The Nihilistic Time Machine

I finally finished the machine this afternoon and I plan on spending the night considering this accomplishment. The one thing I seem disappointed with is the atmosphere of the thing; it doesn't feel 'old-school' for a time machine, but too new, too sterile, and too inhuman. It needs, say, a comfortable leather chair involved somehow. But that's not how it works. H. G. Wells would be disillusioned.

29 October 2003

Got the courage up to try the machine earlier today. Returned 'today', although I'm not sure of what to make of the whole thing. Went to 4003, although it might be a few years off; there never has been too much precision with subatomic particles' movement. But I figure I should devote more than a normal entry to this, much as I am loathe to do so. You'll know why when I'm done, probably before.

It seems too close to me. I figure it's one hundred generations, which seems like a lot for two thousand years, but that's probably about right. I try to think in reverse, but in reverse we know cause and effect; we know what caused the Roman Empire to collapse (or, we don't precisely, but you get my idea), we know why things happened and they pretty much explain today. It's a big difference between Empire and today, and it's just as big a difference between now and two thousand years ahead.

I feel a bit strange writing this. It's a bit too Nostradamus for me, although I almost wish those Millennialists from a few years back were right, knowing now what I know. I also think people, if they find this, will think me crazy. Therefore I'll try to write what I think happened after I account for that which I did see.

Empire to State to Multinational Corporation. Except the concept of a multinational is obsolete; it implies nations. There are no more nations, just corporations. Some giant food corp. seems to have the greatest influence, although the language has changed enough that I can barely puzzle through the simple things. It didn't matter much, however. Many of the lettered signs (it seems a corruption of English, Chinese, and Arabic, although I only have decent knowledge of the first and last) have easily recognizable logos. Augustus would be proud to know that his symbols of imperial growth, sheaves of grain, are still the symbols of wealth. This Giant-Sheaf-of-Grain corporation, as I've mentioned before, seems to have the most power, and understandably; when everyone works for A Corporation, food and survival seem to be prominent.

I remember some laughable things from my youth in the 20^th century, one of which was the 'Pave the Earth' campaign. No one really took it seriously and I'm sure it died out, but there's not a speck of nature to be seen. I myself came to rest in a warehouse basement, unnoticed because I was not something the workers (few though there were down in the basement) needed to concern themselves with. Had I been in the way of a machine that moved some giant tubs of chemical, I might have been noticed sooner, but since the machine is more a 'device' than machine, I was just a random shadow in the corner — if that — of their eyes. I digress, however. My explorations found that there was no true exit to the building; the closest I found was a seemingly-endless corridor with a border-gate in the middle. This was the entrance to another Corporation, and the steely grey door (almost like an elevator door, although I know from my wanderings that it slid vertically to the floor instead of horizontally to the center) had a etched design depicting that 'atom' symbol we know from our own time to be an inaccurate depiction. I assume this was some The Energy Corporation. I was far more interested in energy than food production, or at least, I was until now, so I searched the door for a sign of opening it. No keypad, cardslot, or other 20^th century inventions. No retinal scanners, no fingerprint decoders, and no cameras. My knowledge of science-fiction has failed me again in this respect. I turned, slightly disenheartened, back to the maze of corridors of The Food Corporation.

After a while I realized there were colored stripes running along the surface of the walls. (Concrete, perhaps, or some other extremely hard and extremely smooth surface.) These weren't random, but instead, each seemed to lead one way. I followed the tan one first; it seemed the least dangerous for some reason I could not pin down then. I eventually ended up in what I would call 'barracks' or, at the most 'dormitories'. The most xenophobic Millennialist wouldn't have invented something so sterile, so generic, so inhuman. Imagine a corridor some hundred meters long, and white. The construction of these buildings is done so that it seems the floor and walls were moulded together somehow, the ceiling and walls the same way, with no apparent seam. Completely septic, a hermetically sealed world. Now, down this infinite corridor, imagine a door every meter or so, barely four slits in the wall demarcating each. As I stood at the corner of this corridor and its perpendicular parent, transfixed by the overpowering mimesis, twenty or so people walked noiselessly into the hall. They seemed to touch and push downward, very slightly, on a door each. The doors opened with a very slight pneumatic noise, and the occupants of each cell entered, door closing a second or two after them. Twenty more emerged from their rooms a moment later, going down to the end of the glistening corridor and turning at a right angle at the end. My presence went unnoticed, although all forty wore uniforms like containment suits without hoods, white with the giant sheaf symbol in green on the back.

That was the only green I saw, besides what I wore on myself, the entire time I was there. A green stripe on the wall and the green sheaf-of-grain symbol, but no more. The symbolism of the color must be a holdover from earlier times, like we in the early 21^st century hold on to symbols like the eagle and cross which hold no realistic or everyday meaning anymore.

Out of curiosity, I went to the section of hallway which the latest 'shift' had emerged from, looked around, and pushed on a door. I expected this not to work, for some strange technology embedded in the metal itself to reject my left palm. But it opened, and I was greeted with 'The Room of the 41^st Century'. We used to joke about the Japanese being efficient users of small spaces. But this...this was easily half of my freshman college dorm room, which in itself had the quaint title of 'maid's room'. Yet this was not what frightened me the most; that was left to the whole room's environment. There was a mattress of sorts along the back of the room, filling it completely. It was light grey and of some strange foam material I have not met an equivalent of in my life; one surface, not foam with a cover, but strangely resistant. The material failed to be the opposite of 'comfortable', but not by much. I convinced myself that this was simply an economical mass form of bedding that I supposed now, with little shock, that people had been used to since birth and did not find uncomfortable. After all, to be denied our pillows and forced to use wooded neck-rests, as some cultures did some four thousand years back, would simply be impossible because of what we ourselves are used to. This was not disturbing. What was disturbing was that the room, a white rectangle, was empty but for the essential furniture. I presume the 'citizens' (that's too kind a word) never ate in their own cells, but in some communal hall. I looked again, to be sure I hadn't missed anything; there wasn't much there.

A mattress, grey, along the wall. The bed. A white cube of some strangely light-but-sturdy material, almost like pumice without the visible holes. A multi-purpose cube. Chair? Footrest? Table? All of the above, and probably some more I wouldn't think of. There was a screen in one wall, and I shivered when I saw it, expecting a woman to come on and ask me why I wasn't doing my morning exercises, or wasn't at my post. 1984 some two thousand plus years late. There was one other thing in the room, although it was more a part of the room than something in it, and that was another, but smaller, panel. I pressed this and it spoke to me in a strange language, unpoetic and monotone but correct, as if intonation had completely dropped from speech. I said nothing, afraid I would activate something I was powerless to stop. It slid closed on its own a few seconds later.

Somewhat inspired, I touched the screen. This was simplistic; no knobs to remember which way to turn, no buttons that needed to be pushed in any sort of sequence, just touching. The screen lit royal blue, with twenty white icons I could easily recognize. A smiling face. A bird. An icon of water or the ocean or a pool. The omnipresent grain icon, and so on, with a blank square in the lower right corner. I touched — this was a simple interface — the bird. This was the only glimpse of nature I had my entire time. The screen displayed noiseless nature footage, the sort I remember from Disney-sponsored specials when I was young, although the blank square remained in the corner. Touching it brought me back to the 'menu', and touching it in the menu made the screen blank. Simple. The Corporation has entertainment — and news, I guessed from the icons of The Corporations in the menu — covered with the screen. Food. The panel on the side I had my 20^th and 21^st century biased guesses about; some sort of trash receptacle, perhaps laundry for the uniforms or an all purpose transport device.

I was about to leave the room when curiosity got the best of me again. I wanted to find out if that was a news program about The Grain Corporation, or propaganda, or what have you. If it was news, it would save me time in my explorations and I could leave, my stolid vow never to breed and cause anyone to live in this time set firmly in my mind.

It was news. From what I could tell, The Grain Corporation and every other had two components: workers and directors. The directors wore what they liked, dark colors predominating, setting them apart from a crowd of white-uniformed workers. There was some sort of deal going on between all, or seven or so, Corporations. It was propaganda footage spliced with footage showing what looked like subsistence farmers, and a icon-filled graph which, had the listener not been able to know what was being said, showed that there were a few people which lived outside The Corporations. The Corporations had destroyed a settlement of these outsiders and there were less every year. There would be a new set of programs in celebration for this, for a short time.

I turned off the screen, left the room and scurried noiselessly to the end of the corridor, nearly knocking into a robot which was methodically sterilizing the walls, floor, and ceiling. I had to leave. I had seen only three or four hours worth of this world, this world as distant from me as the Roman Empire. Sure, the people seemed basically provided for — for an instant I wondered the world population — but was there anything to live for? And my carefully cultivated aesthetic sense was reeling from a lack of stimulation. I had to return here, to the sanctity of my own room, my own world, imperfect but personal. I had pain, I had suffering, but it was my pain and suffering, and my subsequent well-earned and appreciated happiness. This was the new world, the Corporate world, the generic world, and I activated my time device to send me home. Nowhere but home.

I stare at it now, the little device, and wonder if I should destroy it. I cannot destroy my knowledge, but I dare not share it with any. I fear that if this were known, we would be expedited to that world, not prevented or diverted from its course. I will disconnect the vital circuits and use the wires in some other project, and although I look suspiciously at my robots, I know they'll never be enough to cause the thing I saw. And if they do, I thank my DNA it will run out in some seventy years.

End this project journal.