It came, fully formed, all at once, in a dream. They all say I am mad. Truthfully, I don’t understand it myself. The math simply does not align with what we have proven quite literally millions of times. But the tests have all passed. Well, the ones ran with my equipment, I suppose. After the Journey, Steven and I will have to meet to compare notes and find the discrepancy with his tests.
But the primary thing is achieving one Journey, with myself as the chrononaut, of course. I can’t understand how they don’t see this as the most consequential endeavor ever undertaken by humanity. Greater than Marx’s manifesto, Jenner’s discovery, Columbus’s voyage, or even Socrates’ fundamental questions. How can they not see this? While Columbus doubled the world, my work expands the world infinitely. No part of human existence will remain unaltered. Can we now escape Heat Death? Is energy still preserved? What is looped consciousness? None of this can be answered—by us, right now. But if we need ten million years to learn this, we now have it. Time has always been the barrier.
And all this has been obvious to me since I was boy! Our dreamers have known it for a century—The End of Eternity is all you need (though the whole thing is almost worth throwing out at the end of course). But alas that we live in such a thoroughly scientific age that real dreams seemingly cannot be sought.
I suppose it must have always been me. And I suppose this is also why the first Journey will be thoroughly my own. Only a dreamer can dream, and only a dreamer would choose my Journey. All Eternity will know this as the first Journey, and I find this to be right. Truth must prevail in Eternity. This Journey will certainly not enforce that reality. I cannot comprehend what could, except possibly Truth itself, working itself upon the cosmos. But at least this will begin Eternity well.
Because after all, this is still a Journey of Science. Science at the deepest level, you might say. Or maybe science as it was always meant to be. The science of the Important.
But yes, it will be a Journey of Science. That is important to remember. The results could truly go in either direction. I certainly have my guess, however we understand what Popper taught: science, or really all knowledge, must be falsifiable. As it stands neither opinion is falsifiable. And of course not. But now, all questions of history are falsifiable, precisely because observations of it are repeatable. Yet another immense consequence! Indeed, the very meaning of “history” is ambiguous now.
But the time is upon me. My hands shake. Suddenly my confidence halters. Perhaps I am mad. Is it not possible that at every stage I have somehow been deceived? That the results of my experiments were wrong? I could even have been betrayed by my body, my senses. Has my madness swapped numbers? Do I want to believe that badly?
But no, no. The Fixation of Belief saves me again. I have conducted every test. I have performed every check. There is no other possible explanation—this must be successful. My belief is grounded in Nature and Effect.
I press Enter and step in.
The instancy of it surprises me. No strange visions, no slow build up, no nausea. We have so much to learn of ourselves, the last and greatest field. We can know a thing, and yet not have familiarity with that thing’s sensations. Possibly Hollywood made its way into even my expectations.
But here I am—exactly as I intended. I walk into Bethsaida as planned, and spot the first man, two thousand years dead. How will humanity come to intuit and be comfortable with such a break in all prior experience? My heart trembles at the frightful wonder of it.
His name is Thomas (not the doubting apostle, of course). I ask him if he knows anything of the teacher, and he certainly does. The plan was just to get directions from him, but he is going there himself, and asked if I wanted to accompany him. Hadn’t planned for that. But it dawns on me that this is in fact a good idea, especially since his accent is quite different than I had trained for. Seems the experts were mistaken there. It is a bit dangerous to follow him, to be sure. The culture here is so old I am skeptical we could truly know anything of it back home (until now), and what is unpredictable is dangerous. This is a practical not philosophical statement, of course.
He is from some place nearby that I do not recall having studied—I expect its memory has been wholly lost. He asks who my family is. I give him the planned response: I am from Tiberias but rowed the Sea to hear from the teacher. That seems to satisfy him, thankfully.
I ask what he knows and thinks of the teacher. He is far more skeptical than I anticipated. He was raised going to temple, as I imagine virtually everyone is, and says his priest does not approve. And Thomas doesn’t approve either, because he has heard rumors of Jesus eating with tax collectors and prostitutes and the like. So I ask why he is going. Very interestingly, he replies that he is going to find out for himself, and also because he has had skin sores on his leg for many years, and hopes to be healed. He then asks me why I am going, and I tell him the truth. Very similar to him. I have heard many things, and some people I trust believe and others do not, and so I want to see for myself.
We arrive, quicker than anticipated. The scholars got the timing exactly correct, but the location was kilometers off. Surprising, but fortunate.
It is truly a large crowd. I suppose I had always imagined one large church service or something, or maybe an old tent meeting. And so of course it always seemed impossible that he could speak to five thousand people at once, not including women or children, so more like twenty thousand. No one can speak to that many people at once without electronics. So even early on I took the number given in this passage to be a literary rather than literal figure. Meaning, exaggerated. But looking at it right now that actually, astoundingly, seems about right. I’ve never been talented at estimating the size of crowds so it could be anywhere from five to fifty thousand I think, but five thousand family units seems as reasonable a guess as any.
But the crowd isn’t all in one big spot, listening to a lecture. It is like an enormous festival, almost, but no not quite. Maybe like a conference, with different larger or smaller crowds here and there, and people going every which way, even with some small camps here and there. And mothers talking to one another, and children playing. And not only is Jesus teaching, but the disciples are doing some teaching as well. In one group, I find Peter talking very animatedly about all that he has seen and done. Peter is just about exactly as imagined.
But certainly the largest crowd is around Jesus. Not sure how many but several hundred at least, probably over a thousand. Mostly men, but plenty of women as well, and a few children.
I am about to meet a man who billions of people think was God walking the earth. This is the entire question, isn’t it? Hardly any of my old faith is believable to me anymore. Once I found my way into real biblical and religious scholarship the veil was rapidly lifted. Jerico, the Exodus, the “miracles”, Adam, Ancient Near East influences, Platonic influences, midrash, the sheer Jewishness of Jesus, the absurd mental gymnastics of the Church on the difficult questions, etc. Not to mention the simple corruption and hypocrisy. When you hear what the real, intelligent skeptics have to say, youth group and Bible study and Sunday worship suddenly become very silly.
And yet the possibility of something being true about it still remains open in my mind, in some form. I understand the apologetic. Maybe something happened, a long time ago. Maybe whatever happened back then, still means something now. Maybe, maybe. But the real difficulty is the Silence. Maybe God broke his silence in ages past, but he is not doing that today. I am a man of Science, and I cannot, nor ought not, be other. If I do not see evidence, then I do not believe. It is really quite simple. And what’s more, when I do see a clear and evidence-based argument, I do believe. This is simply Science. Christians may have invented science, but science has certainly un-invented Christianity. Nature does not have the problematic fact of Silence.
So, the first Journey is to settle the greatest Question. Or at least, to rule out one religion, one part of the Question. The one easiest to falsify, I’ve always thought. So many great freethinkers before me have had the courage to hold a true skeptic’s vision, and yet none have had such an opportunity to truly falsify.
But of course I must not forget that this is an experiment, and experiments often have surprising results.
I listen and must admit that I am struck. His words are… quite possibly unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Remarkably piercing. The crowd asks him a question, and he seems to answer a different question entirely, and yet at once his answer fits with this different question, and with the original question, and the union of these two questions is immediately apparent. I am almost cautious of blasphemy at the moment but the only thing like it I can recall is the experience of reading Nietzsche. It is like seeing everything you’ve felt at your deepest core put into words, and words that seem immediately obvious once said, but which you could never have articulated. But also better than Nietzsche, because these words seem good more than they are hard, though some are also hard.
This confirms one thing to me straight away—it was no accident that this man began a religion. If nothing else he possesses some profound, intuitive grasp of human psychology that only comes around once in a millenium.
Ah but there it is. This response does not ring true. Those words are simply a clear product of culture. Not only that but he seems to have avoided the real question altogether. Actually avoided it this time. The crowd around me seems raptured still, except for a few here and there. And now that I think about it, I can see even more deeply how Jewish this man is, now that I am here. By this I merely mean limited. And I can also see that this very limitation is what keeps his crowd more connected than me. He is Jewish, they are Jewish, but I am not. I can see when his insight is simply his tradition, and not universal, whereas they have no category for this distinction.
And in fact, more than being Jewish, it is notable how much of… just a man he is. Again, I can clearly understand how this man started a religion. A stunning gift of words. But he is fifty meters away from me, and he is standing right there. He has emotions and facial expressions. He scratches his leg from the dust. He has quirks. This kind of odd way of unknowingly rotating his shoulder when he is going to deliver a really important line. He often has to get someone to repeat their question to him, because he couldn’t hear it. It’s funny, I’ve always thought that if I could just see Jesus, perhaps I could believe in him, but now it seems like exactly the opposite. Now that I see him, the aura of two thousand years of glorification and deification slips away. Almost no one here, in this place, believes he is God. Maybe actually no one. Maybe not even himself, yet. Or ever, for that matter. He is just a man, teaching the insights he has, most of which are profound, some of which are, without judgement or pride, simply no longer reasonable or acceptable. He is an enormous leap forward. However no one from here can be expected to understand everything we know now. Back home, I mean. Yet another reason we must commune with the future—the march of progress is not complete, and surely we must have our own blind spots, though I’m not sure what these might be, which of course is the point.
Well, the longer I am here, the more obvious it becomes. Just a man. A normal, flesh-and-bones, human man. I see absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about him, apart from a strong grasp of religious rhetoric. Ah, and it looks like he is moving to a different group. Interesting, it was after a particularly difficult question as well. A classic religious tactic—stay only as long as the questions benefit you.
Oh but wait, there is a woman with a stoop crying out. Jesus is turning back. I had hoped I would be able to see a few healings as well, this is great. This could be easily staged, as was and is still common, but I thought it would still be interesting. Ah and yes, he did something I couldn’t quite see, and the woman is standing up tall now. And the crowd responds as you would expect.
I see Thomas again, and we greet one another. It is still strange to kiss a man on the cheek, I’ll tell you that much. I asked if he had been healed and he says yes! And shows me! Now this is something remarkable. I didn’t see his wounds beforehand, and I am certainly not a doctor, physics is my field. I will need to seek out opinion on this when I get back. I have heard of very powerful Placebo effects, I suppose in extreme circumstances even sores could be healed in this way? Perhaps, in a sense, this is a true “faith healing.” The faith in the healing itself, not necessarily anything else. An interesting thought.
But even so… Thomas’ case seemed too much even for an extreme Placebo. I suppose it is also possible that he happened to be one of Jesus’ (or the disciples’, for that matter) plants. He earned my trust because of the sheer randomness of him. But again, I never even saw his wounds beforehand. I cannot know for sure he even had any. This is another very reasonable explanation. This seems most likely to me. Perhaps if I had been there, and seen the healing for myself, I would be more open to it. But these miracles as evidence of the supernatural has always seemed somewhat silly to me. Every single one of them can be explained in a thousand ways, and there is countless testimony of former “faith healers” explaining in detail how they were simple fakes out to make money. And in any case, as always, the question hinges on repeatability and falsifiability.
Ah and speaking of miracles! The teaching has ended and the people are settling down. Very lively discussions are happening. And here comes someone, telling us to sit in groups, as expected. I believe that was John.
Now what is interesting is that I do in fact see a few families here and there with some food of their own. The traditional account makes no note of that. And this is entirely reasonable—these people must eat and they certainly would bring some food. Right away, I find something that is almost enough to discredit the whole thing! Amazing.
Here comes John again, asking if anyone has any food to contribute. Everybody says no, even those that in fact do have food.
He goes away, and I watch from a distance. I do believe I see the boy with the five loaves, though didn’t spot the two fish. So that much seems accurate: a boy gave them five loaves, and it seems reasonable to assume the two fish were there as well. Remarkable.
They have been consulting for quite a while. I can’t hear what they are saying.
Ah, they are breaking apart now. I am very excited to see how this works. That has always been one of the fun questions to me, when I still believed: how exactly would this work? Did Jesus just duplicate the bread over and over? Was there some strange abundance that happens just out of sight, like when you think you see something but then look straight at it and realize it was never there? It is easier to imagine wine or water or oil never running out, because it is a liquid, and is a continuous stream. But solid food is discrete.
Well, Jesus isn’t bringing us our food directly, someone else is. He is already carrying a reasonable amount of food, more than five loaves and two fish, however it really isn’t all that much. Not enough to feed us, surely. So it seems the supposed miracle has already occurred in the center, and now they are merely distributing? I must have missed it then, I couldn’t see what they were doing in the huddle over there.
He hands off the food, and we start distributing it amongst our group. But this is more food than I thought I saw the disciple carry over. Much, much more. Now that is interesting. I would have loved to stop him before he got here, and count out what he had, and then distribute it, and then count it again. It certainly seems like too much for one person to comfortably carry now.
However I did notice that one of the families decided to contribute their own food once they saw how much there was to go around. Maybe that’s it. Yes that makes much more sense—I never saw how much this family actually had in their basket. I could easily imagine it was a large amount. Perhaps the miracle is simply the miracle of ordinary human generosity, or the way in which one good deed of sharing inspires a great many. Marvelous! Is this not an even greater miracle?
The crowd is really talking now.
But wait. I think I see Jesus walking towards us. Yes, he is definitely walking directly towards our group. And he seems to be looking at… me? Staring, even. I feel very uncomfortable. Oh God, he is looking right at me, and not looking away. Into my eyes. Why is he coming this way?
“Do you know how you came to be here?”
But why should I be so nervous? I must remember that he is only a man. “Yes teacher, I walked here with another.”
“I tell you the truth, you do not know how you came to be here, and you will not have another Journey. There is no road from your home to here. My Father brought you here, to see me. You have often said that you only needed to see me in order to believe.”
How did he know I’ve thought that? “I… did come to see you, and to hear from you.” Oh, it must have been a guess, confirmed by observing my body language. Many people feel the same.
“Have you heard me? And what questions do you have to ask me?”
What does he expect me to say to that? I don’t answer.
“Do you understand what you have seen and heard here?”
“I don’t know.”
“It is not given to all to understand. But you will never forget my words to you, and they will always be available to you, if you desire to grasp them.”
And then he just turns and leaves. He seems suddenly immensely tired as he walks away. And something in me is almost disturbed. Could this man in fact be more than a man? Does he know about my machine? I don’t know what I feel. Almost grief. Definitely pain. Frustration, possibly. Fear. My God, is he trying to make me a convert? Is this the feeling of belief? A rush of anguish. In that moment I think that I possibly believed he was God. What is happening to me? I believe that he is in fact converting me, almost. Is this his power? Is this the power of a creator of religion? I never felt such ability to hold psychological sway. When he is addressing a crowd, it is enough. But when he speaks directly to you… I have never come close to experiencing anything like it. His words were simple but I felt my soul desire to leave everything and follow him, if only for a moment.
I need to take a breath. I need to collect my thoughts. Review the facts. But I feel this struggle like I haven’t since I was a child, but going the reverse direction. But breathe, simply breathe. He could not know about my machine, that is impossible. He just happened to say the words that would cut deepest for me. He never actually mentioned a time machine. I’ve heard of street magicians being able to make astounding guesses about people from subtle observations. That must be it.
But my group is talking almost frantic now. Some of them are going to the other groups. Some are shouting, “We understand! We understand!” I am genuinely frightened. Jesus singled me out, called me a non-believer! I am not sure what they might do. I can reflect upon all this later, I think the immediate thing to do is simply return home. Escape. Yes, I think it is certainly past time.
I walk the road back, and I return to Now.
So much to think and do. The great experiment was successful. I am back, safe.
I have never been truly adventurous, I admit it. I dream great dreams of singular accomplishment, but I have never really felt a great desire to travel, for example. Travel geographically, I mean. But now I realize that I have travelled to an exceedingly far away land. I have traveled temporally. To be frank, I am exhausted. This was all a bit much for me, and I want to return to the professorship, the lab, the house, the coffee house, the lounge, the couch, the life of thought. I am a man of letters, not of action.
It is strange to think how history will remember me. I do not think I want them to know my meekness. I feel a great Importance. I shall be the Father of Eternity. I ought to be a man worthy of it. I desire to see an Eternity of adventure, of spirit, and of dreams. My influence will never cease, so let me give them an influence that will inspire. Of course there is more to be said: honesty, knowledge, and justice. I can only be who I am. And yet, I shall direct my influence.
And so, let me take one more Journey, less frightening this time. I have begun well: I have spoken to our greatest past. Or… perhaps I have Ended well. Yes, that is certainly it! I have ended Time. I have sought its fullness and name it “Expected”. Our religions are created by men. Remarkable men, to be sure. But men alone. They are not communicated by a God—only Nature communicates.
So, now may I begin Eternity! Now may I seek our future. What shall I find? Will I be greeted, known already? Have they established a barrier beyond which travel is not permitted? How do the paradoxes resolve? How do my test results harmonize with the Model? What questions should I ask? So many questions I have for the men of the future!
But enough of these speculations. I have taught much, but it is again time for me to learn. I press Enter, and step in once more.
This time I was prepared for the instancy. However nothing seems to have changed at all. I only went one hundred years ahead (the Portuguese walked before they ran), and yet my lab appears exactly the same. Is it possible it is still here? Or has it become a museum? Very strange.
I go in search of another person, and stumble onto Martin! How could he be here? I ask him, and he seems very confused. Just says that he got back from lunch and is headed to assist Dr. Brown.
Ah! I must have made some mistake, and have actually not travelled at all. How silly! I must have some sort of sign in the future to ensure this silly mistake doesn’t happen again, like a calendar and clock. But for now, let me see what may have gone wrong.
Everything appears to be set up correctly, but what’s this? The main tests are no longer succeeding. Has my first Journey raised a problem with my equipment? This could take ages to fix.
I do not understand it. What could have possibly happened to change things? None of the results are the same anymore. In fact, my results align with Steven’s now. In almost perfect detail. They all agree with the Model in every way.
What could have changed? How frustrating! I can’t understand it.
But that is enough for today. The data is already here, and it proves it. The data could not lie—this is the grounding of all Science. Let me publish these results first, and then resolve the technology later. The technology is secondary—it could even be up to someone else to reproduce it! The discovery is paramount, as well as the first Journey of course.
Not a single independent confirmation! Not a single respectable invitation! They say I fabricated the results. I might even lose my position… I cannot understand it. Published in Nature one month and fearing my job the next.
No one speaks to me anymore, not even Steven. They said I was mad before, and warned me against publishing. But what could I do? The data is there! I did not touch it. The greatest discovery of the century, and likely of all time, including the future, and I have become an outcast. No one believed Einstein at the beginning either—perhaps there is comfort in that. Perhaps it will only take time.
And yet there is a key difference. The new data does not confirm my theory. It contradicts it! Not only are others unable to reproduce my results, I am also still unable. It is enough to drive one truly mad.
It seems that the religious side of my Journey is the only part that is believed at all! The sheer embarrassment. Only a few Christians believe, though even most of them have the sense not to. Catholics and Pentecostals mostly—the gullible and the unhinged. They know nothing of the physics of course, and are merely grasping at anything that confirms what they already believe. I could not have been more clear that the more I encountered the manhood of Jesus, the less I could imagine the Godhood of him! They are even going so far as to debate whether his words that still ring in my ears should be considered a new entry into the canon, with myself as a sort of apostle or some similar nonsense. He barely told me a thing, and certainly nothing new, so I can hardly see what difference it would make.
I don’t know what to do. I must admit that at certain times a horrible thought occurs to me. Perhaps… perhaps in some way I did fabricate the data.
If I recall the Fixation of Belief, then the only method available to us is repeatability. When there is doubt, we repeat the experiment, and align our belief to the results of the experiment, because Nature cannot deceive. And I have been doing just that. I ran the tests. I made my Journey. And yet now, I must continue in doing this. How can I do otherwise? If the data I receive now (as well as all data from all others) contradicts what I received in the past, then I must consistently update my belief—I must disbelieve in the past results.
The trouble with this is twofold: my memory, and the hard data. And neither are simple. This was not a vague impression I had. This was a clear, consistent, lengthy Journey. It was not something that is simply invented. And I have never shown any signs of madness. But perhaps that is what all madmen think…
The second trouble is the hard data. But my mind springs to the obvious conclusion that either my equipment was somehow faulty, or again, I could have fabricated this data without knowing it. I have enough knowledge of Python to produce it. And the reality is that the details of the data really are not coherent. I cannot build a theory on top of it that has any sort of consistency. Of course that is secondary, but it remains troubling.
I have asked to be seen by Henry. I’ve mocked his field countless times, but it seems it has a use after all. He said yes of course, with some pity I think.
He says that I show absolutely none of the common signs of delusions. We have met a dozen or so times now, and tells me that “Frankly, in my professional opinion, you are in perfect mental health.”
I press him though, and he admits that in rare cases, he has heard of seemingly psychologically stable individuals having these sort of lengthy and elaborate fantasies of meeting with a divine character (or demonic), and these fantasies are often accompanied by physical manifestations of the story that can only be explained by the patient creating these manifestations themselves. There is very little academic publications on these cases, and they are mostly dismissed as unscientific, but he has had very respectable psychologists confide them to him. He has never seen one himself.
And so the horrible thought comes to me, and is increasingly plausible to my mind. I must have suffered some sort of terrible delusion centered around my love of time travel fiction, and enacted it without realizing. Nothing else fits the data.
It nearly cost me my career. I will never really be the same, I am sure. I almost lost it all, and I certainly will never be put on one of the Great Teams, and will never have the ability to assemble one myself. I must be a quiet, dignified professor at a smaller university. This is now my fate. But the reality is that it could have been much worse and at this point, I am grateful for even this.
But the experience has opened my eyes to this undefined disease. Perhaps my contribution will not be in physics—perhaps it will be medicine. If this is a supremely rare neurological disorder, maybe I could use my resources and privilege to amplify the research on it, nascent as it is. I will have to be careful, and not embarrass myself further. But next to physics, medicine is perhaps the noblest of the sciences. It would be a worthy endeavor. Yes, I think this shall be my task. And a very interesting one it will be!
Thoughts of a Novice 