04 June 2700
This message was sent by thought transference using module 7a//2 at the Palace of the Chronomage, Lord Jackson II.
From Sinclair 1301, Seraph’s Operative.
Dear ASciFi member,
Firstly, you must know that I could be executed for treason if it is ever discovered I told you this, and I have had to encrypt this message using 4ii generation fractal ciphers, but I am a desperate man with no other alternatives. This message is a direct transference of my thoughts, but I have translated it into the format of an email, so you can read and copy it with your present day communications systems. Please only forward it to the people most likely to take up my offer. I want to limit its circulation as much as possible, as a small amount of information can be a dangerous thing.
My name is Sinclair 1301. One of my own extended family is in great peril, and you are my one and only remaining hope. My son is now lost in the eighth dimension after being sent by Seraph the Overseer on a mission to collect a time criminal for punishment. But first, as I’m sure that you have no idea of what I am thinking about, and I need to explain more fully:
Today’s date is 06/04/02700, and it was recently discovered that someone from your timeframe had been sending emails into the future, in an attempt to interfere with their own personal history.
This cannot be allowed to happen or catastrophic events will occur. The Cosmic Censor has been disabled, these last five years, since the River of Time blunder, and dangerous paradoxes have been possible during this period. So, it was my son, the most experienced of the time operatives of Seraph III, who was selected to capture and bring the person to justice. Something went terribly wrong, and the fact is, that I now urgently need your help.
In the year 27K we have strict laws that prevent Temporal Excursions or Reverse Time Travel for personal gain. It does still happen of course, but the nine Overseers of the Office of Chronomage usually quickly catch these criminals, and then they are always severely punished by the League of Temporal Judges. Unfortunately, we still have difficulty reaching as far back into the past as your century with any reliability, as we have yet to master travel in the seventeen dimensions, or solve the difficulties posed by Dirac's multiple infinite negative mass-energy background. If we could then I’m sure that the present crisis would never have occurred.
Down through the ages, first the Corporate Directors of the Temporal Research Companies, and more lately the Chronarchy itself, has sought to keep the secrets of Time from the general populace for it’s own safety. Our time operatives constantly work behind the scenes to ensure the future is not diluted, and that Time passes normally for everyone. That is why the present Chronomage, Lord Jackson the Second, found the River of Time scandal so hard to bear. He believed that the future was endless, and that his agents in the past could never be uncovered. It was a great shock to have these theories overturned so suddenly, and to be told that his Cosmic Censor was less than useless.
Your own scientists are very close to discovering the secret of Time Travel. In fact, two large corporations working separately are near to the solution, and the Time Vortex itself will soon be discovered in 2053, which will open the Doors of Time. However, time operatives from the organisation I represent believe your world is still too immature to deal with the consequences, and they will continue to delay your progress. Thus it will be at least another century before the inevitable happens, and the first Chrononaut makes a journey. It will take even longer before the Institute of Temporal Research is established and begins its first premature experiments.
We, of future societies, need to ensure that when time travel occurs all termion quantum numbers are first changed for the time traveller, and that the particles that make up the time travellers body cannot occupy the same universe again. If a time traveller ever approached his own universe with termion quantum numbers equal to those of another object in that universe then the Pauli time invariant exclusion force would push him through the fifth, or even higher, dimension to a different universe, consistent with his or her termion quantum numbers. Until you are able to ensure this, Time Travel is inherently unsafe, and your present technology level is insufficient to guarantee this. That is the reason our intervention began.
However, they also mistakenly began to believe that they could actually alter history, and prevent the destruction that resulted from the Time Wars. It was the River of Time episode that finally proved this belief to be erroneous. No one had suspected the level of the distortion to Space and Time by all the previous time travellers. Once they did, it was already too late.
I was born in 2512, one of a mass cloning of the Sinclair genome, a template created with a genome fixed specifically for use as a time operative. I live in the Northern Metropolis, the second major city of the Sol Imperial State. I grew up in a world devastated by the Time Wars, fought between the two largest time travel corporations, with all its post atomic holocaust horrors, so those wars are still familiar to me. Our world now no longer has any national boundaries, nor does it have separate corporations, and the Chronomage is our ultimate ruler. No war has been fought on Earth for 180 years, as a result of regulation by the Chronomage, and his Overseers, who rule the various continents under him.
In my youth, I had high hopes of becoming one of the nine Overseers myself, but unfortunately I was never lucky enough to be chosen for that great honour. I think that I have served Seraph well, and that he should find no complaints with my service. However, I do feel that the State owes me more for my life of obedience, and that the present Seraph Overseer may be getting too old to make the correct judgements in matters of time.
Several generations of my family have worked as time operatives for Seraph the Third. Seraph has been without a doubt, one of the greatest ever of the Overseers of the Chronomage in the Sol Imperial State. My son, Peteo 55, was Seraph’s most trusted operator, and was handpicked for the current mission by him. Although children are no longer procreated in the way you do, but they are produced full-grown by genetic engineering, but he is still my son.
During my son’s mission last week, at the start of the Chrononaut displacement process, a problem occurred within the Temporal Core Matrix. With the Cosmic Censor disabled, dual power overloads in the Core Flux Engine lead to a bypass of the Great Regulator. During the Post Transition phase, after only three minutes, the Tazewell-Gantry dimensional bridge was crossed, leading ultimately to my son, Peteo 55, being lost deep within the Core Matrix Time Pool itself. The Doors of Time then firmly shut tight and could not be re-opened. I fear that his termion quantum numbers have not been changed, and that he no longer occupies a place in this universe, but has been transported instead to somewhere in the higher dimensions, most probably in the D8 zone.
These technical details are of no consequence, and I fear that if I attempted to explain them they would only confuse you, but we assume that the problem was a result of a transference from your century, which must have took place shortly before Peteo 55 was sent from my time. Only someone else from your century could save him now, someone who has never time travelled before, and for whom his quantum numbers are still the original. What I want you to do is difficult, and not without personal risks, but I ask you to please give it some thought and consideration.
If you agree to help me, I will send you all the formulae and plans that you need to build a standard time travel device; which we call a Chronoscalator. It must be kept secret from your own scientists. You must us it to enter into the first eight dimensions and rescue my son, and then finally return, and destroy the time machine forever. Alternatively, you could decide to stay in the future, and make a new life for yourself in the year 2700.
Since the River of Time incident, the Chronomage has switched off the Cosmic Censor, restricted all non-essential time travel, and withdrawn all temporal permits from the ordinary citizens of the Sol Imperial State. I have no way of helping my son myself, and my appeal to Seraph III for his benevolence was rejected at this mornings sitting of the Council of the nine Overseers. Only because of my higher status in the Office of the Chronomage, do I have security clearance to access these formulae and plans from The Mother, our great machine intelligence. Please use the information well, as I will not have another chance to send them back.
In two days time, the information will arrive in a sealed lead lined casket, at Galactic co-ordinates 78/1222/ delta-omega/98 DX 3215, latitude 51° 28' 38", longitude 0° 0' 0" exactly. It will arrive at precisely 12 Noon GMT. I have worked all the details of the transfer out, all you need to do is to arrive at the Flamsteed House Greenwich Observatory forecourt in London, England, at the correct time and pick the box up.
We do have other operatives active in your timeframe; some of them are also from my extended cloned family and they will help you to assemble the Chronoscalator. You must take the plans to the South London Engineering Works, Deptford, at the same Galactic co-ordinates I have given, and ask for Bob Rundle. You must do this within two days of receiving the casket.
The man known as Bob Rundle is a trusted friend and relation, and he will supply you with materials, and a workshop where the machine can be assembled without any questions being asked.
He will also give you a power source for the temporal engine. The assembly process should take no more that a week and then you will be ready to make the transference. If questioned about the machine, it can be explained as diving bell for deep-sea exploration. This is a cover that has been used before, and indeed, the workshop has manufactured such craft in real life.
You will need to supply your own weapons for the trip, but Bob Rundle will offer you his advice on this too. He has contacts in the secret agencies of your local governments around your world, and they can arrange this. Usually, some kind of anesthetic rifle is advisable, as there are strange creatures between the dimensions of the multi-verse, as well as other more desperate time travelers who have been stranded there. During the Time Wars thousands of soldiers were transferred to the higher dimensions and never returned again. It is said that the Time Wars still continue for them, a continuous struggle between different factions occupying different higher dimensions.
Bob Rundle will also give you a small homing device to locate Peteo 55 in the eighth dimension and instructions on its use. This device uses the improbability of the temporal matrix to reverse the Pauli time invariant exclusion force. The danger here is obvious, but my son did not deserve to be cast adrift in the higher dimensions, and we must at least try to return him.
The eight dimensions is a time-without-space, and there will be a risk to your life and health, but I know that I can count on your help. I have been monitoring the posts of AsciFi members and I know that you have the intelligence, the valour, and the strength of character to succeed. Think also of the achievement of being the very first Chrononaut in history.
I believe that in your timeframe, money is still of great importance to you. If you agree, I can make it financially agreeable for you; you would not need to work to supply an income again. I can transfer various articles of historic importance to whatever co-ordinates you desire. I have learned that it is these artifacts that you desire most, and horde in bank vaults and museums.
In my time, objects no longer have any value, as practically anything may be reconstituted from atoms and molecules of the raw material by replicators. When any possession can be yours, possessions no longer have any real value. But, Time itself is a commodity with a real value, and those who can control time are the wealthy people in my society. The Chronomage himself, along with the Overseers and the Chronarchy, can skip back and forth through the ages, while the lower classes are firmly rooted in the present. Not even the Privy Councilors such as myself can make unauthorized time excursions, and non-essential traffic is severely limited.
So powerful is the knowledge of temporal travel, that in the 25th Century the Time Wars were fought over the power of the control of time travel. The general populace rebelled against the industrial corporations who kept the secrets of Time to themselves. After the Wars, our society’s present nature was established, with it’s hierarchical structure. Now, only the Chronomage and his Overseers have the power to authorize time travel, and any Chrononaunts must obey strict rules laid down by the Council of the Overseers. The Mother is able to advise us on any possible paradoxes, and the Council relies on its vast knowledge database to guide it in its decisions. The League of Temporal Judges set penalties and punish infringements of the rules.
Today it is only the Chronomage himself, the twelve overseers, and their time operatives who are allowed any kind of temporal transference. Permits are rarely granted for any kind of Temporal Excursions. The general population no longer has any access to the secrets of time. Even authorized Chrononaunts have restrictions placed on the number of trips they can make.
Many moons ago, these Chrononaunts discovered the real truth about time, when a visit to the future uncovered the Wrecks of Time. These alternative versions of Earth in other realities were all found to be dead worlds, where humans had become extinct. However, in the River of Time between the dimensions, they are all on a collision course to meet again at the End of All Time. They found that the ripples and eddies in the River of Time had now become great rapids, and that because of the frequent use of Time Travel the membranes between the multi-verse had been weakened beyond repair. Until this discovery, the Chronarchy had thought itself practically immortal. Even the League of Temporal Judges was unsure of a solution. They even asked The Mother, but after working on calculations with 80% of its functional capacity for over six months it could still offer no advice on this matter.
Several missions of time operatives were sent back to try to rewrite the timeline, but each time they failed to make any headway, and they even made the dimensional membranes weaker still. Some operatives decided to disobey their Overseers, and to stay in the timeframes that they were sent to, causing even further erosion of the banks of the River of Time. Eventually, the Chronomage was forced to give up and leave off any further tampering of the River of Time.
The shocking truth about time is that the forces of history will always push towards a singular result; that whatever you do to try to change the course of time, the final result is always the same; you only ever change how long it takes to reach it. The End of All Time is a real event, and not even the Chronomage himself can prevent it happening. It seems that this is our ultimate fate, for Earth to become yet another Wreck of Time, and that its path was set in motion when the first time excursion began. We may not be trapped in the present dimension of time any more, but we are caught in the strong current of the River, just as surely as if we were.
Very few people get to meet the Chronomage, Lord Jackson II, but it is rumoured that the first Lord Jackson actually came originally from your timeframe and was a musician of some kind. Some say that his real name was Michael Jackson. This may be a problem if he can recognize you, but I think that the risk is very small. Your population is much larger that ours, and apparently you do not know everyone on your planet by sight, or maybe it is because that you have fewer clones and more genetic diversity.
There is also very little cultural or ethnic diversity in my world today, the best aspects of the various different cultures of your time was combined together centuries ago. The present Jackson is also quite old and was cloned before the technology to copy complete memories between clones was fully advanced.
You must not speak to anyone about the content of this letter, or about the real identity of Bob Rundle. This I ask you to do, even if you should decline to help me. The problems that resulted from the River of Time debacle have shown us that such information can never be erased once it has been disseminated.
If you do decide to remain in my time in history you will find that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider horizons, but narrower viewpoints; we travel more, but have less; we have more possessions, but enjoy them less. We have smaller houses and larger families; we have more knowledge, but less sense; more intelligent machines, but more problems to solve; more medicine, but less wellness; we've added years to life, not life to years.
We can fix your genome to give you perfect health, greater intelligence, a more fuller enjoyment of life’s pleasures, and we can supplement your existing memory with access to the database contained within The Mother, but it comes with a loss of personal freedom, greater restrictions by those in authority, and a life with few surprises left to be uncovered.
If you decide to return, you have the option of a memory wipe, so that you can never disclose this information to anyone else in your timeframe. This is safe and tested technology, which will help you keep the truth secret and allow you to continue your present life as if you had never made a time travel trip.
You have only these next two days to decide, please let me know either way by placing an advertisement in the personal column of ‘The Times’. I have already prepaid the advertising space for this, but you will need to give them the code word “Twelve Monkeys†when you telephone them. Someone told me that this would be an amusing phrase, but I’m afraid that your more archaic humour is very different to ours. Simply print “I agree†or “I don’t agree.†After this we will have no further contact, but I will be eternally grateful for you help, should you provide it.
I must go now before I am discovered using this module, the Overseers have eyes and ears everywhere, and The Mother, the machine intelligence on my world, and the sum of all knowledge, knows everything that happens. The Mother records every piece of information learnt, every idea written, all data accumulated, by our civilization.
I hear someone approaching…
I thank you for your time,
Your faithful servant,
Sinclair 1301
Remember you must decide within two days!
Thought transference was interrupted, message disconnected at module 7a//2.
This message was sent by thought transference using module 7a//2 at the Palace of the Chronomage, Lord Jackson II.
From Sinclair 1301, Seraph’s Operative.
Dear ASciFi member,
Firstly, you must know that I could be executed for treason if it is ever discovered I told you this, and I have had to encrypt this message using 4ii generation fractal ciphers, but I am a desperate man with no other alternatives. This message is a direct transference of my thoughts, but I have translated it into the format of an email, so you can read and copy it with your present day communications systems. Please only forward it to the people most likely to take up my offer. I want to limit its circulation as much as possible, as a small amount of information can be a dangerous thing.
My name is Sinclair 1301. One of my own extended family is in great peril, and you are my one and only remaining hope. My son is now lost in the eighth dimension after being sent by Seraph the Overseer on a mission to collect a time criminal for punishment. But first, as I’m sure that you have no idea of what I am thinking about, and I need to explain more fully:
Today’s date is 06/04/02700, and it was recently discovered that someone from your timeframe had been sending emails into the future, in an attempt to interfere with their own personal history.
This cannot be allowed to happen or catastrophic events will occur. The Cosmic Censor has been disabled, these last five years, since the River of Time blunder, and dangerous paradoxes have been possible during this period. So, it was my son, the most experienced of the time operatives of Seraph III, who was selected to capture and bring the person to justice. Something went terribly wrong, and the fact is, that I now urgently need your help.
In the year 27K we have strict laws that prevent Temporal Excursions or Reverse Time Travel for personal gain. It does still happen of course, but the nine Overseers of the Office of Chronomage usually quickly catch these criminals, and then they are always severely punished by the League of Temporal Judges. Unfortunately, we still have difficulty reaching as far back into the past as your century with any reliability, as we have yet to master travel in the seventeen dimensions, or solve the difficulties posed by Dirac's multiple infinite negative mass-energy background. If we could then I’m sure that the present crisis would never have occurred.
Down through the ages, first the Corporate Directors of the Temporal Research Companies, and more lately the Chronarchy itself, has sought to keep the secrets of Time from the general populace for it’s own safety. Our time operatives constantly work behind the scenes to ensure the future is not diluted, and that Time passes normally for everyone. That is why the present Chronomage, Lord Jackson the Second, found the River of Time scandal so hard to bear. He believed that the future was endless, and that his agents in the past could never be uncovered. It was a great shock to have these theories overturned so suddenly, and to be told that his Cosmic Censor was less than useless.
Your own scientists are very close to discovering the secret of Time Travel. In fact, two large corporations working separately are near to the solution, and the Time Vortex itself will soon be discovered in 2053, which will open the Doors of Time. However, time operatives from the organisation I represent believe your world is still too immature to deal with the consequences, and they will continue to delay your progress. Thus it will be at least another century before the inevitable happens, and the first Chrononaut makes a journey. It will take even longer before the Institute of Temporal Research is established and begins its first premature experiments.
We, of future societies, need to ensure that when time travel occurs all termion quantum numbers are first changed for the time traveller, and that the particles that make up the time travellers body cannot occupy the same universe again. If a time traveller ever approached his own universe with termion quantum numbers equal to those of another object in that universe then the Pauli time invariant exclusion force would push him through the fifth, or even higher, dimension to a different universe, consistent with his or her termion quantum numbers. Until you are able to ensure this, Time Travel is inherently unsafe, and your present technology level is insufficient to guarantee this. That is the reason our intervention began.
However, they also mistakenly began to believe that they could actually alter history, and prevent the destruction that resulted from the Time Wars. It was the River of Time episode that finally proved this belief to be erroneous. No one had suspected the level of the distortion to Space and Time by all the previous time travellers. Once they did, it was already too late.
I was born in 2512, one of a mass cloning of the Sinclair genome, a template created with a genome fixed specifically for use as a time operative. I live in the Northern Metropolis, the second major city of the Sol Imperial State. I grew up in a world devastated by the Time Wars, fought between the two largest time travel corporations, with all its post atomic holocaust horrors, so those wars are still familiar to me. Our world now no longer has any national boundaries, nor does it have separate corporations, and the Chronomage is our ultimate ruler. No war has been fought on Earth for 180 years, as a result of regulation by the Chronomage, and his Overseers, who rule the various continents under him.
In my youth, I had high hopes of becoming one of the nine Overseers myself, but unfortunately I was never lucky enough to be chosen for that great honour. I think that I have served Seraph well, and that he should find no complaints with my service. However, I do feel that the State owes me more for my life of obedience, and that the present Seraph Overseer may be getting too old to make the correct judgements in matters of time.
Several generations of my family have worked as time operatives for Seraph the Third. Seraph has been without a doubt, one of the greatest ever of the Overseers of the Chronomage in the Sol Imperial State. My son, Peteo 55, was Seraph’s most trusted operator, and was handpicked for the current mission by him. Although children are no longer procreated in the way you do, but they are produced full-grown by genetic engineering, but he is still my son.
During my son’s mission last week, at the start of the Chrononaut displacement process, a problem occurred within the Temporal Core Matrix. With the Cosmic Censor disabled, dual power overloads in the Core Flux Engine lead to a bypass of the Great Regulator. During the Post Transition phase, after only three minutes, the Tazewell-Gantry dimensional bridge was crossed, leading ultimately to my son, Peteo 55, being lost deep within the Core Matrix Time Pool itself. The Doors of Time then firmly shut tight and could not be re-opened. I fear that his termion quantum numbers have not been changed, and that he no longer occupies a place in this universe, but has been transported instead to somewhere in the higher dimensions, most probably in the D8 zone.
These technical details are of no consequence, and I fear that if I attempted to explain them they would only confuse you, but we assume that the problem was a result of a transference from your century, which must have took place shortly before Peteo 55 was sent from my time. Only someone else from your century could save him now, someone who has never time travelled before, and for whom his quantum numbers are still the original. What I want you to do is difficult, and not without personal risks, but I ask you to please give it some thought and consideration.
If you agree to help me, I will send you all the formulae and plans that you need to build a standard time travel device; which we call a Chronoscalator. It must be kept secret from your own scientists. You must us it to enter into the first eight dimensions and rescue my son, and then finally return, and destroy the time machine forever. Alternatively, you could decide to stay in the future, and make a new life for yourself in the year 2700.
Since the River of Time incident, the Chronomage has switched off the Cosmic Censor, restricted all non-essential time travel, and withdrawn all temporal permits from the ordinary citizens of the Sol Imperial State. I have no way of helping my son myself, and my appeal to Seraph III for his benevolence was rejected at this mornings sitting of the Council of the nine Overseers. Only because of my higher status in the Office of the Chronomage, do I have security clearance to access these formulae and plans from The Mother, our great machine intelligence. Please use the information well, as I will not have another chance to send them back.
In two days time, the information will arrive in a sealed lead lined casket, at Galactic co-ordinates 78/1222/ delta-omega/98 DX 3215, latitude 51° 28' 38", longitude 0° 0' 0" exactly. It will arrive at precisely 12 Noon GMT. I have worked all the details of the transfer out, all you need to do is to arrive at the Flamsteed House Greenwich Observatory forecourt in London, England, at the correct time and pick the box up.
We do have other operatives active in your timeframe; some of them are also from my extended cloned family and they will help you to assemble the Chronoscalator. You must take the plans to the South London Engineering Works, Deptford, at the same Galactic co-ordinates I have given, and ask for Bob Rundle. You must do this within two days of receiving the casket.
The man known as Bob Rundle is a trusted friend and relation, and he will supply you with materials, and a workshop where the machine can be assembled without any questions being asked.
He will also give you a power source for the temporal engine. The assembly process should take no more that a week and then you will be ready to make the transference. If questioned about the machine, it can be explained as diving bell for deep-sea exploration. This is a cover that has been used before, and indeed, the workshop has manufactured such craft in real life.
You will need to supply your own weapons for the trip, but Bob Rundle will offer you his advice on this too. He has contacts in the secret agencies of your local governments around your world, and they can arrange this. Usually, some kind of anesthetic rifle is advisable, as there are strange creatures between the dimensions of the multi-verse, as well as other more desperate time travelers who have been stranded there. During the Time Wars thousands of soldiers were transferred to the higher dimensions and never returned again. It is said that the Time Wars still continue for them, a continuous struggle between different factions occupying different higher dimensions.
Bob Rundle will also give you a small homing device to locate Peteo 55 in the eighth dimension and instructions on its use. This device uses the improbability of the temporal matrix to reverse the Pauli time invariant exclusion force. The danger here is obvious, but my son did not deserve to be cast adrift in the higher dimensions, and we must at least try to return him.
The eight dimensions is a time-without-space, and there will be a risk to your life and health, but I know that I can count on your help. I have been monitoring the posts of AsciFi members and I know that you have the intelligence, the valour, and the strength of character to succeed. Think also of the achievement of being the very first Chrononaut in history.
I believe that in your timeframe, money is still of great importance to you. If you agree, I can make it financially agreeable for you; you would not need to work to supply an income again. I can transfer various articles of historic importance to whatever co-ordinates you desire. I have learned that it is these artifacts that you desire most, and horde in bank vaults and museums.
In my time, objects no longer have any value, as practically anything may be reconstituted from atoms and molecules of the raw material by replicators. When any possession can be yours, possessions no longer have any real value. But, Time itself is a commodity with a real value, and those who can control time are the wealthy people in my society. The Chronomage himself, along with the Overseers and the Chronarchy, can skip back and forth through the ages, while the lower classes are firmly rooted in the present. Not even the Privy Councilors such as myself can make unauthorized time excursions, and non-essential traffic is severely limited.
So powerful is the knowledge of temporal travel, that in the 25th Century the Time Wars were fought over the power of the control of time travel. The general populace rebelled against the industrial corporations who kept the secrets of Time to themselves. After the Wars, our society’s present nature was established, with it’s hierarchical structure. Now, only the Chronomage and his Overseers have the power to authorize time travel, and any Chrononaunts must obey strict rules laid down by the Council of the Overseers. The Mother is able to advise us on any possible paradoxes, and the Council relies on its vast knowledge database to guide it in its decisions. The League of Temporal Judges set penalties and punish infringements of the rules.
Today it is only the Chronomage himself, the twelve overseers, and their time operatives who are allowed any kind of temporal transference. Permits are rarely granted for any kind of Temporal Excursions. The general population no longer has any access to the secrets of time. Even authorized Chrononaunts have restrictions placed on the number of trips they can make.
Many moons ago, these Chrononaunts discovered the real truth about time, when a visit to the future uncovered the Wrecks of Time. These alternative versions of Earth in other realities were all found to be dead worlds, where humans had become extinct. However, in the River of Time between the dimensions, they are all on a collision course to meet again at the End of All Time. They found that the ripples and eddies in the River of Time had now become great rapids, and that because of the frequent use of Time Travel the membranes between the multi-verse had been weakened beyond repair. Until this discovery, the Chronarchy had thought itself practically immortal. Even the League of Temporal Judges was unsure of a solution. They even asked The Mother, but after working on calculations with 80% of its functional capacity for over six months it could still offer no advice on this matter.
Several missions of time operatives were sent back to try to rewrite the timeline, but each time they failed to make any headway, and they even made the dimensional membranes weaker still. Some operatives decided to disobey their Overseers, and to stay in the timeframes that they were sent to, causing even further erosion of the banks of the River of Time. Eventually, the Chronomage was forced to give up and leave off any further tampering of the River of Time.
The shocking truth about time is that the forces of history will always push towards a singular result; that whatever you do to try to change the course of time, the final result is always the same; you only ever change how long it takes to reach it. The End of All Time is a real event, and not even the Chronomage himself can prevent it happening. It seems that this is our ultimate fate, for Earth to become yet another Wreck of Time, and that its path was set in motion when the first time excursion began. We may not be trapped in the present dimension of time any more, but we are caught in the strong current of the River, just as surely as if we were.
Very few people get to meet the Chronomage, Lord Jackson II, but it is rumoured that the first Lord Jackson actually came originally from your timeframe and was a musician of some kind. Some say that his real name was Michael Jackson. This may be a problem if he can recognize you, but I think that the risk is very small. Your population is much larger that ours, and apparently you do not know everyone on your planet by sight, or maybe it is because that you have fewer clones and more genetic diversity.
There is also very little cultural or ethnic diversity in my world today, the best aspects of the various different cultures of your time was combined together centuries ago. The present Jackson is also quite old and was cloned before the technology to copy complete memories between clones was fully advanced.
You must not speak to anyone about the content of this letter, or about the real identity of Bob Rundle. This I ask you to do, even if you should decline to help me. The problems that resulted from the River of Time debacle have shown us that such information can never be erased once it has been disseminated.
If you do decide to remain in my time in history you will find that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider horizons, but narrower viewpoints; we travel more, but have less; we have more possessions, but enjoy them less. We have smaller houses and larger families; we have more knowledge, but less sense; more intelligent machines, but more problems to solve; more medicine, but less wellness; we've added years to life, not life to years.
We can fix your genome to give you perfect health, greater intelligence, a more fuller enjoyment of life’s pleasures, and we can supplement your existing memory with access to the database contained within The Mother, but it comes with a loss of personal freedom, greater restrictions by those in authority, and a life with few surprises left to be uncovered.
If you decide to return, you have the option of a memory wipe, so that you can never disclose this information to anyone else in your timeframe. This is safe and tested technology, which will help you keep the truth secret and allow you to continue your present life as if you had never made a time travel trip.
You have only these next two days to decide, please let me know either way by placing an advertisement in the personal column of ‘The Times’. I have already prepaid the advertising space for this, but you will need to give them the code word “Twelve Monkeys†when you telephone them. Someone told me that this would be an amusing phrase, but I’m afraid that your more archaic humour is very different to ours. Simply print “I agree†or “I don’t agree.†After this we will have no further contact, but I will be eternally grateful for you help, should you provide it.
I must go now before I am discovered using this module, the Overseers have eyes and ears everywhere, and The Mother, the machine intelligence on my world, and the sum of all knowledge, knows everything that happens. The Mother records every piece of information learnt, every idea written, all data accumulated, by our civilization.
I hear someone approaching…
I thank you for your time,
Your faithful servant,
Sinclair 1301
Remember you must decide within two days!
Thought transference was interrupted, message disconnected at module 7a//2.
