The Solution

“This will not only be a day to remember, but a day to relive. We can remake the future. This is the beginning.” 

William Howard had now heard that soundbite three times with his morning coffee, and the line was taking on a surreal tone as he heard it played again. William selected a different news source from the list of podcasts. He depressed the button on his coffee grinder and let the kitchen fill with noise while the intro music played. He liked to prepare tomorrow’s grounds while he enjoyed today’s drip. The two different aromas –brewed and ground– produced by the same roast lit up his olfactory organs and generated warm feelings that eased him into his morning. He let up on the button and the grinder hushed. He tapped the clear lid with his knuckles and removed it to release the fresh smells. The news became intelligible in the grinder’s silence. 

[Man’s voice:] “Sharon Baldur, president of tech giant Questlink, is certain her presentation this afternoon will make history. She says,

[The announcement again:] ‘This will not only be a day to remember, but a day to relive. We can remake the future. This is the beginning.’

[Man’s voice again:]We’re all on the edge of our seats because the company is hinting that the technological hurdle they’re revealing deals with time travel.”

[Woman’s voice:] Well, that’s hard to believe, Joe. But we’re open-minded here at NewsNow.”

[Man’s voice:] “Indeed, Lucille. And Questlink will have a lot to prove this afternoon, as they’ve somehow managed to get the world’s full attention.”

The rest of the news was more predictable. There was mention of the latest political quagmires, more grandstanding and more inaction. There was the ticking off of ongoing climate related disasters, and more forecasting of looming disasters. And there was a quick mention of the markets’ latest fickle mood.

William popped in earbuds as he pulled his bike from its hanger in his garage. He was curious now, and he cycled through news sources he didn’t typically listen to as he pedaled to work. They all made mention of Questlink’s announcement. It was eerie. William worked in communications for a climate activism non-profit, and he understood how impossible coordinating this level of media penetration would be. He chose his line of work while his mother was battling mesothelioma, a result of growing up near the vermiculite mines in Libby, MT. The disease took her lung power, and then her life, and he wanted to be a voice for her. She liked to say that everything happens for a reason. Through that lens of karmic causation, she faced the disease with hope and acceptance. William worked to honor those beliefs. 

William locked his bike to the street sign in front of his office building. Inside at his desk, he poured another cup of coffee from a thermos. Jose Perez walked in from the office next to his. He was the Grants Manager. The two men would often start the work day chatting. 

“Did you listen to any news this morning, Jose?” William asked as he opened up his laptop. 

“Of course. I’m as addicted as the next guy,” Jose shrugged helplessly. 

“Did you hear about this announcement? By Questlink?”

“I did. I was only half-listening. But I did hear it twice. What’s the deal?”

“Time travel? I think? It’s unclear. They’re going to announce something. But I’m baffled by how they ended up in every corner of the media today. They’re everywhere. Have a look at this.” 

William opened his browser and navigated to a news site. He opened a new tab in his browser and found another news site. He did this a half-dozen times. He scrolled the first page and easily found a headline around Questlink’s announcement, then did the same on all the other pages. 

“That is impressive,” Jose said. He shrugged again. “I guess we’ll have to check it out.” 

“Why don’t you come over after work? We’ll stream it on my projector. I have a crockpot meal in the works.”

“Hmmm. You believe it’s possible?” Jose squinted at William. 

“Yeah. I’m feeling a bit jittery about it,” William sipped more coffee. 

… 

The projector whirred to life and cast blue light on William’s wall. He’d removed his wall art, two different mountain landscapes, to create the blank wall space. He didn’t like to have a screen as the default center of his living space. Casting the livestream from his phone, the video appeared as large as life before him and Jose. William adjusted the focus and turned up the volume. He and Jose sat on his living room couch. Two bowls of sweet potato and peanut butter vegan stew issued steam up into the projector’s beam. 

The day had contained countless reminders to watch this event. So many that the two men were disturbed. Fortunately, William had prepared dinner the day before and initiated it in the crockpot that morning. His forethought always paid out.

On the wall, the president of Questlink, Sharon Baldur, stood in front of a large screen in an auditorium. In white print on a black background, the screen displayed these words:

This is the BEGINNING.

Do you believe we’re making the right decisions to save the planet (and ourselves)?

Do you believe we’re running out of time?

Do you ACCEPT the INEVITABLE? 

Ms. Baldur began to speak.

“Hello, world. These questions plague us at Questlink, but we believe we have their answers– listen.”

The screen behind Ms. Baldur changed to show a diagram. At first, William thought they were maps of subway tunnels, but the animated motion of atomic particles made clear that it was a particle collider. Images and videos relating to Questlink’s successes with the collider played as the company’s president continued. A subtle musical accompaniment was quietly building an emotional tone.

“Questlink’s particle collider is the most sophisticated ever created. We’ve made numerous discoveries over the past half-decade, many you’re aware of and many you aren’t, but today’s news is revolutionary and must be made public. I’m going to repeat this so that it sinks in: We’ve mastered time travel. 

I am delivering this message across seven continents, across hundreds of nations, and through a thousand different mediums. This is the most watched event in history. How is it possible that I’m doing that today when practically none of you were thinking about Questlink yesterday? We’ve been repeating ourselves while probing for successful avenues. We’ve mastered time travel. We’ve repeated the past ten days seventeen times. The past nine days twenty times. The past eight days nine times. And so on. We’ve been working for over a year in total in these last ten days to make connections and open the world’s eyes, ears, and minds to this message right now.” 

The screen used animations and time lapses to express these ideas visually.

“This will be a lot to process. You may feel fear, elation, anger, grief, or any other extreme emotions as you apprehend all of the implications of this technology. But remember, a mind is like a parachute, it only works when it is open.” 

The video behind Ms. Baldur changed to an animation of a blockchain ledger building. The soundtrack correspondingly shifted to a symphony of steady progress.

“If you’re following me, you may realize that I’ve just told you that you’ve spent a year of time repeating the past ten days of your life. This is simultaneously true and false. You will have not realized that time skipped, so you’ve only spent ten days. Truly, so have we. The only way our team has been able to carry back, and thus forward, any lessons from the erased-elapsed time, is to write ourselves notes on our blockchain that executes the transactions that take place within our particle collider. That blockchain bears witness to our endeavors. The new block evidences our command, and entombs our wisdom –though deciphering that wisdom is onerous. As the particle collider executes its orders in the instant that the new block is written, the succession on the blockchain persists through the time corrections. We can encapsulate huge amounts of data in those blocks to give ourselves orders, or advice, but we’ve learned that it takes diligence, resolution, and some amount of luck to use that data to create an outcome.”

William and Jose both wore puzzled and furrowed looks. Neither of them had touched their steaming bowls of stew. Jose’s arms were crossed in a nervous self-hug. He gave William an anxious look.

“We used these data capsules to guide us forward as we moved closer to this day by locking in one repeated past day at a time as we felt we’d accomplished what we could with it, while avoiding missteps. This near-perfect media engagement and public launch is due to those efforts. We have shown that we can solve a large-scale problem with this technology. We chose to shape our own destiny. We can create inevitability. Now, we invite the world to participate. We invite you to participate. Let me explain.” 

The screen behind the president of Questlink Technologies moved through recent scenes from climate disasters across the globe impacting humans, then to numerous species that recently met with extinction. The fine-drawn dramatic music brought in tragic notes and built in intensity. 

“We, humanity, have manufactured planetary crises. Frankly, we’re too late to save the planet from the messes we’ve created. Without second chances, we’d likely be too late to save ourselves. If we make every right decision beginning today, we’ll still see some tragic results from our past mistakes, but we’ll also give our planet –our fellow living organisms– a new deal.” 

Another blockchain animation built upon itself on the center of the screen. Above it an animated calendar flipped steadily. Pages from the calendar occasionally tore free, drifted towards a node in the network, and then the node began drafting text onto the date. The nodes drafted and shared the highlighted dates with bricks of text beneath them. Copies passed among the many nodes. Words and phrases from the text blocks were bolded and emphasized, lifting from the calendar pages as they passed back and forth on the network. They said things like, “immediately halt,” “blitz seeding,” “preservation of intact,” and so on. If a consensus of nodes verified a single date suggestion, the animation showed that date becoming a new block in the chain with the variety of text blocks attached within it. The calendar above would jump back to the consensus date and then continue its forward progression. The animation suggested a torturous advancement through time with long durations of forward movement interrupted by jumps backward to nearly the same dates over and over. 

“We can create a path forward to live a different culture. To transform. To evolve. For decades we’ve floundered. Individuals, movements, and nations have led by example only to lose wealth, influence, and hope. Incentives, sanctions, taxation, criminalization, etc. have unfortunately only polarized us and pushed us further from the global-scale cooperation necessary to solve our myriad problems.

Your cooperation is not only necessary, but inevitable. The sooner we all accept our fate –our new, better fate– the better. This technology belongs to all of humanity, and we will use it for the benefit of all. We are going to democratize this solution, but we’re safeguarding its success. Our blockchain operates using proof-of-stake protocols. Our team are the original validators, and at the close of this presentation, several thousand pre-selected and pre-vetted individuals will receive invitations to become validators. Others are invited to apply to be validators. Know that the less compatible with our mission your lifetime behavior has been, the higher the collateral stake will be to participate. The stakes couldn’t be higher.” 

William looked at Jose. Jose’s face was pressed into a deep frown of hard thought. William felt like crying. He was inspired and relieved, but confused. His brain was reeling. Jose looked afraid.

“We are a species of miraculous potential and technological marvel. We will reach that potential. Leave this presentation uplifted. Move us towards our better future faster.

I will not be taking questions at this time, but resources are now provided as links –here– and across the media you’ll find avenues to those resources to help each of us better understand this new solution and all that it implies.”

Sharon Baldur looked down at her podium. The animation continued showing the progression through time as solutions became stamped in the blockchain’s code. Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” crept up to a piercing volume, 

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'

Jose and William locked eyes. 

“Is this real?” Jose asked. “I’m feeling out of sorts.”

“It feels like a dream. Perhaps we’ve already lived this moment.”

The stew remained untouched on the coffee table. The projector whirred softly. 

… 

Both William and Jose became validators relatively early on in the project. Their lifetime behaviors were easily vetted as compatible with the mission, and though their stake was still costly, it was not a decision for them.

They’re work was supercharged. They had countless new partnerships. They had access to forums and conferences on strategy. They participated in elections and draft votes. They organized. 

…

Seven years later with three new blocks. The first new block was the day after the presentation. The second block was two days after. The third block was three days after. It was difficult to know how far into the future the world had gone before returning to each block. William and Jose had likely cast contributing date drafts, but it was impossible to say as text would only be validated without identifying markers regarding authorship. 

The blockchain showed two things: it revealed how many “corrections” to the timeline existed, and it carried the text. The knowledge was simultaneously paralyzing and igniting. The deluge of text embedded in the three new blocks served to guide inspired and euphoric new movements, new nations, and new religions. And it sewed terror. Suggested solutions to problems which no longer remained in the collective consciousness or in the historical record could only be inferred to be resolved, but they raised massive ethical questions. Mentions of problematic individuals or groups that no longer existed were particularly concerning.

William and Jose no longer lived in proximity to one another, but they kept up constant conversations in the countless forums that obsessed on “The Solution and All That It Implies.” In the forums, people made public pitches for dates. They explained why certain problems had already passed their fixing points. They posted videos of animals now extinct, but still alive at the time of block three’s creation. They argued about whether or not forming consensus on a date prior to the presentation could lead to a new timeline where the particle collider and blockchain didn’t exist. They posted murder-suicide manifestos condemning the impotence of their existence. They wrote odes to the reassurance the solution provided, and praised God for destiny. Media channels were built around philosophical lenses for interpreting the situation. Dates were everywhere: tattooed on bodies, projected upon the night sky with lasers, graffitied in public spaces. Billboards asserted date corrections. 

Personal tragedy or gain shaped philosophy. Whole forums existed for discussion surrounding the real and potential losses of loved ones and alternate timelines. William’s tag in the forums honored his mother, and everything he wrote was followed by: “Everything happens for a reason - WH.”

…

Ten years later with one hundred and thirteen new blocks. The blocks were tightly stacked. Some dates shared multiple blocks. The twenty fourth day after the presentation had sixteen blocks – each just minutes or hours after the previous. The texts attached were vast and demanding of interpretation. 

Constant philosophizing. Constant sermonizing. Video. Radio. Media. Forums.

The interpretation and prognosis of the globe’s health and the possibility of consensus around a single interpretation was an ever-present question. A threat. A promise. 

Aging populations made desperate pleas to turn back time. They bemoaned their individual legacies. 

Defector groups lobbied for consensus around dates that preceded the particle collider and the blockchain. Groups lobbied for dates preceding the industrial revolution. Groups lobbied for prehuman dates. Obviously, the technology had not been tested outside its own lifetime. Theories were created around the consequences of choosing such a date. And there was no guarantee a person would even return to existence if a date was chosen prior to their birth. Most people still clung to dates within their lifetime.

William messaged Jose. 

W:Is this the most in control humanity has ever been?

J: I think it’s the most trapped it’s ever been. We’re still obsessing about the future and the past. The past becoming future again. Prehistory may be our only escape.

W: To when? I’m feeling optimistic. I don’t doubt that we’ll lay down hundreds or perhaps thousands more blocks before relinquishing, but in some ways I love that knowledge. In each new block, a newer version of me, of us, moves closer to perfection. It’s all happening for a reason.

J: I disagree. We’re sick. Any measurement of time chains us to false beliefs. Time is our construct that now rules us. I would love to see us give back to the planet by leaping back to prehistory. The only way to live presently is to uninvent time.

W: Trust the inevitability of our destiny, Jose. You’re contributing to a legacy of fulfillment of human potential. 

J: You sound like the borg. You worry me.

W: It’s comforting to me. 

J: I’m submitting a prehistoric date transaction. There’s movement growing. I pray there’s still time. Join us. Please, William.

W: Take care of yourself, Jose.