The first rule on time travelling: You are to remain invisible, and to leave as little an impact on the past or the future as possible.

The second rule on time travelling: You are to time travel at your own risk, and a return to the original time-space vector is not a given.

The third rule on time travelling: You are responsible for your own time travel route. Should you get lost, you are to locate and construct your own time marker to get yoruself back onto your designated route.

The fourth and the most important rule on time travelling: You are not to interfere intentionally with birth or death of any living creature. Any preconceived interference would automatically mean a destruction of the primary time marker which will lead to an erasure of your primary form at the point of origin.


Time travelling is now possible.
You laugh. Don't. BEcuase you can't be sure that the person you sit next to on the bus did not come from another time zone, posing as someone from your own time. Nor can you be sure that the next cockroach you stomp on is not some tourist from the future. In fact, the fact that cockroach is the oldest creature on earth has a story behind it. In 2489, a new breed of cockroach were sucessfully sent back in time to cross breed with ancient breeds. The sucess of sending something back in time fully intact and raised a storm all across the globe. Scientists got more ambitious and sent cockroaches as far back in time as they could. So cockroaches may not have been the million year old creature you are now being taught to think. And by 2489, human consciousness has become something transferable from embodiments to embodients, that is the fastest way to travel by the 25th century. Physical movement is too slow, the psychical transference is much faster and more efficient. You no longer have to call a friend just to send information or a message, you just need to possess the nearest thing you friend is holding or using. You can become a possessed cup in her hand and then send your mental message to her. That of course made cheating on spouses and girl/boy friends extremely difficult. So new devices have been created to block off the intruding psychic forces, or at least have some kind of alert system to prepare one for any out-of-body intrusion which is on its way to haunting your pen, your cups or any ordinary items.

And that of course put Einstein and his followers in a difficult position. In fact, all scientists were put into a terrible situation where material reality, rules and physic laws are no longer as important or all emcompassing. Shamans, priests, palmreaders, any psychics are the movers and shakers and inventors in this new century where people have discovered the power of mental and soul force. The body and the external is no longer as emphasized as in the past.

In fact the activity done the most in the future is to sleep and dream, menial labourers, the lowest in the social hierachy are still around to feed, dress, clean the masses. As always the people closest to the dirt of phyiscal reality and the secretions of flesh and blood occupy the lowest rung on the ladder. And by 25th century, the person with the highest mental, soul psychic force became the leader. Development of mental skills were important if you did not want to be mentally controlled by another of superior power. Unless of course you chose to abandon the pyschical realm for the real. There are stranders who refused to be part of the network and became vagabonds hovering a little between the two, they tried sleeping as little as possible so as not to intrude into that realm, but they also stayed away form the hard dirty work demanded of the physical realists.

The psychical mases could have communal dreams, and travel in time merely by posssessing objects in the future or the past. OF course, no one bothered travelling to the future, simply because the objects open for haunting were so few. Physical reality no longer has importance in the future, so there are little pathways for them to travel to, portals became miserably few. BUt the past, that was a rich playground for the adventurous and those who wants to create a little havoc. But none of them dare betray the rules for fear that they very own existence could be put into jeopardy. The past though massively acessible were a riskier part of the game. They could by accident change things such that events follow a different path eventually leading to their own destruction or just the simple fact of them not ever being born.

Call it universal karma or God's divine rules, personal influences on past or future is greatly limited. Not your silly science fiction type movies where a person can try to change the course of the world or bring history of mankind down a different path, because it has already been proven that a person's influence on the matters or people, or events around him or her is extremely small. It is like an ant trying to bring down a whole forest. So no change of consequence could be wrought by a single person or even a group of people. To seriosly change past events like the elimination of Hitler before 1939 or to let the first emperor of China be assinated before the unification would need several generations of people to all work together, and even then sucess is not a given. Often the only changes time travel would bring is personal, your own un-doing or little triumphs which would only matter to the individual, at most a community.

The worry that someone from the future might try to bring critical information back to the past which would lead to a precognition and hence a possible wave effect into the future is also unnecessary. Because as it is already obviously known, the human race is notorious for their bad judgment, and lack of imagination. Any well intention person from the future would sooner be locked up in the asylum than be listened to. Their well meaning advice would sooner cause their own end than to be treasured by the ignorant throngs. By the 25th century, the futility of trying to advice people from the past and warn them of dire consequences of their course of action has generally been accepted. Time travel while it was once seen as a portal to bringing about great chances have by now become just another tourist opportunity, another great escape from the here and now.

Ladies and gentlemen, now that you are familiar with the system of time travelling, the safety and even profitability of this enterprise, you are also free to invest into this arena of great future and past possibilities. It is also a vehicle for generating tremendous revenue. Especially if insurance commercial segments also show an interest in partnership. What I am doing here today coming all the way from the future, is to assure of the profitability of your investment today, that it will reap a great reward in the future and of course figuratively also your past. Now, if you have any questions, I will open the floor for questions.

If I had to pick out of the seven deadly sins
perhaps pride
is my greatest fault
because I cannot see you
Evil and goodness
Miracles of life abound
like that documentary about our origin
the beginning of the universe
how I felt a shiver
a tingle
how uncanny
how small
how indescribable the ice and how I felt an out-of-body experience
for a moment I felt so connected
and tiny
that the very atoms of my body came from
an explosion
of stars
that I will one day turn back into
the star dusts
how my life is so temporal
How, I would rather
become materials in deep space
than to drink from fountains of life
clothed in white

No, I saw you
caught a glimpse when I saw the immenseness
of the darkness
and mystery
of the galaxy
where life
LIFE was a gift
where for a fleeting time
time and all the right conditions
made it possible for us to catch that glimpse
of where we all came from
a miracle
but suddenly
you became unbelievable
a santa clause
a easter bunny
a fairy
an old man with beard
with a son who died without sins

If you created the universe
you will have no hands
no face
no image from which we are borne from
because the most wonderous things
have no forms
like the immense black of space
like music which speaks to my
very soul
like the very feeling in my heart now
of the gratitude
the disbelieve
and desire
to reach you
like the tears behind my eyes
not yet formed
they have no shape
nor substance
I do not want to rely on what the eyes can see
or even what the mind can conceive
or what the heart feels
nor do I want to name you
find you
like the WORDS
they are a child's
You will be outside of words
but they are all I have to offer
and all I can reject
but
I can never live without
like the believe in you
even if you are no longer
GOD
nor a father-in-heave
nor a Jesus
you are not a you
permeating even the vacuum in space
in everything we call fate
in time
in life
in death
in existence
in non-existence
in materials
in non-materials
in prehistory
in history
in the good
the evil
you are there
and you are not YOU.

IT IS.
It is not.
You are.
You are not.
I am. Not.

GOD?

We are so intelligent
yes clever
so darn superior
we spin lies
like being the most intellgent species
or a chosen race
so evolved
we invented atomic bombs
and almost destroyed ourselves
nine times over
made cars, televisions, all those
scientific mumbo-jumbos
so amazingly progressive
we wrought global warming at unstoppable pace
all in a couple hundreds of years
so ambitious
we explored space
littered the galaxy
and blind ourselves to our insignificance
so categorical
we named things
and then classified them in little boxes
and propagate them to our future generations
so humble
we congratulate ourselves
every single day
on how far we have come
the progress we have made
See, how amazing washing machines are
people used to wash in the rivers
that's when they understood the value of nature
our dependence
but we have grown from that
we are weaned on nature
no longer
but latex, plastic, neon lights

How great mankind is.

To that place where memories still reverberrate...

She set off one day, to find that secret place. The place where the past still exists not in some long forgotten dream, not in some yellowed archived pages, or words from the long dead, but where they still live and breathe like the trees around her. Where they become things, living things with a life, instead of something half-dead clinging to the living, like pieces of driftwoods after a ship wreck. Where they are more than artefacts, a testimony silent but dead to a past time. A falsifed witness. A liar who chose to omit things to the eyes, so that we only see what we want to see. No she wanted to see the past independent of memory. Independent of tenses. She wanted to touch the secret core of existence, the independent existnece of things which have come and passed, like the rain.

When she told them of her intention and her journey, they laughed.

"You'll have to be dead first." Cruel laughters.

"it is impossible, you are looking for the impossible. That place you look for does not exist. Only in your mind, it has no external reality. All the past has already faded, what is real is only now. LIsten to the wisdom of the Buddha." Wise councils.

"That is scientifically illogical. physically imposssible. What you are talking about here is a mere fantasy. You would not be able to travel to such a dimension even if it existed. And even if you did, you will no longer be you, so what's the whole point of this foolish entreprise?"

Whether it was out of stubborness or a staunch faith, she heeded none of the warnings, their teasings, and the truthful confrontations by the wise. She knew that the place existed, somewhere outside of time, outside of human knowledge of possibilities. The only problem is how to get there. Must she really die first in order to get to that place. Perhaps that is the only way to break out of the cage of human-bound physical reality, to get to the one inhabited by past memories.

Books and imaginations could not describe this place, because all those are the outputs of human mind. Sanity--is our guidepost and our chain. To fly perhaps she needed to break that chain. People who cared for her started to worry that she is going mad.

"You are obsessed." They say.

"Obsessed about things which lay out of reach. The past cannot be retrieved, and you are being foolish. Let memories lie, like the dead, don't go disturbing them."

"What is this journey you are planning? To travel you need a destination, you need an intention. What you are talking about here is crazy. there is no such place you can go to. Why don't you just stick to anticipating visiting the future instead of trying to return to a past." Their concerns had no place in her desire.

Once a desire has been placed in your heart, it is like a stubborn stain which refused to be forgotten. It surfaces time and again in your consciousness, haunts your dreams, and like a slowly rising tide, removes the extraneous, until all that is left, after the flood is the essential, the core of that desire. she envisioned herself paddling a tiny wooden boat in this sea of liquid dreams time and again--trying to find her way to the palace of the past.

Every old photograph was a testimony to this place. EVery captured moment of sunlight filtering in, on a incidental passing person spoke like a secret, a frozen lake of time beneath which the past still swims. She refused to be fooled by the eyes or the senses. Her knowledge has a deep dark spring well, the same place where babies and ancient wisdom came from.

In dreams, she returned to the sea inside. And all around her, the watery expanse was vast, and all she could hear for the longest time was just herself calling out and the echoes which returned. All she could see was that misty whiteness.

"Wake up from your fever, little girl, come back to us, to reality." Voices, disembodied and yet familiar, like an old song--foreign and familiar.

Mechanical blips sometimes filtered in unto the still lake of whiteness, she still paddles on, looking for the way to the place where Elvis songs and Mozart pieces drifts and blows like breezes through leaves; not the replicas on little silver discs, and Mona lisa smiles with a secret that is warm like blood running beneath veins. Where the childhood sunshine still burns her skin, torched and tattooed in a memory which threatens to evaporate every second, which seeks to mutate and recreate every instant into something new strange, foreign.

At the edge of the massive sea, she put down her burdens, strips her clothes and her past, leaves her shoes behind. And she never turned back.

I dreamt I was a in an aquarium ICU
they put exotic sea creatures in tubes and little machines
they had mermaids and mermen
watching over them 24-7
heads bowed in concentration
hair floating in he salt water
bright lights
flourescent
glowing mysteriously
like the creatures in the tanks
immobile
strange
eerie
I walked past the tiny red sharks
racing
There,
I saw
aquatic medusa
her dark hair
like seaweed
lifelessly dancing
secret currents
her eyes closed
her face pale
tubes, and a clear glass case around her head
a guard praying
all that moved was that mysterious current
hospital and a circus
rows after rows of fish tank
of imaginary mythical creatures
now real
now helpless, immobile
and me behind a glass
equally hapless