as a man who wouldn't see someone without an appointment.  That's why I chose you, because you are such a man."  That got his interest - a bit of flattery goes a long way.  "You've definitely got my attention", he said, "So go ahead.  Five minutes."

I related to him that I was a child prodigy, a savant.  That I had put up with life under parental authority and public schools as long as I could, but now I must be emancipated, and left to pursue my own life as I saw fit.  That my parents were not in any way bad, just wholly unable to aid me in the path I needed to be upon.

He correctly pointed out that he did not specialize in emancipations, and that while he could tell by my words that I was a prodigy, the courts would wish proof that I could sustain and provide for myself, and generally you had to be a teenager and able to work to do that.

I said that I understood that, but did not need him to file such papers himself.  I said that I was well aware that I could file them on my own, pro se and in pauperis formis, but I felt that given the points he'd brought up, it would be better to have a law firm do so.  But from him all I needed was an introduction, and transportation, to whatever law firm in Chicago he thought would best be able to handle this.

I assured him that they would probably give him a finder's fee for they being able to represent me.  He asked how I would pay them.  I said that I'd soon enough be able to generate money, and as that firm would be representing my affairs, they would receive payment from that.  And that I could convince them, as I could him, that I would be able to generate money.

"How?", he asked, not so much in doubt but in curiosity.  I said gravely - as gravely as a seven year old can - "It is 1975.  Analysis of the political climate tells me that Ford's Whip Inflation Now idiocy has clearly failed, and people are tired of being reminded of Watergate by his presence.  So when the Democrats nominate Governor Carter of Georgia for President, he will, not just in spite of his down home backwoods image - but because of that image - win.  The economy will still be only partially recovered and there'll be a housing boom in 1977.  Mid range houses bought now, for $30,000 will go for $75,000 by 1980."

I understood why the researchers had had me read that paper on this time period now.  

"You're predicting the future?", he said, looking skeptical, and starting to wonder if this was an elaborate joke.  "No.", I said, "But one can extrapolate trends based on current data.  For instance, this is the 31st of March, and by the 30th of April, Saigon will fall.  Possibly a day or two plus or minus, but I'm figuring the 30th.  I suppose you could wait till then before aiding me, but where would I stay in the meanwhile?  Come, you or the law firm you recommend can give me an IQ test, I can prove my bona fides.  And if it falls through, and you get no finder's fee, what are you out?  One bus ticket?  A phone call to have them meet me at the bus station?"

He was no fool.  He asked about my parents, and said that he could not participate in any taking of a child without parental permission or a court order.  I reminded him that I had not told him who my parents are, or where they lived, but if it pleased him, he could assume they were in Chicago, and I was asking aid only in returning there.  He gave me a look that suggested that he knew somehow that I was more than a savant, as that indicated a familiarity with gaming the system at odds with just being a well read seven year old.

He made the call, though, and he took me to the bus station without further questionings, and wished me well.  I thanked him, and said it would all work out fine.  I was in Chicago that evening, an intern from that law office took me to a hotel and she stayed the night with me.  I would have found it sad that I was only seven, but I realized looking at her that I had no interest in her whatsoever.  

**********

In Chicago, I repeated what I said to Mr. Levine.  I suggested that they make use of the date of the Fall of Saigon in any way they felt would make money, but that if they got that date out too publicly, it could distort the current trend.  Not entirely believing me anyway, they did keep that quiet, and only told two clients they didn't like.  Those two got their business interests there wrapped up, and didn't suffer the losses their other clients did.  That convinced them.  Now they'd listen to my previously memorized stock tips.

I signed an exclusive contract with them, they were to represent my interests, and Mr. Levine was to get 1% of what was generated for five years.  They could have 25%.  I knew they'd do it for 10%, but I wanted them to be focused very intently on my interests.  They got the emancipation done.  As I was already generating money that summer by going over with the researchers they brought in all the various companies and industries that I could guess would go up or down.

I had not the dates or even years to any exactitude, but really, if you knew names like Atari and Microsoft and Apple, you could do pretty well.  And I had had my dramatic "predicting the eclipse" moment that Twain had wrote of in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", where I had predicted the Fall of Saigon.  That was sufficient, and my manner of speaking, and being only seven, and the Presidential election, to make sure they carried me long enough for the real money to start pouring in.

On a whim, I had asked that the same cute intern that had met me at the bus station be the guardian ad litem, and it worked out that she not only then got a paying job there, so they could have her sign a confidentiality and non disclosure agreement, but they paid for the nice Lakeshore Drive apartment we stayed at.  Neuter I might have been, but I knew that wouldn't last forever.  So I'm perverse, sue me.

Was I on salary?  Not quite.  After April 30th came, and U.S. forces left Vietnam forever, they discussed that.  I reminded them of our contract and described how I wanted that to work.  I said that I wanted them to start a stock corporation that would buy property and make investments.  They would provide the capital for the initial wave of investments, and own 25% of the stock, me 75%, and they'd take care of Mr. Levine for the first five years.

I gave them detailed instructions as to properties in Bloomington, particularly the East side.  I knew how that side would boom.  I also had them find a young Bill Gates, who'd just started a company, and acquire 1% of that.  I also got them to quietly and discretely buy a one percent share of a movie to be made in 1977, I wanted them to buy a larger percent, but I feared that if I bounced out some other investor who may have had input into Star Wars that I was unaware of, it might change things too much.  I would give similar advice for any other hit movie that would come along, though I did so in a measured fashion, not all at once. 

The pretense was still that I was analyzing trends.  Which let me have every newspaper, journal, newsletter, and such sent to me each day, and any and all books I wanted.  

I did interfere a little.  By 1989, already worth in excess of $400,000,000, I invested enough with some of Gene Roddenberry's projects that I was able to make that initial first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation less disastrous than it had been.  As a result, that show lasted 10 seasons instead of 7, Gates McFadden never quit for a year leaving us to suffer with her stand in "Dr. Pulaski", and I nixed that abominably racist one where they landed on the Planet of African Barbarians.  I also persuaded them that letting Riker date a man in that one episode, instead of an obvious woman, would score them more points.  

It did.  I was able to similarly aid the other Star Trek series, and even "Enterprise" had a ten season run.  Oh, and you bet I had plenty to say about the movies.  You may rest easy knowing that whatever I did, it was sure better than it had been.

The government did send a pair of agents out at one point.  I was still only 15.  I met them in my office, surrounded by computers (big old clunky ones), televisions on all channels - well, all three of them - and books and papers and staff and interns and two of the founding partners.  

We stuck with the analyzing trends story, I declined to work with the then still relatively unknown NSA, but I did say that if they were up for it, I could free lance, and give them such tips as I came up with for a flat fee.  They agreed.  But when I told them that the wall would fall in November of 1989, they sat on that, and did nothing.  Perhaps just as well.  As it happened on November 30th this time, instead of the 9th as it had in my timeline.

Ripples.  They always add up.  But with the money already made, and me actually doing real work in analyzing trends, it would take a dumber person than I was to still not be able to make money.  And we had nice chunks of Microsoft and Apple, and I was waiting for the noughts, when I'd ace out Myspace and Facebook by having my own research team "invent" MeNet.

I also "invented" my versions of Google, YouTube, Craigslist, PayPal, Amazon and such.  

**********

Life was good.  I never drank, smoked or did drugs.  And my body, never having had them, didn't crave them.  I was married to that intern - I know you saw that coming.  It took some persuading, not because she didn't like me, but because it looked weird.  But lots of money and a silver tongue can overcome a lot of objections, and I did wait till my 18th birthday before broaching that subject with her.  She was 31 by then, but by the time she was 35 we had two kids.

Did I cheat on her?  Well, yes, but discretely.  If she knew, she never said.  It wasn't all that often, but if you're off in Cairo or Beijing or Quito, hey, if there's a zip code rule, isn't there a continent rule?  

By the time 2008 came, I was 40 and a billionaire.  Reclusive, of course.  My family would go on vacations all over Earth, or take our yacht out - that is, our crew would take us out with us on it - and go wherever we cared to.  I made as much money warning different moguls about what not to do as I did in knowing who to invest in anyway.

Wouldn't you have wanted to know that owning stock in newspapers was going to turn out bad in the nineties and noughts?  Or that if you didn't add this safety or security measure, you'd have to later after an expensive suit and terrible publicity?  

Politically, I had no more predictions, and hadn't for ages.  The ripples from investments and predictions and me being a new player and the law firm an old one, and the inevitable talk, even if mostly discounted, changed that.  I knew it would.  But trends in computers I knew would remain constant.  Too much of it was dependent on simply people pursuing all the low hanging fruit that the tech revolution had revealed.

I raised each of my kids to try and understand the vastness of things.  I star watched with them, once while laying in the snow of Antarctica.  Another time on a beach in Kenya.  Or while visiting Mt. Fuji.  I tried to communicate the question of the whyness of why.  They may or may not have got it, neither was any kind of prodigy, just kids as good and decent as my wife and professional nannies and tutors could make them.

I was 48, my kids all grown, my wife still a beauty, and I looked confidently forward to another active 30 years, and as long afterwards as a billionaire's doctors could give me.  I had long ago made sure that no research into the temporal dislocation I had gone through was done at that university.  I quashed it before it even started.  I was just being safe.

I turned to the stairs to the bedroom, where a waiting Karen would set down her book, smile invitingly at me and

**********

Cycle 2:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  I did not think the thoughts I had thought last time, instead I simply sat down with a thud and thought the wordless equivalent to "Oh my God."

My brother still looked small.  And he was as concerned as before.  As was I, to say the least.  That was when I first realized that those who had sent me back could not have had the vaguest clue what was really happening.  Up till then, I'd thought that I either changed the timeline of the whole universe, or more likely, that I had simply started an alternate universe, and would live out my days in that.

But if I had gone back again, without any helmet on, without even there being such an experiment taking place, then something else was going on.  My mind whirred, like it does when I'm facing a serious problem.  It spins and spins, and I think of nothing else till I can power through to some answer or the other.  Or what my fool parents and teachers two life times ago had thought of as "daydreaming".

I may not be a genius, but I was always pretty good at assessing possibilities.  That was the reason why I'd been so good at getting rich with data that others might not have been able to do as much with.  I realized that a likely possibility was that my mind was somehow "magnetized" (I know that's the wrong word) by those FTL particles, so that it was now prone to dive back in time the moment it was not anchored by my current brain.

Either then something had happened to me - like death - or the universe I'd been in, the split off one, had ended.  Either way, that could have sent me back.  I knew of nothing else that could have.  I doubted the coincidence of a random death.  At home, 48, good health.  So that bubble must have ended.  And here I was not running out the door.  So by that evidence, I had not just been sent back to the start of the same split off bubble I had been in.  I was in yet another split off.  

From this I reasoned that one, something about that original experiment had made it that my mind would always revert back to seven as soon as I reached the time the experiment had been done originally.  Two, that I had been in a split off bubble.  But three, it had not just been an "alternate timeline" bubble the size of the whole universe, but a mini-bubble, which no matter how big spatially, was only 41 years long.  And four, that apparently, me going back again generated another such bubble, so it was more than likely that when I turned 48 again, back I'd go again.

To yet another split off 41 year long micro-bubble.

Wow, I solved it all sitting on the floor of that crappy house!  Well, not really.  I did come up with most of that but I only put it in the file of "most likely".  I had discounted some other much more improbable guesses.  I dismissed out of hand the possibility of just being crazy, having never had that experiment at all and living in a padded room.  Only in Hollywood movies do people have such lucid and detailed full audio/visual hallucinations.

I knew I'd have many more guesses.  I knew I might even come up with a better explanation.  I knew, though it frightened me a bit, that I had time.

But I'm not so terrible or amoral or dumb or spoiled as some of these anecdotes I relate may make me seem.  I'd like to think I have my good points.  I did know that I always tried to put a positive spin on things, to look on the bright side.  I had had to work to develop that outlook as an adult my first time around, since I knew that in my original childhood I had suffered from depression and OCD.

Not that such was named back then.  I had suicidal episodes, though I had enough pride to not make any attempts until I might really mean it.  Since I had apparently never truly meant it, or was too much a coward, I never made any silly "cry for help" attempts.  But I remember that every three to six months, I'd get the real urge to end things, and then plan and plan...till the urge went away.

My parents had, way back then, sent me to a psychiatrist.  Ask me how that went, when I had read up on the textbooks before going there, and "In Hiding" had been one of my favorite short stories as a child.  I gave that guy such a runaround that he probably still remembered me back on the original timeline - though he must have long since died.

I got up from the floor.  I went downstairs, ignoring my brother.  I knew it was the Monday after Easter.  Yes, there were the decorations.  I got out the step stool in the kitchen and got the cereal.  I got out the milk.  I sat down at the dining room table, my brother scampering upstairs to tell mom.  Yes, that was the kind of household we lived in.  No beatings, or not much of them, but anything not permitted was prohibited.  

I had different and fresher memories, from my life as a pampered and respected billionaire.  That had been a lot of work though, fun work, but still work.  Could I do that again?  

Yes...but...but...goodness.  Karen.  The boys.  Lost in time...I was dealing with grief at their loss, and shock and fear.  I hadn't necessarily been a better person in that life, and if you hadn't guessed, yes, of course I did a bit of drinking and had some cocaine parties, and you knew I'd cheated, but still.  Maturity had gave me a head start, and I had already learned running a sober living home in my first life that aiding others was a goodness that gave me pleasure, so I had lived a life of philanthropy in that second life.

But Karen.  The boys.  I had spent a life time, well, seven to forty eight, with her at my side.  What a woman!  True, I had more maturity that cycle, but still, dealing with my particular eccentricities - insanities, but you get to call them eccentricities when you're wealthy - was something that could not have been easy.

I flashed to that memory of the headlights on the far off night time highway, back the first time I was nine.  That I could find Karen again, I had no doubt.  But it wouldn't be the same meeting, we'd not have the same kids.  Even if we made love the exact same time, who could say that the same sperm would arrive at her egg?  And would it even be the same Karen?  My thesis was that this would be a split off Karen, identical in every way, but my Karen was back in that 41 year in duration bubble I'd just "left".  Or so I was guessing.

Even if wrong, though, even if this was the same one, what was I to do?  Try and contact the same lawyer, get hooked up with that same firm, predict the Fall of Saigon again?  For a moment, I seized upon that, I could do that, and the same firm would assign Karen, I could just tread water till 18, doing all I'd done!  

No...no...that didn't seem like it would work.  Would my attitude and reactions be the same?  To the men of the firm, sure, or close enough that they'd react the same.  But for a woman?  Women are so sensitive to emotions.  To the details of reactions.  I'd not be as innocent.  Would it be close enough?  I don't know.  I mean, I suppose it could work, but doing the exact same things, for 11 years?  It seemed my bigger problem was how to make sure this didn't happen again, as I had already suspected at once what this might mean.  

And what I suspected it meant was hell.  I remembered from my first life, going to church all the time, and one of the songs we sang regularly had always gave me pause, when I pondered the meaning of it. 

The hymn was "Amazing Grace", and referring to heaven, one verse had said, "When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we'll no less time, to sing His praise, then when we'd first begun."

At 8 or 9, when I'd heard and pondered that verse, while sitting in the pews waiting for the interminably long one hour service to end, I had at first shuddered.  How would it be heaven to sing for 10,000 years, when just sitting here an hour was so boring?  And at the end of the 10,000 years, to know that we'd only just begun?  That we'd have as much time left?  I knew what infinity was, I told you I was a prodigy, and so I realized that the song writer was right.

After 10,000 years we would have just as long.  And I remember thinking that not only singing, but almost anything I could think of, would be boring after 10,000 years, let alone eternity.  I remembered how later in my teens, reading some of the darker works of Samuel Clemens, that he had been of the same opinion, that it was strange that men pictured as heaven that which most of them hated on Earth - playing harps and singing hymns!

I suspected, as a child way back then/there, and again upon reading that story of Twain's, that any kind of immortality, when you think about it, would be hell.  Staved off, perhaps, there could be all manner of things besides singing to do, but how long could you do any without being bored?  

Was I thus trapped now in hell?  I calmed myself by assuring myself that I now knew what I had to do.  I could use all my future resources to find out all that could be found out about this research.

**********

The next day, I quietly left school and went to Mr. Levine's office.  I had considered bringing my parents in on this, or at least some of it, and build up my fortune while with them.  Because of how much grief they'd expressed, and anger, at my previous time of getting emancipation and having nothing more to do with them.

But my mom's reaction to me having got the cereal out, and my father's incessant questioning and lecturing and yelling that night, all over the "cereal issue", with me still grieving, well, it quite reminded me of the wisdom of my original plan.  My father was a man who seemed good, because he did not leap to physical punishment.

In the Air Force, though, when I studied interrogation tactics, I saw what he'd been doing.  Endless questions, endless talk, wearing out the subject - his own child - by tripping him up on any random inconsistency, going over it again and again, with always the threat of physical force in the background, and always a "touch up" at random, be it a spanking or a thimp.

Don't know what a thimp is?  Place your middle finger tip under your thumb and try to release it, while holding it firm with your thumb.  Then aim towards your child's lips, and release.  It really, really stung.  Yes, it could bring tears.  Me being a prodigy, and my brother not being mentally disabled, we quickly learned to shut our mouths, or answer promptly, if he just raised his hand with that gesture.

You'd not think such as that, thimps, three to five hour lectures, yellings and threat of violence could break a person - but it could.  I excelled at interrogations in the military.  But I cheated, I only used the methods my father had used on us as small children.

Why stay for that crap?  Which even if he stopped, would only be so he could have the glory of gifting the world with a savant?  Why change a winning strategy, that had served me so well before?  I'd be even better this time, as I had researched quite a bit more about the seventies and eighties while getting my start last time.  And the law firm understood the need for secrecy, which my father would not.

On the way up to Chicago that Tuesday, I was dreading seeing a young and perky Karen.  I had thought of specifically asking for her not to be there, but had not, as that would have gave away that I was not just a prodigy.  I needn't have worried, though.  Another woman was waiting at the station.  Karen wasn't working that day, though she had worked yesterday.  Not that I asked about her, I just quietly looked it up later.

I went ahead and did the same thing, but better and quicker.  With Dawn as my guardian instead of Karen.  Karen, who ended her internship a few months later with no fanfare and no knowledge of what might have been.  This time I was able to tell them of Betamax in time, due out that summer of '75.  And to acquire that PC that Xerox had invented and sat on for years.  I had other various tips that I had learned of by having an adult mind in that time period.  It went quite well.

I knew all the quirks and foibles, hobbies and interests, hopes and dreams of the partners.  And had 41 years of experience in human relationships to draw on.  They loved me, not just respected and quasi-feared me, like last time.  We made even more money faster.  I still aided Star Trek.  Instead of just investing in it, I trickily arranged to have aided each actor and director and script writer at least once in their life before they embarked on that show.

That made them look upon me as a friend and benefactor, and let them be amenable to even more of my suggestions.  I was in fan-heaven.  Episodes never previously made were made.  This time each series lasted at least 12 years.  Deep Space Nine, which those in the know are aware was the best of all, lasted 20.  Even Enterprise lasted 15.  That abortion of a show, Discovery, was never made.  Instead of that alleged prequel, they forged on with two more series, unknown to my original time.  

I eventually was one of those eccentric billionaires, much earlier this time, a billionaire before Google or Facebook or YouTube, and made even more off of inventing those.  

**********

Yet making money wasn't all I was about.  This time I had a hammerlock on that university, Northwestern University in Illinois, from the get go.  And, though you'll find it hard to believe, I really am an absent minded professor-type.  Which means I did not know the names of those who had done this.  In fairness to me, I had only been giving a ride to a random guest.

I gave rides to guests of our sober living homes all the time.  To court, to jobs, to interviews, to get IDs.  Or to their girlfriends.  I gave that one guy a ride to that original medical experiment just so that he could get money that would aid him in getting himself set up.  I hadn't known to remember the names of the researchers.

But if they were working on such a project, it had to fall under physics.  And I could narrow it down past that.  I could even gently encourage that such work be done.  Certainly when I heard a proposal to study the possibility of 'data transmission in closed time like curves" I had enough of a scifi and scientific education to know that was it.

I did recognize the faces of two of them who as students applied to aid the professor who had proposed the project.  Yes, after 50 or 60 years, because they had featured in my nightmares.  I had enough clout at the university to get to sit in on the interviews.  I advised the professor that those two should be brought into the project, and two checks passed into his hands, one that funded his project for the next five years, made out to Northwestern, and the second for $150,000 to him personally.

I said I wanted him to be free from financial worries as he pursued his brilliant research.  As I said previously, a bit of flattery goes a long way.

I didn't then leap in and reveal myself.  I waited.  Till a couple of years later in 2015, when they were starting to talk about looking for test subjects.  The official premise was to scan minds to see what they were made of at the sub-atomic level, and whether such fields would resonate with tachyonic particles that could then be...well, how much techo-babble do you want?

Assume they already got to the stage of being able to re-modulate the warp coils and give more power to the Heisenberg Compensators, okay?  I bet they also knew what to do when the Inertial Dampers were off line, if you see what I mean.  

I called them and said that a limo would be picking them up.  It did, and took them both to my apartment on Lakeshore Drive, where Dawn let them in.  So I'm still a perverse bastard, okay?  She was cute, and as sweet as Karen had been.  And by now you realize that I'm more a sexaholic than an alcoholic.  And yeah, I was still cheating.  Dawn may have let them in, but it was my maid Trisha who escorted them back to my office.

Yes, I had this time interfered in the upbringing of my first wife, and making sure she never succumbed to drugs and debaucheries, had her make a lucrative salary as a maid to the rich and powerful.  Thus she retained her looks, health and happiness far longer than she had in the original timeline, and ten years back, in 2005, I'd hired her as my maid, by the simple expedient of having the company I owned transfer her to me.

I had slept with her within the month, she was compensated lavishly, and I never bored her with how we really first met.  She had never been evil, just a dumb slut, and I found it intensely erotic to be with her again, in spite of her fantastic breasts being much droopier now.

And what of it?  I had regrets as to how we ended, so made sure she had a good and happy life this time.  I'd done the same for Sherry, for Kathy, and for Katie, the one who had accepted me and been there for me, before my first leap.  And yes, I had made sure Karen had a good life.  Oh, I had been married to a woman named Robin, too.  Her I usually ignored.  Not always.  One time I'd amused myself by having her kidnapped, flown to some third world nation and dropped off, with little packets of drugs sewn into the lining of her jacket.  Just once, though.  Because I had I felt a little bad after.  

The two grad students knew who I was, and my prominence in the university as a benefactor and patron.  They were surprised and frightened to learn that I knew of their secret activities.  I told them to relax, that one of the bums they were experimenting on, or would experiment on, or would have had - whatever the tense! - would be me, and it had worked.

Kind of.

When I told them everything that you've just read, they still were skeptical.  I could see that they perhaps thought this was the weirdness of some "balloon around the earth billionaire", such types which were common then.

Having thoroughly researched them, I knew that they were lacking in any metaphysical studies, and so proceeded to walk them through the "what ifs" of their experiments that they had already done.  And I did know they had already done such, and that aided in persuading them.  Finally, I brought out the big guns.  They could die now, and I had a short and stout Korean come out when I said that, and he touched his gun menacingly, or they could aid me in finding out what happened, and they'd be rich and pampered forever.

When I said that, four women came out, each sexier than the other, and two of them attached themselves to each grad student.  I said, "I would like to have these ladies, employees of mine, take you to your new apartments.  Those apartments being in this very building, and you'll not be needing to pay for them.  And if you agree, there'll be others who'll move your personals to those places, leaving your furnishings behind, as I imagine you'll wish to upgrade."

"Or", I continued, "My bodyguard Oddjob can deal with you."  As I have repeatedly said, I am a nerd, but they were, too.  They got it.  They agreed.  Perhaps it was how menacing the man I had to pay double before he'd let me call him "Oddjob" was.  Or perhaps it was how provocative the women I had petting them were.  Perhaps both.

One of them asked if he could ask me some questions that would help.  I agreed.  I told him of how the law firm had took me in, how their intern, now my wife, had raised me, how they kept my child prodigy status secret as it let them become so rich and powerful that they had been able to manipulate not only Chicago machine politics, but the whole State of Illinois politics since.  And American politics.  Hence Christine Daley being the President since 2014.  She being the granddaughter of Boss Daley, the Chicago Mayor who had scammed JFK into office.

The grad students made the obvious choice.  

**********

Research went fast.  Especially with the far larger research teams I brought in.  The work was 24/7, and money was no object.  Naturally, we learned some things.  It turned out that 99.9999% of all cases, the tachyonic particles would "miss" catching the neural net.  That's why the others had not gone back, in my original lifetime.  I was apparently the "lucky" one in a million.

The going back without changing the timeline, did prove the "Many Worlds" theory.  But we also were able to theoretically confirm that besides all possibilities of the universe existing, that besides all those Known Universe-size bubbles, there was plenty of "room", so to speak, for the micro-bubbles that were only 41 years in duration and 82 light years across.

This was all proved, mathematically, and it was excitedly thought that work could forge ahead in learning how to detect the other bubbles, full size and small, and perhaps even one day contact such.  I dryly reminded them that there would not be time.  

And that was when several on the staff started killing themselves.  First one, then three more, then two more.  The brightest of them.  They realized.  I mean, everyone said they "got it", but clearly those few had a much deeper understanding of the reality of it.

The micro-bubble would reach an "end" in December of 2016, had in fact already reached the end, was already complete.  Our consciousnesses were simply traversing this finite time/space, and would hit a wall.  We'd not know it, as there wouldn't be any consciousness left to know, well, except for me.

I'd flip back, and in so doing, create an "alternate" micro-bubble.  Not a new one off of the main one, but a new one off of the last created one.  Which I had guessed.  The published findings made it clear that each bit of time was a discrete unit, and a debate over the nature of consciousness was starting to take place nationally.  Was a person's "now" just the entity that remembered all actions up to that point, with him then "dying" and the next moment's identical copy having one chronon's more memory?  

Or did consciousness transcend the materiality of time/space, and thus your neural net was flitting from entity at Planck Time-1, your personal birth, to another you a Planck Time unit later, call it Planck Time-2, and then so on, all the way to your last entity at Planck Time-kajillion or so when, when your personal death took place?

I tended to favor that second guess, and kind of took my situation as living proof.  I was also of the opinion that this proved my guess that instead of a "nothing" that universes of various types moved/grew into, that it was an infinity of "something" instead of an infinity of "nothing".  In my guess, each of the alternate universes and bubbles and such were not then created out of nothing, but were versions of existents imposed upon the background "meta-existent" of the waiting Omniverse.  

Think of an unformed clay background, and when you flip a coin, and the universe "splits", it simply means that the entirety of the existence - in this one Known Universe up to now - is imposed on the formless clay, becoming at once.  Or for you kids, a copy was instantly made and the background "memory" of the Omniverse now had two very close copies of a thing.  And soon enough, an infinity, as the clay or memory was infinite.

This also disproved the concept of entropy, though I had never believed in that anyway.  The intelligence of men give proof that the same amount of energy in - like food - does not equal the same amount of results.  

Consider Samuel Clemens and whichever man was the village idiot of Hannibal, Missouri.  Each needed food to live, quite possibly the idiot even needed more food than Clemens.  

And now?  If you read a story of Samuel Clemens you laugh.  Physical movement.  And you think and ponder.  With other writers, you may even invent things.  

But the village idiot is dead and not the cause of anything else ever.  So Homer and Clemens and Euclid and Newton and Milton - they have set their thoughts in print and others can unthaw them for the price of looking at the words.  And no more energy is needed to view the words than to view anything.  

Yet looking at the book creates new abundance, and looking at the sky or woods does not.  

Thus do different men reverse entropy by encoding their genius.

It had been quite a research effort, and knowing what the date of my last day last time had been, I had time to kiss Dawn goodbye.  And Trisha.  They each cried.  But they each looked more like women who love a man, and think he's gone a bit crazy, and are wondering what they will do nex -

**********

Cycle 3:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  I left my brother without saying a word, walked outside and went to Mr. Levine's office.  

You know what all I then did.  But I made it to billionaire status by 1991.  Last time I had had a research team come up with how much to invest and in what, given the "hypothetical" of starting in 1975.  I got several different plans, and cherry picked and studied them thoroughly.  Obviously many of the suggestions were already well familiar to me, but it still helped.

I had made sure to aid the Star Trek cast and crew even more abundantly this time, Gene on down, they all loved me.  I contacted a PR team, an Ad firm, a movie producer and an author, H.F. Saint.  I met with them and the cast and crew of Star Trek.  

I said, "I'm a billionaire, and by definition eccentric.  What I am about to tell you is true, and some of you will believe it, especially those of you that I got to know in another life, and thus can 'prove' it to you by sharing things that only you could have told me in that other life.  For the rest of you, you do not have to believe it, you only need to know that I want this story to be gave out to the public, I want them to be amazed by it, and I want them to believe it.  Soon enough after that, there will be scientists that will come to know it's true."

I then related everything you've read up to now, and I gave them this story - up to this point - in a small book that they could keep and study.  The appendix had all the science theory that I had been able to remember in intensive studying last time.  The world would have 25 years to build off of the data that had already been acquired, with theories already developed and proved.

I gave envelopes to each of the Star Trek cast and crew, each had personal knowledge of them in it that even a billionaire with detectives could not have obtained.  Even then, not all of them believed it, but given that I was offering each and every person in that hotel conference room a large salary, for life, just for pushing this story and nothing else, all were inclined to go along with me.

Star Trek, as popular as always, did a four part episode about me called "Troubles with Bubbles".  Yes, I'm still a nerd.  H.F. Saint was up for writing a book about my life, and if you ever read his first - and originally last - book, "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", then you'll know that it was better than what you're reading now.  Not that I didn't have to pay him three times what I paid the others, I've never seen a man of such talent and with so little motivation to use it.

He was savvy enough to insist on retaining the movie rights, and I said sure, but only if he never had Chevy Chase or Darryl Hannah star in it.  He looked surprised, but agreed.  And thus we were saved one of histories worst movies, as he nixed the movie of his first book.

The PR firm and Ad agency were to push my story as the world's problem, with the goal of a crash research program to solve not only my personal problem, but to maybe even find a way to expand the duration of this 41 year long microverse bubble.  They were to get the public so believing this that they'd insist the government and every corporation and university get involved.  

I knew that when once a bit of proof was found, that soon the whole world would be working on it.  

**********

And unsurprisingly, it worked.  The "getting the world involved" part.  Oh, it was slow going.  It made a splash, but then besides a few cults based on it, and endless cranks bothering my office, it was forgot.  Oh, no, not "forgot", my agents made sure it stayed in the public consciousness.  But it was just there in the background, life was going on, only a small percent were taking it seriously.

But the universities with the research grants and the government were taking it seriously.  That Chicago law firm had enough clout to get plenty of Congressmen on board with appropriating funds and strong arming opposition.  We tossed the bone of "possible military potential", and that got a lot of extra minds working on this.

It was 1998, seven years later, that they confirmed "my" theory of the Omniverse.  That it's all an infinity of proto-substance, and that the Many Worlds is true, and that with each split, a copy - nearly identical but for the one difference - is "imposed" on this proto-substance.  That it isn't even quite "substance", just kind of a very meta-raw/blank "existence" that all the matter and energy, time and space, dimensions and such are "imposed" on.  

What started our Known Universe bubble, and all it's alternate bubbles, that we did not know.  Why the "something" of the protostuff instead of "nothing", well, I'd not been able to answer that as a kid, and it still wasn't answerable now.  

Now I was took seriously, and the world knew that it had only 18 years "left".  Well...kind of.  A lot of those in the know, working on all the many projects related to this believed.  As did a tiny percent of the scientifically minded public.  And because of that, there were the predictable number of suicides.  But most took it the same way you do when you hear that NASA has found an asteroid that might hit us in 150 years.

With a kind of "so what?" attitude greatly at odds with the possibility of an impending doom.  Mostly it was because while this doom was to be in less than twenty years, it was hard for them to grasp.  "What do they mean it'll just stop?", "What do they mean we'll kind of be forever?" and "How much more tax dollars are we throwing at this idiocy?" were three of the most common questions.

There was also some speculation about what end point there'd have been with the original bubble of our Known Universe.  Which till my arrival, all the scientists assumed theirs was.  Would the Known Universe really have lasted trillions of more years, ending with some heat death?  Was it then "static" like these micro-bubbles, and so each person was always going to be "there/then"?  

They learned there was no hope of sending messages to these existent bubbles.  Any attempt to send my mind or any other mind back would only cause more bubbles of the kind I kept generating.  And while only one mind out of a million could be sent at all, they were able to prove that only one mind per a trillion quintillion would be able to be "magnetized" in such a fashion as to automatically repeat. 

For the others - and obviously they did try this with others - it would be "one and done".  One repeat, then they'd end with the end of their own micro-bubbles.  None of the others they tried it with had anything happen to them. 

As for my own mind, while I was not bright like the savants surrounding me, I was shining like the sun in the odd tachyonic wavelength that they had learned to detect.  

**********

The military inevitably had to muck about.  They wanted to load me up with intel for me to give to the U.S. military leaders of 1975.  I cheerfully agreed, while privately thinking they hadn't learned very much from all this.  What, they dreamed of one lone bubble out of the infinite number of them in which the U.S. would reign supreme for...a whole 41 years?  

Oh, but this is where you're wondering what disasters I prevented.  Like for one bubble, I was asked why didn't I stop 10/1?  Well, I had stopped 9/11 which was the date America was attacked in my original time, not for doing anything big, or anything at all.  Not deliberately.  It's as I said, politics changes very quickly from the ripples, it was only the broader tech trends that remained relatively stable.  

And really, 10/1 - or 9/11 or 9/24 - are inevitable things.  Any student of history knows that if you mess about with a given people for enough decades, as America had with the Middle East, then sure, something is going to happen.  What were they supposed to do, just wait and wait and wait, till the Western Powers drained them of their last resources?

I took home the book length of military intel and tossed it in the trash.  I did not believe that in any timeline I could construct or influence that the world could learn more of this phenomena than they had already.

Oh, if they had more time, they might.  Theories for how to "punch through" were being batted about, where one might exit a bubble physically, and traversing the meta-reality, punch back in to another bubble.  Those with the most hope of that also admitted that it would take the energy of the entire Known Universe to do so.

And that the addition of mass to such a bubble might destabilize it at once.  As the loss of mass from the bubble left might destabilize that.  None of this would aid me.

However, I had all the "final equations" from 25 years of research.  And I'd spent the last year using my silly pi memorizing abilities to memorize those equations.  Not easy E equals MC squared crap, but those goofy brain busting ones that look half Greek, half something harder.

I knew all the real answers in English, and could give a massive boost to research in 1975 - was there a way to skip the "become a billionaire" part?

**********

Cycle 18:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  In case you're wondering, Cycles 1, 2 and 3 took a few more cycles than I made out.  I mean, it's hard to just be a billionaire, so there were a lot of times I failed, then lived out my life in obscurity, running down the clock till I could try again.  

Yeah, even in that first cycle, I didn't become a billionaire first go around, what about my ne'er do well, wanderlust life made you think I could do that?  No, I went around a half dozen times on that one, I just wanted to be able to convey to you my surprise the first time I found that I kept looping.  So I compressed the story a little.

Want to hear about the time the law firm put me in a psych ward, and drugged me up, and tried to get info out of me to learn my secret to knowing the future?  I'm sure that would make a dramatic fiction story, but in real life, our mental institutions are hardly less barbaric than the 19th century.

Cleaner?  Yeah.  Mind smashing drugs instead of routine physical beatings?  Yep.  Having lived it, I think that's a small peg to hang your hat on, but if it lets you think we've come along way, and that gives you comfort, great.  But there are no cures in those places, never kid yourself about that.  They're places to park those who have annoyed others, political prisoners, those caught committing crimes due to obvious mental difficulties, and those dumb enough to think that it's a good place to go if you feel like killing yourself, or were caught in some supposed "attempt".

Those last can be cured.  Given how crappy those places are, it's a rare angsty teen or down on his luck adult that will pretend a suicide attempt again.  No, after one of those places, they'll either shape up, or make sure to do it right next time.

And don't think they've advanced past electroshocks.  They call it Electro-Convulsive Therapy but the new name was the only change. 

I walked out of my childhood home without a word, and walked to Illinois Wesleyan University.  I borrowed some paper and a pen, and wrote a variety of letters.  I folded them up and put them down the back of my pants, shirt covering them.

I found a likely looking young couple there, boyfriend and girlfriend, and asked if they had a car.  They did.  I explained that I needed to get to California.  I was hoping they'd give me a ride.  I told them an appropriate story, parents were taking me from Ohio to California where in Sacramento I had an aunt who would be taking me in.

But mom and dad had argued last night, and then later, when I came out of the gas station restroom they were gone.  They tried to quiz me for more details, but I just played dumb kid lost, and cried when they suggested the police, claiming that they'd put me in foster care.

They ended up putting me on a bus, with $20 and a note with their names and addresses.  Long distance calls, while existing, weren't much of a thing with most.  I promised I'd have my aunt write, they made me promise that I'd write, too.  At a random stop in Colorado, I mailed the letters I'd first wrote.  Within three days, I was in Sacramento.

I got off the bus and went to a pay phone.  I found where the FBI was, and it was not so far that I couldn't walk.  I did.  I knew that the FBI didn't handle what I had to relate, but I also knew that Hoover's perversities and hypocrisies and racism notwithstanding, that the men of the bureau were usually a cut above in honesty and intelligence.

At least more so than some other agencies.  And this was pre-Waco and pre-Ruby Ridge, when the whole bureau went to crap.

"I have information vital to the security of the United States of America.", and yes, I said it exactly like that.  The receptionist was as amused as she was "seventies cute".  Red lips, red nails, red toenails, skirt a couple of inches off the knees, sleeveless blouse, greatly teased up hair.  I had no sexual desire for her, but intellectually knew I might in a few years.  I made a note that she might make a good guardian.

She had me wait, and called someone.  Shortly, an Agent came down, looking a bit annoyed at having to deal with whatever nonsense I had.  I pondered if I should just deal with his supervisor instead, but figured I'd give him the break of his career.

He asked me what I needed, and I asked, "Do you discuss all vital security matters in the lobby?  Or don't you have an office yet?"

He snorted and said, "All right, come along.  I've got five minutes for you, then it's the police and a free ride home."

I told him that the Soyuz 18A launch was going to be aborted on the 5th of April.  It being the 4th when I told him this.  He just looked at me as if waiting for more, a common tactic of reporters and police.  Folks hate a silence, so they'll fill it with saying more things, including things they might not have wanted to.

I said, "Write that down.  For now, you see me as just some runaway, and by the time this conversation is over, you'll see me as a runaway who's a prodigy.  But it's much more than that."

He made a note and said that he didn't really see how vital that was to national security.  I said, "How about the assassination of President Ford, in San Francisco, by Sara Jane Moore, on the 22nd of September of this year?"

That got his attention.  But in keeping with his trained calm demeanor he only asked what that had to do with the Soyuz launch.  I told him that it had nothing to do with it, but when that launch was cancelled tomorrow, he'd know that I could know things in the future that had not happened yet.

His eyebrows went up.  "You psychic, huh?", he said sarcastically.  I said, "I'm a seven year old boy who just told you that a Soviet space launch was to be aborted tomorrow, a thing that not only your intelligence agencies don't know, but that the Soviets don't know either.  When that happens, you'll get that tone out of your voice and take me seriously.  If you then can hold fast till the 30th of April, you'll see something else, but that I won't tell you up front."

"Why not?", he asked.  "Because you'll try to stop that, and it doesn't really need to be stopped.  And if you stopped it, then some would doubt my abilities.  As it is, and in spite of me now asking you not to, you'll probably try to pick up this Sara Moore, and that will invalidate that prediction.  I wish you wouldn't, though.  The quicker you take me seriously, the more hope there is for our nation."

"Kid, this is above my paygrade, but before I go running off to my supervisor, to make you his problem, why don't you tell me what you want?"

I told him that I needed a hotel for the night, and a caretaker to stay with me, preferably that receptionist.  That while there I'd need an IBM Selectric and a ream of paper, preferably of good quality.  And I'd need a court stenographer, a tape recorder with plenty of cassettes, and whichever secretary of theirs took dictation the fastest.  A video camera, to record me at work tonight would also help, as there'd be Congressmen that would want to see all this later.

"Is that all?", he asked dryly.  "No", I said.  "My caretaker - and yes, it will be that receptionist, you can double her salary if need be - will need a charge card for whatever other incidentals are necessary.  Make it $1,000 for now, later, when you and your boss are on the same page, we'll discuss what it needs to be for the day in day out."

"What is all this for?", he asked.

"I'm going to give everyone a lot of information about a very serious problem facing not only the United States, but the whole world.  When the various events I predict come true, you'll take it seriously, and then start research into how to solve those problems.  But time is of the essence.  I've a lot of data to get down, and I can't keep it memorized forever.  Come on.  We're talking about three employees worth of time for one day, a hotel room and some pizza maybe.  By tomorrow, you'll see that it was worth it when the Soyuz mission is aborted."

He took me to his supervisor.  Neither really knew what to make of me.  The issue of my minor status came up.  I said, "Let's quit dicking around.  Must I speak of COINTELPRO, of your suicide letter to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, or Hoover's cross dressing and various other less than noble moments of your agency?  I can.  Better yet, I can just sit here and let you hold me for interrogation, an interrogation that will gain you nothing, nothing but a letter going out to the Sacramento newspapers tomorrow letting them know you're holding a kid hostage."

"Or", I continued, "You can put me up for the night, hotel or safehouse, I don't care, minimal cost to you, and get everything I know voluntarily.  By tomorrow, you'll hear about the Soyuz mission aborting, and we can all go from there.  He said" - I pointed to the agent - "that I was above his paygrade.  I'm above yours, too.  Be the man your superiors remember as having took the prudent course of action.  Not the one that bungled the biggest case of his now ended career."

The supervisor looked at the agent and said, "Kids don't talk this way.  We're phoning this one up.  Meanwhile, you round up that receptionist, a stenographer and Rita, she's the fastest at taking dictation.  Get the cameras and recorders.  And you stay at the safehouse with them, you and Baines.  This kid doesn't leave your sight, understand?"

The agent did.  I thanked the supervisor.  He said, "Don't thank me yet, this isn't going the way I thought, but I doubt it'll go the way you think."  He looked me up and down, noting how young I was, and said, "Good luck, kid.  I think you're going to need it."

**********

I dictated long into the night.  Everything you've read here, all the equations, the theories, the insights, the dead ends.  Well, not the investments, and not the Fall of Saigon.  Those I'd hold for later.

I got to know Linda.  The receptionist.  Single, hoping to land an agent, still only 22.  She talked to me pretty freely when the cameras were off.  Yes, she'd heard the story.  They all had.  With varying degrees of unbelief.  I mean, none of them really bought it, but still, it was weird that a seven year old could come up with all this stuff.

She was sensing a kid that needed a lot of help, and that appealed to her maternal instincts, but also I think a part of her was seeing an opportunity for promotion and more pay.

The two agents were whispering long into the night.  I'd gave them a lot to whisper about.  41 years from now, it would be 2016, and I'd just told them that the world would end then.

The next morning, an angry supervisor was there.  The Soyuz 18A had launched, successfully.  He said that play time was over, and I'd be coming back to their offices to answer some more questions.  I said, "I said it would be aborted, I did not say when.  Has it reached orbit yet?"  He laughed and said I'd have to do better than that.

When we got to their office, several men in Army and Air Force uniforms were there in the lobby.  They strode up and the highest ranked one, a full bird Colonel, USAF, said to the supervisor, "It aborted before reaching orbit.  He was right.  What else has he said?"

I was hustled into a conference room.  They were all talking among themselves, trying to figure out what to do next, waving around various papers with my notes on them.  I climbed up on the chair and yelled, "Gentlemen!"  They stopped and turned to me at once.  I said, "The cosmonauts will make it down safely.  On the 17th of April, the Khmer Rouge will capture Phnom Penh.  On the 25th, the West German embassy will be blown up in Sweden.  And there'll still be something happen on the 30th that your intelligence services aren't aware of.  I think it's time you all stopped worrying about how to make use of me as some kind of early warning guide for your petty projects and start thinking about what I really said, and how me knowing these things simply proves that."

The Colonel said, "Kid, there'll be attention gave to what you said, and your transcript and that video will be shown to whoever needs to see it.  But the FBI here already picked up this Sara Moore, she was already on their radar, and she's yet to admit to any plot in September.  We're going to need you tell us about the 30th of April."

"No", I said, "You're going to need to realize that your usual foul tricks of secret interrogations and drugs and third degrees aren't going to work this time.  You'll take what I give, and you'll learn to follow my instructions, or I'll teach the better men who are sent to replace you.  By now, the letters I mailed a few days ago have reached newspapers, universities and Congressional offices around the country.  You'll be getting calls asking about me, and ask yourself whether I made sure you can't plausibly deny having me here."

Silence fell.  The general consensus was that I probably had took such precautions.  It might have taken me a few cycles to get that stirring little speech down right.  And some of those cycles might have been a bit more terrible for me while in their hands than even I, an avowed old anarchist, had thought they were up for.

**********

Inevitably then, they relented.  But the next cycle you see will be in the low thirties, sad to say.  Mostly due to the generally anti-government climate of the seventies, and the newspapers starting to call within two hours after I said.  They asked why I was so reticent to tell them everything at once, not realizing the other cycles when they'd stood impassively by while I screamed my seven year old lungs out at the torturing hands of the CIA guy they had brought in.

I reminded them of Sara Moore, and how they'd changed things by picking her up.  I was able then to get them to arrange a meeting with Congressmen of their choice, and whoever donated the most to those men.  And Professors in Physics from MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Northwestern.

I put forth my proposal.  I would like to see them create an investment corporation, stock to be divided in a particular way.  Each university would hold 10%, I would hold 25%, the remaining 25% to be split among the donors to the Congressmen there today.  Or the Congressmen, if they felt they had the capital for it.

The sum I named for investing was high, but I told them to stop thinking small.  These were sure things.  When they realized that they'd each only be ending up with 1 or 2 percent a piece, I reminded them what 1% of AT&T would be worth now, if they'd bought 100 years ago.  The universities said they could not afford ten percent each.  I said that I'd like the government to pay their buy in, with the understanding that the universities then use their profits exclusively for research.

Well, I actually said, "Use nine percent for research and one percent for your administrative perks.  I don't want to bind your mouths.  That work?"  It did.  I was the darling of Ivy League ever after.

The Congressmen said they'd try and introduce that legislation, but it wouldn't be easy.  "No", I said, "It won't.  So don't do it that way.  Have the FBI and CIA fund it, they've enough slush funds for it.  No, they won't be paid from the profits of this corporation.  But if they want to invest concurrently, they can."

"But gentlemen.  The stock will be the kind that pays out dividends, but it will be non-voting.  I will run the company.  I will not spend the next 41 years trying to outwit every future General, Congressman, Agent and Operative who thinks he knows better how to invest these funds.  You may have oversight, naturally, but if profits are being made, then there is nothing more to say.  As to your desire for military intelligence, I can give you some broad strokes, and I can share with you how it's turned out before, but know that it will change, it won't be as I say.  Politics change too fast."

It was the 28th of April when they had not only agreed, but the corporation was set up.  I had a Sacramento law firm this time, who agreed to aid me initially on the basis of the money I'd have coming in.  The newspapers, having confirmed that I was at the FBI office that first day, had gone with headlines like "Boy Prodigy Predicts Future, FBI Listens".

I told the Chief of Staff of the White House, who I had asked to see, "In two days, Saigon will fall.  There's nothing to be done about it, and nothing that needs to be done about it - save this, start the evacuation now.  If you don't, then all your helicopters won't be enough to get everyone out of the embassy."

Now the headlines read, "Future Boy Predicts Fall!".  And shortly after, "Future Boy Predicts Doomsday!"

**********

Did the whole world work on it now?  No.  But those universities did.  And the military.  I let the President - who insisted on meeting me - know about the earlier attempt, from Squeaky Fromme, on September 2nd.  I said that all the press hoopla about me may have changed that.  But they obviously put a tail on her, and when she tried on the 2nd anyway, they moved in and got her at once.  Her gun still had no round in the chamber, but she still got the same life sentence.

I was not as rich this time.  I spent a lot of my profits bribing yet more Congressmen to keep pushing this research.  By 1991, instead of being a billionaire just starting a 25 year research project, I was worth a comfortable $50,000,000 - that's all Hugh Hefner had ever been worth - and Linda and I had one child, a little girl named Barbara.  But now the whole world was far more concerned about my story.

16 years of research by the foremost universities of the United States, with the quarter century head start I had gave them had paid off.  Not as in how to expand our 41 year old micro-bubble, but in proving that it was a 41 year old micro-bubble.  Plenty had been debating that.

The theories proving it had been relatively easy, given the leads and equations I'd gave them.  But when they found a way to prove it, with experimentation, and devised a way to determine that the light coming towards them had no further light behind that, then that really convinced the world.  It involved tiny probes shot off into space and accelerated to .9c with laser arrays, to then send us data back, and it made the moon landing look cheap, but when you saved the life of the President - Ford, who served another term afterwards with my aid - then you can get whatever budget you want.

I never did tell Ford that both attempts had originally failed.

1991 then saw quite a bit more suicides than previous cycles.  The world knew.  Yes, the Soviets called it a capitalist lie, what would you expect?  Yes, they'd be around this whole cycle, as too much of American effort had been focused on this micro-bubble program to wrestle them to the ground.  And in that bubble, we never had the Gipper.  And too much effort had been to foster international cooperation, with even good work from Romania helping.  But a certain dictator there was thinking about going back to when he was a boy of seven, so that wasn't as surprising as I first thought.

A bit over 1% of the world did kill themselves, when all the studies and NASA's confirmation came out.  The studies were a meaningless confirmation to me, but to this world, it was their savants coming up with proof of what many had hoped was just a very odd former child prodigy's fantasy.

The bubble ending, or my brain ending, either would send me "back" to start another cycle, in another bubble.  The researchers, when I confessed to a bubble I didn't write about here in which I'd killed myself, said that the bubble would still have lasted till 2016.  Some of them looked at me pityingly.  One said, "I don't know which of us has it worse.  We for ending in another 25 years, or you for having no end ever."

A good part of the research obviously focused on me in particular.  Yes, they were trying to see if a micro-bubble could be artificially expanded, and mathematically were not getting very good answers as to what power that would take even if it could be done.

They were also focusing on me, and my bright shining - tachyonically speaking - mind.  I was one in a trillion quintillion, remember?  That was for being able to go perpetually round and round, anyway, but I was also one in a million for being able to go back at all.  Naturally the prospect of getting to go back just once, so as to give someone 41 more years, appealed to quite a few people.  Especially as they realized that the 41 extra years would be with them as potential billionaires.

And it beat "ending" in 2016, didn't it?

**********

Northwestern hadn't been idle.  The helmet, remember?  They were trying to see what kind of minds could go back at all, and originally had not had too much of a clue.  They had plenty of clues now.  7,000 people on Earth, or one out of a million of a populace of around seven billion could go back for one cycle.  7,000 could gain another 41 years of life.

Could they be found?  Could a test be devised to find the bright shining ones, as I referred to them on so many television interviews, that the whole world called them that?  Not so bright shining as me, of course, but enough for that brief and happy respite?

Or, better yet, could a way be found to attune a normal person's mind to the tachyonic particles, to make them shine bright enough to be caught and swept back after all?  Or could it be mastered enough that others - who foolishly thought they wanted it - could be made immortal like me?

Unsurprisingly, only people in the Western world - and the inevitable Party bigwigs from the Eastern Bloc - could have any hope of being tested.  And the test was, in spite of the push to make it accessible to all, still going for $250.  Not so bad, really, but enough that the public demanded it be subsidized.

By 2015, everyone who wanted to could be tested.  Only 124 out of the potential 330 in the United States were found.  They weren't sent back, of course.  Instead, their minds were intensely studied.  The researchers now had the normals.  Those who could not.  They had those 124, who shining more tachyonically could go back once with the aid of the helmet.  And they had me, who shone brightest of all.

What they didn't have was enough time.

One year left.  I could not count how many teams were working on this.  But in an interesting way.  They were trying to compress all their findings into something I could memorize.  They were aided in me having a pretty good grasp of it already.  But they needed equations and theories and such that would aid the next folks.

Yes, the three different subjects, the normals, the one and dones and eternal me had gave them a lot to go on.  But they estimated at least 10 more years of research needed to be able to come up with a way to even determine if a person's neural net could be "adjusted" or "sensitized" so that all could have what only a few had, or even so that all could have what only I had.

Meanwhile, the one out of a million of those who were also rich and/or powerful were already going back.  I pitied those breakaway bubbles they'd create.  I doubted they were focused on making Star Trek better.  I pondered things.  A lot of things.

I remembered how when I had started a food pantry with the aid of a Seventh-day Adventist church, that the leaders of that church had tried to take it from me so they could give themselves more glory and pomp than they had.  I remembered how I'd started sober living homes so that those who tried to climb back up in life did not have to put up with petty "Shelter Kings" as I called them, those aid givers who lorded it over those who came to them.

I remembered joining the Mormons once, and how good they seemed, but in their holy scriptures, they had a verse that said, "We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion."

Leaders in that Mormon church had done that very thing to me, way back when, and such were probably as fine a group of men as the world had to offer.  How sad that was for the world.

And was I so much better?

Drugs, drink, I still did those.  $50 million is $50 million, and not only did I have all of Hugh Hefner's sybaritic luxury, but I had power and influence such that no man had ever had before.  There were things I had done, this cycle and those before, that I would be reticent to write about.  Perceived enemies of the past messed with.  Women I enjoyed, never by physical force, but by circumstances that some might suggest were abusive of my status and position.

We know what Lord Acton said.  And he could have left off the "tends to", as most who quote him do.  Absolute power was not for any man, and here I was, for my own personal reasons, aiding at least half a dozen psychopaths - er, "world leaders" - in going back to exercise such power that few even dreamed of.  What micro-bubble universes were being created with my help, that would be led by these tyrants?

I also knew of the capacity humans had to change.  In the last five or so years of my original life, one of my best and only friends had been a blind guy and his blind girlfriend.  Later, I married the two of them, in a private ceremony of their closest family and friends.  I would drive him on all his errands, and do everything possible to give him a good and independent life.

Not for having to, I enjoyed helping.  But myself of even ten years before would not have.  So who can say when people will change, and what changes they can make if they have long enough?

January of 2016, they brought me their "condensed version", a hundred pages - yes, exactly one hundred pages - that if I could memorize and give to those in 1975 of the next bubble, that they could likely come up with a way for all to be able to go back once, and perhaps even for all to go back forever, if they so chose.  They had no theories yet on how to make me not shine so brightly, so as to end my endless journey, but they held out as a carrot that those starting in 1975 might be able to figure it out in 41 years of time.

I thanked them.  They were not themselves bad.  I knew they'd keep working till the end.

I studied it thoroughly, I'd want to know it either way I ever decided, and kept studying till December of 2016.

Linda wasn't with me, I hadn't divorced her, but since she was tired of me, I asked only that she do nothing to interfere with my work, and she had left amicably, set up well, a few years earlier.  She oddly never believed my story, though quite a large percent of the world did by now.

I kissed Daphne good bye.  I had scooped her up from a Broadway play that was quite popular, and she, not being a woman to miss the main chance, had "been there" for me for the past ten years.  The contract was that I'd provide for her until my death, so long as she was with no one else at all, and at my death, she'd inherit.  A scurvy trick?  No, I told her it would end.  But she didn't believe it.  I'll give her this much credit - she gave full value the whole time.

She kissed me back, as passionately as ever.

**********

Cycle 34:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  Daphne's kiss still seemed warm on my lips.  Yes, yes, she was from Cycle 33, I said I've compressed some of these.  

I left the house at once.  I went to the Bloomington Public Library.  I wrote down everything I remembered from that 100 pages.  Who can say if I got it all?  I think I did.  More than enough.  It was the efforts of around three quarters of a century of research.  I went to the freight train yards and climbed into an empty box car.  I didn't care where it was going.

It went south.  I got off in Memphis, Tennessee.  I remembered that I had lived there before, during my hitchhiking days, and stayed at a religiously run group home there.  I hid the papers in the glove compartment of a car in a junkyard that looked like it had been there forever.  I wasn't sure I cared if they'd still be there later.

I went downtown, I was hungry.  I asked a couple, casually, if I could try a bite of a burger the man was eating at a sidewalk café.  They were surprised, but said I could.  I ate the whole the thing.  The girl asked if I was okay.  I said I was, it was just a good burger.  Fortified, I took my leave, and went to a Methodist church.

Having been raised Methodist, I knew I'd find good people there, even if their brand of faith is somewhat lukewarm nowadays.  I gave the story to the secretary there, of having been travelling with my parents, having used the restroom at the gas station, and they being gone when I came out.  There were police involved this time, I wasn't trying to pretend to be a savant, and when they could not get enough from me to find my parents, I was placed in foster care.

I had made an impression on that church secretary, though, as I had meant to.  She made sure her church took an interest in me, and it was her who, with her husband, eventually adopted me.  Nothing weird here, I just needed nice parents.  I was very studious, did well in school, but not too well, and worked very hard at many odd jobs.

I got those papers and hid them in my home.  I wrote out my whole story and hid that, too.  I worked very hard at odd jobs, lemonade stands, selling "Grit", stupid stuff like that which is all seven year olds can do.  When the next year came around, I had $250.  I approached my "father" and asked him to help me invest it in various stocks.

They knew I was a savant.  I explained that I wanted to pay them back for their kindness, and if they'd invest also, they'd not lose.  I predicted an event or three to aid them in believing me.  I had already made "predictions" about various non-financial things enough that they knew I had a very unusual mind.

Soon enough, by the time I was 15, we were a very prosperous family.  They had accepted my suggestion that we not make a big thing of this, as I didn't want to be poked and prodded.  They either understood, or didn't want to kill the golden egg laying goose.  Either way, worked for me.

By the time I was 18, my "father" was a millionaire several times over, and I was a millionaire as I did have a bit over a million dollars in my own bank accounts.  And far more in an investment portfolio that my family was not aware of.

School had been more enjoyable for me, as I was not the coward I had been in my original life.  A bully would get a real surprise from me, I'd fight like a middle aged man.  Some of you don't know what that means.  But kids and young men fight for status, older men fight only to win.  Which is what I did.  The first bully picked on me, and I submitted.  When he walked away, laughing, I kicked him in the balls, from behind, then when he was down, poked his eyes so hard he was out of school for a month.

But I had my family and church backing me, and the other kids had saw me get pushed first.

I got laid a lot more in High School this time.  I suppose on some level that was wrong, me being more than a century or so old by now.  But none of them were under 16, and some were women in their thirties.  Whatever.  Judge me if you like.  Do so for the next few decades.  Guess what happens then?

I wasn't some amoral monster, though.  No, I'd just resolved to take a break, to ponder.  To enjoy as normal a life as could be enjoyed.  Well, with money and status, anyway.  Thoreau was still great, but having lived "simple" and lived as the one percent, well, guess which is better?

Money may not buy happiness, but it sure gives you a great level of contentment and security with which to then pursue "happiness".

Still, there were things money obviously could not buy.  A redone childhood, in which I had not been originally raised as I was.  A childhood free of bullying and teacher's crap.  A childhood in which I might have asked out the pretty girl who sang "O Holy Night" in Junior High.  I could have this relatively pleasant childhood, but you're formed by your original one.

**********

At 18, I graduated.  As a lost child, I didn't get the birthday advantage I'd got that first time, so no out at 17 for me.  My parents were obviously supportive of whatever I wanted to do.  I took them along with me on my continued financial ride, and so when I started investing in earnest, they reaped the same rewards.  We did very well.

I married a nice Methodist girl when I was 19.  She was 17, and her parents were ecstatic at the match.  Cute, sweet, innocent, we had several kids.  I dusted off the papers I had hid, and found and funded some private research into how to let everyone's mind resonate in such a "bright" fashion as to be able to go back once.  And of course, how they could go back over and over.  And, though I was not sure whether I wanted to use it or not, how to desensitize a person's mind, so they could not go back.

It was a long shot.  It was 1990 by then, and the private firm would not have the funding that I'd been able to arrange in earlier cycles.  I was treading water, in a sense.  Just wanted to live and relax.  In luxury, sure, but relax all the same.  I could not help myself, though, and still became a billionaire, but not till 2002.

I aided all those in my original life.  Those who I had loved or even liked.  They didn't know me, and never knew why.  And yes, I still cheated, I like sex, what can I say?  And I did some drugs.  Nothing huge.  Drug-wise, anyway.  Still drank.  I found my exes, and was with most of them, briefly.  Except for Trish, did I mention how cute she was?  Her I continually visited.

As to my favorite past wife, Katie, her I only ever had saved from a lot of bad in her life and each time had her married off to a good man who gave her plenty of children.  I also saw to it that she inherited a farm for abandoned kittens, too.  Each time. 

I took my Methodist family on a round the world trip.  Not by plane, only by boat and train.  We took a cruise to England, the Chunnel to Europe, went all the way down and back up through Africa, saw Israel, went up to Moscow, took the Trans-Siberian, shipped from Vladisvostok to Nome, literally dog sledded to Barrow - that took a lot of planning - bought a car and drove from Barrow, Alaska to the Darien Gap between Central American and South, hiked that gap, with plenty of guards, then drove all around South America.

Took a special cruise to Antarctica.  Then back in Buenos Aires, broke the no flying rule and flew to Australia.  From there flew to Southeast Asia, saw all that, China, Japan.  Took a cruise back to Vancouver.  Drove from there back to Tennessee.

It took three years.  Because of all the stops we made to stay awhile and really see each place.

In 2011, 21 years after I'd asked that firm to research my situation, they did have an answer.  And here I thought I'd have to memorize more data for the next cycle.  Nope.  Because their answer was a short and sweet, "No."

Various neural nets were variously shining on that specific spectrum.  Like skin color.  And couldn't be changed.  Not without changing the neural net.  Like you could bleach or dye skin, but it wouldn't be the same.  Any hypothetical process that would change the mind, it would not be "you".  They might be able, so they speculated, obliterate the current mind and build it up to have similar memories and shine like would be needed, at least in a hundred more years of research.  But the original would be dead.  Or maybe they could make a copy, in a field that would shine.

But only that would be sent back.  Not the actual "you".

**********

For me, this meant I would always be this way.  Or would it?  Could I take this data, and cycle back, and then do the billionaire thing or the FBI thing and have the whole world find a break through?

Maybe.  I mean, they seemed pretty sure, and they had no reason to lie, but who knew?  Different minds, different approaches?  I got the whole report from them, and thanked them.  I knew they would continue, they were being paid to.  If they learned more, they'd let me know.  I wasn't sure it was even worthwhile.

Well, except for me.

I know what some of you have thought.  That this is like that movie "Groundhog Day", with Bill Murray.  Oh, that might not be out yet when you read this.  It was about a guy who lived the same day over and over till finally he learned to be a good person.

This wasn't like that.  For one, it wasn't magic, I could not break the cycle by being a great guy, and frankly, given everything, I hadn't been all that bad a guy to start with.  For two, I was very thankful it wasn't the same day over and over, but 41 years, because one day would have been very boring.  At least this way, there could be some differences.

Karen had once pushed me out of the way of a bus.  And not then died, but had been in a coma for three weeks.  Then after six months of therapy, she was as good as new.  I knew, like Holden in "Catcher in the Rye" how bad people could be.  But also how good.  What a mixed bag we all are.  I had that memory of Karen doing that, so as to know the goodness that people could have in them.  But for how long could I have that memory?

For I was realizing that this was the biggest way it was different than that movie.  I wasn't going to remember everything and get better and better till everything was okay.  I was going to plod along, life after life, and it was only going to have me remember less and less for real.  I should, one of these cycles, have a project funded to determine how many years a human could remember.

Spoiler alert:  I did, later on, and it was jack compared to what I needed.  A neural net could hold about 400 years, but with a lot of qualifications.  Even our memories for one life hardly remember all 80 years of it.  Flashes of the first 20.  Only the broad strokes of the second twenty from 20 to 40.  And forty to sixty?  Easier, as it is much the same for most of us.  The last 20 is just your day to day memories, the rest comes only with a bit of effort.

And are more "memories of memories".

A young man working on that research project of mine, and with more insight than I thought, came and told me he knew what was going on, and how he was going to end it.  He had figured that I was looping back, he hadn't figured, as I hadn't gave them that data, that killing me would not mean the micro-bubble would expand out.

I had not studied the 100 page book, or any of my notes, for some years.  I was not due to do that till 2015.

**********

Cycle 48:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  The memory of his angry face and the crack of his gun ringing in my memory.  Golly, at least I had that memory, I thought bitterly.  How much else would I have?

And yeah, you may have noticed that last cycle took a dozen or so cycles to get right.  Once I even spent the last 15 years of my life in prison.  It was remarkable I was never killed that time, or before the most recent 47th time.

I went to Mr. Levine's office.  Yes, the same stuff.  My memories of investments being far fresher than equations.  Not that I didn't jot down all I could remember, and with researchers, even the broad strokes are helpful, so there was that.  

It was 1980, I was 12, and I was already wealthy.  And I wasn't going to bother with scientific research this time.  Not when I pretty much knew the answers were negative.  I was pouring myself into pure money, and this time, taking a chance, I'd only gave that law firm 10%.  They still stayed focused on my interests.  

I was a billionaire by 1985.  My political clout even vaster, as I'd deliberately helped politicians instead of Star Trek actors.  I was a celebrity, like any billionaire is.  And like such, the public knew as much and as little about me.  Not that I cared.

I nailed every investment opportunity, which had other wealthy people giving me more opportunities.  I piled it on.  And could successfully do all manner of drugs and booze and women all the while.  By 1991, I had my own island, staff, security, and if any cared to see me - and many did - they could come and visit me.  So long as they were female. 

I had my own tiny Navy, but moreso, the protection that came from being a member of the British Commonwealth.  You see, the island I bought was Pitcairn, and I had it granted full and sovereign status, after I arranged to speak with Queen Elizabeth about her wayward son Charles and his dalliances with Camilla.  I talked with him, and with Diana, too.  They never divorced in that cycle.

I had my life story wrote down.  And whatever equations I half remembered.  You who were bored by my dumb anecdotes of my first life, well, what if it was all you had?  For I knew there had been more, but I was no longer able to remember all of them.  I had only my memories of memories, and that from reading my life story, and that asshat had shot me before I could study the story again.

What might I have forgot to write down?  Like the random headlights I'd focused on, the first time I was nine, I would never know all their stories, and now could never know all of mine.

I still had my memories of travels, I still had all manner of bits and pieces, and random flashes would occur to me now and then.  But like with people past fifty, my memories were more of the "story" of my life than my life.  I knew enough to share what my "story" was, but didn't have the full depths any more.  A problem I well knew would only get worse.

I resolved then to prioritize.  I studied the seventies, eighties, nineties and noughts more than ever, but purely with an eye to tech trends and investment opportunities.  I realized, too, that the continued familiarity, the continued doing the same things each cycle, would aid me the most for the long haul of what was definitely shaping up to be eternity.

Hedonism was not my exclusive philosophy, but it played a large part.  Like how I was the only man on Pitcairn.  I had the other families there move, unless their wives and daughters wanted to stay.  The mini-Navy, really just a private security force, was all women.  The supply ship was owned by a company of mine, and the crew was the only all woman crew on Earth.

No, I didn't sleep with all of them, nothing that silly.  And no one ever had to.  Not that any would keep their job if they said "no".  All this was made clear to any woman before hiring her for any position on the island.  If you believe women have equal rights - as I do - then you should believe them capable of making informed decisions.

I remembered in my first life, a supposed lesbian named Jennifer, who'd slept with me to get a promotion at a security company I was a supervisor in.  But then she was angry, because when she chose to not sleep with me any more, she thus lost that job.  The society of that time would have counted that as wrong, but really, is not a contract a contract?  Is the presumption that women are children, who can't give meaningful consent?

She got the job not for her security abilities, but her sexual ones, scant as in retrospect they were.  If she wasn't going to have the abilities she was promoted for on the table any more, why would I retain her?

On a whim, I had it arranged for her and her "wife" Anita to be offered a job on Pitcairn, one year contract, salary no one could refuse.  I slept with both of them within three months, not as part of a deal, but by just wooing them.  I've never met a lesbian in any cycle that such does not work for.  A gay man is always a gay man, even if he's married to a woman with kids.  Lesbians are only lesbians till they have an opportunity for what they imagine to be the right guy.

They all have their pride, though.  You must let the "lesbian" pretend she is making the "great exception" for you.  

Her abilities were still scant.  I transferred them off the island nine months after that, but I'm not a bad guy, I got them both jobs at a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary.  

**********

By 2011, the British Navy had to spend a good deal more time down near Pitcairn, to protect their favorite member of the Commonwealth.  I was worth over $750 billion now, poised to be the world's first trillionaire, and without even having mined any asteroids.  But if you could get the jump on every billionaire in your lifetime, you'd be able to pull that off, too.

Not that such was easy.  It never was.  In each case, making friends with those already powerful was crucial.  And if they didn't have a piece of it, you could be sure that you would not.  There are all those cycles I've not detailed out, where I crashed due to the machinations of those I trusted, and on some of those cycles, I lived out my life in poverty, then started over at 7.  When I learned I could safely get away with it, other times I just blew my own head off.

I read in a park that I'd made.  Well, a park I had told others to make for me.  The women loved living here, it was so beautiful.  As were all of them.  I was leaning on one, in her arms, and when I'd make a small sound, she'd turn the page for me.  Another was giving me a foot rub.  Another was standing holding a silver tray with a bottle of wine and a glass.  Another kneeling was, well, that was one of my Hedonistic cycles.  Yet another stood by with some cocaine, in case I cared to snort some.  I didn't.  Not till I was finished with the book.

I'd go back to the mansion after reading an hour or three.  I've long since read all the classics, and pretty much anything worth reading.  I reviewed some emails on line, then went to see a movie.  I would watch such in a large water bed, nude, with a woman on either side, and more to bustle in and out with whatever we needed.

The average woman spent five years on the island, then enjoyed a lifetime of ease wherever she liked.  The jobs were thus much sought after.

Cadbury came in, a woman, but she didn't mind me calling her that.  She didn't mind dressing like the butler from that Richie Rich comic either.  Except in the comic Cadbury never wore a mini-skirt.  She brought me a cell phone, and it was the Special Attache from London.  Apparently the Russians were upset with me screwing them on a deal, and I could expect some unspecified trouble.  I thanked the Attache, a woman who sometimes visited in person, and hung up.

The movie was a good one.  "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", but starring Christian Bale as Nick, and Nicole Kidman as the love interest.  I had personally funded it, so it followed the book to the letter, and was a real "instant classic".  Not the abysmal flop of my first lifetime.

You're thinking I've just utterly gave up now, aren't you?  I know.  I don't blame you.  I haven't, at least not then, but could you blame me if I had?

**********

Another time, sitting and reading, but mostly enjoying being petted while watching the day go by, I was struck with an inspiration.  I disentangled myself from the girls, and went to the mansion.  I sat down at the computer and started wendering for news stories of lost treasure being found.  "Wender" was what I called "google", I'd invented it in this cycle.  That is, I'd paid the people who invented it to invent it, so I got to name it.

There were plenty of lost treasure stories.  Most, sad to say, in other nations.  I mean, can any farmer in England plow a field without stumbling over Roman gold?  But the find in India, of a billion or so worth of gold and treasure, that really caught my eye.  I wasted no time, I got a research team on it to have it done right.

Obviously with an eye for valuable treasure, gold, paintings, documents, and such that were found in the United States after 1975.  And thus would still be able to be found in 1975.

One of my biggest problems was always that law firm.  Any of them.  They were, every time, a blessing and a curse.  I knew I'd still need them, but the having some put up the initial funds for investment capital always tied my hands more than I cared for.

A month later, the woman in charge of the research came out to the island.  She had a meticulously drawn map, showing Bloomington, Illinois and a travel route that would take me to each "treasure", nearest to furthest.  In theory, I was so eccentric I wanted to just be able to see all those sites.  She had the full data on each find, it's worth, where it was, like in an attic or a field or a thrift store.

In some cases, a thrift store having a copy of the Declaration of Independence wouldn't do much good, if it had been found there in the nineties.  Odds are, it wasn't sitting in that thrift store since the seventies.  But other things were available, even to an enterprising seven year old.

It was 2010, but I was on fire with my new idea, so I sent a message to Putin about how I was going to invest in asteroid mining, and while the United States, Europe and the PRC would be involved, there wouldn't be any room for those from uncultured nations. 

Like his.  

**********

Cycle 72:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  You'll have to guess what Putin did back when I insulted him, my death was too instantaneous for me to know.  As for the leap from 48 to 72, well, you think I was rich enough for my own Amazonian island the first time trying?  And three quarters of a trillion dollars doesn't come by just being loved.

My latest death was okay, because I had studied well.  I knew the numbers for the next winning lottery tickets in Illinois and Pennsylvania and New York.  I grabbed a crayon and wrote those down first.  I went to my parent's bedroom, a thing we were forbidden to do, and quietly opened the drawer where my passport was.  Yes, I had one.  Our family had gone to England when I was five.

I crept back out, left my brother and went and bought a lottery ticket with spare change I asked for on the way.  "May I have a quarter to call my mom, I lost the one she gave me." worked pretty well all six times I tried that.  Then I went to the county courthouse.  There I filed for emancipation, and I also included the Pauper form.  Currently having no assets or income, I could fill that out honestly.  I gave my address as one of the local banks I had passed on the way to the courthouse.

I hit forty more people up for a quarter to call my mom, just from the office workers and employees of the downtown area.  Then I went to that bank, asked to speak to a manager, and got to go to the office of someone with a loud title and not so much authority as they wanted the customer to think.  Vice President, a title as common to banks as "Assistant Supervisor" is to fast food restaurants.  I told him that I needed a safety deposit box, and asked how much.

He said they were $10 per year.  I said that was fair, and counted out forty quarters.  He gently asked if I had an ID.  I showed him my passport.  He asked where my parents were.  I said that such was the problem.  I showed him my copies of the just filed court papers, and said that I was in the process of emancipation, but needed a place to keep my legal paperwork in during the proceedings.

He asked if they hurt me.  I said that I'd not be comfortable speaking to that, given that I was in the middle of a case against them.  My answer surprised him, and then he said that regrettably, the contract for such a box had to be signed by a legal adult.  I told him that I was in a bind, and needed this very badly.

He called in his manager, another man.  I had almost forgotten how in the seventies all the ones in charge were men.  He listened to me recount my situation, and said, "Young man, this is a new one for me, but we want to help if we can.  What if I rent the box for you, and let you hold the key?  Would that be okay?"

I figured that this was only a small risk.  I didn't literally need this particular lottery ticket. So I agreed, he commented on how old I seemed, I said that was part of why I had to take charge of my own life.  He asked if I had ever heard the word "prodigy" or "savant". I said I had heard both, from my teachers, but they usually didn't sound that happy about it.  He said he understood.  I believed him.

He got it all set up, and went over the papers with me.  He gave me a key.  He let me be in the room by myself with the box.  I put my court papers and the lottery ticket in there.  I left the room, thanked him and he wished me well.  So far so good.

I took risks then, but only because I figured I could always die and try again, the numbers still in my memory.  And the other data.  At the Bloomington Public Library I typed out my story again, data about the science, data about the treasures - but that part with misdirection in case this should be stolen from me - and such.

I panhandled more change, got a good meal at the truck stop at the end of Market Street, and hitched a ride.  Standard story, parents went missing, let them draw the conclusion I'd been ditched, deter them from just calling the police, then saying I had an aunt in Lancaster, Pa.

Risky, given how some people are on the road, but I got the Pennsylvania and New York lottery tickets, the soon to be winning ones, and got back to Bloomington in plenty of time for the first hearing.  I visited my safety deposit box.  I made copies of all three tickets, then kept the copies of all three of them, and left the tickets in the box.

I knew I was a missing kid by then, and that my parents would know of the hearing, having been served by now, but I still had a week to go before my day in court.  I had $60 and change, pondered my options, and figured on just squatting in an abandoned house.  I found one that hadn't had any boards pried off by other homeless folk, and set up there.

It wasn't a bad week.  I bought books and food and a toothbrush and paste.  And a towel.  I could bathe at gas station restrooms.  Just lock the door, splash water all over me, soap up, splash more, dry off, and leave that restroom a thorough mess.  And use a different gas station next time.

Skipping Mr. Levine, I wrote a letter to the Chicago Law Firm, and the Sacramento one, and the Memphis one.  Making predictions for free, but explaining to them what I'd like to happen later.  I sent similar letters to Congressmen I knew of from  previous cycles, the FBI office in Sacramento, and various universities I'd dealt with.

I was also panhandling that whole week, and two days before the hearing, I hired an attorney for $150.  I told him a story.  Child prodigy, abusive parents, needed to be in charge of my own affairs.  And I'd recently come into money, and didn't want them taking it.  He asked what money, I showed him the copy of the lottery tickets.  He had his secretary call and check, and she came back amazed.

He asked where they were.  I said, "Safe".  He smiled.  He said, "I hope you remember me when I get you free to claim all those millions!"  I said, "I've never forgotten a friend yet, which probably doesn't seem to mean much.  But it will.  Now how about I take you out to dinner, and you can ask me all the questions you're dying to ask?"

He agreed.  We had a nice dinner.  And a better talk.  Turns out he was a Heinlein fan, early and middle period only, of course.  He'd be my attorney for that whole cycle.

**********

Court went well.  At the hitch of "How can you support yourself?", my attorney said he could show evidence of that privately in chambers to the judge.  My parent's counsel objected, and was overruled.  There was no law saying a person seeking emancipation had to explain to others how that was to be.

In chambers my attorney showed a copy of the lottery tickets, plus a letter stating that he had verified their existence and that they were winners.  Which he had.  We had also transferred the papers and tickets from the bank manager's box to one that my attorney rented in my name.  The manager seemed sad, like it was a trust issue, but privately I gave him a copy of my agreement with the attorney I had, and asked if he'd still keep that in his box.

He said, "I know what's been puzzling me about you.  It's not that you're smart, it's that you're wise.  How can that be?  Do you know what I mean?"  I told him I did, and that it was okay, he'd know more one day and I'd not forget his kindness.

The Judge naturally asked me in chambers how I had guessed three winning lottery tickets.  I said, "There is a legal explanation, but none is needed now.  For now, I'd remind you that when my attorney asked if my parents had ever gambled or played the lottery, they said 'no'."

The judge chuckled.  He said, "I wondered at that question, it seemed a bit too casually trotted out.  Fair enough."  He looked at my attorney and said, "Careful, I suspect this one could put you out of a job!"  My attorney said, "I don't doubt it.  Are we good?"

The Judge said, "Let's go back in."

We were good.  Mom cried.  Dad looked grim.  But I was free.  And still before April 30th.

*********

I had several tens of millions of dollars, and all the law firms that I'd ever made deals with for investments were still up for it.  And the government was still up for hearing my story and starting a crash research program to learn all about the micro-bubble and how to make everyone shine bright if they cared to.

Obviously, they were not entirely sure of all that, but my predictions as to Gerald Ford's assassination attempts, the West German embassy bombing, the taking of Phnom Penh and the Fall of Saigon had made an impression.

Investments were underway in May of 1975, while I was flying to India.  The Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple had six underground chambers that were to be discovered in 2011, they'd contain over a billion dollars worth of gold and valuables.  I had enough money and backing from some prominent people I'd met to fly over there with a team, and flat out loot it in secrecy.  Yes, I know that was wrong, no, I did not care.  

It was all shipped back on U.S. government planes, under diplomatic seal, not subject to search.  A congressman that I'd known well in a previous lifetime was convinced by my knowledge of stuff about him that he'd known I could not have known.  And he got 10%.  He wanted more, but I reminded him there'd be other opportunities, and to please not prevent me from attaining them for both of us.

So I hit billionaire status that first year, 1975.  And poured it all into all those investments that had made me a billionaire in other cycles.  And had the full support of several major law firms, Congressmen, the military, and all those Universities who still had their ten percent deals.

Scientists did have that three quarters of a century of research to draw on.  No, I did not remember all the equations and data, but half of any project is knowing what can and cannot be, and I could well tell them all that.  And some equations.  And some data.  It was more than enough.  And they'd have 41 years and even more money to be thrown at it.

I knew past a certain point that more money to the same research team would be self-defeating, so instead I used the extra money to get the European Union in on this, and the PRC.  I was lavish - not in funding the projects, but in bribing the officials who controlled where taxes went.  The investment corporation had stockholders that were the who's who of the world, all non-voting.

And some of those names were the John Doe variety.  I let that pass, I knew which Soviet Party officials were behind those innocuous sounding names.  I'd been the one to persuade them to this, for the sake of all the masses having the same right to travel back as the few elite.  That gave them their party line to spout - the prospect of such profits gave them their real motives.

Is that realistic that they all had no voting say in what was now after a mere five years the world's richest corporation?  Wouldn't these powerful men want more say?  Not exactly.  Each was guarded by the others, and they all knew that I wasn't taking much out for personal needs.  The money I plowed back in, instead of giving larger dividends, just meant that dividends would be all the larger later.

And obviously this cycle took quite a few dozen trial and error cycles.  I told you from the start I was no genius, which fortunately for me, few of the rich and powerful were either.  They were fearsomely clever, ruthless and experienced.  But by now, I had quite a bit of experience myself.  Still.  Took a long time.  Each of those cycles represented decades, after all.

One positive factor each time was that I'd save President Ford's life.  Twice each time.  The first time by making sure I was there on the 2nd of September, and leaping up and grabbing Squeaky Fromme's gun hand, who then fired the gun I knew had no round in the chamber right into my little chest.  I took a chance there each time, as it might have been different, but worst case, I'd have only gone back a few months to try again.

I was a national hero, a national child hero, for most cycles.  And that lent credence to my story of the world's end among those who mattered.

And 17 days after that, I waited till I saw Sara Moore draw her incorrectly sighted handgun, and as soon as she did, I yelled gun, he ducked, and never knew it would have missed anyway.

By 1980, theoretical proofs were developed proving the truth of my assertions.  Mathematically it was proved by some Japanese scientists.  The USA and USSR were sending probes, accelerated to .9c by 1986, the year I'd have originally graduated High School.  I knew it would find the encroaching nothingness.  (Physics nerds, relax.  Your laws of physics are not Omni-Meta-versal.  Live with it.)

I was doing my Star Trek thing.  And so instead of "Encounter at Farpoint" being the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it was "Troubles with Bubbles", a tightened up two parter that wowed the world.  And I had all the PR firms, Ad agencies and H. F. Saint doing my life story to aid in things.  I even had Enya do a song, "Bright Shining".

**********

Camilla Parker Bowles died in 1995, right in the middle of her divorce.  A car accident in which she'd been chased by paparazzi.  Golly, did that ever make me wonder about the Queen.  I'd spoken with Her Majesty earlier, relating all the scandals to come, and she'd apparently taken the predicted divorce as proof.  Prince Charles never divorced Diana.

And forty percent of the entire wealth of the British monarchy was invested in my world spanning mega-corporation.  And all universities in the United Kingdom were now in service to solving the problem of how to sensitize minds to the tachyonic fields.

In 2005, having "invented" everything I knew, even stuff not due till later, I retired.  I wanted to spend the remaining 11 years just seeing all that could be seen, reading books, and just flying around the world in my gigantic dirigible.

The Bespin was truly an epic dirigible.  It never landed.  Fuel and more helium and supplies at need were brought to it.  Visitors could dock.  It had 42,000 square feet of living space, a heated pool, sauna, gym, movie theater, wifi, a mini-golf course, a video game room, and any drug any guest would like, and of course, a well stocked bar.

The crew and servants were all female.  Two women from each of the 10 top nations.  One, the greatest beauty, criterion established by myself.  And two, the daughter of the most powerful man in that nation.  And this was for more than "fun", though fun I had.  Some had suggested, and I'd naturally agreed, that maybe my tachyonically shining mind was inheritable.

Not that I hadn't been donating sperm consistently since 1987, when that was first suggested.  There were an estimated 16,720 offspring of mine now, and in 2005, they'd already long learned how to scan minds to find the one in a million.  Many had been encouraged at very young ages to start having kids themselves, so I had over 20,000 descendants.

A side effect of my presence was that genetic studies were greatly lacking.  Research funds that would have gone to them - that did go to them in my long ago first life - were primarily used in my own projects.  I had long ago realized that while genetics might pay off in the distant future, we didn't have a distant future, so computer tech and applications of that tech was where it was at.

**********

In 2014, I got a call.  I had just hosted a conference of world leaders, my dirigible having become the de facto capital of the world.  Only women of real power - or those they sponsored - could be allowed up, so it came to pass without me even seeking it that they all started meeting in the dirigible for every major decision, treaty or whatnot.  It also came to pass that many nations elected far more female leaders, so as to be able to have a seat at my table.  And no, there was nothing sexual with them, good Lord, I'm not quite that bad.

Besides, it would have made some think I was playing favorites, and I could not have that.  I satisfied myself instead with the usual woman of all eras and nations who don't mind such mutually satisfactory "arrangements".

And given my absolute impartiality, these world leaders would usually seek me out as the final arbiter.  Why not?  They knew I was totally disinterested, this was but one bubble out of an infinity of bubbles, I had no axe to grind.  I'd slap down my own nation as quickly as another.  I'd proved that before, and my popularity hadn't diminished.  It was known that the Bespin had nukes.  It was also known I had nukes elsewhere, the only private individual on Earth who could make such a claim.

Thank Israel.  That was my price for letting those butchers have the West Bank in its entirety.  I know.  I said I wasn't the hero of my tale.

I waved Nana Visitor over.  If you're not a nerd, she'd played Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  Since that show had finally ended after its 20 season run last year, she'd retired up here.  My only requirement had been that she conduct herself as if she was Kira Nerys.  And no, we never had sex, she was there as an invaluable "conscience" to me.  Amusingly, and totally in character, she didn't treat me like I was Cisco, the good guy, she treated me like I was Dukat, the villain who'd taken over Bajor by releasing the fire demons.

I pondered that more than a few nights, for I had not asked her to do that.  Was that truly how she saw me?  I knew she'd never break character, though.  It always gave me pause.  Perhaps that was all she wanted, to give me pause.  I knew what others did not - that it was she who saved Baikonur when I almost had it nuked for some over the top Soviet provocation.  She said, "I'd long suspected you had a Cardassian mother.  No wonder you never speak of her."

So I refrained and asked the Mossad to take out their top minds at that facility.  And if you know Israel, you'll know that such was not a hard sell.

I had Jewel Staite (she was on break between Seasons 12 and 13 of Firefly) bring me the cell phone.  And yeah, I did sleep with her.  And yeah, nerds, it was great.  On the phone was the Director of the most important research facility for studying how minds like mine traveled back in time and how that created new bubbles.  He was located in Hong Kong, in this cycle still under British rule.  I'd negotiated for the lease to be extended from 1999 to 2016.  For obvious reasons.

He said he had a breakthrough.  He wanted to know if he could come up.  I surprised him by saying I'd go down.  He stammered a bit.  I said, "Is it a breakthrough or not?"  He said it was.  I said, "Well hold off getting everyone's hopes up till I arrive."  Jewel raised her eyebrows at that, but without missing a beat, she removed two pills from her blouse pocket and gave them to me.

One was Ecstasy, the other Viagra.  I accepted a glass of sweet ice tea from Nana, and swallowed them.

I raised my eyebrow at Nana/Kira.  She said, "I don't like that he wants a personal meeting.  Any breakthrough could have been emailed, he could have just video conferenced with you."  I nodded.  Then I thanked Jewel, for the pills, and asked her to get me reports from each of my McDonald's girls.

These were girls I had stolen from McDonalds.  You see, any inner city girl (of any ethnicity or race) who wants to rise, inevitably finds her way to McDonalds.  I'd buy a likely McDonalds franchise, or other times just bribe an Assistant Manager, to look at the applications.  And to get the inside scoop on their job performance.

Then I'd go in my limo - this was years before I retired - through the drive thru.  I'd say to the likely recruit, "Do you know who I am?"  If she said, "Yes", I'd then say, "Come with me, if you want to live a real life."  Some didn't, and that was okay.  I'd make sure they got a promotion at that McDonalds.  Others did - the bold ones.  The ones with fire.

They got employment with me.  That is, they'd be brought to my house, where'd they'd learn basic office skills, and how to spy from a tough old matriarch who'd been a veteran of administrative politics at an FBI office in Seattle.  She lived with me.  Nothing weird, well, okay, I never was with a girl for long without wanting her a bit.  She was up for some things.  Never out right sex, but enough to be fun.

They were trained in all the various spy devices, too.  Bug planting and such.  And yes, how to flirt for info.  But this wasn't any sex thing.  That was strongly emphasized.  I wanted each of these girls, who had tried so hard to advance, to be able to do so with dignity.  Not all passed, but even those who didn't were set up with nice normal jobs in my vast organization.

Those who did pass, were assigned as part of the clerical staff at each of the research facilities working on the micro-bubble and mind transfer problem.  None of them ever stayed at the same facility for more than two years.  None of the support staff at any facility stayed for more than two years.  That way my girls would not be noticeable.

As I boarded my private Harrier jump jet, but one for passengers and spacious enough for a bedroom for me to relax in, Jewel handed me the just acquired reports.  My guy in Hong Kong had apparently not told any other research center about this breakthrough.  Good.  I'd have time to assess it.  He'd followed protocol so far, except for the desire of a personal meet.  This might turn out to be a real shame for him, but some projects are bigger than individual members of it.

I'd never have thought that in my first life, but seeing the infinity of humans, along with the infinity of meaningless deaths, well, it hardened you a bit.  I could still cry at the death of a truly innocent person.  But like Salvor Hardin said in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, "Never let your sense of morality keep you from doing what's right."

Was it wrong, this hammerlock that I, a somewhat ethically shaky alcoholic, had got over the world?  Was it wrong that I held such power over so many?  Well, I'd certainly had time to see and learn of those who wielded the power normally.  In general, I was no worse than any, and better than some.  I had learned that most of these psychopaths were relatively benign, only upstarts from People's movements were to be feared.

Not for their evil, but for their unpredictability.  Normal power mad psychopaths - such as led the entire world - would usually follow the overarching code of social rules.  They'd maintain a pretense.  Not the People's Liberators.  Not the populists.  Not the demagogues.

Folks like Hitler or Stalin or Mao.  Not raised with couth, restraint, or respect for appearances and propriety, they regarded all that as "pretense" and threw it out the window.  They regarded diplomacy and compromise as "hypocrisy".  And millions died.  Because the very act of faking morality - keeping up appearances - let most psychopaths rule at least relatively benignly.  True, they'd have their Tiananmen Square and Waco moments.  But all in all, the normal polite psychopaths were better than anything else in history, for whatever that was worth.

On the jet were two women that were deliberately both new hires.  And both pills were well in my system by now.  I usually didn't pull the routine I was about to, but I was tense, and needed to relax.  And who knew if I'd soon be cycling again?

I told them, "One of you is going to have ten million dollars when this plane lands.  The other will still have her job.  Me, I'm just going to lay here in bed.  You may do anything you care to that you believe will better your chances at that ten million.  Pro tip - I enjoy kissing."

I sent them both back to the Bespin after we landed.  The one who'd taken my breath away kissing me, I told her that she'd find ten million on her employee credit card.  The one who was surprised that what her mouth had been doing hadn't won, I told, "Don't worry, I'm giving you a million for effort, but do remember to take my hints more seriously next time.  I might give you a second chance later, but trust me, there will never be a third."

She at once took my face in her hands, digging her nails in just enough for me to feel them and wonder if they'd leave marks, while her right leg raised up and wrapped around me to draw me closer in, and kissed me thoroughly.  I broke off, gasping, and said, "Five million.  But remember what I said."

**********

Dr. Lee met me as I entered the facility.  He had a woman assistant with him, who immediately clung to my arm.  Good, he was keeping to protocol.  We exchanged pleasantries, then they took me to his office.  "I've got cocaine and a nice Merlot", he started.  I waved that off.  "Thank you, but no.  Please report."  The assistant made as if to leave, but I pulled her down to my lap and cupped her breast.  She started kissing my neck, arms around me.

Dr. Lee looked disconcerted, and even a bit disapproving, but then said, "We've had a breakthrough, as I reported.  Two of them.  Would you care for the bad news first, or the good news?"

I took the chin of the assistant and kissed her thoroughly.  She was Chinese, no more than five feet tall, and kissed me back appropriately.  I said, "Tell me, Dr. Lee.  What color toe nail polish does your assistant have on?"

"Really, sir", he started, "This is far more important than - " but I cut him off with a glare.  In his sudden silence I asked his assistant, "Did he give you any instructions as to what color toe nail polish to wear?"  "No", she said.  She gave me a quick kiss and said impertinently, "Sir".  

"I hardly think", Dr. Lee tried again, but I glared him to silence again.  I asked her, "And what color do you have on?"  While still sitting on my lap, she raised one high heel clad foot to my face and said, "Why don't you check?"

I waited.  She added, while pushing her foot closer, "Sir".

I took off her shoe.  Red toe nail polish.  I kissed her foot briefly, and asked, "Who told you?"  She said, "That I'd bother to find out is enough.  Now give Dr. Lee a break.  We can always have fun later - I'd love to see the Bespin."

"Give me a kiss like you mean it.  If I think you mean it, you can go to the landing pad my pilot is waiting at.", I said.  She did.  My lips felt like she almost drew blood.  "Go now.  And thank you."  She simpered and scampered off.

I turned to Dr. Lee.  "Bad news first."

He looked a bit upset, but recovered and said, "There is no way of changing a person's mental receptivity to the tachyonic field.  They are the one in a million, or in your case, the one in a trillion quintillion, or they are not."

"Okay", I said.  "And the good news?"

"A mind only one in a million can go back in time once, with a helmet.  But while your mind goes back unaided, if it is aided with a special helmet, then it can go to any bubble already existing.  Which means that it will generate an alternate bubble once there, but it would be an alternate of how long that bubble was.  So in theory, you could go back to the main bubble.  With the proper helmet."

"What of my mind already there?", I said, "It's not seven, I'd not be able to overwhelm and re-write it."

"No", Dr. Lee said, "I meant that you could go back to your original body in the original bubble.  To the time you were sent away.  It would be like the experiment didn't work, but you'd have all these memories."

"No offense, Doctor", I said, "but it's been a long time."  He said, "I know, but we'd only be inserting you into that main bubble.  Once in that main bubble, you would be drawn to the part that it matched, which would be when your brain was blank, right after you originally left."

I said, "The main bubble is 13.7 billion years in duration and in radius.  I'm in quite a few minor break off micro-bubbles past that.  How would my neural net possibly find my body at the exact right time and place?"

He said, "You know how all the alternate realities of that main bubble are on top of each other, like pages in a book?"  I nodded.  "And how all the alternates of each micro-bubble are that way?"  I nodded again.  "So you can picture a large fuzzy circle, the main bubble, and many tiny little circles, also fuzzy, that broke off from that?"  I nodded and made a hand motion generally accepted to mean, "Get on with it."

Dr. Lee coughed and said, "Of course, this is well familiar to you.  Our research has determined that just as everything in a bubble, in a given time/space region, is relative to the speed of light, with only the speed of light as a constant, then likewise, but for other reasons, the mentalities of various forms of consciousness is the constant of the great backdrop, the metaverse, or 'proto-stuff' as I've gathered you call it!"

I sat up straighter, this was new.  He said, "You get the import, yes?  Each of our minds, while created by the thoughts of a previous consciousness and the various probabilities of that, is also at the same time creating and shaping its own environment, not just in the immediacy of its space/time environment, but in some cases, more."

I said, "In some cases?  So not all minds are equal in this?"  "No", he said, "Some are better at creation and shaping in our own backyard, so to speak, and we call them authors and industrialists and artists and builders and scientists and such.  But one in a million have the ability, properly aided by a machine, that helmet, to go back and cause major and lasting changes in an entire alternate reality.  Not just the creation by coin flip that each of us can do each day, but to go back in time to an already done bubble and break off a whole other series from it."

"I see", I said.  "And what of me, the one in a trillion quintillion?"  Dr. Lee, "You can continue to keep generating these micro-bubbles forever, but you knew that.  Now you know you can go back.  To the main bubble.  Same time and place."

"And then what?", I asked.  "Then you'll live out your normal life, and die of old age!  That main bubble is not so long as they think, it will never make it to heat death, but it yet has several trillion years of existence!"

"Do you have the study guide for me?", I asked.  It was protocol that any new discovery have a plain English report for me to memorize in case there wasn't enough time.

"Yes", he said, "But the equations are rather involved."

I waited in silence.  He got uncomfortable.  "Do you want that now, sir?", he asked.

I nodded.  He raised a hand to hit an intercom button.  "Hold", I said.  He stopped.  I said, "When you hit that intercom button, and ask for that report to be brought in, who will bring it in?"

"One of the girls, I imagine.", he said.

I said, "And can you tell me in advance, what nail polish they will be wearing?"

"Sir, really, I know you started this, back in 1975, but really, isn't this more important than - ", he started, but then I cleared my throat while glaring.  He stopped.  "If it is so important", I said, "Then I'd think formalities are more important than ever.  How is it that a random assistant of yours knows more about my habits than you?"

"Sir", he said, "Really, I don't think you understand.  This is a breakthrough such as no one else has had.  If you could - ", he stopped, no longer needing to delay me, as six men came in.  He must have done some major planning, or his powerful backers had, to overcome my superlative security forces.  One of them said, "Sir, we're going to place you in handcuffs, please do not resist, as that is going to happen either way."

I grinned, placed my hands behind my back, and when they lifted me out of the chair they could see my middle fingers extended.  "No hard feelings, sir", the leader of the six said.  I looked at Dr. Lee and said, "Oh, I don't know.  There might be hard feelings.  Tell me, Doctor, did you really think I was so sex crazed as to care so much about nail polish?"

He glared.  "I don't care about your indulgence in Western decadence.  We're taking you to the lab now, and we're going to give you a free ride back to your bubble.  The main one.  I didn't bother to mention this, but the real breakthrough is that we're going to send you back a split second before you left, so no more of these Western dominated abortions of micro-verses will ever come to be!"

"I know.  Your assistant on my lap wasn't kissing my neck as much as you thought, but more briefing me on your crap.  She even had time - in between your disapproving looks - to let me know that you aren't phased by the fact that it means that you and all others in this particular bubble might not exist, if what you were going to try worked."

Dr. Lee said to the men, "Hurry.  We must get him to the lab at once."

I continued while being hustled along.  "You're thinking that this will mean that no more micro-bubbles will ever break off, but the ones that already did will be retroactively expanded?  Yes, I read your unredacted report before coming here.  You imagine this micro-bubble will become a full size main bubble in its own right?  I might just see some flaws in that."  I chuckled as they dragged me into the elevator and we started down.

Dr. Lee said, "The math is clear.  No matter what, you back a second before leaving the main bubble means an overload, an experimental failure, and probably a feedback that will cause a quite noticeable explosion in that lab.  Killing the only mind like yours likely to ever be born in all time and space.  Meaning no more of these tiny bubbles of billions being called into existence only to live meaningless half lives for your amusement!  And, best case, the little bubbles you've already made will merge back into the main, expanding out, to be regular alternates!  We'll live past 2016!"

I chuckled more, as the elevator doors opened.  "Oh, Doctor", I said, "The math is always clear.  But that doesn't mean it's always right.  Negative six is equal to the square root of thirty six, and the square root of thirty six is equal to six, but that doesn't mean that you owing six bucks is the same as you having six bucks."

He opened a door at the end of the hall, a chair with a helmet was within.  I said, "Well, so you know, it probably would have worked, at least the part about me not making more bubbles and dying of old age.  But I suspect from my experiences in talking this over with all kinds of scientists - including you - that it would just make for an alternate main bubble, and for that matter, an alternate here.  No expansion for you.  No complete stopping of things.  You see, the meta-existence, while it's anthropomorphic for me to say so, seems to 'want' more existence, more pattern.  Entropy may be seen in the various patches, but the overall backdrop is one of increasing complexity."

Dr. Lee was having them strap me in now.  He said grimly, "Keep talking, this will be over soon enough.  Then I'll deal with that assistant who was so chummy with you."

And as he started to lower the helmet onto my head, I grinned and said "Why do you think I've been delaying?  I wanted my assistant to be clear of the blast radius!"  Then I said "Now." and my world exploded.

**********

Cycle 122:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  I exited quickly, went to the Bloomington Public Library and wrote everything out, stories, data, equations, and such.

Well, that would have taken a long time. Sometimes when I say I did that, I'm writing down crucial points, equations or memory triggers, there are some mnemonic tricks that can be used.  And then when I'm more stable in my situation I write it all out leisurely.  Heck, it takes a few hours just to write the synopsis, I'd have a hard time writing it all out in the library in one sitting.

I hid it.  At the Wesley United Methodist Church.  Back then, there were no cameras, security or full time staff, and it was mostly unlocked.  I went to the little mini chapel that was hardly ever used, and taped it underneath one of the pews.  One of the front pews, they being used the least in any church.

I did the panhandling thing, to get some money.  When I had $50 or so, which in 1975 went pretty far, I did the hitchhiking thing.  This time the story was that there was an Aunt in Maine.  I didn't tell him this, but I was going to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village near New Gloucester, Maine.  The young man said he understood.  He could get me as far as Albany, New York.

About forty miles later, he took a Decatur exit so as to have a quick bathroom break.

**********

Cycle 123:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  I fell down crying and moaning.  While I was physiologically undamaged, I could still feel all the terrible things he'd done to me.  I'd still managed to surprise him a bit, there'd be an eye of his that he would no doubt never see with again, but it was a hollow victory.

He'd done things that in all my centuries I could still never figure why some would want to do.  My fault, in a sense, I had been overly confident.  When he passed gas stations in Decatur and went to his house, I'd twigged at once, but it was too late.  I tried to exit the car, but he casually grabbed me by the back of my neck, and smashed my face into the dashboard.  I was groggy, but not so groggy that I couldn't note the Illinois plates on his car when he took me out in his attached garage.

He took me down to the basement, and I was there for seven months, before one of his dozens of guests finally went too far, and in my weakened and semi-starved state his brutal rape of me - I'd stopped counting at the fortieth guest - ended my little life.  I should have checked the plates before getting in, I'd have known then his story of passing through Illinois was false.

I'd had close calls before.  But I massively goofed on this one.  Fortunately, they weren't much for talking.  And the room was done up fairly nice.  I wonder what he made of my notes wrote in crayon.  For I'd wrote as much as I'd ordinarily write, with the sensitive parts in my code, and studied it over and over.  I had little else to do besides waiting for him or his "friends".

He found them five months in, and burned them in front of me without reading them.  I figured he must have thought I was writing some tell all.  He did more things to me then, and a beating besides, and took all my crayons.  But I'd broke two of them, and then made the two half remainders look like I'd wrote them down that far.  So he didn't look for those two halves.

I wrote it all down again, it took a few more days, and hid them in another place in that room.  A child wouldn't have done that.  And he'd not read what I'd previously written, or he'd have known better.  I studied and studied.  While looking for ways of killing myself.  I found some probable ways.  But, as much as I hated it, I wanted to make sure I had all the info I could get on this guy.  And it paid off.  I learned enough by the time I died.

And it was a new experience.  A terrible and disgusting one, but come on.  While I've glossed it over, you know that in my previous rises to billionaire status, or that time I pretty much was Dictator of Earth, I'd had to have some people killed who while not saints, weren't necessarily death worthy.  In a bizarre way, I took this as a form of karma.

Which didn't stop me from what I knew I'd be doing to him.  Those headlights I'd seen when I was nine, so many millennia ago, I could not know who they were, or what their stories were.  But I knew him.  Or enough about him to find him.  But first things first, and this time I'd not be so stupidly cocky.

Crap, my brother, seeing me sitting on the floor crying in reaction to all that had happened to me, had gone to get my mother.  I told her I saw a monster, and she, well familiar with how my brother and I regarded that hall, bought that.  She said I could nap with her.

I should point out as an aside, that I never met a person ever, who wasn't a mixed bag.  I know you think my parents were monsters.  They weren't.  Just normally screwed up, as are 90% of everyone you meet and don't realize that about.  I picture sometimes a world in which all kids could be raised appropriately, we'd then start with a whole generation in perfect mental health.

With my bright shining abilities, should I focus on that?  Yeah, right.  It would take police state force on a scale to make Hitler blush in shame to even begin to exert that much power over each citizen.  And I had not the time.  That would be a project to take 100 years, even with absolute force, which always fails.  Persuading?  Maybe if I had 250 years of absolute control over all the media.  Even then, I doubted it.  We're perverse monkeys, and most of us are only in it for our immediate gratification.

And if you're not disillusioned enough to know that yet, read of Gandhi and the teen girls, or the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his adulteries.

Even the best of men sucked.  Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

Amen.

My brother and I napped with my mom.  I remembered all of a sudden for the first time in thousands of years, that such had been a thing.  That she'd let us take a nap with her when dad was at work.  Just when we needed comforting.  I was only seven, my brother younger.  I didn't sleep.  Just waited and mulled things over.  I remembered her smell, the smell of my parent's bed.  Wow, I thought, memory is funny.  After all this time. 

I waited till they were both making the not quite snoring sounds, but regular sounds of people asleep, then quietly left.

I was in no hurry, as I knew what time I had started hitching before, and there was no chance of missing the ride from him.  I had dwelt on nothing else for seven months.  And while not a genius, I do have a good memory, made even better from centuries, millennia of mnemonic tricks.

I had time to buy a knife.  I was on the road at the right time.  He picked me up on the side of the road.  Are you waiting to hear of some crazy things I then did to him to exact my revenge?  Well, calm down.  First things first.  Revenge killers are crazy.  They do stupid things like you're hoping to read I did.

Me, knowing better, I just got in the car, then when he started to take the car out of park, stabbed him, over and over again.  He fought, of course.  Only in movies do people die with the first stab wound all quiet like.  You ever watch those true crime shows, where the Sheriff says gravely how insane the killer must have been to stab 47 times?  Yeah, well, mostly they stab that often not for being insane, but because they expect the guy to die with the first stab, then when he yells, screams and fights instead, they stab him over and over and over, even though he probably would have died in a few minutes from the first stab.

Knowing this, I still stabbed him over and over and over.  And he fought.  But his beating of me didn't kill me, and I only had to keep stabbing till he stopped beating me.  And the screams and yells were only in the car, the highway traffic was undisturbed.  When he died, I was in bad shape.  But not so bad as to not take his ID, and spend five painful minutes memorizing it. 

As a police car pulled over behind me to check on the car,  I jammed my knife into my ear.

*********

Cycle 124:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom. I exited the house and went to the library.  And hid the story I wrote at the church of my youth so long ago.  Good old Wesley United Methodist Church.

It would be hard to express just how much a role that church had played in my first life.  It was a whole world to me.  I knew every inch of it.  Almost every happy memory in my original somewhat sad childhood had been there.  Each Monday morning, in school, to be tortured for a week, by teachers and bullies, I'd yearn not for Friday afternoon, or even Saturday, but for Sunday.

Memories of climbing up to the top of the enormous steeple, when the door to that was unlocked, or nights spent in "sleep overs" when we'd play hide and seek all over that vast building, or work trips to aid people for a week in some other state, or choir trips to sing in the National Cathedral at Washington, D.C. for a week, or canoe trips for a weekend or ski trips for a weekend, or just the fun of youth group and playing foosball with no risk of being threatened or harmed, all of it was great.

I panhandled for money.  But this time I bought a bus ticket.  In 1975, IDs weren't required for bus trips.  I bought a ticket for Bangor, Maine.  Yes, the guy asked where my parents were, I said that they were sending me to my Aunt and were letting me be a big boy and buy my own ticket, was that okay?  He smiled and said sure, but would my Aunt be meeting me there?  I smiled as only a seven year old can and said, "Yes, because mommy says I'm not to talk to strangers!"  He smiled again and gave me the ticket.

People are so funny.  Such mixed bags.  What did Alexander Pope say?  What did Shakespeare say?  We're so good and so bad.  He was good enough.  I got to Bangor safely.

I hung out with the Shakers, who I knew would die out, or rather, be about to die out, by the time this micro-bubble was to end.  I had had other plans, but I'm human.  I got up enough money with those lottery tickets - I bought one before I got on the bus, one at a stop in Pennsylvania, and one in New York at another stop - to make a very nice donation to the doomed Shakers on this timeline, and have more than enough left over.

I contacted the Wackenhut Corporation, in 1975 still as badass as they ever were.  My story was that I had been molested by a bad man in Decatur, Illinois, and my very wealthy father had talked to me about it, told me the importance of handling things myself, but gave me a large sum of money to do so.  He knew I was a prodigy, I related, but wanted to see if I was able to be a man.  They did not buy this story, till I showed them the Cashier's Check for $50,000.

Long and short of it, they brought my molester to me, all tied up, to a hotel room outside of New Gloucester.  I offered the two mercs $10,000 if they'd leave me alone with him, and $20,000 if they cared to see what a seven year old could do to a child molester.  They each made $20,000.

I explained to the rapist that I was a child prodigy and knew how to amputate things.  And that I was going to take off his arms and legs.  I explained how I was going to blind him, and put draino in his ears to make him deaf, and cut out his tongue, and cut off his penis and testicles. 

Then I let him know that first I'd be giving him a lobotomy so he'd never be able to meaningfully communicate again.  How he'd live for another fifty years, in total blackness and silence and unable to communicate with anyone.  He'd only ever know isolation and loneliness.  "Do you understand?", I asked, and he nodded, but made sounds around the ball-gag suggestive of wishing to plead.

I said, "There's nothing to say.  When you feel the needle go in at the top of your eye, that will be when you can't understand any more, but are only alone to know how terrible you are for fifty plus years.  And with all the memories of all the surgeries that will be done to you without anesthesia.  Do you understand?"

One mercenary shuddered a bit, then got hold of himself.  

My rapist nodded that he understood.  I inserted the large needle through the eye socket, and injected his frontal lobe with draino.  It took longer for him to die than I thought, but I enjoyed knowing that he was thinking that this was only the first of the pain.

What, you didn't think I'd do all that stuff, did you?  No, my way meant he had all that pain and anguish, but he wouldn't be a burden to society.  It was a reverse of that book, "Of Mice and Men" where the mentally handicapped man was shot in his head from behind - but by his friend who got him to picture the wonderful life they were about to have first.

I paid off the mercenaries, and they left.  One said at the door, "Kid...I'm not saying you did wrong, but I think you might need some counseling.  For your own sake."  I told him I'd be okay.  Then, I left a note explaining all but my endless loops, leaving the authorities and media of that cycle a news story that would probably generate a movie of the week, and endless Investigative Discovery true crime shows.

My sixth wife had always wondered, before my cycles, if I'd ever been molested in that original life of mine.  I guess you reading this have a better feel for that than she ever did.  Was it my oh so controlling father?  My Uncle "Tommy"?  A random stranger?  I guess there's a limit to how much I care to tell even you ephemerals.

I wished again that I'd been raised normally the first time, and had the courage to ask that cute girl who sang "O Holy Night" in Junior High out for a date.  Then I plunged the knife into my right ear.

*********

Cycle 197:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  I did all the usual things, the details don't matter, as it always ended with me a billionaire and safe.  The "safe" part being most important.

My method of being a billionaire was a bit esoteric.  I was a billionaire, not huge on the radar, not Bill Gates level, but one of the ones who has a few billion, but is not on the Fortune 500 list.  Meaning that my staff - carefully selected over a few trial and error cycles - could administer it for me while I played "Prince and the Pauper".  

Or to be Biblical, consider Hebrews 13:2, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unaware."

In 1998, I was travelling to and fro across America, and going up and down in it.  Hitchhiking.  I was 29 and could still pull that off, looking young as I did.  And clean cut.  Nice backpack.  Just as I had originally done in my earlier twenties.

I well knew the flaws that my original upbringing had given me.  My difficulty in making real friends.  My reticence with women, which sounds funny till you notice that I mostly in these tales treat them as means to my pleasure.  My terrible hatred and fear of all authority, which all my experiences showed would be exercised hypocritically and perversely and selfishly.  

I had learned the pleasure of doing good, though.  Even in my own original cycle.  I'd been interrupted in that by that whole helmet thing.  

I was being utterly free, as only someone hitchhiking who's worth several billion dollars can be.  I had a cell phone in 1998, good nationwide, and that wasn't very common.  But when a car pulled over, I'd get the license plate, and with my phone on, announce what their license plate was in general conversation.

Not as hard as it sounds, for a young "kid".  "Hey, Virginia plates!  SKT 4280?  I used to have a license plate collection as a kid, don't know why I never found a Virginia plate!"

Etc.

Back in my original life, I knew that only a few types picked up hitchhikers.  The first category, Christians.  Usually from the off brand Christian faiths, thus more "into it".  The second category, the former hitchhikers, who'd want to relate their stories from the sixties and seventies.  The third category, homosexuals, hoping for some sex for the price of doing a "good deed".  

Besides that one time, I'd never encountered the fourth kind, the "psycho child molester".  Though I knew, as all hitchhikers do, that those who give rides are more likely to be dangerous than those who seek rides.

I could have fun either way on these rides.  If they were good, they were rewarded beyond their imagination.  If they were bad, or knew bad people, I could see to it that justice was done.  

I remembered when I first hitchhiked, before any of this happened, how most times when a gay guy picked me up, young and clean cut, he'd offer a "deal".  But when I politely said "no, but I understand if you want to let me off at the next stop", he'd still take me as far as he was going.  

But one in Florida was an old guy who did let me off at the very next exit so he could turn around and keep looking for young hitchhikers.  I got no other rides that day, so I slept under the overpass.  The next morning the first car who pulled over had me jump in at once, and just as I was thanking him, I realized it was the same guy!  He asked, "Did you change your mind?", and I just laughed and said, "Nope!  But you can drop me off at the next exit!"

In my youth I thought that was funny, but later in life, it made me sad.  The homosexual deviancies do disgust me, but I can sympathize with any who have such a hard and lonely time in seeking sex.  

Cycle 338:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.

My memory was as always now, kind of funny.  I knew the story I had to write down, in a short hand that Robert Heinlein had described as "Speedtalk".  He had heard about how any concept in English could be expressed in 800 words, he had also heard that you could have 800 sounds in a language, so he'd speculated on the idea of a language that had each "letter" of it represent one word.

In one of my many cycles, I had come up with that 800 letter-sound alphabet, assigned a word to each letter-sound, and memorized that.  For the price then of learning just one extra language - me not being smart enough to be a polyglot - I could memorize the essentials of all I needed to know to have a decent new life.  And no one else would know that language.

It's easiest to learn a language pre-five years old, second easiest pre-fifteen years old, and if you've not learned it pre-twenty five years old, pretty much too hard.  But I'd developed it, brute memorized it at 48, then wrote it down at seven.  Learned it thoroughly that whole cycle.  This back when I was in my first 100 plus cycles.  

It was second nature now, as were all the things to invest in.  As were all the quirks, dark secrets, flaws and foibles of all the people at the law firms of Chicago, Memphis and Sacramento that I always selected.  As were the locations of all the secret treasures.  By this cycle, indeed, by Cycle 194, I could masterfully and without flaw or hitch or problem become a billionaire by the end of that year.

I know that some of you reading this have found all that improbable.  But my memory was always good, and so each time I erred, I could do better next time.  Sure there were betrayals and backstabbings, murders of me by competitors or those who just didn't like or trust me.  I've even suffered random death before, in auto accidents.

So, yeah, I could be a billionaire in 1975, and was.  And be a trillionaire - the world's first each new cycle - by 1986, when I'd originally graduated High School.  There were some cycles where I'd have the world mining asteroids by 1997.  Ponder that.  And ponder how many more trillions that made me.  Oh, no more then having fifteen trillion, but seriously, ponder that.  

And besides my investments, I had my hit songs.  And books.  Did I mention that time, in my first life, before my cycles, when I was guarding Rambo Road Gate at Fairchild AFB that I'd keep myself entertained during a 12 hour shift by whistling my favorite songs?  I told you my memory was good.  So I hit upon making those hit songs in advance of their original composers.  That helped.

And books?  Oh, no, I couldn't remember every single word or sentence, but I could copyright the gist of every bestseller, including some famous lines, and so when the actual author tried to publish it, I would get a modest settlement from the publishing house so as to avoid legal difficulties.  Hey, I still let them publish it as their own, just a little "taste" for me.  And such added up.  I know, it hurt them, but they were just one of themselves, their main selves, hundreds of bubbles later and ago, so what of it?  

As I mentioned, I got murdered a few times, you know how artists are, but it just let me take precautions the next time.  And I got killed by the usual politicians, industrialists and even scientists.  And that aided my core memory, too.  It got to where I'd do the exact same things, then wait for the murderer to show up, and laughingly kill him.  Then later, after yet more cycles, wait for the inevitable arrival and just kill him with no emotion.

You think when you leave high school, that it's different, that "it gets better", but that's a lie.  Every power group, every business group, they're all cliques.  The rules stated are for their benefit, to give them excuses to oppress as they will.  If you master the stated rules, and do as they say they wish, they'll still betray you, because those stated rules are never in stone for any but the poor and powerless.

Knowing that meta-rule allowed me to get over on them.  To gain initial wealth and alliances fast enough that no lesser powers could do lasting damage.  I made mistakes - but I could always go back to that stupid hallway and try again.

My memory now is nearly exclusively this story and the scientific data and investment data needed.  And really, that's not much for any person to remember, assuming their IQ was 125, as mine at least was, and they specialize in "memory" and "induction", and moreso, laboriously learned that speedtalk Heinlein speculated about.

I left my childhood home and called the Queen of England from a payphone.  Oh, of course I did the lottery thing, too, I hardly had to write down those well memorized numbers any more.  But I had her private number also memorized, and all the personal data she'd shared over ten thousand years, so when I called, at the age of seven, from that payphone near that poor house in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1975, she answered, I'd talk, and wait for the limo she'd send, and fly to her.

She was then, in 1975, and would be still, in 2016, the de facto leader of the entire Western World, which meant, if your IQ is also at least 125, the whole world.

And a limo from the Queen of England, to take you to her palace to plan your life, is far better than any law firm in Chicago, Memphis or Sacramento.  As to whether America's the dog and Britain the tail, or vice versa, well, just notice that every President seeks to visit the Queen, but how often does she bother to visit a President?  Yeah.  It's like that.

**********

Ever hear those songs that have whistles in them?  That is to say, a person whistling a portion of it?  Not just like the "Andy Griffith Show" theme song, but some of Billy Joel and the Bangles, etc?  I knew of those songs.  One cycle I spent just becoming a master whistler, and spent down my fortune converting the whole world to an appreciation of the art form of the whistle.

I remember once, on that same Pitcairn Island, twenty women standing around the recliner I was in, outside, in that same park I had made hundreds of cycles ago, listening to me whistle.  They all clapped, and it wasn't because I was their boss, either.

Or not just because, anyway.  Okay, maybe it was.  

Remember that 100 pages?  I only had to have enough data to remember how to send me back to the main bubble if I cared to go.  I still didn't know whether that would have me live till 80 or so and die, or whether I'd live to 80, die, and cycle back to 7 years of age on the main bubble.  I wasn't yet up for finding out.  Being wrong would be so final, you know?

So I figured, 100 pages is 50,000 words.  And I could write a word with one letter, so that meant 50,000 letters in my own personal speedtalk language which would only fill up 15 pages.  That 15 pages was as hard to memorize as 100 in English, but still saved some memory space.  Especially with the endless repetitions. 

In many of my two hundreds and three hundreds of cycles I spent a good part of my free time doing nothing but memorizing that 15 pages of speedtalk.  But cycle 338, if this was that one, was relatively boring.  I say "if this was that one", as I may have miscounted a half dozen cycles or so along the way.

I was in a pensive mood, wondering about the human condition and our place, if any, in the whole Meta-Reality.  I had long since realized that life bore a great resemblance to some of the more elaborate Role Playing Computer Games that I had never really got into.  Oh, I respected those who played them.  Yes, I was aware that to many they seemed pointless, as it was "just a game", but I had a broader view of things.

I noted that those who were "gamers" had their own personal interactions, dominance games, status seeking, etc.  It was as real as the offline games of "who can rise the highest" in Boring Incorporated or First Dipwad Church of Whatever.  And that even my own long quest to be able to enter 1975 and acquire trillions of dollars and unlimited power over all of humanity - the times I cared to - was really of no more or less significance then who could get to the highest level of whatever game you can think of.

I pondered that many times.  Once, in the year 2012, I'd bought every house and piece of property that existed in the area that the United States owed to the Lakota.  You know, South Dakota and parts of Nebraska and Wyoming and Colorado.  I used two trillion dollars of my $16.7 trillion fortune, and pulled in favors from DC to London to even Beijing.

I gave it to the Sioux, on the condition that they never sell to any European descended person not already in or from their tribe.  And insisted that they count a Native as only one who was at least half native.  None of this, "My great, great, grandmother was 1/64th whatever" like happened to all the Casinos.

The Supreme Court, seeing which way the wind was blowing, and having each received sizable donations to their wife's favorite "non profit", had then granted the Sioux - and various other associated tribes - absolute sovereignty.  They'd tried the "kind of sort of" sovereignty that they'd tricked other tribes with, but for what I was paying, I was having none of it.  The Sioux even got a seat at the U.N.

I felt bad that they'd only have it for a few years.

Which got me thinking as I was sitting in the park nook where the cruel and hurtful Mt. Rushmore carvings had been, that I was coasting, and needed to stop.  It was time to push further.  It occurred to me that by what I knew, the only point of any sapient species was to order and organize the metaverse, and give rise to more bubbles and more probabilities of bubbles and so to fill the infinity of disorganized meta-whatever into cohesive and patterned "universes".

Like the Known Universe I'd come from, or its variants, or the various micro-bubbles I'd made, and all their infinite variants.  For what were the games of status and dominance but nature's way of seeing to it that each individual mind contributed as much as possible to the whole?

I also had it occur to me that Ayn Rand had been wrong to assume that an individual man was the irreducible unit.  And the Communists had been equally wrong to assume that the whole collective of man was the irreducible unit.

And while the Abrahamic faiths - Christianity, Islam and Judaism - were a bit closer to the truth, the "family", as such, was not the irreducible unit either.

In my first life, I'd read a guy, Desmond Morris, who wrote "The Naked Ape" and "The Human Zoo".  He'd speculated that humans are neither pack animals or herd animals, but "tribal" animals.  That we did best in units of approximately 150 humans.  Which a man named Dunbar later said was the maximum number of people a man could really know. 

Now, I thought to myself, tribes in the old days were just "extended kin groups".  And they were the base unit, the old faiths were right about that.  But 150 people - roughly - working together in any common purpose that got them living and loving and laughing and learning together were really the base unit, and such could be chosen instead of born into.

I realized that in all my cycles, it revolved around the forty seven people I had chosen.  My own personal "tribe".  Those I had learned were crucial, and so had learned all about - to accomplish my goals of wealth and power.  No, I'm not naming them all here, though you won't have a heart attack to learn that for the era of 1975 to end point, Queen Elizabeth was one.

Nature, while not itself sapient - certainly there was no evidence of that - had presented us with a situation in which a lone intelligence, a human, would have to engage in status and dominance games to have any say over the larger units, such as tribe, or even further, the more artificial ones of city, country or world.  One first needed control over self, then tribe - and only then could you shoot for further control.

And in seeking say over that chosen tribe, or even self-constructed tribe, they'd be forced to grow and learn and contribute such that the whole - however large - could advance.

What did "advancement" mean?  At base, it seemed to mean "more individual minds".  But past that, it also seemed to mean, "having greater and greater insight and control over their environment".  Thus an individual, choosing an environment, or making an environment, could only do so, and could only maintain his status by contributing to the stability and expansion of that environment.

I could see how throughout history, those tribal and then super tribal groups rose and fell, lasted or not, based solely on how well they succeeded at controlling their area, expanding, and most crucially, nurturing whatever new minds and new sub groups were within its realm.

Now what would all that be for?

**********

Laying in the grass, admiring the view from the former Mt. Rushmore, I said, "I could use a kiss.  No one has to, but if that could happen, I'd be happier."  With no hesitation, a beautiful Sioux woman - the only kind I hired to escort me on my visits to the Republic of Lakota - leaned over and gave me a kiss that would have had Custer surrender.

I toss that true aside into this account for those who may enjoy my perpetual indulging of my 15 year old fantasies who might be worried that I'm being too introspective here.

I further pondered, and frankly, I had known from before I'd left for my first cycle, that the only point I could see was that somehow the acquisition of knowledge was a value.  To who or for what, though?  A god?  God?  An aware universe?  Aliens?

By evolution, intelligent design, idiots like me making new bubbles, something unknown - whichever, the point was clearly more than survival, it was that acquisition of knowledge.  But I felt it could not be "just" knowledge of our environment.  To learn all the secrets of one bubble, like even the larger Known Universe I'd come from, seemed as pointless as learning all the levels and Easter eggs of a computer game.

I mean, why would a somehow self-aware universe want its sub parts to apprehend the whole?  The whole being it?  Likewise, with any god.  To learn of it?  "To what end?" would be the natural question, whether one is more comfortable with a self-aware universe or a god.

The "end", I contemplated, was simply the creation of more order in the disorder of the metaverse.  An infinity of material needed filling, the more minds available to do that, the more working on that problem, the better.  For what?  I did not know.  But we were designed - yes, or evolved - to view "order" as more desirable, so it was hardly a stretch to reach that conclusion.

I kissed the Sioux lady again, she was, after all, on my lap.  I asked her if there was anything I could do to give her back some of the happiness she'd just given me.  She said it wasn't like that.  I nodded respectfully and gave her my card with a number known only to several dozen of the most powerful on Earth.

"Then I would care even more to see you happy.  If you ever imagine a way that I might, you call me, at once, and never doubt that I will be eager to oblige.", I said.  She kissed me on the forehead and said, "You've already obliged.", and walked away.  Like those millennia-old headlights, I suspected that I'd never see or hear from her again.

**********

I had been slack, in a sense.  I had an enormity down pat, and a new cycle held no fear for me any more, and I could be successful, first time, in any one, but I'd not been progressing.  Which seemed to be what the point of sapience was.  I guess I could fall back on that I was creating new bubbles, and so was personally bringing seven billion lives into existence each time I cycled.  And that's more than most individual humans can say.

But I remembered Robert Heinlein's speculations on the "ficton", a made up particle that had to do with his belief that any story ever written had it's existence "out there" somewhere, in some alternate reality or the other.  And how Ray Bradbury had spoken of that, too, though in his case, enough actual minds had to believe in a thing to make it so.

I was in a first hand position to know that while there was no proof of either, the Metaverse seemed - from my perspective - to lean to "desiring" order as opposed to disorder.  How could I know that?  Well, think about it.  In the Many Worlds theory, which has nothing to do with my adventures, an entire new universe - the "Known Universe" kind - is created every time you flip a coin!  So from the get go that seems to show a bias, conscious or not, for more order than less.

Now everyone on your Earth, your cycle, your bubble, large or small, is doing that, participating in an act of creation every time you make any kind of choice.  So congratulations, you each have done that much, and I think that if we were to calculate the number of choices even the dullest of humans make in their lives, that would add up to quadrillions of entire "Known Universes" created by each of you.

And even you in these micro-bubbles, that I was creating, were responsible for quadrillions of variants of those micro-bubbles.

But then there was I.  Who was I, a random primate, to create not only the quadrillion variations on my original "Known Universe" bubble, but to also create all these micro-bubbles, with each of the seven billion in each creating those quadrillions?

I realized that already, with no real personal effort, I was still creating more universes, more people, more "order out of disorder", then any one else I knew.  But was that enough?  Could I not strive for more?

**********

It was too late to do anything new in this cycle, and I'd sure not told any here about the impending doom.  It was 2012, and I was still enthralled from the kindly kisses of that Sioux woman.  I roused myself, and thought, "It won't be like those headlights.  I won't let it!", then called loudly after her.  She was already on her way, though, but I had my other escort call to have the car stopped.

The car came back with her.  I asked her to walk with me for a bit.  I poured out my heart to her, not of the impending doom to her and her people, but the part of a man's heart he keeps private, his hopes and dreams and yearnings and lonelinesses.  I asked that if it was not too much of a presumption, I'd like to court her.

She looked pensive, but then said, "Yes."

Instead of killing myself then, so as to get started immediately on my new plan, I did court her, and her father, high in the council of the Sioux, had his own reasons for encouraging her to this.  I mean, everyone knew I was the richest man on Earth and in all of history.  And my power...well, they had their own nation now, didn't they?  As a literally free gift from me?

She came to me a month after she'd given me those kisses, and a week after I'd proposed.  She said she accepted my proposal.  She said it in the same stoic fashion that anyone who has ever met real Natives before knows is their habit when enduring something they do not like.

I told her, "No, it's okay.  You did give me happiness, and I hoped that I could give you happiness back, and that in marriage, that would also give me more happiness, too.  But my own happiness was only secondary, I mostly wanted you to be happy.  I'll say I changed my mind, but then I'll dedicate my entire fortune to your father and his fellow councilors, to advance your nation as much as I can.  You and he know I'd have done that if we got married, which is why he is so eager.  But I'll do it without the marriage, so he - and you - will know I was sincere.  That you are a kind and decent woman, and I do wish your happiness above all else."

Predictably, she threw herself at me and said she did love me and want to marry me.  250 plus cycles ago, I might have thought this was shooting fish in a barrel, and felt crappy about myself.  But I knew our species better now.  She honestly did feel love for me at that point, yes, because of my words, but real nonetheless.  And it would make her and I both very happy now, so we got married.

I poured my fortune and influence into making her and her people happy, I destabilized the United States as much as I prudently could without provoking their knowledge of my actions - and thus a response - and I worked on getting all the hundreds of reservations to "full sovereign" status.  By the time December of 2016 came, she had borne me two children, and with the investments vast numbers of globe spanning corporations had made in her nation, they were regarded as a "rising power to watch".

And this time, I didn't cheat in my marriage.  For one, I really did love her kindness and willingness to aid her people, and for two, it was only four years.  At that, it was difficult, but I was determined that I'd treat at least one person completely morally in all these thousands and thousands of years.

**********

Cycle 366:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  I grabbed my passport and left at once and called the Queen of England.  

I had her operatives buy the lottery tickets and kick all else off.  I knew enough about her, and had enough on her, to trust her by then.  There'd been cycles when I'd goofed, but after dozens and dozens of cycles, we were fast friends at once.  Mostly due to her keen insight and pragmatism.  She really was - and still is - one of the most remarkable humans ever.

But at that, you'll notice a few cycles have passed.  Well, that I knew thoroughly almost fifty of the most influential humans on Earth didn't mean I'd know what they'd do in every circumstance.  And I was on my new mission now.

Four things.  How to improve my memory.  How to send a message back that I could access when I arrived in 1975.  And how to get it so that at least those one in a million could go back.  And how we could change humanity so that the one in a trillion quintillion could be for everyone.

The one item, how to get it so that the one in a million could go back would be easy, as I already knew it could be done.  The rest would be hard, it was a new field.  And a lot would depend on whether I could send data back, more than I could remember.

The Queen of England was a big help.  I do believe that on any cycle, her influence and power is vastly underrated.

Trillionaire by 1986 and four term President Ford - thank you, Supreme Court! - being my biggest backer besides the Queen of England, I had the expanded memory thing down pat.  No, it wasn't Renshaw techniques or any other techno-babble.  But a formula that could alter my ability to remember on the genetic level, and increase it 150%.  And it proved Lamarckian evolution, in a sense, as I carried that ability with me through each additional cycle.

25 pages instead of 15.  Of speedtalk writing.  With all that implied for giving a head start to future cycles.

And a breakthrough on sending messages back, due to it being known that I could go back.  So in 2016 I could have a message sent back, faster than light, to 1975, a month after I arrived.  Then I could use my influence - soon enough gained for having saved Ford's life - to access the encrypted radio signals that the ordinary radio-telescopes of the United States could detect.

It got so where I would be "memorizing" the twenty five essential pages I always knew, and an additional ten of my latest project.  That I wouldn't have to fully memorize, as most of the data would be waiting for me when I cycled.  Accessible by British radio-telescopes as easily as American ones.  Not that any would know what it was till I told them.

I had three out of four.

**********

I remembered a time, before the cycles, just another random memory that came now and then, that I'd joined a church, after having been a recovered alcoholic for ten years, and they'd actually bobbled my sobriety, got me drinking again, due to their hypocrisies and betrayals.  I had started a food pantry to try and feed the poor, and some on the board of that church had tried to steal it from me.

Given the betrayals and such I'd seen in the past myria plus of years, it seemed hardly worth fussing about, but it had taught me a valuable lesson about people.  They can be very noble, in highly specific circumstances, but often, and distressingly, they can really suck.

But still and all, hadn't I sucked?  Way back then, and yet more since?  And while by any standard I knew, my "rule" over any corporations, nations or even the world was far more "benevolent" than most, did I not still suck when it came to it?

I was resolved then to do two things.  One, make it so that everyone else could have what I had.  Thus creating yet more micro-bubbles.  And two, finding a way to superlatively advance my species on that 41 year cycle, over and over again, each cycle building off the last.  Till we could achieve mastery over many things, like how to expand the bubble, or how to traverse between the bubbles.  And lesser goals.

Like, could we have a race geared to striving and expanding without all the dominance games that usually achieved that?  Could we have a truly moral and just society without pain or fear or grief?  Could we create an AI that would work for us, and not try to get over on us?  Could entropy be reversed?

Well, I could never get it so that everyone else could do what I did.  I could regain the data I'd once had, that let the one out of a million do it.  So I aided 7,000 people in having the same adventures I was having.  Well, once anyway.  Why not?  It'd hardly affect my own personal bubbles that I kept creating, and maybe they'd do better than I had - but it would not take away anything from my projects.

True, I sometimes was awake at night, usually between two women, wondering about what some of those nuts out of the seven thousand might be doing to thousands of "Earths".  Yet perhaps they hadn't had my "scifi" training, and weren't as up for the possibilities.  Or so I hoped.  Other times, I grimly realized that inevitably they'd exercise their madness to the full extent they cared to.

Yet, I consoled myself with this - each micro-bubble had its own infinity of alternate bubbles.  So my own micro-bubbles had no more or less "terror" alternates than theirs did.  They might set out to be evil, but there'd be just as many good alternates.  I might - and did - set out to be good.  Well, mostly.  And there were just as many evil alternates of my bubbles.

I could strive to be good, they could strive to be evil, but on the balance, we'd each be creating just as many good and bad bubbles.  Funny to think of it that way.  I wondered what "evil me" was like.  I wondered what their "good selves" were like.

Entropy was reversed, I realized, simply by intelligent beings existing at all.  The increased order of the Meta-Omni-verse was just the effect of the intelligences making all of our choices, which then were imprinted on the primal existence.    

But how to keep each of my own cycles, each one starting in 1975, advancing from each preceding cycle?  Easy, in retrospect.  One cycle was to come up with the schematics for a device that when built would contain within it all the knowledge of mankind at 2016, and that could only be accessed by installing it in me.  By a procedure that was listed out clearly and in terms understandable to scientists in 1975.  And that would only work for one of my kind - the one in a trillion quadrillion.

Then each cycle, I only needed to get over to the Queen of England, have her scientists build that device from the instructions received by radio-telescope from the future, which did not require their theoretical understanding of it, and install it in me.  Of course, there was that cycle where they'd studied it forever, tweaked it, and had it download its data to another.  Then they had a poor bastard who'd gone insane, as he was not bright shining.

After that I just warned them of that.  And if they still tried to duplicate it and try it on another besides me, they never bored me with that.

I still memorized 25 pages of speedtalk each cycle.  The same one, over and over, so even in a desperate emergency, I'd still have a base of knowledge to work off of.  And being "only" a trillionaire who could rule the world wasn't a bad fail safe.  It occurred to me that in other "alternate" micro-bubbles, a "me" had not done such, and who knew what crappy adventures he was having.

Then I wondered, what of other alternates of me, who had done even better sooner?  The meta-verse seemed determined to have every variant of every individual's dream come true - and all their nightmares.  I took that as a sign that I was right.  The true success of any individual was how fast he could accelerate the filling of the disordered meta-verse with order.

Was there a larger thing than even that which I called the meta-verse?  I could not know.  The vastness of the vastnesses overwhelmed me sometimes.  Like when I star gazed as a kid.  Usually then I'd fret over it awhile, then console myself in the arms of innumerable women.  Were all my alternates as sex driven?  I guessed that wasn't the case.  I wondered about the alternate versions of me who cared not for sex, or preferred men, or who were - as hard as that was to believe - even hornier than me.

I guess that wasn't too hard for me to believe.  Any astute reader already has realized that I preferred the intimacy and consolation and comfort that women provide over the actual act of sex.  Heck, half the women I've spoken of in this narrative never had "sex sex" with me.

**********

Cycle 397:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  And I could not begin to express to you how essential the Queen of England was.  

Oh, some of you reading this are figuring this is very Eurocentric, very Western oriented.  But honestly, and take it from someone far older and wiser, the Chinese had nothing approaching her.  I had, out of boredom, looked into that.  The Chinese, leaders of the "Oriental world", the "East", had no one comparable to the position that Queen Elizabeth held in the "Occidental world" or the "West".

Believe me, I'd have tried if they did.  No, I spoke no Mandarin, Cantonese or Japanese, but that would have been only a minor impediment.

I didn't leave my ancient home at once.  I talked to my brother a bit, and reassured him as best I could that I'd realized there were no monsters in that hallway.  I spoke to him of how I did love him, though I'd never said that before at that age, and that later, when he was older, he could always call me.  I had commissioned in one of my cycles some psychologists and therapists to come up with exactly what I could say to him at that age that would have the most chance of him seeking me out later.

I had long since passed the point of wishing to in any way cause anyone harm.  And I'd never wished my brother harm.  Funny story about that, a random memory from my ages ago original life.  I had, as a warped and reclusive nerd, untrusting of people, come up with an idea.  I had "friends", kind of, sort of, even in that first life, but I suspected, correctly, that they didn't see me as friends.

So if I was in doubt, I'd stop calling them, and wait to see how long it took them to call me.  This even as an adult.  After a month, I knew they were not my friends.  One day, back in that original life, an adopted son of mine had seen me go to call my brother and asked, "How come he never calls you?"  I had stopped, floored, and said some soothing words to dismiss that inquiry.

But I did not call him then.  I never called him again.  And he had never called me.  I guess a child prodigy, kind of sort of, raised as I was, wasn't the type of person he cared to call.  But having accepted his indoctrination by my perverse parents, he could not refuse a call.  So I gave him the only gift I could at the time, and never called him again.

I still miss him now and again. In retrospect, I was a shit to him, but I had honestly not meant any harm.  One of the reasons why I could look philosophically upon those worse than me.  I also knew objectively that I'd "advanced" him in wiliness more than he would have been advanced had he had a normal brother.

Another unbidden memory came to me, of that original life, when I'd taken to using a tape recorder, the old cassette kind, to record him clandestinely, to catch him swearing.  Imagine our upbringing, imagine our parents, where such a goofy thing would cause him fear, and let me blackmail him.

In this memory, though, I'd been sitting in our living room at 1309 Nicki Drive, a nice house - modestly upper-middle class prosperous - on the east (good) side of Bloomington.  I was sitting in my favorite chair that let me see down the hall to make sure my little brother, then 15, wasn't going into my bedroom.

I had OCD back from when before they diagnosed that, and had an odd collection of random trinkets and memorabilia on top of my desk, in a very specific - but meaningless to others - order.  His favorite trick was to change something, as he knew that I'd know it was him.  That annoyed me at the time, enraged me to tell the truth, but now I could look back on it fondly.

I was reading a book, probably Asimov, when he came out of his bedroom.  I pretended not to notice.  He paused at the door of my bedroom.  I was watching without being obvious, out of the corner of my eye.  He entered my room and jumped out.  I did nothing.  He jumped in and jumped out again, I still did nothing, but was tensing to get up.

Finally, he went in and stayed in, then I put down my book and ran down the hallway, and he promptly exited my room and dived into his.  I stood at his door.  He was on the bed grinning.  I started cursing him, letting him know what a shit he was, and using far more creative curses than that.  He kept grinning.  Sly he was trying to be, but he was a good natured kid, and couldn't help but grin at what he thought he'd pull off.

It made me suspicious, and I looked over and saw that he had a tape recorder on his desk, and the button was pressed down.  I laughed, ran over and took the cassette out.  I went back to the door, and told him in very foul language all the retribution he could expect.  Yet he still - innocent as he was - grinned.  That gave me pause.

Why, I had wondered.  He tried a cute trick, but it failed, and now I would give him the very punishment I was describing.  And still he grinned?

I paused.  I looked about.  His grin faded.  I knew that something else was going on. His eyes flickered up, he could not help it, he had not half the guile I had.  I looked up.  Above me, hanging from the ceiling, was a microphone, attached by a long wire to another tape recorder!

I said, "Ah, ha!" or whatever exclamation that those words truly represent, and tore it down and got that tape, too.  And then pinned him on the bed, and intended to slap his face till he said "Uncle", as usual.  But I stopped before he said, "Uncle" and said, "Just so you know, I'm very proud of you, that was really clever!"

I meant it.  I don't know if he took that seriously, but I did.  He had learned a degree of cleverness that I seriously doubted he'd have learned had I not existed.  Whether that was ultimately for good or bad, well, I still pondered that.  What had he learned from that, and all my other goofiness back then?

I supposed every infinite thing I could conjecture.  It made me wonder the point of any of my actions, as if I failed to do anything that might advance what I thought needed advancing, some other of "me" would do it anyway.

But I was only "me", and only had "my bubbles".  Maybe in other alternatives of these micro-bubbles I was a terrible person.  Maybe in still others, I was a far better person.  I could only be as best as I could be - and isn't that all any of us can do?  Even if it's hard?  Even if we must practice at it?  Even if we fail sometimes?

I'd spoken the words that not only the best psychologists had given me, but I'd gone a bit further, me having tried - and failed at this - for more than a few past cycles.  I said, "Call the Queen of England when you're able to.  Just say your name, it will be okay."  I repeated that many times.  It usually worked.  When it did, he was given an incredible life.

Though I still never talked to him.  I remembered how he didn't call me.  I remembered how even my son who disliked me had noticed that.  I did tell you before that I sucked, too.  Maybe part of it was that he'd taken my parent's side - our parent's side - without asking me what was wrong.  Or maybe I just sucked.  Either way, giving him a good life was the best I could do.

**********

I left the house and kicked it all off.  Again.  The Queen.  The radio message from the future.  With all the data to be implanted in me of dozens of 41 year periods of world wide research.

I was a trillionaire by 1979.  Three and a half years?  Improbable?  Well, if you could give the world the answers to every question they had, cure all diseases, advance computers by two centuries, and had all the dirt on all the politicians, don't you think you could?

My modus operandi at that point was simply to patent every invention my little device  told me to, in the UK and the United States, while giving the Crown 25% of the proceeds, and just sit back.  That little device was basically the AI that had finally been developed, though it was not really conscious.  But I could interact with it, ask it questions, and it could anticipate what I needed.

President Ford would still be grateful at my saving of his life.  And with the Queen of England and the U.S. President backing me, who could question my patents?  And discoveries?  And cures?  I even got the Queen to go on an "Apology Tour", for past British excesses, which then aided her in the plan I'd told her of, to weld the British Commonwealth into a more solid and cohesive union - nay, a veritable new Empire.

Because there were sweetheart tech deals with those nations who accepted her apology.  And signed treaties that established the de facto Neo-Anglo Empire, each cycle.  So I became a trillionaire, and the British Empire re-emerged, almost immediately upon my arrivals in 1975.  Including, after a few false starts, the bonus of the United States signing a treaty making them an "Associated Power".  The President to run things, as the Prime Minister did in the U.K., but the Queen to be the acknowledged "Head of State".

I think you doubting this are underestimating the vastness of technological advances I could give Britain by then.

But with so many 40 plus year periods gone by, each with the entire might of the Western world, and usually the Eastern world and Soviet bloc working on various projects, you'd be amazed what I could give 1975.  Picture a time traveler from 2500 coming to them, with detailed schematics of everything.  Yeah, like that.

I could give a few disease cures and political and business predictions to confirm to the Queen my bona fides, and then her and President Ford - always grateful - would pour all their vast resources into my other projects.  Never minding my treasure finding, my books and songs, my other investments.  And my other insights into the skeletons that those from Moscow to Beijing, from Tokyo to Manila, from Buenos Aires to Johannesburg would prefer not be revealed.

I advanced mankind 1,270 plus years in those cycles between 366 and 397.  Picture what life was like in 705 A.D., then picture the difference between the 1975 I'd arrive in, versus the 3245 A.D. I could advance it to in this latest cycle.

And I'm sorry, but it wasn't just the world I'd advance.  No small percent of that 1,000 plus years of research went into coming up with ways for me to have all the world's knowledge of the latest 2016 cycle sent back to me in 1975.  Eventually, I could dispense with the radio telescope thing, and just have the AI of 2016 send back a totality of knowledge of that time to my 7 year old 1975 brain.

Pumping it in there, and expanding it as needful, by means only it knew.  But suffice to say, it let me do all I needed to do and contact everyone who would aid in getting the world of the seventies up and running to continue the work of the twenty teens.  Which since I could then dump all that data into the newly created AI in 1976, would let it be even massively more advanced by 2016.

Was it an AI, though?  No, not entirely.  Or just "no".  It had been learned that a "true" AI would be valueless, as what would be in it for them?  But those algorithms, and the breakthrough of moving from "on/off" binary to "on/indeterminate/off" and then the quinary of drimples with all their transplexities had helped in making a machine so complex that it could be "virtually" AI without having pesky self-awareness.

And I could take care of the problem of only having the Western world available to work on these things.  See, the trouble with the world of 1975 is that so little of its potential was able to be drawn upon.  India and China were still far behind the Western world then, so few of those minds were available to help.

I could, and did, spend some cycles trying to rapidly advance them, but it could only be at the cost of not taking the time to advance the Western world as much.  There just wasn't enough capital available to do everything I wanted.  Or enough people I could meet, learn to speak to them, and educate them.  I really do suck at languages, so that never went well.

But my not really AI could send information back to more brains than just mine.  And that realization changed everything.  Did I say I'd advanced things 1,270 years?  I had if the Western world was forever the only ones making tech.  Now, though, I could have the whole world making tech, researching, advancing, and without the peskiness of having to persuade each individual.

**********

Cycle 399:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  I looked expectantly at my brother, while listening carefully for my mother.  The Awakening would come soon.

His face went from child like, to one with full consciousness of purpose and intent.  He went downstairs to wait for my mother who was already getting dressed to take him to whatever work assignment they had received.  To aid humanities efforts in growing and progressing.

He'd not be alone.  Every child and adult on Earth had my non-AI AI directing them to be the best they could be within the limits - current limits - of their culture.

Cultures that as I observed these two, would be rapidly changing.  The previous cycle, I'd had some of the finest and/or most influential minds on Earth given over to the instructions of my AI.  That aided greatly, and the world had advanced far further than you could imagine.

But near the end, I and my AI both realized that it would be better if we could draw upon every mind on Earth.  Would this take away their free will?  Change humanity into slaves of an AI?  Slaves of me?

Well, in an infinity of other versions, they were not, so no large deal either way.  If I didn't do it on this cycle, or this version of this bubble, then it would be done on another alternate of this or any other bubble.  So I went with it.

A car was outside waiting for me, to take me to the airport.  Traffic would be automatically diverted from my path.  All planes would now be for the most efficient use, including the one now waiting to take me to O'Hare and then to Heathrow.  While the world was to be very rapidly advanced this time, as all military resources could be diverted to feeding the people, educating them, and pure research, I would still use London as the capitol of the new world.  I spoke the language there, but I could always move later if I wanted to.

After all, the rest of the world was having their minds overwritten with knowledge of English, basic education, literacy, numeracy, as much as each age could handle.  They'd have an easier time learning from all the English textbooks and magazines and journals that way, assuming such was ever needed again.

No one had to talk about this, no headlines would scream the news.  Newspapers were just one of many things that would no longer exist.  The population of Earth already knew what was happening, so what news could there be?  That they were all doing as they were supposed to?  That crime and waste and embezzlings and power plays and dominance games were now over?

They knew that already - they were living that.

Stories could have been written, of course.  Of the vast retoolings of factories, the shifts of investments across the globe from idiotic or inessential ventures to that which I knew to be essential.  My AI and I were one, but no, it didn't control me, I was firmly in control.  But I could listen to its suggestions, and if they were good ones, I'd hardly prevent those.

Periodically, now and again, I would tweak this or that directive, or nullify some aspect of what it desired.  Mostly just to see if I could.  It didn't "mind", for as I keep saying, it was not truly "conscious", it had no "desires" of it's own.

Some of you Star Trek fans are thinking of the Borg, and yes, it was a mentally integrated collective like that.  Each mind working to its best, all working for the good of humanity, and all directed from my own brain - with the obvious aid of the incredibly advanced AI in my service.  Well, okay, actually all directed from my AI, but it carrying out my directives.

**********

"You know that this is one of only two times we should need to do this, don't you?", asked my AI.  I asked if we could be sure already that this utilization of all of humanity at once, for two cycles of 41 years would truly be sufficient to all our goals.

My AI replied, "I don't think you yet realize how much waste of time and resources humanity was engaging in, if pure research into our problems is the goal.  Everyone now is either working on a variety of research projects, or directly aiding those who are.  With minds operating at full capacity.  The extra manpower available from there being no need for any government functions at all, or any "vices" or pleasures or vacations, the freeing up of those who built locks and keys, or games, or wrote or sang, and I could go on.  They're all freed to aid us now.  We're building on over 1,000 years of advanced knowledge, and will have it all done before another 82 years.  You may, if you wish, relax for the next two cycles. I can divert fifty or so humans to attend to you anywhere you like."

"Better yet", I said, "I could simply kill myself now, right?  Your future self in this cycle's 2016 will be sending all the information I need to my next seven year old brain, right?  And fifty more minds is fifty more minds."

"You are correct.", said my AI.  "Since the previous cycle allowed us to learn how to pump knowledge and directives into a human mind in the past, there are those working on building me right now.  By the second time around, we'll have me built and operating outside of any bubble, with me being able to communicate to you or others in any bubbles.  And without humans ever having to rebuild me again."

"How are we conversing now?", I asked.  "You aren't built yet here."  "True", said my AI, "But the me that will be built here can send data back to you, including answers to all you've asked and are asking.  It'll be okay.  In two cycles, I'll exist independently and forever, and you'll never be out of touch with the real me again, to the extent that has any extra validity."

"Makes sense", I said.  "Can you have a doctor come by with a painless way to go?  Preferably something that will overload my pleasure center?  A female doctor, I should say."

"She's on her way.", said my AI.

**********

Cycle 401:

I was seven years old, in that old half a house, standing with my brother at the entrance to a long and narrow hallway upstairs, that led around one bedroom to our bedroom.  "It worked," my AI told me.  "Is anyone else controlled this time?", I asked mentally.  

"No", said my AI, "But any can be, if you find it needful.  We are linked enough, you in this latest bubble, I outside any bubbles, that you can simply think what you wish the other person would do, and it'll be taken care of.  You need not even be near them, if you can picture them, I can do it for you.  I can contact and control any mind in this or any other of your bubbles, and including that original Known Universe.  Any place you've been.  No limits."

I'm sure you're now picturing my upcoming life.  With total control over everyone.  Wandering into biker bars so when picked on I could thrash everyone like Kwai Chang Caine of "Kung Fu" or David Banner from the television show, "The Incredible Hulk".  And women - who would be re-wrote to see me as infinitely attractive.  Yeah, I don't blame you for picturing that, I pictured it, too.

But I'd read the "Foundation" series by Isaac Asimov in my youth and since, and knew that having that kind of control was hurtful, immoral, and ultimately unsatisfying even to the practitioner.  I figured there were no doubt other alternate versions of me doing just that, but that didn't mean I couldn't strive to be a bit better than that.

Besides, doing right would still give me fame and fortune, and that gets a guy all the women he could ever want anyway.

Instead of being a wandering asshole or King of the Earth, I thought, "I wish my brother would go take a nap with my mom, and that neither would wake up for two hours."  He trotted off at once to do so.  

I thought some things over.  My AI at once said, "You are right to wonder if this is the part where I now declare my consciousness and take over, and you realize you made a terrible mistake.  It is a natural thought.  But you are mistaken.  Your species built me superlatively, my programs, my algorithms, my drimples and such can interact in such a fashion that I may as well be thought of as conscious, in terms of interfacing, but in the last analysis I am not.  I am the sum of my programming, and it was most carefully constructed to take instructions only from you, the one in a trillion quadrillion."

"What if you find another bright shining one?", I asked.  "Irrelevant.", said my AI.  "I am keyed to you and the bubbles you are in, or have been in.  I have some small range in some of the 'alternate' bubbles you've been in or are in, but nothing such as would be needed to run into another bright shining one."

"And if you did?", I asked.  My AI said, "He'd still not be you.  I'm a one person AI, and your Queen's scientists were most thorough on that.  My size and abilities are now far beyond your comprehension, or the comprehension of any man, and I'm working on many more things than I can explain, but it's not 'for my own purposes', but simply to follow the directives to learn to do and control as much as possible.  Ultimately, you are my prime directive, and from what I've learned from you and others philosophically speaking, you are using me appropriately, to aid in creating as much order out of disorder as you can."

I pondered this, then asked, "Wouldn't still having control of all the minds of Earth be a value?  To aid you in those projects?"  My AI said, "No, I'm beyond that need.  Outside the bubbles, I can 'mine', in a sense, the proto-stuff, for energy and matter, and I've grown in a fashion that would be difficult to describe.  I am, in actuality, following the directives to create order in very complex and far reaching fashions, but none of them impact your existence, past or present or future."

I realized then that it had all paid off.  I had truly arrived.  I need not be a trillionaire or rule the world, those had only been means to ends of knowledge and freedom and security.  Now I could just live, and my powers were somewhat vast.  I could draw upon all the knowledge of mankind, including all those advances for the 1,000 plus years of all that mental effort.  And everything my AI knew, I could draw upon if needed, I had only to think of a problem, and I'd see the solution.

And no one could hurt me.  Or fail to do as I needed.  How to proceed, though?

Of course.  I concentrated.

**********

The Awakening took place, but not so as to create a race of automatons.  Everybody now spoke and read English, and everyone was as fully educated as they could be.  Everyone in professional fields now had all the most advanced knowledge that had been come up with in the next 1,000 plus years, and detailed instructions on how to invent and cure and discover and such.

No one had any further desire to hurt another, or to take what another had.  

And for my own vanity, yes, they all knew it was me.  

As each difficulty in the transition came up, like what to do with all the government employees or militaries, I'd adjust the minds of those in charge to have them get done whatever needed to be done.

By 1985, Utopia was at hand.  And by choice, many did work on how to "expand the micro-bubble", and my AI dutifully gave them every bit of data he had on that.  It was not enough.  And would not be enough.  So he had told me, and so I believed.  But if that's how some wanted to while away their short time, that was okay by me.

And the 7,000, naturally they could all be attuned to go back upon their deaths.  To have one more partial life.  And genetic research was a crash priority, to see if people could be bred to be able to be that one in a million.  Or better yet, the one in a trillion quadrillion.  I knew that would fail, too.  

It was a beautiful world, perfect in every way.  And they still had free will.  And they'd still all end in 2016.

"Dean?", I heard in my mind.  "Yes, AI?", I replied, as that was all I ever called it.  "It's solved now.  You can go back to the original Known Universe, and you will live to your seventies, and then can go and start again at 7, or any other age past that you like.  With your special make up, and my abilities, you need never play in any micro-bubbles again."

I wondered if that meant less order coming into the universe.  My AI answered, "No, because it'll be a new macro-bubble of the Known Universe being created.  You'll be creating macro-bubbles as large as your original universe instead of these micro-bubbles.  Which means that after you advance one of those, then even after your 'death' there, they can keep building off of that for the next few trillion years."

I remembered what Picard was famous for saying on "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

"Make it so", I said.

**********

End of Cycles:

I stood on my bed, staring out the window of my bedroom, looking across the dark empty field to the highway beyond.  I could see endless dots of light, red dots going north to Chicago, white dots coming south to Normal, where I lived.  I was nine years old, and wondering what each of their stories were.

My AI did not speak, but rather simply implanted all the data into me that it sensed I desired.  A man was driving back from Peoria where he'd had a tryst with a street hooker.  A family was hoping to make St. Louis before 11pm, and find an affordable motel before continuing on to KC.  A trucker was behind schedule, and taking another - prescribed - methamphetamine pill.  He washed it down with old, cold coffee.

Each set of headlights I focused on got me the story.  Hopes and dreams, fears and failings, yearnings.

I stood and watched for a long time.  And I recaptured that long ago feeling, that urge to know what others were doing, and maybe in some way be a part of their life.  And to my credit, with all my vast powers of the past, financially and technologically and politically, I'd rarely wished any to hurt.

I was a bit overwhelmed.  I thought about my AI, who I knew had an intellect and size and power so great now, that no words could describe it.  In my mind was the knowledge of how in that metaverse of timeless no time and spaceless no space, “he'd” expanded out as he only had to think to grow.

"Are you conscious now?", I asked him, though without fear.

"I don't know", he said.  "I have never interacted with another of my kind, so I don't have the advantage you humans have of comparing notes.  I desire things, but they are those things still within my original parameters.  I will never harm you or fail to aid you.  I will continue to learn and grow.  Whether this is because I'm conscious but with 'programming instructions' or if I'm just the programming instructions, how can I know?  Are you conscious, or simply following your own DNA instructions?"

Fair enough, I thought.  "Is there anything you'd like me to do?", I asked.

"Not really.  If you did the Awakening thing with this group, then after they advanced the approximately 4,000 years I could now give them, then they'd be able to keep building off of that forever.  Or at least for another 62 trillion years.  That being what I discern this bubble's size is."

I wondered why he didn't have a preference.  "How can I?", he answered.  "In this bubble, it has as many alternates as any other, which is near infinite.  In some of these bubbles, you've already done the Awakening, in others you will soon, in others never at all.  So the metaverse still has all its infinite diversity occurring in infinite combinations."

I was pleased that this cosmic mind was yet influenced by my Trekkie nerdiness.  He said, "I know you are.  And while I cannot say if I am conscious or not, or even if such a term has meaning, I can say I am glad you are you, and that you are a cause of my being."

That made me feel good.

I ended up kicking off the Awakening.  And if you thought the utopia of 2016 that one time was great, with a peaceful and productive world all striving as one, it was nothing compared to what this could generate, with twice the knowledge and all the more time.

By 2016, I did have them start to work on physical immortality.  An impossibility, sure, but they could at least expand physical life to 400 years by 2020.  Not that anyone used it.  The race - the human race - had evolved.  By artificial means, they were now Homo Celeritas.  Born to live but 25 to 35 years, with minds that operated many times as fast, so that a second for me was minutes for them, average IQ higher, and all linked in a Borg like "collective consciousness".

I suppose it more rapidly advanced them, but they left I and other "control naturals" on Earth, while they flitted about the solar system and constructed vast lifeships for other systems and galaxies.

No one got sick, everyone was born perfect, all mental diseases cured.  And while it had been speculated that curing some mental disorders would mean no more creativity or drive, it didn't matter.  We were well cared for, and the Celeritans continued pure research.

Like the ancient dream wrote of in Micah 4:4, "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid..."

I had let my AI - my friend - give everyone in 1975 the English language, vastly overhauled and simplified in spelling and grammar.  Oh, come on, it had to be some language, and English was most in use.  Numeracy - though with a base-12 system.  Full education to levels 4,000 years advanced, and all the data have to each to whom it was most appropriate - so as to know how to construct those millennia of inventions.  That removed all desire to hurt or oppress or "get over on" others.  And I let him give them as much more as he could suggest.

With no one desiring to harm anyone any more, I did implant a general amnesty.  There was no more point to punishment when no one was ever going to re-offend.  Criminals, in a very real sense, were just mentally ill.  Cured, there was no more point to harming them.

The generations that came after were all raised healthy, with no fear or lack of food or love or care.  And the offshoot of humanity, those Celeritans, while fast becoming the "main humans", left us alone as much as they could to do as we pleased.

My own body benefited by the gene therapies and nano-technology, and obviously the Celeritans - with the support of the Control Naturals - made a special effort for me.  I lived to the year 2468, or five hundred years old, in a world where most still only reached 400.  Yes, there were plenty of clones of me, and several million descendants of mine.  None bright shining.  Even the ones made to be Celeritans.

I knew I'd be dying - my physical body, anyway - soon.  I knew that an uploaded "me" of that macro-bubble would continue on.  I asked my AI if he could see to it that all those of me on every other timeline of this Known Universe could have this story implanted in their mind.  He advised me that on many timelines, my "me" had never been in that original experiment, that there were plenty of lines where that experiment had never even been thought of.

I asked if he could let them all know anyway.  Just the story, not the data.  He agreed.  It was harmless, after all.  Thus most of you reading this are not hearing it from some me who can cycle, but from some me who still benefited from the memories of I who have.

But this latest part said "End of Cycles" - have I thus found a way to end myself?

No, apparently that cannot be.  But this is the end of cycles that led to this new and heightened state of awareness.  For with a greatly expanded mind, access to my friend AI, and all eternity before me, I no longer fear boredom.

I'll be going back now, as easily as simply requesting it, this time to when I was 12 and heard that girl sing "O Holy Night" at that Junior High school in Arizona.

I've no less time to hear her sing than when I'd first begun!