An Experiment into the Controlled Release of Information about the Future.

This experiment has been authorized by the Second Council, Research Division 8, Late 20^th-Early 21^st Century A.D.
Authorization Code G-8142-H-7261​

To begin as to why I am posting this on QQ, well that is simple Plausible Deniability. If this proves successful, I may try to do an AMA on Reddit or something. However, if the experiment gets out of hand, then searches will lead back to this original post on a creative writing site. Most people will just see the nature of this site and decide that is enough evidence that this is my own personal story that I wrote.

To preface this, I am a temporal researcher and historian from several “thousand” “years” in the future. Or I suppose to be more accurate my "Soul" is from that period of time. My body was born to a family whose “Souls” also come from the same time period and their mission is similar to mine. While we can send back matter (ie. people and supplies), it is a one-way trip. There was a time when we sent back Temporal-Wolfhelm machines with agents, but that was back during the Temporal Cold War. A period well before the current Council came to authority.

Of course, we stopped using the Wolfhelms because of risk of contamination after the destruction of Earth. OK, yeah, I will have to explain that nasty history in a future part. It’s more important to understand the current method of operation.

The “Soul” getting sent back is far less risky and provides a conduit for us to get home after the lifetime of gathering data and information on your people. This is a most fascinating time in history. For the first time in history people, thoughts, and ideas could cross the planet in a few seconds (to a few hours for people). So our objective is to observe the cultural shift that happened over the 300 years starting in 1800-2100; while also collecting lost works of art, culture, and history.

Example, I arrived for my mission (“born”) in 1983, but I have seen a perfect recreation of Disney World from 1959, and yes, it was AWESOME. Our researchers in Florida will go to the Theme Parks all through their lives, or better, get low-level full-access jobs like janitors or maintenance (nothing in creative departments, don’t want unnecessary risks of contaminating history). Then they will upload their memories back to the department for cataloging and research. This happens every night automatically while we sleep (we don’t dream).

Our teams back at the base will then take that information and build an advanced holographic representation (similar to Star Trek, except without the “dangerous malfunctions”). It takes about 10,000 hours of time spent in the park to get everything close (including average crowed density). Once everything is setup, people can go and visit Disney at any time period they want. (side note: special programming allows us to have the large crowds of modern Disney yet still be able to organically cause lines to disappear. It is difficult to explain unless you see it)

Our Holographic Tourism Division, HTD, is our best export to Earth. Yes, I know, I told you Earth was destroyed. I promise to explain that dark period later. Sufficed to say, the First Council fixed things.

In the next part, I will get into the nature of our “Base”. Though, calling it our “Civilization” might be more accurate as we don’t exactly align to any Earth based governments. I will have to start that discussion with how the Earth was destroyed.

In the meantime, ask any questions that you might have about our great and glorious work in preserving history. Also, the title seems a bit long and 'stiff', admittedly my researcher side is showing. Any help with that is appreciated.

 

how do you emulate the other asècts of tourism? the smells, the tactiles, Hardlight can only make so much....

 

The smells are just simple organic chemistry. Create the scent, strategically release.

"Hardlight" is a slight misunderstanding on how we define a "hologram". The holograms we use are not pure light or energy, but rather a material that can change shape based on the signal sent. This creates the shape and feel, while the light they generate is used to change the 'lighting appearance' (gives color). Even the "NPC people" are made of this material so it is quite flexible. All of the simulation is controlled from a central computer and each simulation takes about a day to formally start-up and close-down. There are a few thousand Holo-lands throughout the world with more opening on occasion. They are massive, usually the size of a small city (Modern Disney World would fit inside a standard Holo-land about twice). So each park usually runs 2-4 different attractions (depending on size) each month then rotates them. You can even rent a section for a special event, like getting married in the Sistine Chapel by the Pope, or whatever else you can imagine. It's not even that expensive anymore, price really dropped since they opened so many new parks. Now they usually keep upwards of 10% of a park set aside just for reservations.

EDIT: I talked to a buddy who used to work with the Holo-lands. I was wrong, the material actually changes it's "light reflective index" to change colors.

Gil: "Wait, that's not a hologram. A hologram is at least partially made of light."
Bud: "Yeah, it was easier to explain to the general public. Some people still think that 'true AI' is possible and might become sentient. It all marketing."

Even several thousand years in the future, and infinite lifetimes to learn. Some humans still refuse to learn/understand "basic" science.

 

Text color is gray, which for a black background is hard to read. Select all, and click the bottom right of the text color pallete. It will erase the color and make it contrast with the background.

 

OK, I think I got it. Is that better?

 

Still black or dark grey. Try the 'Use BB Code Editor' button on the upper right-hand corner of the text box's control panel (the one with the symbol that's hard to describe, but is just to the left of a button that has four arrows pointing away from the centre). That should let you see the COLOR tags, and remove them.

 

Prince described another way (for mine, you need to select the white box with an 'X' in it).

 

OK, I finally figured it out. I switched it to dark mode and played with it until it was right.

I think the problem was that I copy/pasted from the Word document that I was using to edit everything.

 

Cute alien girls, yes or no?

I'm also willing to accept genetically modified cat girls.

Otherwise, #NotMyFuture

 

I mean, we could modify humans to do that, I think. I will go over our cloning set-up in the next post.

Thing is, it might be fun for a few years but you would be stuck that way for a whole lifetime. (assuming the lifespans are the same, otherwise, we are to short on resources to let people do that.) Would you want to be a cat person for 100-150 years?

Wow, I am not even sure cat people are a thing in my time. I might have to check the next time I report in. It might be fun to introduce people to the concept for cosmetic purposes....... Might be an additional source of trade for us.

 

PS: Sorry for the late update, I meant for this to be posted Thursday, and the next be ready for Sunday. But work got in the way.

I wish there was a way for the Council to send me money so I could focus more on my mission. But I suppose that I need to interact with the locals in order to understand them better.

 

On one hand, an interesting prospect.
And the other hand , a terrifying prospect.
For if it is true,than we can learn a lot about ourselves and what our civilization means in the future history books.
Sadly we probably commutes a lot of evil in the coming centuries.
So let me ask, how does living space prospect look in the future?
Are still confined just to a single star system, or did we move a bit further than that and into other starsystems?
And if so how does living on the other planets look, do we keep the local atmosphere (or lack of it), and we live in more or less
Domed colonies.
Or 're we go full terraformer or change the possible planets to fit our home planets atmosphere.
More over how far did we move in the space exploration prospect vehicle wise?
Spaceships capable of FTL or Cryogenicly frozen crew fo the ships?
Genetherapy?
Or maybe even robotics?

 

Yeah, not a lot changed until we discovered the pseudo "Immortality". Once that happened, peace came, mostly. Human nature didn't change as, killing just became pointless, so society changed greatly because of that.

I really am not allowed to delve too much into how the future sees your society. This time period brought rapid growth and change, like no other point in history (except for the discovery of "Souls", but they tie for first place). But some aspects of the late-20th and early-21st century will be looked at the same way you look at 'Bloodletting', 'Alchemy', even the horrors of the 'Lobotomies' from the last century. Your society has not fully adapted to the new technology, you see this most in some of the older generation who are unable to use technology. This is known as "Future Shock".

Before the 1800's, Technology grew slowly, over the course of decades or centuries. Minor improvement to the blade, maybe new navigational tools to sail more accurately at sea. Remember, this is a time of unprecedented change.

Good, ish.... not exactly near future, but it will happen. We started it a few hundred years ago....... I come from over 5000 years in the future BTW.

The real problem is setting up a truly sustainable ecosystem on a planet (or base). There are certain elements of nature that your current scientific just does not understand yet. Things that don't appear connected but are finely interwoven.

While we know that moving between two points in a time less than the speed of light travels is possible. (because traveling faster than light is impossible, but there are more dimensions of Space than you realize.) We currently only have simple prototypes that are 'proof of concept' vessels. It would take us 1000+ years to get the "alloys" and materials needed to build something capable of reaching another system.

Domed colonies were quickly abandoned due to "bad logistics" and the above mentioned ecosystem issue. It wasn't until the 'Temporal Cold War' and the desperate resource shortages (when you know that running out in only 2000 years is in your lifetime) that we truly made an effort to Terraform Venus and Mars. That was awesome seeing the Ion Drive tow ship dragging asteroids to crush up and throw at Venus (It needed more mass to be viable). It's a slow process but should be worth it.

Yes to both. Especially the robotics though.

Genetherapy is really boring though. Most of the "Destructive" Genes were removed well before the discovery of "Souls", so I don't remember a time when genetic disease occurred. Other than my life in this time period anyway.

 

So we are stuck at sol?
Bummer.
By ftp I meant any kind of way to possibly traverse space from point a to point b in less than a year .
Example is there a transport that allows someone from earth to take few weeks of vacation on moon or maybe even mars?
Though hearing that we didn't move and spread from sol is a bit disappointing.
I guess than that humanity didnt meet another intelligent lifeform.
Not made by us btw.
How about programming field?
Did we make a vi?
Did we achieve mind upload technology?
Or maybe even ai?

 

We have decently advanced propulsion so we don't 'have' to sling shot ourselves around gravity fields (like Earth) or get super precise with our timings for launching space craft. If we need to, our ships can catch up to the orbits of planets and moons. Fast, but not faster than light. (We have a prototype craft that can move between 2 points faster than light would travel through space. Not true FTL though, I do not understand the underlying physics but something about the dimensions of Space/Time that we can not observe but can calculate.)

No, we have detected them though. (they left behind space trash.) We even found evidence of them visiting us in the past suggesting an "Anthropology" interest. But it appears that they lost interest several millennia ago (from our perspective). They might be observing you in this time period, but I doubt it.

I do not know what either of those are. Can you be more specific?

Not like you are imagining. The "Mind", or brain, is more of a processor rather than a storage device. While the "Soul" is where the information is actually stored. When your scientists observe brain activity and see the various sections (like short and long term memory) of the brain become "active", that is the processor running to write things onto your "Soul". The other portions of the brain are there to process all of the various inputs and such. This is a gross over-simplification of everything because there is emotions that are also processed in the brain. That is generally inputs about the situation coming from the "Soul".

It gets complicated fast, and I understand this only on the basic level.

True AI is impossible. It is not possible to create an AI that is comparable to the "Mind" and "Soul" of humanity.

However, "weak" (non-thinking) AI is used daily and is usually more efficient. The best example of this would be Self-Driving cars, they will be great at driving and only driving. They will pass along information, and gather information, but only about driving and the vehicle it is in. They are incapable of "TRUE" learning and adaptability. They just can not adapt to how unpredictable humans can be.

It's not my mission, but another team is coming in the next generation to observe the implementation of Self-Driving vehicles. It is one of those "mysteries" to us how you managed to implement Self-Driving vehicles without completely banning all human drivers. We know it will happen in the next couple hundred years, and some of the surviving records have given us clues, but we just do not know how you pulled it off. (My money is on banning all human drivers by 2050.)

 

Sorry misstyped I meant to type in FTL instead of ftp.
And by Vi, I meant virtual inteligence, it's more or less an AI with stunted growth.
They are smart in a sense that they can do the job they were made for,but can't improve by itself it needs outside help in that.
Where an AI can develop further by self improvement,that's at least my definition.

Well juuust great!
Governments are still assholes how far into the future?
Backstabbing still popular in all government sectors?
Please tell me you guys didn't give power back to cia, they did enough shit.
And temporal space anchor?
Is that what allowed you're soul to be reborn in the past?
Or is it more like a television into the past where our lives are equivelents of the history documentary?
Btw did we make portals?
Something along the lines of:"oh we have one on mars and one on earth and the travel is just a pleasurable 5 min walk"?
Let me guess M4 (forth millennium) some catastrophic crap happened that needed humanity to unite otherwise huge chunk of us would die.
Btw by asking about gene therapy I meant like are we bioengineering our kids and adding things in?
Like having a cat eyes is like wearing clothes themed after cats?

 

Ah, a VI (virtual intelligence) by your definition is as far as AI will ever be able to develop. As mentioned "True" AI that can develop real self-improvement and adaptability is impossible.

It's gotten better since we restored the time-line in which Earth does not blow up. I will go into more detail later, but the First Council essentially becomes Earth first, non-terrestrial, nation.

side note: CIA? Bold of you to assume that the U.S.A. you know will exists in 4000+ years.

No, the Temporal-Space Anchor is what keeps our pocket dimension of Space located near the object. Otherwise the pocket will remain exactly at that point in space, while the planet and solar system fly off without it.

We use a machine that can send energy (and only energy) back in time to send our "Souls" back. It is a very simplified version of the Wolfhelm.
Sending matter back is extremely difficult and only used to setup a new long-term operations. Sending matter forward is impossible as no local power source is strong enough (and can not be hid because there is too great of risk of the full Temporal-Wolfhelm machine, or its power core, being found). A team of six is sent back to start up the project and have children (I think the original team I am on was sent back to the 1780's). They use a special device to prevent local "Souls" from entering the fetus's, then we send team members back to those bodies. NO HAVING SEX WITH THE LOCALS, we can not risk creating people who previously did not exist.

Remembering our past lives is just like any other memory. We just found a way to remove the *sigh* "Vale" that "obscures" them (again with the inaccurate religious terms but closest match in your language).

Kindof, our prototype drive makes a portal to move great distances. It is still in development though. Nothing for an individual person. We still use trains, cars, and flying machines; just more advanced technology. (we stopped using 'planes' when Ion propulsion and hovering became commercially viable)

I wish, even then they just could not.......... A catastrophe does happens, but that is in an upcoming part. I will refrain from spoiling how it came down. Let's just say, there is a reason why the five temporal commands decided to form our own nation in space.

We stopped having Children like you do today. I still occasionally meet up with my Last mother and father from the time before the Immortal Era, but more as friends. Everyone is a "randomized" clone, and we have to limit our cosmetic edits to basic "hair and eye color" type stuff. We can do more, but we don't just encase we have to start breeding again. Humanity found that we have to be prepared for the worst case scenarios like; Solar Flare knocking out our cloning facilities, Super-Volcano reducing the population to where we can not maintain our technology level (we have hard data backups for everything also).

Night-vision (cat eyes?) would just be a simple, non-genetic, tweak to the brain and maybe an implant. It would be possible for more, but the number of people allowed to use them would be regulated (and probably sterile, not an issue because we don't typically have children, clone bays after all). But we need at least 50% of the population to be able to produce children IF the worst case scenario ever happened.

 

I'm kinda curious as to why the information about the future was authorized for release. I doubt that anything you say will have an impact on your future 4000+ years from now as it were. Was it a personal project of yours that the council approved of?

 

A personal project Authorized and supervised by the Council.

You would be surprised at how big of an impact (what you would call) the butterfly effect can have. This experiment is to try and measure the smallest possible temporal wave possible. We know how far our equipment can Theoretically go, I am trying to see if we actually can go that small.

 

My project was Temporarily Suspended while we investigated an...... "Incident" with another team member who was from the 2030's. I FINALLY got permission to resume.

I am a team leader for the 2000-2030. Thankfully, this idiot was on the next team. This next part is a bit complicated.

We all "leave" at about the same time, relative to Council time. This means that my parents (in this century) left only a few minutes before me. We do this to keep things simpler for us and to share information with other teams who are further in the past. For example, the team in the 1960's would have had no idea of the cultural importance of Woodstock and not attended. The team from the 70's-90's were able to let them know and we had a small team on the ground to document the hippies shenanigans. All in real-time relative to the Council time

So when I say that this just happened, it is all relative.

I was taken home for a series of emergency meetings to discuss how to resolve the issue. So I have been running on VERY LITTLE SLEEP because of this jackass.

We are NOT to, at any time, for any reason, have sex with the locals. This is because if someone gets pregnant, the Soul will enter into the world at a time when it was not originally supposed to. Then, when that Soul was SUPPOSED to enter the world, a different Soul will come in. This has a massive snowball effect where entire families will change (because your Soul does impact your personality greatly, ie who you are attracted to, the type of people you choose to surround yourself with, etc). Simply put, entire family trees will change. Grandfather paradoxes abound, and everyone we ever knew could suddenly disappear. (usually more localized to a few hundred-thousand people even after 5000 years, but you get the idea)

Guess what this moron did....... No points for guessing correctly. Yeah, it has been stressful.

Pulling agents out early is something we try and avoid, it can be tricky to manage the Temporal Mechanics of the thing. But we found a way to pull the idiot out 2 weeks before he had sex with the woman. No sex, No pregnancy. It was a full mess and he is now in Jail awaiting arrangement. He is looking at 100 years of hard time (keep in mind, we don't exactly "die" anymore. So 100 years is more like 5 years for you guys). He deserves the temporal headache of remembering something that did not (will not, has not) happen. Oh yeah, he is also fired and has no future in the Temporal Science field. Considering that around 25% of all Council jobs involve Temporal Science, he might end up moving back to Earth after his sentence.

Worse still, he claimed to have a "Neanderthal" fetish. 1) The mid-21^st century is nowhere near that primitive. You have electronics for Deity sake. He was assigned to Japan, so not in any way, shape, or form "primitive". 2) In our time we have these great Holo-parks I mentioned before. Yeah, it is no big deal to rent artificial companionship (yes, they feel exactly the same). ANYTHING is possible with the right programming and we have a full psychological profiles of the an average person from every decade going back to 1800. We can literally create a tentacle monster if we want (thank you for introducing me to the idea, BTW, best vacation I ever had). The only reason to have sex with a human being is because you love them.

(side not, ethically and legally, you are not allowed to program a specific individual. ie. no sex with Albert Einstein or something. But you can get a hyper-intelligent person with the knowledge and personality of someone from the early-20^th century. In fact, individuals not associated with the company are not allow to program "Sexual Recreation Programs" for this very reason.)

Just 6 more months until my next vacation starts.

 

I hate to have to ruin my silence, but first welcome to the new timeline. I have to say I'm a bit disappointed in those future Earth civilizations. Not even fully exploring the 'magical' side of things or perhaps it's more of a blocked topic.
Thank you for posting it's a fun read. From what I'm seeing is that the council, and the various governments are a kin to 1984 (the book).
Could you pass along this message for me? "A-5757T-U-J-198320, the consequences are far reaching. This is a new field to seed and reap. It's all toppling down this time. Justice is coming."

 

There is no such thing as "Magic", only insufficiently studied and understood SCIENCE.

 

A time traveler after my own heart. Magic is just handy nomenclature, and provides enough context. Has terrestrial based equipment been released to detect and communicate with other dimentional beings?
Are there mega corps in your time?

 

I remember the day well.

When I say 'I am a researcher', it is more accurate to say historian. Even with a top-secret project, they needed us to see just how far off our current knowledge was from what actually happened in our past. Even knowing that I would not be able to publish what I learned for maybe hundreds of years, I could not pass up the opportunity to observe the past. Our team only used stealth satellites and drones to observe up to 2000 years into the past (Not even reaching the 21^st century). We monitored communication, while I mostly cross-referenced history books to see if it was accurate.

I did not know about the "Black-ops" teams being sent back, not officially anyway. We were suppose to keep an eye out for anything "obviously" out of place and report it in. The couple times we did, things changed in the past, and we were not told anything more.

That day, I was on monitoring duty. A boring shift, watching snooping on the 39^th centuries Internet when suddenly, black screened. Then an emergency announcement. "All contact from Earth Lost, all hands to stations." Both commanders from N. and S. America burst into the room to try and figure out what was happening, but nothing on the comms. Maybe a massive EMP burst knocked-out all communications? Luckily, the supply ship and one of the ore crushers were in dock...... but no contact from the other 5 ships. Even if Earth was somehow hit by an EMP, how would it have hit the whole fleet?

The N. American Commander got in the supply ship to go to Earth to investigate. It would only take a couple days to reach at that time of year. A few days later, we got the news, there was nothing left on Earth, and the surface was cold. Meaning, whatever destroyed the Earth did it a long time ago. We only survived because of the Temporal shielding surrounding the Base and the Station (the Anchor is useless without something to attach to).

Then, more news, the European Base they put on Earth was broadcasting a distress signal. The crew was dead, but their "Souls" were in batteries. Fortunately, the supply ship was able to transfer the "Souls" into their Batteries (and some at our Base). But, we had no Cloning Technology. In the event of someone needing to be brought back, we just loaded the Battery onto the ship and went to Earth.

But, if the European Base survived, then the others might have as well. And rumor had it that the Asian's were doing cloning experiments on Titan.

 

No, most stick to there own continent. Nationalism is very strong and it's hard to get a foothold for "foreign" businesses. All international trade is done at the government level.

When the Council declare Independence from all nations on Earth. The Treaty stipulated that we were to be permitted to trade "Intellectual Idea's and Information" regardless of region or nation. They thought if was just going to be Media, News, and History. But it gave us the backdoor to setup our Parks around the world. We also established some Universities focusing on History, but also general subjects too. (every couple hundred years, you kinda need a refresher course on Math, Science, and other general subjects.)

We also are trying to educate people on actual history, instead of the myths and legends told through the ages. People actually believe that giant walking Mechs were used in WW2, everyone was using laser rifles (not invented for a couple hundred more years), and that the Nazis ate babies...... I admit, I may have personally believed a couple of these before I came here.

 

I'm hooked. For the Earth being wiped, is this Pre-First Council or during the First Council, or even a transition?

Ahaaha. Music related, and current media might make finding what actually happened slightly difficult at first.
How through is the historical research and documentation teams?

 

I love that song. I never appreciated the series of events that lead to humanity actually surviving the 20^th century. I honestly thought most of those legends were greatly exaggerated. Turns out, the legends were actually tamer than the reality.

I really can not wait to publish my Thesis on this time period. I am hoping to win a couple of awards but..... well politics (the Council is not popular with most governments, succession from Earth, claiming all the equipment we had, and one other thing that they did not like that I will mention later). I will gladly settle for seeing the looks on the faces of the Ancient Studies professors when they read it.