Experiment - Blind Past Awakens

Their fingers flew over the virtual interface with practised ease. A familiar old television tune played in the background for motivation. “I appreciate the sentiment, but we'll keep the lab on silent” said the lead researcher. For a moment, nothing happened. “We're listening for them, not the other way around”. Reluctantly the music was stopped.

Through the glass the room was setup the way he remembered it. In the days the followed the cataclysm his memory had improved, and he set up the layout perfectly. There were some components that were best fits, and others the devices were improved upon, but the functionality was there in any case.

The auditory signals that were coming through were somehow spliced, a confusing result until it was repeated exactly. “I don't remember doing that” he said, “but it seems like something I would do.” A few quick surveys found that a few others did notice the media in other formats. “It's a shame we don't have more observers from that time period.” he said for the hundredth time. “Everything is being recorded” cautioned a voice. He looked over, annoyed.

The point was made, very few people were at all observant, deductive, or at all useful in a scientific sense. He valued the people now around him, and wished that they could do more for Past Him.

We have a new battery of tests we'd like to try. It seems the January Protocols are holding this time, and he's still on task. He thought back to earlier in the year. Once again his past self visited the house/lab as he had last year. The journey had left him a bit unstable, but he answer questions readily enough. They had thought it best to do a mind wipe, but that had only been partially successful. The time in the lab had been erased, but it seems the Time Lucidity had not.

Without access to the equipment, he wrote in journals, twitter, and typed up movies and plays. In an ironic paradox, it was these stories that would later bring the team together – even though he doubts he would have written them had the experiments not gone through.

As the days progressed, he remembered less and less of what he did, making more observations on the past more and more important. It seems the chaos effect was still very much in play. There were times though that a significant memory still filtered it's way through time, he usually just woke up remembering something new. It found a place among his other memories and just fit somehow, even if the exact details didn't flow smoothly into the rest of what he actually did.

It made sense, on some level. He was still connected to his past self, but in other ways it was like dealing with another person. Someone who he had a lot in common with, but under such conditions, a mirrored set of circumstances.

There was a protocol at the lab to list several contacts for each position, in case someone an interaction in the 'past' skewed the 'present' in some way. A few times the old lists had been changed, when a certain bit of writing or idea sparked some change in a secondary email, or backup phone number. It seemed that there was a certain buffer around the experiments though, in that once they were underway, nobody vanished or suddenly had any major changes in their past or personality.

Once they had enough anchor points for everyone in the experiments, they would be a little bolder in their trials. A surprise contact from the first test subject proved to be very helpful. She could anticipate his moves with a bit of coaching from the public writings and could act as a control for the trials. She would picture the various ideas and recommend the most advantageous stimuli.

What nobody seemed to get is that he would roll with the punches.

Most people want a certain amount of control over their own lives, he wanted to be set free from that type of grounding. As much as he tried to explain that to the team, they wanted to see his past self put that in writing first.

He didn't regret the January experiments at all. At least it meant something was happening. It progressed the scientific advancement, and hopefully woken up someone else's rather bland expectations.

Sooner or later they'd have to be up front about the whole thing, and he was conditioning himself to be the one who would take it in stride.

Since the January experiment, his internal scale for happenings had been reset. A lot of things simply didn't register on a scale that rocked other people to their core. He was already detached from things, and not in an altogether dangerous way. When time itself became your anchor point, finding 99% of everything else turned to dust wasn't that much of a shock. Even the blandest of preparations indicated that was a likelihood.

As far as he was concerned, he was a blank slate ready for the next round. As soon as future him made enough backup measures in case something unexpected happened he would would be ready at this end.

He already explained it to his short contact. “The laws of time must be elegant, as is everything else, with forever ahead of us, we'll get there eventually”