Fuck.

/u/hornswaggle

This sub was one of my first electives after the defaults. They were entertaining back then. I long for new installments. That is all.

Just found Hornswaggle's story when I was looking up time travel conspiracies lol. You seriously need to make a book outta this. Or an E-Book for Amazon. You don't have to sell it for much, but you can and I'd still immediately buy it.

Any chance of Hornswaggle writing more?

Is he still around?

It would be great to see more chapters from either the original or the reboot.

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

#7. The Reason

#8. The Press

#9. The Law

#10. The Acclimatization

#11. The Filibuster

#12. The West (Part 1)

#12. The West (Part 2)

Moore’s law isn’t really a law. It’s more of a predictable trend. It basically says that transistors become half their previous size every two years. You could also phrase it that you can double the amount of transistors you can fit on a chip every two years.

In my timeline this trend was starting to look like it might plateau due to transistors getting too small. With traditional designs of that size, electrons could teleport from one side of a potential energy barrier to the other side, defying classical physics and being generally problematic. I would have been able to tell you more about this if I wasn’t jumped back in time before I took my Electronic Materials and Devices course.

A transistor is a simple enough idea. It’s just a switch. Apply a voltage and the switch is closed, apply no voltage and the switch is open. Humans have had switches since electricity was first harnessed, but what makes transistors special is that they have no moving parts. Seems trivial, but along with agriculture, metal, the internet, writing, plastic, penicillin, the wheel, the printing press, the internal combustion engine, and the push-up bra, the transistor has been called one of humanity's greatest inventions.

In 1985 the size of a transistor (min. feature size) was about 1.5µm. The size of the transistors in the A5 chip of my dissected 2010 iPhone 4 is about 45nm. Roughly a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. So within about a year, transistors, arguably one of the greatest human inventions, became 1/30th of the their previous size. The implications of that were fucking astronomical.

Technology didn’t jump ahead on a linear trend, it jumped ahead on a logarithmic one. For the first time, technology outpaced imagination. Like in old movies set in the future, they always imagine the wrong things changing. Flying cars are easy. The human genome project, not so much. That’s because the game changers are the innovations that people couldn’t already imagine. I remember when I was a kid being in a competition to build a card house in class. I remember it continuously falling down and thinking to myself “This isn’t god-damned possible. They’re just messing with me.” Then I saw that fucking Chloe was done. Evidently it was possible. And getting over that mental hurdle allowed for me to get there, just barely. It’s classic psychology.. probably.

Another factor influencing the surge was public interest. Computers weren’t just for nerds. People saw what they didn’t have and wanted it. They seriously wanted it. Just like me and the card house, suddenly it was possible. Suddenly the thought of a telephonecameracomputervideogameGPSmusicplayer in your pocket wasn’t fucking ridiculous. Technology research and development funding boomed. Enrollment boomed. Even after this timeline’s technology surpassed what I remembered back in my own, the way it became an ingrained part of life caused it to continue to accelerate.

So I was consulted. The internet was already sort around at the time, but not really. So from 1986 to 1987 this timeline’s version of the internet didn’t emerge organically. It emerged as a designed entity from the top down. That’s because the people building the foundations of it weren’t imagining it. They weren’t limited by not knowing the direction it was going to take, or the hurdle of whether it was possible. It was because I sat in a chair fucking describing it and describing its value.

That being said, it’s a totally different thing than it was. I mean, it’s great, but different. Even calling it the internet is probably misleading. The way I used to visualize the internet was as an anonymous crazy chaotic awesome web: millions of interconnected nodes, and if you wanted to fetch information, it had to travel from one node yours. And if there wasn’t a direct line, it would propagate from one node to the next until it reached you via a chain of them.

The new structure was not like that. I’m having a hard time with the similes, but the best way to describe it without going into the tech is like a body of water. If you want information to travel from one point in space to another, it can just move freely. It doesn’t need to go down pre-defined routes hopping from one node to another, and so it doesn’t need that structure. Instead the internet, like an ocean, is an encompassing unified framework that everyone is submerged in and that facilitates movement in all directions. It doesn’t need explicit roads because if information is to be transmitted it can carve its own path in space.

It also emulates physical space more. You can, but usually don't navigate by jumping from link to link, page to page. Your browser shows a map of a sort of 3D space, highlighting where current activity is. And the map is constantly growing, but it follows trends like a city with districts. From the map you can zoom in to see what's going on in different districts. For example, a viral video would be bright white and flickering with all new views and comments. And you could see discussion rippling out into the subsequent pockets of interaction surrounding it. Or if you were out of the loop after a new news story broke, you could playback in sped up time the map, and see how it unfolded. Seasoned users can almost read the flickers and explosions of a screen and be able to interpret what's going on, just by judging the patterns and movements of the districts. This means there's nothing private about it. You can access almost all information, you can communicate with anyone, you cannot however make a website like facebook, where only users you select can see your content. It's a massive open universe.

Part of its controversy was that when it was made public in North America, it wasn’t something people could opt out of. In order for it to work it surrounded everything and became integral to all life. This really upset some people and would upset people in my own timeline, but the mentally of the people here was different. Human perspective was shifted more than ever before in history. Privacy, almost everything, was secondary to technological growth.

By this time there was a brand of 1980s Amish-y people emerging. We now collectively refer to them as Gaughanites, named after a minister from Indiana called Timothy Gaughan. This is a bit flawed though, because they come from lots of different ideologies and don’t all get along. Sikhs for instance are often Gaughanites for whatever reason. Anyway, after the new internet came flooding into peoples lives, Gaughanites flipped out.

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

#7. The Reason

#8. The Press

#9. The Law

#10. The Acclimatization

#11. The Filibuster

#12. The West (Part 1)

Part 2.

From France we went to West Germany. I was born the year after the Cold War ended. The ridiculousness of the Berlin wall seemed like a parody. Like a children's game: Here's the invisible line in the ground. There are two teams, the white team and the red team. The white team's job is to run across the line without being caught by the red team.

That was the basic idea. There was a more complicated points system. On one side, you were guaranteed a certain small number of points regardless of how well you played, but on the other side you might be able to earn more points or less points depending on how well you play. However, if you got across the line, you would lose all the points you had up until that time and would have to start over.

At the border there were smugglers in the bathrooms. West German men would walk in wearing three pairs of "blue" jeans, and walk out wearing one. East German youths would overpay for Levis and other uncultured icons of capitalist fashion. If it was plain enough for me to see, I'm sure it was an open secret. The guards were either bribed or simply inept.

The knowledge had become widespread that in my timeline the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. There was a tension in the West as we awaited to see the policy changes enacted by the Soviet Union in response. If you were told you were going to lose a game 38 years into a 44 year long game, how would you respond?

You could stick your heels in and commit to your strategy but intensify; you could accept your inevitable defeat and change sides (worked for Italy in both World Wars); or you could go for a last ditch effort. If you knew there were only six years left in the game, you didn't have to worry about saving energy. You go for the hail mary and try to make a come back.

I'm pretty sure the year 1985 was just a coincidence, but it was the year Gorbachev became President. The Soviet Union had played pretty much the same game for the last 20 years and it had sent them on a route to devastation. The Soviet Union's economy was failing, the USSR was going to collapse, and Gorbachev realized the need to implement change. Gorbachev knew. He saw the direction the previous years were sending the USSR, he saw that it was unsustainable. He was trying to put it on a course back to stability.

In my timeline Gorbachev was seen as adopting a collapsing empire and softening the fall. In this timeline Gorbachev was seen as singlehandedly causing their collapse. It was abundantly clear to the officials of the Soviet Union that they had survived this long on the policies of a militant, old school communist party. Now, here was this reactionist making noise like he was going to implement economic leniency; give more freedoms to the people; and was acting all buddy-buddy to Reagan. And they learn that in only six years, they would be defeated. Reforms? Not on their watch. Gorbachev was ousted and a fanatic named Kryuchkov assumed office. The USSR became more hardline and aggressive than ever before.

Continued in The Tech

So I missed that about a week ago was the three year anniversary of the story, the last chapter being posted three years ago this November. Although I don't see it happening, I hope to see the story come back again someday.

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

#7. The Reason

#8. The Press

#9. The Law

#10. The Acclimatization

#11. The Filibuster

Part 1.

The battery on my laptop, or some sort of connection, finally gave. Before now, the computer needed to be plugged in to turn on and couldn't hold any sort of charge, by now it sporadically powered off even when plugged in. It came to the point where the software could no longer be vivisected, so that week I sold its carcass to IBM for them to biopsy. Like that, I found myself owning nothing from the future, possessing no information that wasn't already being distributed, and having nothing but an all-too-common sense of self-importance and individuality that plagues every young adult in the western world.

I smoked cigarettes now, but I still found the smoking on the plane obnoxious and the distinction between the smoking section and the non-smoking section intellectually dishonest. The plasticity of the airplane food was comical and repugnant. Cracks about airplane food were stale and exaggerated 2014, but now, in their heyday, there was something relatable about them. I wasn't one for organic, gluten-free, free-range, products but the food, especially the cheese, seemed to have an especially processed, artificial way about it. Mel was already sick of hearing these observations. "Hey Mel, did you know in the future a corporation has created self-driving cars with cameras mounted on them that have driven down and taken pictures of every street in the western world, and much of East-Asia?"

I'd been to England before, but it was much more fascinating seeing it, well London anyway, under these conditions. Yes, it was a different time, Thatcher was meeting the newly-instated Gorbechev, the Miners were striking, the IRA were taking out prison officials, and UK82 punk bands were burdening society with their presence. My historical and political perspective was happily consuming information and I was eager to tourist around consuming the events I'd only read about. What caught me off guard that it still had a unique and sharp sense of distinct culture. Of course it did in the future too, but globalization dulled it. In the future the English watched more American media, they cooked and ate more European foods, they drove more imported cars, they were begrudgingly members of the European Union, and they responded to my accent with a very different attitude. Embracing external influence only recently started to take effect. This time I actually felt like I was visiting a distinct different country. The further away from London I got, the more true this was. If London was a different country, Liverpool was a different planet.

From England we went to France because Mel wanted to fulfill some innate desire of the female Homo-Sapien to be romanced in Paris. Somehow, that fulfillment translated into getting hilariously drunk on cheap wine and hooking up with some Dutch guy in a public park. Hey, everyone needs a transition person with a pathetic excuse for a goatee. Despite the goatee, Mr. Dutch who I can't remember the name of was an alright guy. I gave them some space, and went about fulfilling the innate desire of the male Anglo-Saxon Homo-Sapien to wander about sulking and sneering contemptuously at everything French. Everyone has their baser-instincts.

Continued in The West (Part 2)

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

#7. The Reason

#8. The Press

#9. The Law

#10. The Acclimatization

All together

I've heard there are goggles you can wear that invert your vision. Up is down. Right is left. If you wear them, at first it's completely disorienting. You can hardly function. But if you muscle through it, within a day or so your body completely adjusts and you become reoriented. You can function competently in a backwards world. The world was still adjusting to me. But the continued transcribing of the articles was no longer in the headlines. And without my distinctive fashion sense and after losing my beard, I could slip by unnoticed in public. There were good consequences and bad consequences to my arrival, but overall I think there was more optimism among the world. Two months passed since the jump. I had adjusted. I had reoriented myself. And my current crisis had little to do the year. I was just young and lost and angry and not sure what to do with myself.

I don't really remember much about the month before. I sobered up, mostly. Mel left her shithead fiance and was having her own life-crisis, so her and I reconnected and became pals. The city made me restless; it was all too recognizable. But at the same time foreign. It was the uncanny valley of the time-traveler. That was my theory anyway. Like anyone my age, I considered my options.

Drugs. ☑

Bimbos. ☑

Some kind of stable fulfillment. ☐

Good, well at least I had ambitions.

To clear my head before revisiting these ambitions, I suggested to Mel that we go traveling. In the past (or whatever), I went traveling when I got restless. It tended to mellow me out and Mel briefly mentioned that she needed to get away. We weren't romantically involved or anything, and she was four years older than me, but why not. There are pros and cons to traveling alone and with someone, and I tend to prefer traveling alone. An ex-girlfriend of mine would certainly have something to say about the cons of traveling with someone. But I was alone enough as it was and I wanted Mel to come with me. She said it was a great idea.

A fan of both travel and history, I thought this was exactly what I needed. Mel vetoed my first suggestion. I already wanted to travel to South Africa, and the political climate right about now would have been fascinating to witness first hand. Mel was not on board and I made a mental note of the first concession that accompanied traveling with someone. She had never been to Europe and was eager to go. I was more than happy to abide. I wanted to see East and West Germany. I wanted to see more of the world I found myself in. And I'd also never been to Rome.

I was still doing good for money, despite last month of indulgence making a dent. However, Mel was restricted and I offered to cover her. She refused, but agreed to let me ensure she wasn't going to let money stress her out.

Mel dragged me along to a travel agency. I get that there wasn't any internet to buy plane tickets directly, but I didn't understand how these things weren't still being disintermediated. Every fucking transaction needed a minimum of four parties involved. We arranged to arrive in London a week later, and to return from Athens a month later.

In the week before the flight, my PR expert, Sarah, issued a public statement addressing my behaviour. It had been covered a little in the tabloids, so she spun it that I was just disoriented because of my circumstances, and I was now going on a retreat to an undisclosed location to clean up and find myself or something. True enough.

This was going to be good for me, but I knew it was just a way for me to bide some time before I needed to make some sort of decision about what to do with myself.

Continued in The West (Part 1)

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

#7. The Reason

#8. The Press

#9. The Law

I made myself obsolete. I could have told you that a tsunami hit Thailand around when I was in grade seven, which when I was around twelve, so roughly nine years before the jump, so roughly 2005. The device I handed over could tell you that on 00:58:53 UTC Sunday, 26 December 2004, there was a 9.1-9.3 undersea megathrust earthquake with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia resulting in 230,210 - 280,000 deaths in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and as far away as Somalia. There was no competing. Sure, predictions about politics, wars, the economy and inventions were interesting, but the world was set on a different course. Human history would change. But geology wasn't going to change. With my arrival, humans knew the next thirty years of weather. They knew where the floods and tsunamis would hit, where and how strong the earthquakes were, and how long the droughts and heatwaves would last. For the first time in history, humans didn't fear the Earth. There was panic, yes, Bangladesh and Haiti, and Iran, among others, faced a shortlived hysteria regarding their respective impending 1991 Cyclone, 2010 Earthquake, and 1990 Earthquake. But among all that, there was a comfort in knowing and beginning to prepare.

I did my job, and now had little else to offer. The game I previously discussed was about testing how much I knew. That wasn't relevant anymore. Now it was just about coming to live in this world I had created. What evolved into a macroscopic story about the world's adaption to my unexpected arrival, reduced back to the microscopic story of just me, and my new life.

I started smoking. Everyone did it. And, apart from Molly, who was going to parent me? She was so sweet, and she called me every week just to check up on me. We both needed that, but it didn't fill my quota for sincere human interaction. I needed to connect with someone, but I was reluctant to adapt to the era. I wanted to dress, speak, joke, and consume media that fit what I thought was 'cool'. I knew full well that those weird giant translucent glasses were all the rage, but they just looked corny to me. I caved into their fashion out of a desire to not stand out, but it continued to feel unnatural. It was settling in how alone I was, and how much I wanted friends, a girlfriend, or family to talk this over with. I was happy with my own company, but not only with my own company. How the fuck was I supposed to meet people?

I had more money than sense and I didn't know what to do with myself. I was a quasi-celebrity, quasi-freak of nature, and quasi-public enemy. I reviewed my options: I could go back to school. I could get a job. I could live comfortably off my electronics sales. I could continue to make public appearances. I could write an autobiography. I could become a recluse. I could kill myself. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be left alone or whether I wanted to exploit my publicity for the purposes any 21 year old would.

Turns out the latter. Only until the novelty wore off. To keep my impending loneliness locked away and keep my sanity, I went on a bender. As it happens, what I'd seen in movies about bimbos was accurate. Being somewhat recognizable, having a surplus of unearned wealth, a superiority complex, and living in a hotel made making new friends astonishingly easy. It's like different rules apply to you. And if you can overlook the big dumb hair and the shoulderpads and the obnoxious colours, the people who never seem to have work in the morning will gravitate towards you. Despite my resentment to what I knew was really going on, I embraced the distractions and the drugs and was going out every night. I spent about a month ruining myself, and disappointing Molly, Don, and Nancy Reagan.

Continued in The Filibuster

(Please see Chapter One here: http://www.reddit.com/r/1985sweet1985/comments/210luy/still_alive_in_85_prologue_chapter_one/)

A pair of Nike Swooshes tracked my screams to beneath the 1985 Buck Lesabre. A face appeared, upside down: a large pile of frizzy black hair and a weird mustache caused me to flash back to an old rerun of Welcome Back Kotter.

"Hey man...you okay?" asked Kotter.

It was a question I hadn't previously considered. I'd made the leap from death to screaming without taking any mental detours. I moved my arms, my legs, wiggled my toes...all there. I maneuvered my arm under the Lesabre to feel my face. All of the parts were present and accounted for.

"I think I'm okay," I whispered from under the car. "Help somebody else."

Kotter peered at me, still upside down, perplexed. "Help WHO else?"

"You know...somebody else. Anybody else. I think I'm okay to move."

I started to shimmy out from under the car, as Kotter took a step back. I stood slowly, tenderly, then finally forced myself to look back at the smouldering ruins of the VA Hospital...my former workplace, and the building I'd been sitting in just moments ago, before it exploded.

There were no flames. No smoke. No smouldering ruins at all. People seemed to be walking in and out at a leisurely pace. If anything, the hospital seemed to be in better shape than it had been when I'd arrived for work that morning.

There was only one problem:

The wing of the hospital that contained my office...the wing that had existed for more than 12 years...was gone.

Rather than laying in a pile of rubble, the wing had simply been replaced by a freshly-paved parking lot.

A parking lot containing a 1985 Buick Lesabre.

"Hey man, you alright? Were you fixing your car or something? You sounded like you were hurt."

Kotter was back my side. "What happened to the building?" I asked, already knowing the answer. "Was it a bomb? A gas leak? Did you see it explode?"

"Explode? Man, I don't know what you're talking about..."

"Has anyone called 911?" I asked Kotter.

"About what?"

Alright, this guy was clearly an idiot. I reached for my blackberry, but it was lost in the blast. I pulled my iPhone from pocket, but couldn't get a signal.

"Can I borrow your phone?"

"My phone? I...uh...I don't live here."

"What?"

"I don't live here."

"I didn't ask if you...forget it."

I ran up to another woman casually walking by. "Ma'am, I need to call 911. Can I borrow your phone?"

But the woman gave me the same perplexed look as Kotter had. Even stranger, she gave me the same response. "I...uh...I don't live here."

Jesus Christ. I ran across the street, pounding on the first door I came to. An elderly woman answered, and I explained that there had been an explosion at the hospital. "I need to call 911. Can I use your phone?"

"Of course!" She let me in, and pointed to an old phone on the kitchen wall. I quickly dialed 911 and again explained how I'd just been sitting at my desk when there had been some sort of explosion and I'd woken up in the parking lot, with my entire wing of the hospital gone.

After I got off the phone, I realized I needed to check in and tell people I was alive. I was likely all that was remaining of my communications department, as our entire wing was gone. I was already going into public relations mode. I needed to contact leadership, assuming they were still alive. Assess the damage and casualties. Assemble staging grounds for the media. Notify our elected officials.

I pulled up my boss's number on my iphone contacts, but still had no signal. "Can I use your phone again?" The old woman said of course, so I dialed and waited. No answer. Of course...my boss was probably dead.

I didn't have the hospital's main number in my phone, and I had no signal for google, so I asked the woman if I could use her computer to look up a number.

"A computer? Like in the movies?"

"...what?" What the hell was the matter with people today? "I just need to get on the internet to get a phone number. It's an emergency. I'll be very quick, and then I'll get out of your hair."

"What's the internet?"

I want you to know that I'm not proud of what I did next. But you have to understand...I'd just survived an explosion. My office was gone. My boss, my co-workers, my staff...all dead. And everywhere I turned for help, people acted like they didn't speak English. I was overwhelmed, and stressed, and freaking out a little, and I blew up.

"Are you KIDDING me? My GRANDMOTHER is on Facebook. How have you never heard of the internet? It's 2014!"

"No, dear...it's 1985."

"I have to pee" was the last thing I thought before everybody died. I can't tell you where their corpses went, but mine went into the air.

I fell, at first, but then I rose, and then I swayed gently, side to side, and soon I was tumbling in somersault fashion, my corpse flying through the sky like it hadn't a care in the world.

It's strange, the things that happen when you die. You don't see your entire life flash before your eyes, but you do remember all of the times that you tumbled. Elementary gymnastics, for example, or playing as a kid in your backyard. In my case specifically, I remembered the time that I had accidentally backflipped off a playground swing when I tried to show off for a girl in fifth grade and messed up, breaking my arm.

That time, I tumbled through the sky before my 10-year-old body landed in the dirt behind the swingset and cried.

This time, I tumbled through the sky before my 30-year-old corpse landed under a 1985 Buck Lesabre.

My corpse began to scream.

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

#7. The Reason

#8. The Press

The hilarity of NATO and the Warsaw Pact debating over "The Hobbit Laws" was lost on no one.

They were actually called the Regulations Implementing the United Nations Resolutions on the Distribution of Time-Sensitive Information. It also had a sub-section regarding the rights and treatment of time refugees. Yours truly. They were established without my involvement, which makes sense I suppose. The law is another area in which I'm sorely ignorant, so most of the technicalities of the Hobbit Laws went over my head. I'll do my best to summarize here but for more detail the full amendment is attached in Appendix I. The name makes them sound trivial, but the Hobbit Laws were bigger than their name.

Let's first define "Information". What did I have? What was considered valuable? What was considered marketable? I had two movies, a ton of music, lots of informative and current ebooks and digital textbooks, lots of code, extremely sophisticated programming, mathematics, and electronics design software, and an extremely powerful computation machine. For now, it was valuable to keep my computer in perfect working order for study and use on the software side. Most of the laws written regarding the distribution of what was on my computer was purely hypothetical. People imagined that the music on my computer could be distributed at one point, but no one was sure how to do it yet. There would come a time that opening it up and dissecting its hardware at the risk of permanently damaging the machine would become the next step. The same was true for my iPhone, and by now my calculator had been dismantled a long time. These were, for the most part, tangible goods. People wanted their own iPhones. Governments wanted their own computing machines. What was less tangible, and more confusing was the issue of how to record the information on the wikipedia pages, and how it should be distributed. All corporations wanted to buy the information I could distribute, and whoever bought it wanted to keep it to themselves to reproduce. However, if a company had that advantage, the competing companies would ensure it was treated as anti-competitive practices, and push for public distribution of the information. The same was said for governments. If NATO could access and reverse engineer advanced circuitry, the Warsaw Pact would push that it was a right for all people to have equal access to future technology for their own growth and development. But, if the Warsaw Pact outbought NATO, there is no way they would want to uphold that argument, but they needed to make it prematurely just in case. This resulted in a stalemate, and what was originally a bidding war transformed into a game of chicken.

I was mercifully granted the right to keep my own equipment, and assured it would not be confiscated from me. I would have to give something back to history eventually, but for now it remained legally mine. If only to prevent it from getting into more threatening hands.

Anything to do with the arts was put into the public domain. Music, books, movies. In theory, these could be freely distributed, but only after they were acquired from my computer. Surely there had to be a better way than taking pictures of my monitor and recording sound off my crackly little speakers. This was the first, quick and easy choice, and it was mostly just a symbolic move by governments to get the ball rolling. These things could be reproducible, and were relatively low risk. As for my hardware, that was another matter.

There was a great deal of optimism and cynicism regarding this. Maybe the global community would get their best and brightest together and collaborate to collectively launch humanity 30 years into the future through research. Maybe it would just be another platform for an additional technological arms race. As it turns out, my cynicism was more unfounded than not. To the best of my understanding, the law regarding my hardware, which is still floating around from lab to lab in pieces as I write this, is that it can be bought, and the hardware is free to be used by whoever buys it, but that any research or findings they do, are to be made public to add to the growing pool of knowledge gathered from it. Different companies and different governments bought different components, and gradually the gaps in knowledge regarding its operation were being filled. Awkward looking overambitious imitations of laptops and iPhones started to be produced, but research in the filed continued.

The biggest battles were fought over the distribution of raw, uncensored information. The debates raged, but people are people. People want to feel appreciated, they want to have sex, and they want to know. I think that’s all there was to it. Anything else be damned, they just want to know. There was opposition. Lots of it. There might have even been more opposition to making the information public than there was support for it, but just like you can’t uninvent things, you can’t say “I know something but I’m not going to tell you”. Every girlfriend I’ve had can do that, but actual humans as a species can’t. It took a week before I was ordered to make the information public. That’s right. I was instructed to somehow, just make the Wikipedia articles on my phone public. I spent a few days trying to hack into the app on my computer so at least it would be easier to publicize. During that time I received two death threats in the event that I followed through. I couldn’t get into the source code. Instead I bought the best high speed video camera money could buy. And boxes of film. I focused it on my phone screen, and spent four days sitting in the hotel, watching TV, eating room service, and quickly scrolling through articles on scientific discoveries. My lawyer suggested we hire someone. I rejected. This was fantastic. I was being paid to sit around skimming wikipedia articles, and I was more than happy to take a couple lazy days. The camera burnt out and I bought one that wasn’t as highspeed but could shoot longer. At first I was cautious. By the end of the first day I was indiscriminately jumping from article to article. I turned over the first batch of film and that began the monumental human effort to transcribe wikipedia.

It wasn’t just wikipedia though. All my music. All of the settings and screens. All my emails. My contacts. My call history. All my text message conversations were transcribed. They were to serve as examples of communication in the future. Some were embarrassing, yes, but I was never actually embarrassed. It was surprising. I would narrate and they were just talking points. “Yeah, in the future we text message, or just for short ‘text’ a lot. It’s convenient, and yeah, people flirt a lot with it. It’s called ‘sexting’.” I filmed it all. I held up the process originally. I just wanted to keep my phone, and didn’t want anyone to touch it. For some reason I had an attachment to it. Like I was expecting, waiting to get a text message. From anyone. My phone was magical to them, but without the internet and without anyone to talk to, it began to sadden me. It lost value to me. In exchange for citizenship and good favour, I turned it over to the government. The transcription process increased dramatically. For a short while, the daily published articles, now with censored names, consumed the attention of the entire world.

I was quickly shedding responsibility. And control. As far as I was concerned, it was up to the world now. And I just needed something to do with myself.

Continued in The Acclimatization

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

# 7. The Reason

Having wikipedia on my phone didn't help with my PR. Most of the public found it unnerving. Seen on TV, it would appear as if I looked down vapidly into a black rectangular crystal ball and looked back up with the relevant information, magically. It was creepy. People here had a certain ease with not knowing something or with agreeing to disagree that I found uncomfortable. In my own time, this had all but disappeared. We were so used to having information immediately at our disposal. We weren't required to try to puzzle out the answer or search through our memories. It was just a question of who would take out their phone first.

"Where was FDR from?" "I sort of think New York." "Hmm, I could have sworn I heard Massachusetts somewhere, are you sure?" "Yeah, I think so." "I'm not sure I agree." "Oh well." And sometimes they would even start tracing out what information they did agree upon. "Well I know he went to school in such and such, which would place him in such and such..." And on it went.

This did not happen where I was from. Where I was from, we knew within moments of looking at a device connected to the giant invisible collaborative knowledge network of humanity. I loved this, but I began to see that what it did was inhibit puzzle solving skills. People wouldn't find answers using logical deductions of other information. They would just get the information. This is incredibly valuable, and did a lot to stop the spreading of misinformation, even with its drawbacks. I miss it enormously. This conditioning gave me a certain unease with ignorance that the 1985 public would note.

My CNN interview on Evans and Novak was first. It was mostly about politics and technology. I was just a talking head. WNBC with Donahue was second. That was mostly about my life, society, and ethics. The interview was filmed live in a recording studio. Both were fine, although I felt more like a dancing monkey on CNN. Before I continue, I'm going to inform you that the next chapter is called The Law. I'm telling you that now because it's important that you read this chapter understanding its context and implications. There will always be doubters, but after these interviews the overwhelming consensus among the public was that I was legitimate.

Below is my commentary and summary of my first two media interviews. I'm paraphrasing at best, so bear with me. The exact transcripts can be found in sections 3 and 4 of the appendices.

Continued in Evans and Norak

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

#6. The Money

In a neurotic tidying binge about a month before the jump, I decluttered my phone and removed most apps. One of these apps was the only app I ever paid for, and it was pretty expensive. For nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, you could download an app called Wiki Offline 2. For this small price, you had access to most of, if not all, of wikipedia's articles whether you were connected to the internet or not. At least once a day since the jump I lamented this poor app's loss. I rationalized it to myself by convincing myself it was for the best anyway, and that such information could only be bad news. Despite convincing myself of this, when it occurred to me in the middle of the night that I could restore my phone to a previous state. All I needed to do was use one of the restore points on my itunes, I couldn't resist. I did not care one bit about the apps I had downloaded since then. Find iphone, no thanks. Three different QR code scanners? I got them in a distracted attempt to program a logger of when different codes were scanned, no thanks. Sensoriwiki, I didn't even know what that was or when I got it, but it seemed to want an internet connection anyway, so no thanks. Time to roll back. And carefully, and desperately, I managed to restore the saved apps from my itunes. And thanks to the grace of apple, it mercifully didn't ask me to update or verify anything online. And that was it. And it was astonishingly simple. And that's how I reacquired wikipedia. And it was foolish that I hadn't thought of it before. And that's that.

Having wikipedia at my disposal felt like an unfair advantage. In the mental games I played with myself I never gave myself that opportunity. It would take away the fun and the challenge of the game. The point, after all, was seeing how much I could remember. But this wasn't one of my mental exercises. This was my life, and this is what I could do. Wikipedia Offline 2 was on my itunes, itunes was on my computer, and my computer was with me. QED Wikipedia Offline 2 was with me. Thank God my computer came through the jump with me. Speaking of which, let me tell you something else I've been thinking about. There have been lots of speculations about the reason for my jump since I arrived here. In particular there has been a lot of religious speculation, both positive and negative. But here are my thoughts. There are three kinds of time traveler stories of which I'm aware. Allow me to summarize in non-gender neutral language. 1) Man creates time machine. 2) Man time-travels spontaneously, but finds himself naked. 3) Man time-travels spontaneously, but with possessions on his person.

The first makes for a great story and often lends itself to a nice and tidy conclusion, but in the end, is nonsense. I haven't killed my grandfather since the jump, but I've disregarded paradoxes and I haven't started to disappear or change or anything. I'm pretty sure my father and my mother aren't going to meet anymore, yet I'm still here. This leads me to believe that there are forks in the timeline, rather than a single timeline that can be altered. Where paradoxes come into play though, is with the man-made time machine. Controlling it and bouncing back and forth not only between time, but between different timelines is just too much. Plus, come on, people don't have that sort of control.

I think the second is usually the result divine intervention or some sort of supernatural occurrence. This version makes for a good story. It's a test of the person's wits alone, and is more spiritual in nature than the others. You, as a naked individual, have been selected by some sort of conscious power in the universe. It has actively stripped you of your possessions and cast you off onto a mission. If it was just a freak natural phenomenon resulting in, not a ripple, but a full on tear in the fabric of space-time, it wouldn't be careful enough to disrobe you. Although I wouldn't take it away from anyone, I'm not a spiritual guy. And because I didn't come naked or even only with clothes, I don't think this was the result of anything supernatural.

The third is the version I'm lucky enough to have gone through. It doesn't make for as good of a story, and it's ending is not tidy, but honestly, it's the only one possible. People will never harness and tame time. And there are no conscious supernatural forces meddling with it. When I jumped, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was populating a certain amount of space that made a mistake. Space-time forgot where that space was in time, and momentarily overadjusted. The laws of physics were snapped, not bent, and I saw it happen. And given all time, and given all space, it was bound to happen in one place or another. I wasn't launched 29 years into the past; everything in my vicinity was launched 29 years into the past. This means snow, leaves, sticks, air-molecules, and yes, my bag and all its goodies. I told the press where I jumped, and there has been a continual hippy camp there all week getting off on the vibes. One thing they found was a branch that was recently alive and out of place. It was too big to be from anything in the surrounding area. Some tree scientist or whatever has compared the species to a nearby sapling and concluded that its the same. They haven't done the DNA tests yet, but it's pretty much agreed upon that it's from the tree after it became full-grown. I think this is important to keep in mind while: I wasn't special. I wasn't specifically plucked from the universe anymore than that tree's branch was. This was just a slip-up in the laws of physics, and had I walked faster that day, it might have been me ripped apart, not the tree. I'm not an astrophysicist, true. But given that I'm the only recorded human to travel through time, I think I have at least some authority on the matter. And that's what I think happened.

Continued in The Press

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

#5. The Family

Don's has become unlivable and I'm not comfortable burdening him or Molly anymore. I need to find an alternative living arrangement. The university has been handling the attention they've gotten well. And the professors who played with my laptop have displayed no restraint speculating on the processing power of my computer. Nor its implications. No one's quite sure what to do with me, and no one's quite sure who's pocket my living expenses should be coming out of. It's time for me to grow up and realize that despite being a media sensation and (maybe) a historical figure, I'm going to need to take care of myself. I call Mel and she hesitantly agrees to let me crash with her and her shithead fiance for one night. Maybe two. I have spent the last few days not making any public appearances or statements. Instead, I have been letting those I have interacted with this past week do the talking for me. Everyone I've spoken with this week has been dug up and interviewed. The professors? Interviewed. That kid I spoke to when trying to find Don's office? Interviewed. The doctor who had no love for being connected to this absurd story? Interviewed (and subsequently dismissed by the University for her remarks). Random citizens lying through their teeth about meeting me? Also being interviewed. And, well, shit. You know who else is being interviewed right now on the television? You know who? Those economics kids I first saw in the library trying to score some coffee money from. And you know what they're saying? This is great news. They're saying that I said that communism fell in 1989. I did say that, didn't I? Fuck, Charlie, have a little restraint.

People would talk shit about the future. They would say that our social and communication skills were deteriorating because we were all stuck to our devices. I was one of the last people I know who got a facebook account. I was just too punk rock to participate in such a conformist, shallow, self-obsessed media. Plus, I had all sorts of opinions about corporations and internet privacy to boot. I must have been insufferable to talk to. Truth be told, I was just scared to because it would mean I'd have to come to terms with the numerical data that showed a trend: I had no friends. Despite my continual objections, I eventually succumbed and got an account. Here's the point: There was exactly one feature in facebook which I found terrific. And it was exclusive to that form of communication. Whether I was speaking with someone in-person, on the phone, via text message, via email, via instant messenger, you name it - once I said a thing, there was no taking it back. And I tell you right now, I say things I really wish I could take back. Daily. Sometimes innocent, or stupid, or incorrect. Sometimes malicious and spontaneously combative. Sometimes "mercurial, capricious, unpredictable, and dangerous". That was from some random book that my father used to quote. It always stuck with him, and so it always stuck with me. It was one of the things I said to him when we met this year -- just to see his reaction.

Anyway, with all those mediums, once I said a thing, the die was cast and I muscled through the fall-out. With facebook, it was fantastic. You could just go back and delete things you commented. You could even edit them. Enough of the time you are even given a ten, fifteen minute grace-period in which no one even reads the thing. It was great. "Nah, maybe I won't be a condescending sarcastic dick about this article some dude from my highschool linked that is utterly unimportant." Yeah, it was great. Unfortunately, I didn't tell these people that communism was going to fall in four years over facebook. Unfortunately, I didn't know any web design and couldn't invent facebook myself. The Soviets knew their empire was crumbling, I'm sure. But what they didn't need was some mouthy kid that the press was claiming to be from the future definitively prophesying about it.

I didn't take that frustrating vow that seems to plague stories about time travel. There was no Doc telling me that it was against the time travel laws to alter the future. There were no laws to this shit. Alter away. I've already sent off a chain reaction, I can't just pretend to not exist. What I can do is try to make history better. That's all I want to do. Maybe I should lie. If someone told you that you were destined to live a happy life, would just believing that set you on the right track to it? Is it about state of mind? Should I just lie about the future, telling them how great certain things work out if they try them? Or is it human nature to try to oppose the predictions of others and carve your own path? Maybe reverse-psychology was the way to go. Enough, Charlie. Don't think like a philosopher. Think like a... Pragmatist? Utilitarian? It doesn't matter, I just realized I can't lie anyway. ll I have going for me is my credibility. If I start predicting stuff that doesn't go right, I'm done. And I've already done that. If communism survives a year past 1989, there's going to be hell to pay. They might think I'm lying, sure, but worse, they'll think I helped the existence of 'the evil empire'. Alright, sod this. I don't know any of this. Who do I value the opinion of? Who's smarter than me? I should see if I could meet Richard Feynman. And that chess guy. I have to remember to ask someone about that later. That'd be cool. Also, I'd give him a heads up about the whole cancer thing. What was I thinking about before this fucking newsreport came on? Oh right, Mel's place.

Around half-past midnight that night most of the reporters had retired. I said goodbye to Don and Molly and thanked them extensively. I slipped out Don's house over the backyard fence. I chose to walk for about hour before finding a payphone and calling a cab to take me the rest of the way to Mel's. Molly gave me cab fare and it was the final thing I could bring myself to accept from them. Their only son had dropped out of college and subsequently was killed by friendly fire in Vietnam twelve years earlier. He and I looked nothing alike judging by the photographs, but Molly had a maternal streak to her and leaving them while wearing his clothes was cruel and absentminded of me. Not uncharacteristic though, I'm afraid.

I was at Mel's now. Time was of the essence and I took some control of my life. I didn't trust her shithead roommate Erica (as it turns out unfairly), so I was in a rush to get out. There was also only so much I could listen to them debate the prospect of getting a cat and discuss the newly popular Bechdel test. I sold my HP-50g graphing calculator to be reverse engineered by Hewiett-Packard themselves. I was paid $300,000 for it. For another $50,000 I let them have the manual. They spent and entire day filling camera film. They took picture after picture right off my monitor of the giant .pdf manual. Later they gave up trying to reverse engineer it and sold it at a significant profit to IBM. Teaches me for taking the first offer. IBM launched a technological revolution after a year of silent work behind closed doors. Apple never stood a chance this time.

I moved on from Mel and her shithead roommate's apartment into an expensive hotel downtown. I'm not one for lavishness, but I still didn't have a bank account because I still didn't have an identity. I was here because I needed somewhere secure enough to keep my money. I spent the next few days continuing to get my life in order. I hired a PR person and a lawyer. Shortly thereafter I agreed to interviews for undisclosed amounts on CNN and Phil Donnahue. I can't tell you how much I was worth because of the non-disclosure agreements, but money was no longer an issue. Convenient, I know. I now needed to get ahead of the political crisis that was snowballing in my wake, and get some good PR.

Continued in The Reason

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

#4. The Public

The press got wind that I was staying at Don’s so outside his home was a hellzone. Don didn’t care, but I felt awful for Molly. Her poor garden. I decided to lay low for a couple of days, to wait to see if the government would make a move. No governments officially commented on my presence. My own government, the Canadian government, would actually be one of the last to involve themselves. They eventually granted me citizenship and fiercely protected me from extradition, which was cool. A reminder of the insignificance of Canadian history, even to itself, is that when I landed I had no idea who was running the country. Couldn’t have told you who was the Prime Minister or even what party they belonged to. I could tell you Reagan was in office, as with Thatcher. I knew Gorbachev would be taking up the harnesses sometime this year, and that Deng Xiaoping was currently rocking the boat in China. But Canada? Could have been anyone.

I did a lot of writing on my computer, thinking it valuable to document this extensively. Mostly I just wrote about the future. I wrote about what things were like in the future and were going to be like in the future. These writings are attached in appendices 2 and 5 at the end of this account. The rate at which I could type astonished Don. I type on a dvorak keyboard, but all the keys are still laid out in QWERTY format, which means I have to type completely by touch. It also means people have a lot of difficulty trying to use my computer without me first changing the language settings. This would be frequently noted whenever my computer was threatened to be confiscated. They could type if I changed the language settings, but good luck to them navigating windows 8 to the control panel to the language settings. All without being able to type in ‘language’ in the search bar. And just to throw them off and keep them on their toes, I could dual boot my computer in Ubuntu, and they’d have to completely readjust. These simple nerdy things I did would help me keep my autonomy.

Because I had shown Don and then Strangways my ID, they knew my first, middle, and last name. And because I was trying to be official and historic in the press conference, I called myself by my full name. I wasn’t even thinking. So in the papers and in the broadcasts, I was again addressed as such. Normally, this wouldn’t connect me to any particular person given my three common Anglo-Saxon names. But there was a man named Peter from Manchester, England who was six years older than me. He was living in the North West Territories of Canada, which shared a border with the province I was in. There was also a man named Michael living back in Manchester who worked for the Manchester Evening News. Michael was 32 years older than me. In my family there have been generations of men with the exact same middle name and the exact same last name. These men were my father and grandfather, and because of my name, they both knew it. It didn’t help that Michael worked in the news, and soon Michael and Peter received public attention. I don’t think Peter would ever have come forward and put any sort of spotlight on himself. Not if it wasn’t for his friends and colleagues who reported they knew the time-traveler's suspected father. My mother was still a mystery that I was hesitant to involve, but that didn’t stop tabloids from picking up the stories of women claiming to be my mother.

Peter upped and moved to avoid any publicity, but was still dug out by reporters. When they hounded him for comments he just denied having anything to do with me, and maintained that I was an insane person. He got a lot of heat for this at the time and especially later on. But in all fairness to my dad, his perspective was fair. No hard feelings. He was just a young man trying to mind his own business. He would be a great dad, and never shirked the responsibility of that, but this, this was just something else. There would be a court-ordered paternity test that neither of us wanted about a year later. And there would be some enlightening and intense conversations that followed. I liked him. I’m not sure how he felt about me. But our relationship remained that of polite acquaintances whose relationship arose from awkward, forced circumstances.

It’s an interesting thought to wonder if in this situation a parent might have a parental instinct kick in. Mothers especially might think themselves as having an innate maternal instinct. I don’t think so. In this situation, you might have affection or a dependence on your parents that you might think they would share with you. You have so many shared experiences and history with this person, and you know they’re there to take care of you. It’s hard not to resist that. But really remember -- these people are just strangers. They have no memory of you. They have no obligation to you. You are just some person with psychotic claims who disrupted their lives. An exception could be made for circumstances in which you were already born and then go back in time. By this point their parental instincts have kicked in, and you might register as a real person they have a connection to. They might even recognize your face a little. But they already have a version of you and their love cannot be split between their real child and an imposter. Once again, they owe you nothing, and their maternal and paternal instincts will not kick in to help you. No more than anyone else. If you ever find yourself in my circumstances -- leave your parents alone.

I couldn’t help Peter. He got roped into it and dealt with the situation accordingly. That just meant duck and covering at this point. I made a promise to myself that I’d leave my mum out of this. For the most part, I did just that. I was okay with leaving them behind. I didn’t need family here. I felt uncomfortable enough as it was having shared memories with people who didn’t have them back. Sadder than losing my dad to time, was that my mental picture of him was replaced by the face of just some guy called Peter. At least I can still remember what my mum looked like.

Continued in The Money.

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

#3. The First Day

I was one of those teenagers who would say things like "I was born in the wrong era." I listened to punk rock, with a particular love for early American hardcore. This gave me a self-righteous pedestal and a superiority complex. I could reflect about how my tastes were so much more sophisticated than the dull, watered down pop punk of my contemporaries. Being born 30 years earlier would have made me 18 in 1980. At the prime of American punk, I would have been at the prime of my angry youthful angst. I might have participated in the punk culture I romanticized, instead of bemoaning missing it with equally self-pitying losers on the internet. Now, given that opportunity, I would sooner give myself food poisoning than attend a Black Flag concert.

The next day Don and his adorable wife who I can't remember the name of made me a delicious breakfast, and shut me down coldly and succinctly when I tried to help clean up. Throughout breakfast Don made several mentions of how I must have been up all night thinking. I knew he must have been. The universe was going to be a different place, and he had a front row seat in it. He knew he was going to be in history books. He knew the significance of my being there. Not only for humanity. Not only for science. But he couldn't stop thinking about the significance of the world I left behind. He couldn't stop thinking about my family and friends. He wondered if I was mourning their loss, and whether they were existing without me, mourning mine. He wanted to know if I had vanished from that time all together, or if I had divided like a mitotic virus and was inhabiting both dimensions. (His words, not mine.) He wondered if there had ever been others. He wondered if the world could accept me. He wondered if my presence would incur the rage of the scientific community and radical religious groups alike. He wondered if I could carry the burden of 30 years. Because he was up all night wondering these things, he assumed that I was doing the same. I wondered literally none of these things. I had spent the night before trying to sleep on a desk in a cold library. I was exhausted, and given the comforts of an old couple's home, I slept deeply. His wife's name was Molly. They were eventually divorced. Don's a good guy and I owe him a lot, but I'll admit to you that I thought that was a bad move. He's currently married to a woman named Joanne. For better or for worse, Joanne's the type of woman who would have no qualms with me helping clean up. And I mean that.

Today's press conference was at noon. I was anxious. Don was excited. At eight we drove to the university in his eighty-eight so I could meet the college president at nine. It was in this ride that Don gave me more unsolicited advice than anyone I have ever interacted with. A man I once met while traveling called Richard told me that the good thing about advice was that you didn't have to take it. Don was a smart guy, but Richard was smarter. Once we got to the president's office Don was excused and I entered the same routine as before: "Hey, look at all this stuff! Guess what! I'm from the future!" By that point it was still fun blowing peoples' minds. Within the week, it would get tiresome. Still, the president was cool. A guy called David Strangway. He was a physicist so he took a real interest, and he was one of the most respectably skeptical people I ever confronted. Now, lots of people told me I was full of shit and shook me down for "the truth". Strangway took an intense interest, but had no enthusiasm for my story. He didn't think I was lying or crazy. But he also firmly informed me that it wasn't possible. He had no hesitation to look me in the eye and ask me if I was going to make a fool of him. He was the only man that made me doubt myself, not for my sake, but for theirs. I truly did not want to make a fool of him. Strangway never outright told me if he did or didn't believe me. But once we established that I wasn't going to make a fool out of him, he became the second in a series of people willing to put themselves on the line for me.

We would meet again in a couple hours for the press conference, but first he ordered I go to the university hospital and get looked at by a physician. I couldn't argue. He made a call and his assistant came to take me to the hospital. Before I left asked me if I would leave my computer for him to look at and I said no. I spent a lot of those first few weeks being escorted around. Sometimes by people I enjoyed the company of, like Strangway's much-to-smart-for-her-job-and-knows-it assistant. But often times not. She told me the physician hadn't been told who I was, and was just told that the president wanted me examined. I was relieved not to have to explain myself to another person. Fortunately I didn't have to explain myself to Mel, the aforementioned assistant, because she's a wonderful eavesdropper. I asked her if she would see Ferris Bueller's Day Off with me, just for shits. Faster than most might, she went from confusion to realization I was talking about something in the future. I told you she was sharp. I hope she remembered the name until next year. Dropping references to the future never got old. Later, it played out well for me because people would recollect the things I said to them for the news.

The doctor wasn't impressed at being told to examine someone by the president. I think she just assumed I was someone's kid or nephew or something and gave me a quick run down. Eyes, ears, mouth, heart, lungs, balls, 'does this hurt?', a clean bill of health, and out the door. In that order.

Mel and I headed back to the president's office where media was starting to gather. The doctor was instructed to tag along, which further unimpressed her. Mel took me and the doctor to a small room where Don, several of the profs I met the day before and Strangway were. They explained the situation to the doctor and I smiled innocently. She threatened to quit on the spot because of how outrageous they were being. I remember her name but I won't mention it because she always hated having been roped into this. Anyway, she didn't quit and she begrudgingly stuck around for the show.

The press conference started. Strangway spoke first.

"Yesterday, Friday, the young man to my left came to the university. He entered the engineering building and spoke to our head of electrical engineering. All our engineering and computer science faculty available gathered in a lecture hall, where he presented some of the materials in his procession. These professors, working on some of the most state of the art technology available, were rendered speechless by what they saw. He has with him, technology that we have never seen nor imagined before. Technology so powerful, that what can fit in his pocket would be the size of a truck with our technology, and would still be capable of less. He claims it is technology from 30 years in the future, and it is the professional opinion of all the professors present here, that he is correct."

Can you believe that this guy had an hour to write a speech that he knew would be recorded and read for all history? Now that's pressure.

Me and Mel debated earlier what the reaction from the reporters would be. As in, whether they would stay silent in confusion, or would immediately start launching questions in a frenzy, or would roar with laughter. It was worse, they sort of looked sad. They looked embarrassed for Strangway. Like they didn't have the heart to tell this guy that he was losing any credibility he ever had. I was breaking my promise to him. I couldn't let him be made a fool. Fortunately, as a child of youtube, I filmed the whole thing. I put my phone to the mic and played the video back. It was great, it was like two birds with one stone. I was showing off some technology, and while doing so, Strangway's explanation was replayed for them to reprocess. Admittedly it was less impressive than if I was using a wall sized surface pro, but the reporters leaned in and the cameras zoomed in on my little screen, and they saw the recording. Then I started my laptop and did the quick little show I had optimized from repeatedly showing people. Unlike with the profs of the previous day, the reporters weren't entirely sure what they were looking at. Partly because it wasn't as intimate as a demo as I had been able to perform before. And partly because Strangway had made it sound like I was about to show off a personal time-machine, not Microsoft Excel.

Still, word did spread. In retrospect it makes sense, but at the time it was highly unpredictable how it actually played out. There are a lot of questions one might ask a time-traveler, but given the opportunity to, they fell quite flat. Folks just don't know how to address science fiction concepts in real life.

"So, you're from the future...?"

"Yes, from the year 2014."

"And you expect us to believe that?"

"I don't expect everyone will believe it, but it's the truth, and given the opportunity I think I can prove it."

"And why have you come back?"

"I'm not sure, it just happened to me."

A moment of silence, except for one reporter who shook his head exhaled sharply out his nose.

"So, what happens in the future?" It was asked sarcastically but I decided to answer sincerely.

"Lots of things! Too many to address. I'm hesitant to comment on certain things like politics right now though... But oh! I can make two predictions catastrophes that happen! This might actually be useful. In the eighties, though maybe this has already happened. Has Chernobyl happened?"

More silence.

"Oh! Well Chernobyl is some sort of nuclear power plant or something in Russia that blows up or has a meltdown or something. I think it kills a bunch of people and makes a deserted radioactive wasteland out of the surrounding area. I'm not even kidding. Where I come from is not an apocalyptic nightmare as much as I just made it sound like one, it's actually pretty great, but yeah, that happened. Oh, and the second thing is that NASA's building a space shuttle or something called Challenger, and it crashes and kills the people inside. You should still give NASA a lot of funding and support, but that was a catastrophe that killed the crew. Something to do with just one screw or rivet coming loose."

The reporters were dumbstruck. I wasn't sure if any of that was the right thing to do, but I went ahead and did it anyway. It was very specific knowledge, and definitely made people sit up and pay attention. Not that the Soviet or American Cold War governments were exactly who I wanted the attention of.

"Also, do you have AIDS?" Poor phrasing in hindsight.

They nodded tentatively and shared bewildered glances.

"Well.. you know.. try to get a lid on that. It does spread and we don't have a cure for it even 30 years from now. It's a bad thing... Okay, I think that's enough premonitions for one day. I'm going to get myself into more trouble than I'm already in. Instead, look at this!"

And I started to play of an mp4 of Star Trek Into Darkness on my laptop. Funnily enough, in the polls I later saw, that was cited as the #1 thing that convinced the public I was from the future: Star Trek.

Continued in The Family

#1. The Prologue

#2. The Jump

Alight, so I wake up in this library that just reaks of cigarette smoke. Everyone smokes. I get frustrated thinking about what other people would say to me if they knew my circumstances. "Invest in microsoft!", "Bet on sports!". I have no money. I have no identification. I have no bank account. I have no records of my existance. Just investing in something is right out. Plus, what would I do even if I could, invest and then just hang around for five years until it paid off. I'm talking about surviving day-to-day in this situation.

I'd traveled a bit in the future and this was just like that. I'm in a new place and need to survive and I'm homeless. Also, I have no idea who won anything in 1985. I wasn't alive and I don't follow sports to begin with. I know that France won the world cup in 2002 I think. Or maybe 1998. What was it? France, then Brazil, then Italy, then Spain? That's pretty much all I could tell you. No, this wasn't about making bets for the long-haul. I couldn't just reenter society as someone with no documentation. And there is no one I know who I can turn to. My mum's family is across the county, and she's 18. My dad is either still in England or is god-knows-where up in the North West Territories. And even if I found them, they wouldn't be convinced. Cynics, the pair of them. And they wouldn't be able to help me, they were just other young adults roaming around trying to survive like me. I still hadn't decided if I ever got any attention, whether I'd call them out as my parents and put that attention on them. No, I wasn't just going to discreetly reenter society in a job that didn't ask too many questions and keep this a secret. I had to go public. Partly because I was terrified of having to take care of myself in a world I knew nothing about and nobody in, but hell, this was about getting through the now. And hey, maybe I wanted to be rich and famous. Although I was also terrified of being abducted by the goverment so I could tell them about AIDS and the impending fall of the Berlin wall. That's why I figured media was the way to go. If they'd ever believe me.

Alright, inventory. What do I have? Thinkpad laptop (unfortunately with a defectual battery, so it needs to be plugged in). Five notebooks. Signals and Systems. (Probably useless). Algorithms and Data structures. (Maybe valuable). Circuit analysis. (Probably useless). Electromagnetics. (Probably useless). Microcomputers. (Maybe valuable). Graphing calculator. Police flashlight. Cheap knife. Random cables. iPhone. Wallet with drivers' licence, a couple credit cards, student ID, and some giftcards. The laptop, the calculator, and the iPhone are the big ticket items. These distinguish me. These will get me somewhere. I, above all else, cannot have these taken away from me. I'm also distinguished by what I believe is a better sense of humour. But by this point, I had avoided talking to anyone so I hadn't understood this yet.

I need coffee and food. First I need money. There's a guy and a girl working on economics at a little funky looking table around twenty feet from the stall I made my home that night. They're doing arithmetic.

"Hey, are you guys doing math?"

"Yes...", the guy says.

"Have you done any long or complicated calculations?"

"Not really.", the guy says, more irritated.

I was hoping they had, but I'll still try.

"I bet you... five? dollars I can do the entire calculation within seconds." I had no idea if five dollars was too much money. These people may do economics, but I had done none and I was unfamiliar with the inflation rate. "You can test me on a previous calculation you did, so you know I'm not just making it up."

"Uh, no thanks."

"Seriously, like cube roots or trig or logarithms or anything. I can do it."

"Seriously, no thanks."

"One dollar?"

"Honestly, no, we're not interested."

Oh, well shit. I thought that was a good idea anyway. Probably for the best, it's good not to get my calculator out just yet.

"Well alright."

Dick.

"Do you happen to know where the computer science or engineering building is though?"

The girl says it's MacLeod, down main mall. Oh, really? That hasn't changed. Neat. I also ask what day of the week it is, and fortunately it's a friday.

"Thanks."

As I leave I can't help it.

"By the way, communism falls in 1989."

I'm hilarious to me.

Alright, heading down to MacLeod. It's only seven thirty according to my phone, which I think I can rely on. That seems right, and I put it on airplane mode to save the battery and stop it from looking for a signal, so I think it's right. No one will probably be there, but maybe I can try getting money off someone else trying to add impedences in parallel or something. How did they even do that without calculators? Maybe they did everything symbolically.

I get to the building and let myself in. You don't need to buzz yourself in with your student ID card. Any homeless person can just waltz on in from the street. I'm not sure what sort of security they have here.

"Excuse me, do you know where the head of the head of engineering's office is?"

"Fourth floor probably", this guy said without looking up.

"Know his name?"

"Don something."

"Need any calculations done instantaneously?"

"No thanks."

Dammit, this is not a working strategy. I go up to the fourth floor I go up to the fourth floor and find Don something's office. McAlister. I sit down in the hallway outside and review how I hope the conversation goes. At first I decide to leave all my electronics out of sight and just sit, but I come to terms how reliant I am on stimuli. I put my earphones in to listen to music. A couple people walk by and I assume they assume I'm deaf. Later I'd learn that people in the eighties indeed did have walkmans. I'd also learn that Back to the future was made in 1985, and that Marty was sent as far back in time as I've been sent to his time. Had I remembered this at the time, I would have put it in the 'Possible Evidence that this a Delusion' list I was creating.

The secretary arrived first and I asked for an appointment with Don. I had planned to say, "Ma'am, this is an emergency involving the most sophisticated electrical equipment that has ever been developed" if she put up any road blacks. Unfortunately for my sense of drama it went smoothly and she asked me to have a seat and wait. He would be here shortly. She had ridiculous looking hair. I had ridiculous looking glasses.

Don arrived, sized me up, and went into his office. His secretary spoke to him, and she told me he'd be right with me. My heart raced. I should bail. This was the first thing I thought to do, I should give it another day of thought before casting this die and committing to this. True to his word, Don was with me shortly.

"Dr. McAllister, my name is Charles. I'm an electrical engineering student here. This is going to be very difficult to believe, and you're going to think I'm wasting your time. I promise you I'm not, and I can prove it."

He leaned back unimpressed and didn't say anything. My first plan of attack was to tell him I was from the future, then prove it. I was disorganized and nervous so I changed my mind suddenly and decided in another direction.

"I'm going to show you a device that is more capable and sophisticated than anything that currently exists."

"Alright, I'm intrigued. Did you develop it."

"No, not exactly. It's mine, and there's only one on earth like it, but I didn't make it. I'll tell you where I got it from after you see."

I took out my iPhone. I decided not to overwhelm him at first.

"This is a video camera." Ding. "I'm filming right now." I turned it around and showed him the screen, displaying the room. The guy was awed. I had underestimated just how magnificent the mundane details were to him. The resolution and the touch screen alone would have sent him off. I stopped filming played it back to him.

"That is an incredible piece of technology, Charles. Where did it come from? Can I hold it?"

I put it back to the home menu and let him fumble around with it before answering. He was pushing the screen much too hard, but laughed loudly in amusement that it was programmed to bounce back smoothly when you tried to scroll too far. It's the little things. He started to read the tiles, some would have been non sensical, like "QR Scanner" with the blotchy picture or "Google Drive". Others made sense to him immediately, and I saw it in his face, so I decided to say it before him.

"It's also a phone, a music player, a calculator, a television, a word processor, and a GPS device. Among other things."

I extended my hand and got it returned to me. Holding it was a great relief. This was mine and was among all I have, and I didn't trust anyone with it.

"Where did it come from? Who made it?"

I had planned this out to the best of my ability while waiting outside, and I took my university ID card out of my wallet and handed it to him. I also displayed my driver's licence but kept it in my possession. Moment of truth right here. I pocketed my phone and prepared myself. For anything.

"I have more devices to show you to prove it, but as you can see from the dates on those cards, I'm from the year 2014. I'm an electrical engineering student who goes here twenty-nine years from now. I have come back in time and I don't know why. I swear to god I am not lying to you."

After a few moments of silence.

"Please believe me." I was worried I was overselling it.

"I don't, but show me more."

This guy was great. It didn't matter than he didn't believe me, he just wasn't flipping out and he knew that there was something up at any rate. He just wanted more information. And who can blame him? All anyone wants is to be awed.

We spent about ten minutes on my laptop, which conveniently displayed the date, as did my phone. Before we even scratched the surface of how amazing these devices were, he was on board.

One for one. A perfect score.

He was disappointed that I couldn't explain in more detail how they worked. That was way above my pay-grade. Instead, I showed him my digital logic and mircrocontrollers ebooks and said I'm sure there was more than enough information to satisfy him. He asked me why I came to him and I told him that I needed help. I lied and told him that I had contacted my family first though. I couldn't let him think that he was the only person who knew, that would give him too much power and I'd be vulnerable. I said I needed his help professionally verifying my equipment is from the future, and that I wanted to contact the press. And that above all, I wanted him to help me ensure that my stuff wasn't confiscated from me. He was more than happy to verify. He was unsure about contacting the press but had no alternative suggestions. And he made no promises about helping me keep my computer. Fair enough.

All the computer science and engineering profs available were called to a meeting in a classroom, where I demo'd my gear. I did the same routine. Draw them in, then drop the now famous "I'm from the future" line. I'd invariably lose some people there, but I'd keep enough. Fortunately this group was interested more in the technology, and wasn't grilling me on political information or future predictions. That was for later. I spent the day being furiously protective of my gear, but relishing showing them the capabilities. I did however let them play with my graphing calculator, which was exciting for them. It's ancient, overpriced technology for me anyway. Maple was a big hit, and the camera was always a top seller. Don agreed to let me stay at his place and the university called a press conference for the next day.

Continued in The Public

Before you read this read the prologue.

Five hours in the computer lab and I had accomplished nothing. So much for reading break. I forgot my microcontroller and DE2 board at home, so I couldn't work on that. I didn't have all the microchips I needed for the new lab because I had fried mine and borrowed someone else's to complete lab 2. I did review our formal report and add some paragraphs and fill in the glossary though. But I was spending way too much time on it when I should have been studying for a circuits quiz, which I couldn't bring myself to do. I put some programs in my calculator which was the sort of fake-studying I do when I'm pretending to do something that's going to help me. Really, I just end up fighting with syntax for an hour so that in the end I'm pressing six less buttons. So that's what I was doing when. The rest happened like so:

Then Holy shit! It's snowing. Fuck this, I'm going to get out of here. Maybe a walk in the snow will clear my mind and I'll walk off some excess energy so I can study tonight. Delusion. Cables swept into garbage can. Expensive equipment precariously carried up to the locker I had commandeered, just so I could do it in one trip. Jacket on. Bag over shoulder. Earphones in. Walking straight past the bus stop, because I need to walk and listen to some music. Walking through ex-girlfriends neighbourhood absentmindedly when I think I see her in a sushi restaurant with a bunch of people. Weird. First time I'd seen her since our less than pleasant termination. It was for the best. Shake it off and keep walking. Hopefully she didn't spot you. Who's idea was it to walk, my hands are freezing and I'm only wearing cotton except for my belt and boots. Check it out, looks like the eye doctors have changed location.

BAM. Blinkseizevertigo. And feeling like being throat punched by a freight train with my cochlea deciding to have a midnight jazzcore party turned up to Spinal Tap levels. Also dizzy.

"Nnnnggghhh."

"Ow."

"I'm alright. I'm alright. Okay. Okay. I'm alright."

I think I just had some sort of stroke. Am I good to walk? Should I call someone? No, no, I'm okay. Just give me a minute to see if it comes back. I'm alright. Wait.

"What the fuck?"

Did I just blackout? Is this 10th? Yeah, the slope of the road seems right. Check out the ghetto street signs... I hate trendy neighbourhoods that just need their own sign styles. Seriously people.

After this, there was not sort of a gradual realization of where I was. There wasn't like a "Oh, why are the cars different, is there a car show going by?" Followed by a "Man, the hipsters are really into vintage in this area." No, none of that. Although I fancy myself Sherlock Holmes, I'm not. But it did not take a series of deductions and conclusions to determine where I was. Once my attention shifted from confusion about my stroke/seizure/blackout to my surroundings, it was immediate. I knew exactly where in the city I was located; I could tell by the hills in the area. And I knew with supreme confidence that within the week, this entire neighbourhood had not undergone a full renovation. I recognized the cars on the road. I saw that the snow was all gone. I was the storefronts and their advertisements. And I saw it all at once. I lifted my head up and right there it said "Hey, Charlie! You're in the nineteen fucking eighties or something!"

That's not to say I believed it immediately. It's not like I turned onto a road with no one on it and immediately drew the conclusion "I'm the last man on earth!" I knew what I was seeing. Have I gone crazy or am I drugged? My mind's pretty clear. I have a tendency to be able to disconnect my mind's frame of reference to my bodies and view things objectively while still experiencing them subjectively. I remember when I first saw an animal slaughtered and gutted. My head: clear as day. Curious about how they were doing it. Trying to identify each organ as they pulled one thing out from under its ribs after another. My body: totally sick. I got a headrush and needed to sit down otherwise I was going to throw up. All the while still curious and wanting to see. I have had a similar reaction the three times I've seen someone die. Except, I felt less sick. Maybe everyone's the same way, I don't know. I just like to think I'm special. And here I was. My head: well, all my senses are telling me that I'm in a different decade, how should we approach the situation. It's too much of a coincidence that you love thinking about time travel, and here you are, time traveling. You must be hallucinating. If you've been drugged perhaps you should throw up. My body: scared. Heart's racing, hands are shaking, stomach has completely dropped, fingers and toes feel blurry. Sensible reaction if you ask me. At this point I'm thinking there are three options: insanity, drugs, time-teleportation. Either way, there's a lot to be concerned about.

Later people would ask why I didn't think I was dreaming. They'd say it seems like a go-to conclusion. Simple: I don't dream. And yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone's going to tell me I dream but just don't remember it. Well, first of all, I maintain that is not true, and that I simply don't dream, but, if that is true, then I still don't think I dream. A tree falls in the forest and all that. I have never experienced being in a bizarre situation only to awake to the conclusion that it was all a dream. So I didn't come to that one. Also, my old buddy Walker who lucid dreams said that you never have five fingers perfectly in a dream. And I think I would have noticed if I had an extra finger pointing out of my hand.

Back in my, oh so crystal clear head. I decided to continue to walk. I'd get more information if I kept moving. I turned the corner onto 4th and the area was getting more populated. Yes. These were a different sort of people. There's a certain gift in western men's fashion. I looked out of place, sure, but it's not like the men were wearing ponytails out on one side of their head. Short hair, a little bit of growth, a collared plaid shirt, black jeans, brown boots. Apart from maybe my jacket and what had transformed from a satchel into a purse, I wasn't crazy looking. Apart from my behaviour, of course. Keep moving, keep getting more information. Walk for another hour or so.

This is funky and all, but I need to figure out what I'm going to do. Okay, here's the new situation: it's night time. I'm in an unfamiliar place. I have a little bit of cash, but the bills are different. Wait, are coins the same?! Who am I kidding, I don't have any coins. Debit cards aren't a thing. Wait, are they? I was born in 1992, I don't even know what the 80s are like. I don't think so. And it's not like HSBC defies the space-time continuum anyway. Apparently it hasn't snowed today after all, which means homelessness isn't not an option.

Questions: Is it worth crossing town to go to where I think my home is? Do I know anyone who lives in Vancouver in the 80s? Should I go to the hospital? Enough of this '80s' nonesense, what is the exact year?

Answers: It is not worth crossing town; I don't have a bus pass. The only people in Vancouver would be old friends'/girlfriends' parents... and I don't think I have that going for me. The hospital will conclude I'm insane, and I don't want to go down that road all over again. Wait, no they won't, I have crazy futuristic shit in my bag. Jesus, I'm not going to be homeless tonight. I know I don't have any cash, but I have the most sophisticated electronics on the planet. Oh, and according to the sign on that car dealership's window -- it's 1985. And the cars are not beautiful.

Okay. Who should I take my equipment to? Cops? No way. Hospital? Eh, too far plus not the right option. Government? Eventually, yes, initially, no. Plus, it's not like there's a big building with Mussolini's face on it with the words 'THE GOVERNMENT' written across it. Hm, I should go back to the university. See if there's and engineering or computer prof who would understand the significance of what I have and let me demo it. Unless they're some sort of crazy person who would steal it, kill me, and then proclaim that they had created the future. I doubt it. "I'm a student who has traveled in time from the future and can prove it by showing you the equipment I am holding". Not bad. I'm also thinking the press though. Would the press be more likely to rob me than the school? Maybe. Okay: plan of attack. Press is good though, if I get press before I get government, that means they'd face more backlash for stealing my stuff. Here's what I'm thinking: School. Then press. Then government. Then out east to Ontario to see my family. And my mother who is my age. Then they can do a blood test or something and I can prove it and then become super famous for being a time traveler. Then face ethical dilemmas and existential paradoxes. Good. I have a plan. I doubt anyone's going to be at the university this late, but maybe the library is still open or something. I can crash there until morning, at which point I find someone who knows what they're talking about and can help me out.

Continued in The First Day

As a sort of bored mental exercise while on the bus or sitting in class I played this game where I imagined I was teleported back to various points in time and was trying to communicate. At one time or another I would play the game and find myself in every historical age, but I had three that I would go to the most: Ancient Rome, the 1700s, and 1985.

The first part of the game was to convince the people I was from the future. This was easy in the versions of the game where I teleported with the electronic equipment I was holding. The second, and more important part, was to teach the people of that age everything I knew.

In the versions I teleported back naked, usually it became a different game, as I had no proof. In the Ancient Rome version, it usually just becomes a survival game and usually I get killed by bandits. In the 1700s it varied, but sometimes I would be able to predict enough events that someone would take notice. In the 1985 version, I would have to try to get across the country and get to Peterborough, Ontario, where I would find my mother and her family and try to convince them who I was. Not easy, but the game served as an exercise to try to recall how much I know about my mother's childhood. Of course, occasionally my grandfather would beat me up for being a creep that must've been stalking her.

An aspect of the game was that it served as an exercise for me to review and summarize everything of importance I knew. The game presented different challenges in each age. In Ancient Rome, I practiced how it would play out having to rely on what little Latin I knew and the romance languages rooted in it. This tested the foundations of my knowledge. I would have to try to draw a map of the world from memory, and then explain where things were to the best of my ability. Luckily, Briton, Hispania, and Germania had not changed much over the millenia. I would also locate the planet in a diagram of the solar system. I've imagined this playing out in many different ways. Either with me making up new names for the planets, or explaining to them that we named them after the gods they were familiar with, but that they weren't actually those gods. I would also show them I still used Latin characters to write. Also, I would try to teach them Arabic numerals, and how to do operations with them. Next on to physics, starting with the kinematics equations. Then what chemistry and biology I could recall. I'd try to write a periodic table from memory, and explain protons and electrons. I'd explain evolution and natural selection. My chemistry is lacking, and I have received no biology education, but I think just my cultural knowledge is more substantive in the ancient era than we might initially think. Then I'd think of inventions that were important. The printing press. The steam engine. The slide rule. In some versions of the game I'd be infected with some sort of disease I had no immune system to, but in most that would ruin the fun and I wouldn't bother. Also, hopefully I would have managed to ingratiate myself with the emperor and would be given good care as I furiously spent my days teaching and writing everything I knew. I often gloss over the technicalities of how I first find myself in Rome and how I enter a position in which I'm given a platform to speak and teach. But sometimes I would consider the difficulties I might face if I had purple on my plaid shirt, or how they would react to my barbarian-like pants and beard. In the end I would always wind up skipping over it and instead furiously looking through all the features of my iphone, trying to determine what would impress them most. And trying to do it all before it ran out of batteries.

Also, I'd try to play some music that might blow their minds. That exercise was fun in the 1700s especially, when I imagined playing Beethoven for Beethoven. The guy's an exposed wire anyway, but I imagine a little box playing his music, and unlikely exactly how he'd like it to be played, and he'd flip out. So with the Ancient Rome version, the mental revision is often about the basics of my knowledge. Math, physics, chemistry, geography, biology. And try to identify the most crucial creations of our history and explain them through a language barrier and drawings on my notepad. When I downloaded the wikipedia app for my iphone, the one that didn't need an Internet connection and had most pages on it anyway. I actually felt relief, because it meant that I didn't necessarily have to remember everything just in case. I also used to think at times when I was carrying my text books that this would be a better time for it to happen.

The 1700s version was the least common, but it would often be a review of more sophisticated things I knew. I didn't need to teach them arithmetic, I could discuss the calculus that Newton had been working on. I didn't need to show them kinematics equations, I could try to advance into the realm of electromagnetic physics. I wouldn't need to try to show them where we were in the solar system, but try to describe how we got to the moon. In this version, some of the pressure of time is off because they might be able to deliver a steady voltage into my laptop. It's in this era that I become self-conscious about my handwriting, because people from this age always have great writing. It's also an experiment in history. I can discuss the French and American revolutions, colonialism, the industrial revolution, the Napoleonic wars, communism, and hell, give them the rundown for the major world events up through the world wars, the cold war, up until the establishment of the EU. I think that generally they're educated enough in the time of enlightenment in make use of it, or be interested in how an alternate version of history might play out in my timeline. This version of the game also features lots of music, as I have classical music on my iphone, but also punk rock.

Finally, the other version of the game is 1985. In this version, they know almost everything I do, and instead, I have to awe them with my knowledge of electronics, and can give them an extensive rundown of my laptop and iphone because I can power my devices. In this version, I often try to communicate the sheer scale and significance of the internet. Every picture ever taken, every song every recorded, every movie ever filmed, every book ever written, all instantaneously, and usually freely available. A collective encyclopedia of all human knowledge at your disposal. An open platform to speak and hear and discuss anything with almost anyone. Also, lots of weird stuff. It's in this era when I get on my laptop and try to do everything that might be impressive without an internet connection, as if my screen is being filmed and broadcasted on some latenight show as I describe it. I show them all my software. MATLAB, Maple, MS Office, Circuitmaker, and Python programming, but I also show them GTA San Andreas. Try to get them to see the scale of it, but also shield them from the more raunchy parts so they didn't get a bad impression of the future. I explain the development of Apple and Microsoft, and for the first time in my game, I deal with the issue of namedropping. There are famous people who accomplish great things in my lifetimes who are still young in this era. Can I talk about their achievements? Will they be pleased to be acknowledged as geniuses of my timeline or will it haunt them? Will they not become successful in this timeline and forever hold it against me for skewing their odds. In most versions of the game, start off my lesson with a preamble about my version of history, and how I'm going to tell it how I experienced it, and how that might alter this version and I'm sorry, but that just my being teleported already sent their history on a drastically different tangent. Lots to think about at any rate. But usually I just tried to stick to teaching people what I knew. This era focuses a lot on history. I can't teach math or science, only a little bit of computer and electrical engineering. But I have an intimate familiarity with the history of the last 30 years. I teach them about the fall of the USSR, the recent history of China, I namedrop the presidents of the USA and what they did, I talk about the War on Terrorism and 9/11, the Mars rovers, the Yugoslav Wars, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and I review every single thing about recent history that I can remember. I also use it as an opportunity to go through my music. I show what bands at least survived into my tastes like the Clash. Should I mention Operation Ivy at this point, or would it stop them from existing? Do I have an ethical obligation to influence whether they exist one way or another or should I just divulge everything I know and let it play out how it plays out? I also discuss rap in length, explaining how it would become a predominant mainstream music style that, in my limited understanding of the history of hiphop, wasn't really all the rage in 1985. At any rate, I had gone over these situations a lot in my head over the years. It was just a fun game to see how much important information I actually could remember off the top of my head. I would review all I knew from the shape of South America to the development of the C programming language. Unfortunately, when on Feburary 22nd, 2014 I was teleported back in time 29 years to Feb 22nd, 1985, absolutely of this helped me.

Continued in The Jump

I just came across this subreddit and decided to write my own story.

Let’s assume I appear where I am right now, which is my college apartment bedroom in Bellingham, Washington. I am a 20-year-old girl. I was born in late 1993, so I won’t have been born for another 8 years. I am wearing a loose t-shirt and black sweatpants. No shoes, no wallet on me, no phone. I am going to assume that my apartment complex existed in 1985.

Part 1

January 12, 1985. 10:24 PM

I gasp as the air gets knocked out of my lungs and I fall to the ground with a hard thud.

“What?” I mouth to myself in disbelief.

I forcefully widen my eyes as big as possible, trying to make my eyes adjust to these impossible surroundings. There’s no way that my bed just disappeared from under me. I must be hallucinating or something. I mean, I’m still in my bedroom, but it’s different. The clothes in the closet are different. All my decorations and belongings are gone and replaced with unfamiliar things. A bed is against the other wall and boy clothes are in my closet. The clothes don’t look very fashionable. There are posters on the wall of bands I don’t recognize. I stand up quickly and feel a head rush. I put my hand on my head and close my eyes, taking it all in. Maybe I just fell asleep while studying and this is all a dream. I reach up and smack my face a few times but nothing happens. I’m not dreaming. If this isn’t a dream, then what is this?

Suddenly I hear footsteps barging up the steps outside my apartment. I freeze up in horror momentarily before darting into the closet. I wait a few seconds and don’t hear anyone open the front door, so it must be the neighbors. Oh God, these clothes smell like B.O. I step out of the closet and sift through them out of curiosity. They look really retro. Like ‘80s or ‘90s. Or ‘70s. All fashion before 2000 really blurs together in my mind, honestly. Did I go back in time or something? Is that actually a thing? Am I somehow on shrooms?

I realize I better figure my shit out before whoever owns these clothes comes back. I guess wherever/whenever I am, this isn’t my apartment anymore. I lightly pull open the bedroom door and peer out into the hall. No one seems to be home. I walk down the hall into the living room. Yep, this definitely isn’t my apartment. I mean, the apartment layout is the same but the furniture is different. It looks pretty generic and it doesn’t indicate any specific time period. Oh, there’s a TV. I bet they have cable, unlike I do. I turn the TV on and flip through the channels to find the news. I learn that it’s Saturday the 12th, not Sunday like it should be. I watch the weather guy talk about how it’s going to be overcast all week with some rain. Yeah, no surprise there. Clearly I’m still in Washington. Eventually they turn to the news and they’re just talking about local news stories. I’m not finding the information I need. I’m impatient so I look around for a calendar. I go into the kitchen and see a calendar hanging on the wall next to a landline phone, curly cord and all. I’m definitely at least in a time before cell phones. I see that the calendar is flipped to January. Okay, that’s normal. I look closer for the year.

1985

Holy shit. I’m in 1985. I’m not even alive yet! Yet here I am. How did I get here? What the fuck is going on? Not much time to dwell over why this is happening. I need to figure shit out. Okay, what to do. I need to find someone, anyone, to help me. Who is alive in 1985 that I can trust and is relatively close by? My mom was 18 in 1990 so I guess she’s 13 now. And she lives on the coast. That’s like 2 hours to Seattle plus the ferry (did they have the ferry in the ‘80s? Duh, don’t be stupid Molly). Plus hours more of driving. I have no idea how I’d get all the way there, and a 13 year old can’t really help me. Forget that plan. My dad grew up in Lynnwood, which is just over an hour drive from here. He graduated high school in ’86 so he would be…16, almost 17. I guess that’s the best that I can do for now. And my grandparents and aunts would all be there. Damn, I don’t see my grandparents believing in time travel. My dad totally would though after a bit of convincing. He is super into sci-fi and believes in some paranormal stuff. Yeah, finding Dad is the first plan I guess.

Getting there is going to be a struggle. First of all, I definitely need warmer clothes. I go into the other bedroom to see if there are girl clothes. Nope, more boy clothes. These clothes are smaller than the ones in “my” room looked though so they’ll probably fit me better. I try on a pair of jeans and they look ridiculous on me. I grab the most normal (to me) looking thing - a forest green hoodie – and start to zip it over my large t-shirt. Ugh, why did I have to be wearing the baggy clothes that I sleep in. it sure would be convenient to have anything to prove that I am who I am!

Out of the corner of my eye I see some girly looking clothes in a pile on the floor. Thank God! I guess this dude has a girlfriend. I find an off-the-shoulder pink sweatshirt and blue and orange striped leggings. Woof, were people in the ‘80s colorblind? What a combo. I put them on and they fit me fine. I can’t find any girl shoes so I look in the guys’ closets. I am drawn to what is familiar to me – blue converse. They’re size 7 men. I’m a size 8 women and I don’t know the conversion for shoe sizes so I try them on. They’re a bit loose but they actually fit decently. I find some white socks and pull those on and lace up the converse. I’m satisfied that I found an outfit that is almost something I’d wear in the present (besides the bright colors that don’t match).

Okay, what else do I need? Well if I’m going to get anywhere, money. I feel bad about stealing from these guys but I resolve that when I can, I’ll return money at some point. I’m foolish to think I’ll ever actually have a chance to do that, but I had to tell myself something to make myself feel okay about it. If both of these guys are gone then wouldn’t their wallets be gone too? I dig around their rooms and eventually find a stash of money in a sock drawer. I found six twenty dollar bills wadded up. Hah, the dude probably sells weed or something. It is still Bellingham after all. I look around some more and find fifteen dollars on the kitchen counter, but other than that I don’t see anything else. I guess $135 will be good for now. I look around for any other items that might be useful. I don’t find anything.

I’m ready to leave but where do I go? I know nothing about the status of public transportation in the ‘80s. Maybe one of these guys has a car. Shit, aren’t ‘80s cars all manual? I don’t know how to drive those. I’m familiar with the 2014 public transportation of my city but I don’t know how to get to Lynnwood. I think we have a train here. Ugh, I wish the Internet existed so I could just look it up. 1985 is so inconvenient. How did people ever get anything done? I guess I’ll have to do trial and error. I decide to walk down the street to my usual bus stop and see if anything is there. Damn it’s cold outside. At least it’s not raining. I get to my bus stop and see the bus schedule sign. Shit, I forgot that the buses stop running at this time of night! I’m guessing it’s at least 11pm by now. This is a nightmare. I stand shivering in the painful cold air as I begin to panic.

Hey, Maybe I can sneak into one of the dorms on campus. They’re locked but all you have to do is wait a few minutes for someone who lives there to come open it and then you slide in behind them. I did it all the time last year when I forgot my keys. I’ll go to my freshman dorm from last year. I guess I can sleep on the couch in the common room or something. I don’t think anyone would do anything about it. I begin the 15-20 minute walk to Mathes Hall.

Now that I’m walking, all these new thoughts are rushing through my mind. What if I never go back to my time? I miss my family and I miss my friends. By the time it’s 2014 again I’ll be… thirty-nine! Wow. I am going to have a lot of adjusting to do. No more Internet. No more watching my favorite TV shows or movies. There’s no Harry Potter yet! I still want to get married and raise a family. What if I have a baby before 1993? My kid will be born before I technically was. Am I going to have to assume a new identity? I guess my name is pretty common so I can keep it. I’ll have to make a new birth year. 1985 minus twenty is… 1965. Okay, December 22, 1965. Memorize that. How am I going to get an ID? How will I get a job? Do I have to go back to college? I probably qualify for financial aid now that I only have $135 to my name. Hah. But how will I explain who I am? Maybe I can fake amnesia! That sounds like quite a hassle. It’s an option to keep in mind though. Damn it’s cold. I pulled my hair close to my neck to keep warm. I just realized that I’ve straightened my hair today and that’s not the current style. ‘80s hair is big. I guess some people had naturally straight hair though. Not a big deal I guess.

My thoughts continued to swirl down a rabbit hole until I walked up to the door of my dorm. I smiled at the familiar building. I haven’t been here since I lived here last spring. So many good memories here. I perched myself on the concrete half-wall and wait for someone to show up.

continued in the comments

So, its been two whole years since this subreddit was born. The last installment was almost 2 years ago and I'm felling that Hornswaggle isn't coming back. Happy 2nd Birthday /r/1985sweet1985.

oh how I miss thee.

According to my daily Timehop email, Hornswaggle's time travel story 1985 entered into our collective consciousness one year ago today.

It's still one of my favourite Reddit discoveries. Hopefully we'll see more chapters added to the story someday.