- Stephen Hawking, in a 2012 interview
**********
August 4, 1989 - I saw him come out of the alley, and to his credit, he did not make the error common to new time travelers of looking about wildly, or at all. He came out as if he knew exactly where he was going, though I knew he'd be walking at least three blocks before he felt comfortable enough to start to look for his target destination.
That destination would be a local shelter. You'd be amazed how many time travelers camp out there. Any can go there, no questions are asked, and they're used to people having no ID and just muttering vaguely.
Still, I wasn't going to give him a chance to find that shelter or settle in. I knew that in around twenty years he would be well established, a man of means, and that he'd be the first to attend the party.
He fell instantly that his head turned into red mist, exploded by my high powered rifle fired at a can't miss range of just across the street. Passers-by screamed, a cop car's lights and sirens came on as it screeched to a halt, but I simply turned, ducked into another alley, and went uptime two days.
Sure enough, the cop was gone, and I could settle in for the long haul. I'd need to be well established, too. And quit judging me. I don't leap to killing, it's done only when all the lesser things have failed.
September 11, 2001 - I was about to watch the first of the twin towers fall on schedule from the safety of my high rise apartment outside the radius of upcoming destruction and choking dust. The door bell rang. I was out of my chair in a silent flash, gun drawn as I glided towards the door. I relaxed a bit when I heard the Mario Brother's knock - you know, da da da, da-da da, like the game. Only I knocked that knock.
I opened the door and let myself in. "Why did I decide not to call me?", I asked me. He pushed past me and went to the window. "Me having interrupted my viewing of the fall, I wanted to come over and see it now." I cursed inwardly, realizing that I had just missed the first part of the viewing of the fall. I took a bit of petty pleasure that he had missed it anyway, too.
He grinned at me, knowing exactly what I was feeling. "Well, still, I had to try!" We both laughed, and yes we each knew it was a paradox, and guess what? We/me doesn't know the physics of how it really all works any more than you can build Mr. Diesel's internal combustion engine from your when.
Then he said, "Okay, we missed one. Another early bird. Here on a different mission, but he will stay on till June 28, 2009 for that damned party. He heard about it from his future self who came back to tell him to stay put till then. Some are apparently realizing what we're up to."
I found the would be party attender the next day, and managed to smash his head in from behind with a crowbar. I let him be found in the rubble, so at least he was perceived to have a martyr's death. And made it so that no one was looking for me. I gathered later that I wasn't the only to pull that little trick.
November 10, 2038 8:05 in the morning - Dean was just thinking that he'd be seventy in another five minutes when I appeared. He gave a start and said, "You were right. Living now was the way to do it." He paused. He looked at me, almost expectantly.
I said, "Very well. And yes, I know your request. A one way ticket, so you can't bring back any info. I've 'got that', so to speak, and some other stuff handy for you."
I shot him with a hypospray. In keeping with this era's speculative fiction, it only had one button, and dispensed whatever I felt like dispensing. In this case, it gave him improved health, such that he had four hundred years of youthful vigor, then another hundred of gradual aging. And he could will himself forward in time however long or short a period he cared to - but only that one way. He'd have to be careful in leaving any when, for he'd never see it again.
I told him "no" on the ability to generate matter at whim, such as food or drink. To give him something to be careful of. To keep a bit of spice in it all. He grinned at that.
June 1, 2009 - I sat across the table from her, and waited for the waitress to finish pouring the wine. Something red, I cared not. I was too busy flirting with the time traveling lady from 4,028 CE, and pretending to be here early for the party, too.
She thought I was from 3,288 CE. Because that's what I'd told her. I've found over the years that my fellow time travelers underestimate any from an earlier time than them. In actuality, I was from 2,428,821, and not from Common Era, but from After Jinstel. So add six thousand or so years to that massive figure to see how far uptime I come from.
Soon enough, we were back in her apartment, where I could enjoy a pleasant evening and some sex that had a bit more variety than even 21st century New Yorker women knew of. I had debated whether to have sex with her, but a man does have needs, even way up when I come from. And those needs would be as hard to explain to you as yours would be to an Australopithecine. Perhaps harder.
While she turned to light a cigarette - no cancer danger for those with enhanced genes - I put my band back on my wrist, hugged her affectionately, and with her in my grasp, took her far uptime to what I suppose in your calendar would be - oh, let's just say it was a few billion years in the future, and the Earth was a cold and airless ball.
Mostly for the Sun being gone by then. Not a super nova, just gone. No, not some war, just some random accident from when some were messing about on a routine reconceiving of this galaxy. They later failed, if that matters to you. It mattered not to such "humans" as were then. Earth was airless for the atmosphere having frozen out. We appeared by an oxygen lake, I pushed her from me, was surprised to see a man there who looked like he was trying to cry out, and flicked back in under two seconds. I still shivered a bit upon my return.
A scurvy trick, and why most who rely on bands never take those off. I looked at hers, still on the nightstand. Without it, she was stuck there, and even enhanced genes wouldn't let her survive more than a minute. And don't start judging again, you don't know how many times and how many others had tried to deter her - not that she'd have known of the previous tries.
For instance, a week ago for me, I'd been in this very hotel with her, and tried to strangle her an hour from now. To find that she had an internal system that kept her oxygenated. Then had to flit back to warn myself of that, and thus improvised this quicker - if more jarring - death. As to who the man was that was trying to cry out, I could probably guess. I know me. Never mind.
The doorbell rang. I looked out the peephole, and sure enough it was her. Oh, I should have known she was an always prepared one, I thought. It meant that before her mission she'd gone uptime a bit from her own time to see if she got back, and finding that she went missing on this night, she's come to warn herself. Guess she should have came a bit earlier. Even better, she should have let herself be persuaded or bribed back before they put her on my list.
I looked at my watch, made a mental note of the exact time, and looked out the peephole again. And her head exploded into red mist. I did not waste time in opening the door and thanking the me down the hall, but only went back two hours, sirrd a rifle into being, then showed up down that hallway at the proper time.
June 21, 2009 - A busy month, and now to get even busier. I'd killed 32 different time travelers already, and was due to kill another 37 for just this upcoming week alone. And these were all the ones that had been clever and safe enough to not have been killed before they could come back here, as I knew that I would be killing those next year.
Having not been entirely averse to checking with my own uptime self, I knew that I'd do very well, and stop no less than 2,821 time travelers from even getting back to this time. I was basically now doing the mop up here and now, before getting on to the really grueling - and tediously boring - work of later.
That week of murder would take me several months of personal time, flitting in and out back and forth to get the work done. And some were quite well prepared to defend against me, but given how very much further in the future I was than most, I had a few tricks that they couldn't guard against. Oh, I'm to explain this to you? Yeah. Write down an explanation of how an old man in an oval shaped office can say words out loud and have a city explode in atomic ruin half a world away, and make it so a Roman centurion could understand.
Don't care to explain how President Truman blew up Nagasaki?
Then don't worry about how I do as I do. I just do, okay? And I can no more explain two million year old tech than you can explain two thousand year old tech.
It wasn't all murder. Well, okay, it was, but it wasn't all direct murder. Four clever ones were invulnerable to all forms of physical force, and had got here and now. I learned that when I tried to shoot one. He laughed, he had apparently met me before. I made a note to thus meet him before. He was quite pleased with himself. So was I, as it made me realize why my future self had told me of this in advance.
Having fulfilled my failed attempt, and the four foolishly assuming they were safe, I disappeared uptime and spent a few years tracking down all four in their childhood. And giving each a subtle - well, call it a "poison", but it was really some devices that made nanites look like vacuum tubes. It hid in them till shortly after my "failed" attack.
Flitting back finally, I called after the four, still walking away from me - laughing - and towards the room at the University of Cambridge that would host next week's party. Guess they wanted to scout it out. One turned back and said, "It's not just that you can't kill us. We can kill you if you force the issue!" Such arrogance. The others turned then, too. I said nothing, just raised my hand and waved good bye. And right on cue, they all died of their brains being vaporized inside their skulls.
I rushed over, I didn't need your Discovery Channel or Hawking's nurse to hear of some bizarre find of four dead bodies with blood and goo dribbling from their ears one week before his silly experiment. I keyed each of their bands for a spot in time where I'd be waiting later to dispose of them - and more importantly, dispose of that which I had put within them. Not like those yoctite things ever stop.
June 28, 2009 12:00:00 GST - I checked in with the Chief of an Intercept Team. One that was peace loving and just trying to preserve the continuum in the normal fashion. Such types knew not of me, and frankly, were too pacifistic to conceive of the need for me. But we all have our places.
"How's it coming?", I asked him. He gave a start, then imagined he recognized me, for I had portrayed myself to them earlier as a farther uptime agent who agreed with their goals. I had secured among them a "rank" of sorts that let me demand of them unquestioning respect. "Fine, sir, just fine. We've managed to persuade, bribe or trick over 120,000 temporal tourists into avoiding the party, most of them we met before they could even jump here. Our agents in place have also corralled several thousand into a stasis field we constructed in a 'faux University of Cambridge' that we could get them into by giving them false directions."
"How did you construct a faux University without those in this time seeing and marveling at it?", I asked. "Sir, we didn't construct it for real, only an appearance of it. An illusory overlay, that none except those temporally out of sync with now/when could see. It was placed over a warehouse we had rented for mundane purposes prior to now. It only worked on those relying on the local address, we had other means of intercepting those using the GPS coordinates."
I nodded. I asked, "Are you expecting any more?" He looked pleased with himself and said, "Our reports indicate that none arrived between now and 5:00pm GST, perhaps all wanted at least five hours to find the place, or as some of us have speculated, there may be another agency at work giving us unsolicited aid." He gave me a knowing look.
"Good work, then. May I have the envelope?", I asked. I could see that he thought he knew full well who the other "agency" was. Namely, me. Well, he was right. Though I knew there were seventy eight other agencies with varying levels of organizational efficiency and even more varying motives all aiding me. Not trying to aid me, but doing work that synced nicely with mine all the same.
He gave me the envelope, which he had got from me. I opened it, scanned the page of microprint on it, memorizing it. If you thought that the frozen by the lake woman was genetically advanced, you can have no conception of how my type are so much further up. It was a list of all those who'd be coming between now and five pm. I crumpled up the envelope, put the list he'd just gave me in a fresh envelope, and asked, "When did I give this to you?" He looked concerned and said, "Yesterday, sir. At 4:13:18 pm. But sir - " and I heard not the rest for having flitted back to give him that envelope.
I knew his worry. Closed loop. I knew the names as I had gave myself the names, but where/when had I found them in the first place? That wasn't his worry, though. Or really mine. Not yet. I knew I'd be dealing with the fall out of such loops and whorls for decades of personal time after this was over. This was, after all, my first life's work, and I'd be dealing with this for the full 100 years before I could move on to any second life's work. Damn that Professor's arrogance, if it had been anyone but him, no one would have heard of this stupid party in this nowhen era!
November 10, 1978 - I showed up in Normal, Illinois, for a much needed rest. In the bedroom of a ten year old boy. Well, nine years old, as it was 8:00 am in the morning, and this little prodigy knew he hadn't been born till ten after eight.
He was already awake. He had observed my immediate entrance out of thin air. As I had intended. "I didn't expect it to work.", he said in wonder. Then his face got a look that said he realized that all the work he'd thought of yesterday, and fiercely committed to, he'd now have to do. I nodded. "Yes, you've some work ahead of you. But it worked. This won't be spoke of, though, and I'm sorry, but none will believe you. I think you know that, yes?"
He said "yes", thank heavens. He had been in no danger from me killing him, but his effort had been special enough and he innocent enough that I had not wanted just any random Rectifier to do any mind tinkering on him. He said, "I have questions. Like when you're from. But I guess the most important one is, what would you like me to know or do?"
I beamed. Such a refreshing change from most of the precocious little snots who wanted to ask me about sports wins, lottery numbers or investments. Or the superficially more intellectual snots who figured I carried schematics for warp drives and transporters upon me. I said, "You've figured out we can't do much for you, as it would interfere with the timeline. What you need to know is that there are many over the centuries who think of what you thought of, but few follow through. But even that few is quite a number. It's trimmed down by failure, though. Most messages that the adult selves of children leave do not make it to the future."
I paused. I was weary, and needed a treat from the ordinary ugliness of my job.
He was watching me calmly, though I could tell he was very excited. I mentally shrugged and thought, "What the hell, why not?" and said, "Let's go somewhen else, and I'll try and explain." And with that I reached out my hand, his hand clasped mine, and I took him to a quiet place uptime.
Prillim 28, 1,148,118 AJ - We were on the shores of a lake, surrounded by a small valley and enormous mountains. Three white towers rose from the lake, one clearly broken off at the top. A great sense of age hung over all, in spite of the bright sunlight, the pleasant smells of flowers and grass, and sounds of the lake gently lapping against the shore.
"This is a remnant of a civilization that lasted tens of thousands of years, but died hundreds of thousands of years ago. There are none left here. Or anywhere. Humanity doesn't inhabit gravity wells - planets - any more. We won't be disturbed.", I said. I sirrd a park bench out of thin air with an idle wave of my hand. The boy looked surprised, then nodded to himself as if thinking, "Of course".
"We've received in your future various messages left buried by people like you, each asking that if time travel is real, to please visit them at such and so time and place. In most cases, we simply ignore those. But others find purpose and amusement in honoring such requests. And no good can ever really come of it. It inevitably changes the continuum, even in the best case scenarios. So people like me prevent that. Mostly by getting rid of those messages or otherwise stopping them before others can discover them."
He nodded. "But mine got through anyway?", he asked. "Yours was a routine intercept.", I said, "You did well. Your message lasted more than 10,000 years, micro-engraved on a nickel-rhodium square of metal eight inches on each side. Your thoughtfulness in including a reproduction of the Encyclopedia Britannica 13th edition and the Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge was appreciated, though as you can now imagine, not really needed when we can go back and just get those."
He nodded again, still remarkably quiet. "Your message was found by some scholar or the other and he found it fun enough to transcribe it into a more durable medium. And promptly hide it again, rather than turn it in. You may be pleased to know that it lasted till 212,082 CE. Er, AD, as you're thinking of it. Not quite the record, but it will be now." I made another hand gesture and that 8 inch square plate appeared in my hand.
"I'm going to take this copy of a copy of what you made, and place it in one of those buildings. I know this place will exist undisturbed for at least another ten million years. Undisturbed in that those buildings were constructed with techniques that withstand almost anything, so no matter what changes take place locally, your plate will be intact in there."
Dean said, "You need me to do something, though, right?" Now I nodded. I said, "I need you to promise not to do that plate now. So that it is not there to be found by that scholar. So he won't transcribe it and hide it. Because if you do that, then people like me have to stop dozens - even hundreds or thousands - of foolish time travelers from coming to visit you. And I get tired of the deletions sometimes."
"But", Dean objected, "If I don't do that, then I'll never get a visit from you, and I'll never have my plate put in that building!" I shook my head. "You've seen me, you're here and now with me, so you've had the visit from one person, me, no matter what. And it's a copy placed there, I know what you originally wrote, so you don't have to write it. I know it's a paradox to your thinking, even to mine, but the math that neither of us understands lets that be."
That made sense to him, which was a relief, as I was not sure it made sense to me. I said, "Can you now then commit to not doing it as firmly as you committed to doing it?" He agreed. I could see him make the internal commitment to not doing it. It demonstrated no small amount of will power, to set his course of life - at least in that one regard - so firmly. Another me appeared before me, nodded briefly, then flitted out. The child was not phased by this, I think he knew that I'd just been reassured that he'd keep his word.
"Be happy - you are the one out of thousands of fantasy loving kids who's work made it! And you got this trip! And helped me in my work, and that is appreciated!", I said.
After that, I walked about with him, and he was a reminder of what we missed in our time where our type were cregun instead of born, and provanced instead of raised. It was oddly pleasing to watch this random when/where through his eyes, it made what was old to me new. We spent the whole day there, chatting about nothing of lasting import, as he seemed to know - quite considerately - that I could tell him no secrets of any practical value.
"Could it hurt to know how it all ends?", he asked at one point. I said, "No...I would trust you with that. But there isn't any end. Life...consciousnesses...it just keeps going. And even when it doesn't...it does again. There is always something. Never nothing. 'Nothing', can never be. Never has been, and so can't now, and so can never be. Does that make sense?"
He nodded, and I could see that he had some small grasp of what was, even for me, not fully graspable. But we both grasped it more than most, and that was enough.
We camped that night, and I told him of the stars that he had always been so curious of. Yes, I told him, sometimes when he looked up at a star, and wondered if a child on a planet around that star was looking up towards him, that such was so. "There are always some few inclined to imagine the hard to imagine. And in an infinity of alternate universes, all such imaginings are so."
"I know I can't", the child started, "But I wish that one day, if it didn't hurt the continuum, that I could come and stay in the future." I was touched that he qualified his wish with a desire to not do any harm. I said, "It's a natural wish. But your when/where is as special as this one, or one 10,000 years before you. And has people or intelligences wishing the same wish. Explore your own time. Live that one as best you can. It is enough. It is all any of us really have."
He fell asleep then, and I let him get a good night's sleep under the stars, and thought my own thoughts while listening to the rustling of the leaves in the night breeze and the endless gentle lapping of the waters of the lake upon the shore.
I dropped him off at 8:09:55, giving him time to check the alarm clock on his nightstand, and see it turn to 8:10:00. "Happy Birthday, Dean!" I said, he beamed, though he knew he was one day older than he should be, and I flicked back uptime.
June 28, 2009 17:00:00 GST - The bulk of my mop up mission completed, and still I was not at rest. There were the inevitable crashers to a party that had now started. Started as defined by Professor Hawking sitting quietly in the room for the party. "Welcome Time Travellers" the sign said in 21st century British English. I chuckled to myself. No one ever said this guy lacked style.
I went and sat on a bench in one of the open areas of the campus, but I had monitors and other means of detecting anything untoward. I was contemplating the vast vastiness of time. While I and my type a couple of million years from now thought nothing of a three or four thousand year lifespan, and we had the long range thinking to go along with it, I still had trouble sometimes figuring why something so insignificant as a party two million years ago could matter.
It would be like one of them here/now worrying about a caveman dreaming that time travel was possible - why would they care? What could it matter? No particular cave dweller could have any importance to them, and these folk could hardly matter much to us. Yet here I was, Junior Rectifier, still in training, and given this most minor of tasks.
That I was gave it did confirm how paltry this one instance was. And I knew there were thousands of more such instances. I was only 250 years old, halfway through my first "adult" century, with many more "century lives" to spend on this career, a career that would involve far more historical times and people than this little temporal backwater. If I so chose.
Or should I change careers after this? I knew I'd be another fifty years wrapping this up. Was this what I wanted for the next couple of thousand years before it was in any way conceivable to "retire"? Not that many chose full retirement, not when "work" and "pleasure" were the same word in our tongue, unlike this dark age.
Where was that child I'd recently met now? Barring accident, he should still be alive. What does he make of that long ago visit, now that he's, what, forty? I didn't bother looking him up, as it would only tempt me to interfere. And annoy him greatly, when I failed to interfere over and over as he'd naturally like me to.
He'd asked if I felt bad killing so many. I hadn't really known how to answer. When even the "future time travelers" that give any care about this little party are a million or more years dust to me, how much care can there be? Dying at 80 to 100 years of age, tops? Or dying at 200, like some travelers? Or they die sooner because they couldn't be bribed or persuaded to do the right thing?
Getting to know some here/now, getting to know that kid, yeah, I guess I care a bit. Not enough to stop, and it's not like these travelers are really innocent, they all know that what they try is dangerous. But still, I hate to see any life form, any intelligence get cut short. I had tried to convey that to the kid, but how much can you convey of such things to a ten year old?
Oh, look at this clever one. My enhanced eyes focused on a time traveler who was just now entering the atmosphere above me, in some little self-ship that would land him on the campus grounds. I made a mental note, and sure enough, he disappeared. Destroyed by my future self, I'd have to ponder how I did that later, but at least I had the relief of knowing that clearly I had figured it out.
A student came up to me and asked if I was Mr. Everard. I said "yes" and he gave me a note. It said, "Bathroom" with another few squiggles that meant something to me, nothing to anyone else. I thanked the kid, went to the bathroom nearest the party room, saw the cameraman tied up, went into a stall, flitted back and waited for the cameraman to enter for his bathroom break.
When he did, I was washing my hands. He went to a urinal, and sure enough, another time traveler, dressed just like the cameraman, flitted in behind him, ready to knock him out and take his place. As he was facing his victim, and didn't see me, I flitted uptime, prepared at my leisure, then flitted back, jabbed him with a hypospray, and the devicelettes in it shot him uptime.
To the same oxygen lake I'd left the lady at. Like I had said, I know me. Never come up with a new solution when the old one still works. I could keep using that when/where for quite some time. Wonder what any coming upon a lake ringed with frozen statues would make of it even later?
I got tired of the wait. I made a mental note and myself appeared. I got briefed by me in that bathroom, and thanked me. Fourteen more crashers. All needing to be stopped. I went to a park in 84,832 CE, reviewed the notes, made some plans. Suffice to say, I then did the work and succeeded.
Details? Oh, the usual. In other words, death. Only one unusual case, this guy had protected himself even back into childhood. And had a rather sophisticated AI device watching over his parents and grandparents to detect any overt any harm to them. Hmm. Yeah, turns out he wasn't from the mid fifty thousands like he had claimed to another Rectifier earlier, but was from the later 160,000s. Nice tech then/there, primitive but effective.
I went and visited his grandmother when she was a tweenager of 27. Just about to graduate to adulthood. I offered her an anonymous scholarship to the school that she'd otherwise not get into. Fulfilling her dream that in her original life would have been thwarted. No danger or harm to her, there, right? Right. And no meeting her original husband, either.
Thus one less pesky time traveler for me to deal with!
June 28, 2009 2200 GST - They'd took Hawking away earlier. I'd succeeded. True, there could be some that would try after, even for the whole of his life - but probably not. I mean, what would be the point? Enough had already seen that silly "Welcome Time Traveller" sign to know what he was up to even before he sent the invites. Any who showed up now could be dismissed as cranks, not that other teams wouldn't deal with them anyway.
Which meant that few would bother. Taking a risk when it would work, that's one thing. Taking a risk when it would be dismissed? That's another.
Oilisch 12, 2,428,871 AJ - My first adult century life is over. I succeeded. No more "Junior", I am a full Rectifier now. And you, you reading this, you're looking for the "wrap up", aren't you? Was it me who yelled at me at the frozen lake? What of the boy, did he fast forward and much later become me? Okay, no, he did not, that kind of thing is just for stories.
Not that life in all it's forms isn't just those same stories. In that sense, some when/where, some alternate or the other, that boy did become me, or I the boy, or I'm you or you're me. You picture an infinity of nothingness with stars and planets and people and such as little pin points in that nothing, such somethings being the exception to the rule of absence that you somehow find logical.
There is no absence. Never was - or there could never have been presence. It's an infinity of somethings, in an infinity of forms. "IDIC" from one random TV show in some random empire of some random time, which was some decorative pin that meant "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations". It tickles me that it was truer than any of that time, or much later times after that, ever knew.
I went on to other things, as did the boy, as did Hawking, and as have you. Each of us in our own way and time. And each of us in all the ways possible and impossible. And you were wrong for judging me, for as many alts and which/whens where I won, in as many more I lost.
I am the winner and loser, the hero and villain, the killer and killed, the created and destroyed, the producer and consumer, in all the times and alts and worlds without end.
As are you.
As are we all.
Yet for your when/where, your alt, the when/which that finds you reading this, no one made it to Hawking's party, not because time travel is impossible, but because I'm possible. Because all is possible. Because all is.
Now you know. Make of that as you will, it is no more susceptible to proof or disproof than anything else you think of as real.
Lolshly 8, 342,842,883 SE 4.482 - "Happy Birthday, Dean! Still enjoying life?", I asked. "Always!", he grinned, and as it turned what used to be known as 8:10 in the morning, all his friends from myrias of myrias past, all with comparable abilities to flit about in time, arrived for the party.
