Maybe We'll Get It Right This Time

[Tom Mazanec]

Yes, it was intentional.

[Tom Mazanec]

It is ten years after Supernova 1987A. I gave them the date...heck, with neutrino astronomy I could give them the time (0735 UTC and some odd seconds). And the progenitor matched no models for pre-supernovae, not even close. So a couple days later, some nice gentlemen came to my home and politely asked me to come with them. I complied. They had uniforms and guns. I have spent the last decade under "protective custody". I do not get to see any of the other repeaters, as we are called in what media we (or at least I) am allowed to watch. I only talk to members of the CIA, who interrogate me endlessly. I am allowed the finest food, enough news and entertainment to keep me occupied, actually just about anything except my freedom.
No, I never spoke to Carl Sagan, much as I would have loved to. He is dying...of "myelodysplastic or preleukemic syndrome" as he does in all timelines. And no, there seems to be no exobiology. Even the couple of us who lived long enough to see the entire Milky Way colonized say there is not even an alien microbe out there. I died in an accident in TL-3, helping terraform Xi Scorpii C II, almost a twin of Earth...but sterile as a sugeon's knife. Space is a harsh mistress. No signals from any other galaxy. Maybe it's better we did not tell him of his short lifespan and empty field of study.
We repeaters developed a scale for measuring disasters. Magnitude is power of ten of the casualties, level is percentage of human population. The Toba supereruption of 72,613 BC was a Magnitude 5 Level 99. The Black Death was a Magnitude 7 Level 20. The Spanish Flu was Magnitude 7 Level 5. The "do it yourself" pandemics which contributed to the Collapse (there were 2,3, or 4 in each timeline) were Magnitude 8 Level 5 or so. World War Three was roughly Magnitude 9 Level 40 or 50, except in TL-4 where it was Magnitude 9 Level 90.
Reagan and Bush did not follow our advice to attempt to get energy independence (not to halt global warming, which is a non-issue after 2035 or so with weather control, but to stop sending our money to Arab nations who hate us). "Realpolitik" they said. Then the Great Drought and Heatwave of 1991 (weather is subject to the Butterfly Effect, remember) got Al Gore nominated in 1992, just about when Hurricane Fidel grew into a Catagory 5 monster that suddenly changed course and swamped Key West before it could be evacuated, killing 10,000 people (half the population). That was blamed on Global Warming also. Gore was elected, and he is doing better than his predecessors, but he is too fixated on Global Warming, and I don't know. Reading between the lines I see, like a cloud the size of a man's hand, the Great Bubble and the Sino-Muslim Axis germinating. Maybe we did not get it right this time.
Or maybe our purpose is to make a Level 100 Collapse so Someone or Something else can move in. Maybe we did get it right this time.

[Tom Mazanec]

I will lose my job soon, probably at the end of next month. I plan to make a project in my spare time of "Journal of a Repeater", which will be a diary of mine starting in 1986 in TL-5. Our timeline will have to be TL-0, as I "died" a couple months ago in TL-1 and I don't want to be faced with the Cascade happening while I am writing this (I figure it will take at least a year to get book length). I am moving the "repeat date" up to June 1, 1980 as I figure I need more time to alter my career path. If you would like to be included, let me know what you were doing around June 1, 1980 and how you would change your life if you could live it over. Also speculate on how society would react to us, both pre and post supernova. You don't have to be a late 1950s cohort, but be at least a high schooler in 1980.

[VinceP1974]

There was a great short story written in 2006 about a Time Traveller from the Future warning about jihad

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm

He gave me his one-eyed stare. My stomach suddenly lurched and I wished I’d drunk no Scotch. “Words,” I said.

The Time Traveler raised one scar-slashed eyebrow.

“Last year you gave me words about 2005,” I said. “The kind of words Ken Grimwood’s replayers in time would have put in the newspaper to find each other. Give me more now. Or, better yet, just fucking tell me what you’re talking about. You said it wouldn’t matter. You said that my knowing won’t change anything, any more than I can change the direction the Mississippi is flowing . So tell me, God damn it!”

He began by giving me words. Even while I was scribbling them down, I was thinking of reading I’d been doing recently about the joy with which the Victorian Englishmen and 19th Century Europeans and Americans greeted the arrival of the 20th Century. The toasts, especially among the intellectual elite, on New Year’s Eve 1899 had been about the coming glories of technology liberating them, of the imminent Second Enlightenment in human understanding, of the certainty of a just one-world government, of the end of war for all time.

Instead, what words would a time traveler or poor Replay victim put in his London Times or Berliner Zeitung or New York Times on January 1, 1900, to find his fellow travelers displaced in time? Auschwitz, I was sure, and Hiroshima and Trinity Site and Holocaust and Hitler and Stalin and . . .

The clock in my study chimed midnight.

Jesus God. Did I want to hear such words about 2006 and the rest of the 21st Century from the Time Traveler?

“Ahmadenijad,” he said softly. “Natanz. Arak. Bushehr. Ishafan. Bonab. Ramsar.”

“Those words don’t mean a damned thing to me,” I said as I scribbled them down phonetically. “Where are they? What are they?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” said the Time Traveler.

“Are you talking about . . . what? . . . the next fifteen or twenty years?” I said.

“I’m talking about the next fifteen or twenty months from your now,” he said softly. “Do you want more words?”

I didn’t. But I couldn’t speak just then.

“General Seyed Reza Pardis,” intoned the Time Traveler. “Shehab-one, Shehab-two, Shehab-three. Tel Aviv. Baghdad International Airport, Al Salem U.S. airbase in Kuwait, Camp Dawhah U.S. Army base in Kuwait, al Seeb U.S. airbase in Oman, al Udeid U.S. Army and Air Force base in Qatar. Haifa. Beir-Shiva. Dimona.”

“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.” I had no clue as to who or what Shehab One, Two, or Three might be, but the context and litany alone made me want to throw up.

“This is just the beginning,” said the Time Traveler.

[Tom Mazanec]

http://counter-factual.net/upload/showthread.php?t=7104
is the thread of the sequel to my story.
http://www.counter-factual.net/upload/s ... php?t=7100
is the comments thread
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I kept the established Point of Divergence date, btw.