Ticks Forward

For some reason he felt a glimmer of hope. It was an odd feeling. He had long resigned things to be a unending monotony, without change or stimulation. Not that there was any particular source or cause, at least not one he could define or quantify. It was as if everything suddenly shifted, like a reset button was pressed and things were finally allowed to progress again.

Once reflecting on that he felt like there was a glass ceiling before, confusion, a lack of a destination. Still, things weren't yet clear – but the door was definitely open. If he could muster up the focus and energy to progress, things might actually move.

Class / Future

The class began.

Brains were a construct of physical reality and therefore subject to the laws of such. The mind, he argued, was not. It had sympathetic structures in the physical world, but it was simultaneously the product of all of them, and none of them.

Therefore, he continued, that the mind was not subject to the same limitations of a standard computer, and that it could essentially reach beyond time.

The also meant that any mind was, to some extent, a product of the environment it has be accustomed to. Therefore the default structures in the mind would eventually fall back to a mechanism that would most suitably deal with the environment immediately around it.

Hence, while we have this discussion here, an 'earlier version' of my mind, which is still, in fact the same thing, is busy typing notes on a computer. In fact, let me pull up the archives. Here.

Now, you might argue that I'm simply recycling my own old notes, but the memory is locked away at the moment – due to the other experiments that I'm working on.

You see, that's why there's no reported incidents of time travel. The 'past' mind has always got the memory squirrelled away, since it is forced so often to deal with 'linear time'. When we return the subject to the time they left, down to the nanosecond, the physical brain has had no time to encode the memories into a physical shape.

Why don't you simply have the two meet? - asked someone in the back. We did, replied the teacher, and the memories cancelled each other out. I didn't remember it happening so I blanked out and he was extremely disoriented.

What we need, and why these classes are taking place, is a need to shift the group consciousness into form which is able to deal with non-linear time.

Is that the point of the SuperWhoLock? Laughter. Yes, in fact, because each of us has to deal with it in their own way. Some are deductive about it, as I was, most merely attached to the fun aspect of it, and others reflect that is a trait of God and thus has a place in the Universe itself.

Application and Purpose

It was a fine line, tampering with the past. Too little and nothing is noticeable, too much and people can question their sanity. Thankfully the technology was sufficiently advanced that manipulating variables was as simple as working on a spreadsheet. Overall the application was fairly conservative, which meant that actually changing anything was more exponentially more work than typical non-invasive 'observation only' operations. The cascade from changes could grow indefinitely, or collapse without warning. The question of what would be worth influencing came up rather often. With the changes in the world, erasing past disasters and mistakes was essentially pointless. Not many things survived the cataclysm, so material changes were also for naught. Still there was not specific rule against it, even if the necessity wasn't there.

The main obstacle was one of synchronization, if left unchecked, one would automatically be re-incorporated into linear, non-adjusted time. He started looking for some nonlinear tools to quantify the interactions.

Experimental Conditions

Direct communication is unlikely, undesired, or impossible. We need a target and initial location for a shunt. Some kind of stepping stone for a more meaningful connection. 5^th Cell protocol seems to be a flexible enough platform.

Creation of avatars that represent a number of initial conditions or desired future variables. Feedback via avatar with object creation abilities. Patterns of similar material and combined commonalities to be searched for. External targets based on secondary audio cues and communication windows from environment. To direct to publicly available videos and social media accounts at past location. To confirm bias of experimental success.

Assume undetectable basic monitoring software and equipment to record user interaction and images. Level 8 sharing – consistent with theocratic sharing template – activities recorded and shared with sufficient but not excruciating detail – minus desirable examples. Archival access to project leads for approximately 80% of material gathered.

Unstuck Trianglation

His life was a blank. It was always in flux. That's what happens when you sign up. The only way to see what was happening was to 'prod' someone else to poll the situation. A specific question, a few moments observation in a particular activity. If they could associate that with a set of his actions, they could collate the endless posts and interactions that generated from a life unstuck in time. Without that triangulation, they couldn't determine which eventualities sprang from what series of events. Each probe into the past deflected the situation into a different set of outcomes. Every so often they could detect collapses in timelines, smoothing out the possible paradoxes into a narrative that made a certain amount of sense. Between those times, things were – fuzzy, for lack of a better word. Any action could be influenced by any other future action, so on occasion, missions failed to have the intended effect, when something else was working at cross-purposes. When things like this happened, it pushed him to the ragged edge of reality. Static from the now unrelated actions and reactions hung over him until possibilities coalesced back into a regular pattern.

It was fortunate that his baseline was now fairly predictable, and very rarely was he directly in control of anything like a vehicle which could impact others in a severe way. Moderate, regular, medium influence interactions were preferred, that way any fallout could be on a manageable level.

Future Perfect

Every action was deliberate. More than simply calculated, each action was dependent on a huge, fluid reaction to countless variables. Someone less experienced might think every possible eventuality was planned for, but this was something much deeper. Once all the elements were known as thoroughly as they could be, and everything else was blocked out, it was easy to focus. It was true that certain contingencies had reactions already cued, but this was not out of panic or unreadiness, but out of pragmatism. It was a symphony of action, rehearsed a thousand times, but ready to change completely on a whim should the want arise. It was layered beyond what anyone could fathom, even watching multiple times, with the benefit of hindsight. Each decibel of sound, hue of image, element of movement was chosen with deliberate and clear forethought. The result was something that was enthralling, memorizing and sublime. Gripping, but at the same time so natural that it was effortless to swept up in the experience.

Dark Matter

Dark matter was more mysterious than it was originally thought. Apart from being WIMP – Weak Interacting Massive Particles, it was also unstuck in space-time. Once properly exited, it could open up corridors to other times. Since the dark matter interacted with the gravitational forces of the rest of the universe, they stayed linked to the same relative location of space, despite the movement of things that otherwise occurred across time.

The only downside was that it required a certain amount of intelligence to navigate. One couldn't simply send through objects – even the best drones were having a tough time making a successful trip – let alone ending up when and where they should.