Ok, you see, the key is to make certain the matter extrapolators using matter extrapolation see you, in the past. If they do, then you can communicate to them and let them know how to cooperate with you in order to affect events.
how to catch their attention???
...and then I was suddenly a data unit to them, the early extrapolators.
to save this miss-sent email, or to delete it?
in the overall big picture it made a huge difference down the road, say, a few thousand years...
when all other copies are deleted, if I were to have saved it, imagine the consequences.
It seemed I was fortunate to have a common name...
...or perhaps unfortunate, as the case may be.
2 comments:
This is a tricky story to grasp, but an intriguing one. What are the extrapolators? I imagine they are a sort of advanced technology which sees into the future, and makes little nudges to current events in order to cause big changes far in the future. Were they invented, or are they a sort of engine which runs the universe?
As I see it, James wanted their attention, and he got it accidentally, when an email was mistakenly sent to him due to his common name. The mere existence of this email will have major ripples in the future, which is why the extrapolators have taken notice. If James saves it, he may be causing great future tragedy. But if he deletes it, he will lose the interest of the extrapolators.
This leaves two big questions: how does James know all of this, and what will he do about it?
I think James is an 'intuitive'. Isaac Asimov loved the idea of individuals with some profound sense of intuition: just knowing the right answer or course of action.
This story might proceed along the lines of human thoughts being the thing at which that the extrapolators are able to 'look back - or forward - in time'.
I love the idea of the human consciousness being a cosmic phenomenon on par with the big band, black holes and other exotic entities.
I look at a desert and see a single animal, a camel. the chemical and elemental makeup of the desert is so uniform and invariant - but the camel is composed of remarkable chemistry and a few rare elements in much higher concentration.
The complexity of organisms is a hallmark. I like to think the mind is akin, but rather than chemical uniqueness which the brain does have, it has energetic uniqueness.
our minds being the camel in the desert :)
Post a Comment