Foreword

Author’s Note: I decided to include the historians discovery of the story files in Part 2 of the story. So if you’ve read this Foreword previously, then you may notice the changes regarding when the historians found the archived files in addition to a few additional changes, which are mostly cosmetic.

My Advisors and Bond Mates had been on my ass for close to thirty years to sit down and write the story of the Ark; actually, it is a series of stories that document the Ark’s history from 2026 Old Calendar until 0236 ATF (After the Fall). I’m two hundred and ninety-two years old now, give or take a few years, and I think they were afraid I would die of old age before I wrote it. I kept telling them there was nothing to worry about, but I finally got tired of being nagged and agreed to write the stories. The reason I knew I wouldn’t die before I wrote the stories is undoubtedly confusing to someone who is not aware of the stories’ history.

Before what we now call the Week of the Meteoroids, I told our IT gurus, who we now call Historians, to archive as much information as possible off of the Internet. They downloaded and archived an immense amount of data. After the Week of the Meteoroids our Internet connection failed and we were all very busy with other things. It was around that time that our historians started their search of our archived data for specific information.

I should mention for clarity that we felt the arrival of the meteoroids marked the fall of our civilization, and we decided to start a new calendar. We decided February 22, 2043 Old Calendar was the last day of our former civilization’s calendar, and the next day, February 23, 0001 ATF, was the first day of our new civilization’s calendar.

Back then, we didn’t have many historians, so they did not have a lot of time to review the old data. After the internet failed and as time permitted, our historians began a systematic review of all the data they had archived. Over time, a number of the younger generation became historians, which allowed all of them to dedicate more time to reviewing the archived data. It was shortly after lockdown and our return to the surface that our historians found the stories, and all hell broke loose.

The story’s files had been posted to the defunct Internet with the first story being posted in 2016 Old Calendar. I was fourteen years old at the time, and in the first story I was twenty-four years old. Yeah, I think you are starting to see why all hell broke loose.

Our historians notified me when they realized that they were reading a series of stories that provided a detailed history of the Ark that began in 2026 and ended in 0236. The realization they were reading historical stories that described their future scared them so bad that they stopped reading the stories and notified me. At least they said they stopped reading the stories and they claimed they had not opened the subsequent story files other than the last file, but I have my doubts.

When I skimmed through several of the story files, I realized that we had a copy of stories written by me that I had no recollection of ever writing and the stories contained information about our future. The files had already been transferred to the Administrative disk volume, so I had their former storage locations overwritten by alternating patterns of ones and zeros. I needed to think about this before I read all of the stories. To be truthful, the ramifications of knowing the future scared the shit out of me; perhaps the historians were being truthful about not reading the files. Anyway, all of the computer files were safe on Administrative disk volume. I convened an emergency meeting of my Advisory Council to discuss what we should do about the situation.

At that time, my Advisers and I decided the existence of stories written by me that I had not yet written must be caused by a time loop; that was the only explanation. That was also why I decided it would be impossible for me to die before I wrote the stories, which would not happen until sometime in my future. If I did die before I wrote the stories, our timeline would self-destruct and timelines don’t do that, or at least I don’t think they do.

Several Advisory Council members believed we should read the stories and use the knowledge to avoid making the poor decisions that we suspected we would make in the future. Most of the Council opposed this idea for if we did something different from what was written then it would change our future. They rightfully said that changing any of the future events described in the stories would create a different future for us, and that future may not be as advantageous as the one described in the stories. That of course assumes the stories’ contents accurately describe our future.

tbd

None of us wanted to even think about the paradox that would result by us reading the stories and using the knowledge to change our future. If we did that, I would still write the stories, but what I wrote would be different than what I will write in this timeline. I could visualize our deviating from what the stories said about our current timeline; there would be thousands of possible timelines all existing concurrently and thousands of different Ark History descriptions. I’ve had that nightmare more than once.

My Council may have been split on what to do with the stories, but we all agreed that the historical knowledge of the future was too dangerous to reveal to the members of our current society. Therefore, we agreed that the files should be removed from all of our computers and locked away, so only Clara or I could access them. Once that had been done, we could discuss what we should do about the stories.

I made a hard copy of the stories, without reading what I printed. I then observed as our network specialists moved the stories’ electronic files from the Administrative disk volume where they had been stored to a removable hard disk that was given to me. I later made a package of the hard copy of the stories and the hard drive and gave it to Bob. He and Sharna stored the package where no one could access the stories; he told me they stored it on the moon.

I directed two of our network specialists to permanently delete the story files from all of our disk volumes and to search the data we downloaded for any additional copies of the stories that may have been downloaded. If they found any, they were to overwrite the file locations with a pattern of alternating ones and zeros, so no one could retrieve the files’ contents. Of course, I made sure that the network specialists doing this work were part of the group that believed that reading the stories might lead us to our destruction. They seemed very diligent in their efforts to remove the stories from our downloaded data and my computer.

During our next Advisory Council meeting, we discussed the stories. My advisors were worried about our timeline if we failed to close the time loop. I suggested that we make an electronic copy of the stories and send it back in time to close the time loop. That suggestion set off several heated discussions.

The first issue raised was: How we could send stories into the past when time travel is impossible? Someone asked the obvious follow-up question: Do we know that time travel is not possible? The obvious answer to those questions was we have stories from the past that accurately describe events that occurred after the stories were posted. The only way that could happen was if the stories were written in the future and sent back to the past for posting. Therefore, it is only logical that someone in our future will invent a means of time travel. Now that I think of it, I don’t recall us discussing how those stories would get posted.

The second issue raised was: Would sending a COPY of the stories back in the past create a time anomaly? Everyone agreed that a copy wasn’t adequate. It had to be written by someone. So, since I had written the stories, I would have to write them.

Back then, I was not a writer and had no desire to become one. So I bowed to the inevitable and said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I knew that it would be a losing battle to refuse to write the stories. Besides, by the time my amateur time loop experts were finished, I had become somewhat concerned over what might happen if I didn’t write them.

I had confirmed the last event in the stories occurred in 0236 before I gave the package to Bob. So, I told my Advisors I would wait until after 0236 and use the current stories to retype the stories into new computer files. That way by creating the files, I will have written the stories.