the future

this post was written in the future. do you remember when that happened? yes, friends, i am writing to you (or have written, or will write) from the distant future. the book “1984” by george orwell is about a dystopian future, and who can forget the prince song “party like it's 1999” about an even more distant future, or the stanley kubrick movie “2001: a space odyssey” even further in the future? and who can forget about all the prophecies concerning how the world WILL END on july 5, 1998. yes, all of that happens in the world of the future. let’s visit the world of the future is perhaps the best-known documentary film about the future, because it was filmed even deeper in the future than where i am, and sent back in time to a young filmmaker in 1973 who pretended to have made the movie himself... what a buffoonish liar! i am currently quite far into the future but not as far as that last movie, since i am right at the end of 2009, and 2010 will start in a few hours, which is even FURTHER into the future, making me even closer to the events of that documentary. now, for those of you reading this, in the distant past, it must seem strange to be reading this. in fact, back in your time, things like what i am writing, which are known as “blogs”, did not exist, nor did this thing known as “the internet”, which is the place where i put all these words that i wrote in the future. yes, you are living back in a time where the device i used to type this, “the computer”, had not been invented yet. however, you are quite lucky to be living in the past and not in the future like me, dear reader. to-day, we have things known as “nuclear bombs”, and for awhile there was a great and powerful nation known as “soviet russia” that threatened to dominate the whole world with “communism”. of course, back in your time, nuclear bombs, soviet russia, and communism do not yet exist, so it would be hard to explain. well, ok, russia does exist back in your era, if my records are correct. however, it appears to not be a terribly powerful nation, and is ruled by the czarist monarchy, with the vast majority of the population as poor landless peasants. hmm... it appears from my temporal displacement chronometer that in your time, dear reader, you do not yet even have access to the movie about 2001, the song about 1999, or the book about 1984. oh, wait... i was misreading the instrumentation... i was looking at it upside down. yes, yes, it appears the current year is 1953. by jove! that means that the book “1984”, soviet russia, communism, nuclear bombs, and primitive computers actually do exist in your time! all right then... it must be strange for you reading this on a piece of paper back in 1953. you see, i had to “post” what i am writing on “the internet” on my “blog” so that i could “run” an “app” on my “blackberry” that uses a “flux capacitor” to send messages back in time. ok, so back in your era, you have the telephone. my “blackberry” is actually a telephone just like the ones you have back in 1953, except it does not have wires connecting it to the wall, and instead the phone company sends and receives data using towers made of wire, similar to radio broadcast towers. it can also do other things besides telephone calls, such as sending messages into the past or future, if you install the right “app”, and some of these apps cost money and others are free. i actually wrote this one for time travel myself, and it requires a flux capacitor to be installed in the device, although normally flux capacitors are not in phones. so, ok... hmm... now that you are in the past, and have this message, i ought to have you do something to change history, and thereby warp the space-time continuum, allowing me to access all the 11 dimensions of “M-theory”. hmm... what can i think of that would enable this? ahh yes... your name is john robert dobbs, is it not... but people call you “bob”? you must build an amateur television set, but i cannot send you the design for it. you have to design it yourself! yes, “bob”, you must build an amateur television set of your own design by the end of this year, 1953! if you succeed, it will set in motion a chain of events that will result in the alteration of this article i typed in the future, and this article will make reference to things that didn’t exist the first time i wrote it. if you do not succeed, this article will likely end up making reference to silly things that do not exist. that is how i will know if you succeeded or not, “bob”! if you get this message and decide not to do that whole making an amateur television of your own design thing, please do not start a new religion that you keep as a secret society until you hire a few random nobodies to make the whole thing public, in the year 1979. that would make this all end up QUITE silly and i would be very embarrassed. also, if this flux capacitor does not work correctly (if it fails to store up quantum flux and then discharge it when the wave function is collapsed) you will not get this message at all, and then history will not be altered, leaving me unable to freely navigate 8 of the 11 dimensions. so please do something to alter history! also, i realize that, in the process of posting this on my blog, prior to sending this message back in time, other people who are not “bob” may come across this blog post on the internet, not in the past but in the future, but for any of you who find this on the internet, you will be in the present and me writing this will be in the past, even though right now, me writing this is in the present and you reading it is in the future. please go on about your normal activities and do not pay any attention to the odd unexplainable changes you may notice around you, as you live your daily life in the space-time continuum. there is actually nothing weird going on at all, internet blog-readers. move along now, nothing to see here. okay, you are probably gone by now... phew... close call! “bob”, are you the one reading this, back in 1953? please follow the instructions i gave earlier. if you have any questions, write them lower down on this sheet of paper, and my blackberry app will use the flux capacitor to post them as comments on this blog entry. if you are not “bob”, please do not leave any comments on this blog entry, or you will disrupt communications between me and someone who is actually in the past, which is very rude and inconsiderate, not to mention the fact that it would automatically trigger my doomsday device and start the countdown to the destruction of earth. if that happens, i will probably find some sort of scheme to save us all, like switching earth and mars around so the doomsday device gets confused and we all end up fine afterwords. but please do not do that, for those of you in the year 2009 or later. flux capacitors, you see, can change the past, and if you are not careful, the disruptions in the space-time continuum can destroy the entire universe, possibly even the multiverse! i have a carefully planned scheme that would disrupt the space-time continuum in a positive way, so that we have complete access to all 11 dimensions of space-time and can move around freely (well actually only i would have this ability at first, but i could mass-produce the device and sell you one). anyway, those of you in 2009 or later, wouldn’t you like to be able to buy such a device? yes, of course, exactly. so please don’t ruin my scheme. now as for why only the planet earth would be destroyed... well if someone here in the future posted a comment on this blog entry, this would create a time paradox capable of destroying the entire time-space continuum due to the setup i have here, since your message would be sent back in time to 1953 and “bob” would read it, and he would probably do whatever you say, thereby changing history, but you would not have it carefully thought out, and the resulting paradox could destroy the entire multiverse. however, i have built a doomsday device which catches time paradoxes before they happen. my doomsday device was built billions of years in the past, or rather, i built it and sent it back in time billions of years, and it resides inside the inner core of the earth, right in the center of this planet, where it has been for billions of years, protected by a hard outer shell made from dark matter that is impervious to harm. anyway, any time paradox that occurs on the planet earth while the doomsday device is operational will result in the doomsday device preemptively destroying the planet earth before the paradox ever occurs, thus saving not only this universe but the entire multiverse and space-time continuum. it is a paradox-prevention mechanism that prevents anything paradoxical from occurring through preemptive warfare against chaos. in fact, this doomsday device is responsible for why scientific experiments and logic have been so successful at understanding our universe, but the nature of things such as dark matter will never be discovered by humanity because that would make the hard outer shell of the doomsday device vulnerable, and then allow for paradoxes to occur. the reason my seemingly illogical plan to alter history and give us (or rather me) access to all 11 dimensions would not trigger this device is that i built into it a bypass mechanism, a secret code that you need to use in order to change the past and create potential time paradoxes without triggering the destruction of earth. also, if the device is triggered, it would detonate... about 4 and a half billion years ago or so, preemptively. the results of such a detonation would be catastrophic and likely result in the planet earth blowing up, with most of the debris eventually coalescing back into a smaller planet earth, while the farther out debris would orbit this new earth and eventually coalesce into a moon. but, as everyone knows, earth does not have any moons, unlike most planets. hmm... i wonder if humanity would still be able to evolve if this device detonated and blew up the earth. if that happened, and we still had wikipedia, the moon article would not talk about what moons are and about the moons on other planets and how earth doesn’t have a moon, but would talk about whatever sort of moon this new earth would have. hmm... i doubt someone such as “bob” dobbs would exist on such an earth, if the doomsday device went off. he would probably be removed from history to undo the paradox, and some sort of cargo cult would form around the nonexistent “bob” dobbs and the events that happened in a parallel universe where he is real. ok, “bob” dobbs, sorry you had to read that, but you have to know the importance of your mission. if you fail to do this, if you slack off, you will not exist... you will probably just end up as a cartoon image, a joke, an imaginary character, with your actual self erased from history. plus, earth will end up with a moon, which will be weird. according to my studies, the presence of a moon would create “tidal forces” which would create disturbances in the ocean here on earth. this could give rise to all sorts of unpredictable phenomena, and make it so that the weather can no longer be predicted with absolute certainty days in advance... it is hard to imagine all the things that would be different if my doomsday device were set off. or things could be even worse... and require me to switch earth, the fourth planet from the sun, around with mars, the third planet from the sun. this would save those of us here on earth, but mars would end up a cold, lifeless planet, red and barren, with hardly any atmosphere, no liquid water, no hot martian girls with their green skin. yes, the martians are a warlike people and it is only through the outer space treaty that we finally stopped mars from fighting its incessant wars with us. but just imagine the carnage, the horror, if i were forced to switch our planets around! sure, i could save earth, and we would end up with a moon, but all the martians would not only be dead, but they would have been killed off about 4 and a half billion years ago, resulting in mars being smaller rather than larger than earth, and the debris would create a huge asteroid belt between where earth is now (the place mars would end up) and the gas giant jupiter. it would truly be tragic if i were forced to do that to mars. then again, the martians have never been particularly friendly to our planet, and i am not especially fond of them personally, but it would still be tragic to kill them all through preemptive warfare! and i doubt any moon that would form around earth would be capable of supporting life, either... so we would end up with a solar system in which the only planets that support life would be earth and planet x. maybe not even planet x... it might be removed from history entirely due to another paradox that would be triggered. anyway, please make an amateur television of your own design before the end of 1953, “bob”. if you fail, the only life in the solar system will probably be on earth... and that is if i switch mars and earth around by sending the correct code back in time to my doomsday device. the best i will probably be able to manage is for it to half-blow up each of the planets, but to do more damage to mars than earth. it is good i know how to avoid creating the type of time paradoxes that destroy the entire universe or multiverse. but there will likely be a plethora of parallel universes created by this, and so people will have all sorts of legends about things such as mars, planet x, and even “bob” dobbs. anyway, “bob”, don’t slack off! slacking off is bad! you need to get to work on designing and building that amateur TV! if you succeed, “bob”, i can promise you that you will be able to get whatever you want, and once you are done working on the tv, you can slack off all you want and get things for free. you will be legendary! able to make a million dollars every time you make a mistake! imagine that, “bob”. oh, and get used to people calling you “bob” with quotes around it. you will be needed in 1998. please don’t get killed before then, or if you do, we will have to find some way to resurrect you in time, before july 5, 1998 when planet x will send its x-ist armada of pleasure saucers to destroy the planet earth once and for all. only you can save us from that destruction. or perhaps we will end up in some parallel universe where planet x and its inhabitants are erased from history, and never existed in the first place, as a result of my doomsday device and its machinations. the doomsday device has a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence system built into it, and unless i send the correct code back in time, it will do whatever it sees fit to eliminate paradoxes from the universe and keep us all confined to 3 spatial dimensions to move around in, stuck as time continues to go by, unable to move in that dimension, or 7 other dimensions. indeed, the a.i. on the doomsday device may decide to make time travel impossible for anyone or anything except it and whatever it wants to do. it may even take advantage of the fact that our brains make decisions based on quantum fluctuations of electrochemical impulses sent between neurons, and use its quantum flux capacitor to effectively mind-control all life-forms that have brains, all throughout history, the present, and the future. i doubt it would go that far, however, because i did not program it to do that, but the a.i. may become self-aware and decide to dominate everything for itself. i really doubt it would do that though. i guess the martians might get destroyed by it though, since my personal bias against martians no doubt influenced me somewhat when i was writing the code for its a.i., and the doomsday device prioritizes saving all life on earth to saving life anywhere else. it is ironic that the only way for it to save things is by blowing things up. or i suppose it might do the mind-control thing, but i did not teach the a.i. how to do that... i doubt it would figure it out, even if it tried for billions of years. the brain is just too complicated. most likely, it would only be able to cause mental disturbances in people, so that the fictional ailment of “insanity” that is in many works of fiction would actually exist in reality, and there would be a whole new type of illness called “mental illness”, all caused by the interference of this device in its attempts to mind-control everyone who has a brain. luckily, “bob”, you are the only man in history born without any brain who managed to survive, and that is why only you are capable of doing this mission, since only you cannot be controlled or influenced by this device i have built. if you do not carry out your mission as printed on this long note you are reading back in 1953, i suspect you will be removed from history as well, since the dastardly device i built won’t want anyone around that it can’t control. that is why it is of the utmost importance that i send the code back in time to control the device... oh wait... my sister is coming to visit along with her little daughter! i guess that means i won’t send any coded message to the doomsday device, and it will operate on its own. please carry out your mission, “bob”, or else earth will be the only planet in this solar system with life on it, and there will be countless other changes to our universe. nobody else should interfere, since you probably will be under some negative influence, if not outright mind control, by my doomsday device. and if mental illness comes into existence, retroactively, then in 1953 someone else may fill the void created by the destruction of “bob”, and create some odd religion based around opposition to the psychiatrists that would exist in such a world where there is mental illness, and this crazy person’s evil cult would probably recruit a number of hollywood celebrities and make a lot of money. that cult would probably have a stupid name like “scientology” or something. and then some group would eventually form in opposition to this cult, with an even sillier name, like maybe “anonymous”. it would all be extremely silly. hopefully you can prevent all of that, “bob”. oh crap... you don’t have a brain. i doubt this will work. sorry everybody! anyway my sister and her daughter are here now, so i am going to hang out with my family now. happy new year everyone!