Chapter 42

Five years later...

Earth time: April 27, year 204,860 9:00 AM Antelope Freeway Standard Time

After my morning workout with A'moth in the arctic gym, I was all set for our usual 8:00 AM staff meeting, but Isabelle said she and Jim are working on something interesting and she asked if we could postpone the meeting till ten o'clock. So I asked Issie to jump me to Antelope Freeway so I could practice my jumping for a while. I practiced for about a half hour, and then got bored. I parked in one of the lounge chairs in the center of the Freeway and waited for Issie to pick me up.

My jumps are easy and smooth now. I don't know what my distance limit is. I can jump anywhere on the Freeway with ease, but I could do that in 2033. Sometimes I dream of walking south from our arctic home. I'd only have to walk about 500 meters from the peninsula tip, and then I'd know how far I can jump. But how to get back? The Nebraska channel is so dangerous and unpredictable; it's not worth the risk.

We spent our first year in this new era keeping a very low profile and just making passive observations. It seems this time loop is true to form. The WFM has survived for over 200,000 years now. As much as I hate their guts, I have to admit they've withstood the test of time... sort of...

What do I mean by true to form? In Havika's original time loop, the Blue Ring starting singing to Kalea soon after their disastrous 1436 expedition. In our loop, we broke temporal symmetry during that expedition, and the Blue Ring didn't reveal itself until the following Path opening.

Anyway, Havika's Hopewell history book describes how Kalea, Hiapo and Havika decoded the X-tree information from the solar tower. The book describes how a single pair of young adults from this era takes one of the slip ships from Earth to Aina. So we know how the loop completes, how time manages to back into itself. I remember a meeting we had four years ago, where A'moth was going nuts trying to understand this...

"But this still makes no sense!" she said in a semi shout.

Isabelle was there at the table. "The math is very tricky mom, but Jim and I both think our model is sound."

"Oh, it's not the math, daughter! How can you predict our free will is gone?!"

"It's not. I'm not predicting that."

"But if the future is determined, where is our free will?! I thought we broke temporal symmetry with the last loop during the Hopewell's 1436 expedition!"

"We did!"

"Aha! So why are we converging to the same history as the last loop?"

"Because we're still inside the same loop! The reality interface demands it!"

"Isabelle, that makes no sense!"

Jim broke into the conversation. "A'moth, if I could interrupt... Are you familiar with the butterfly effect?"

"Sure. A butterfly decides to flap its wings or maybe not, and six months later the world's weather patterns are all different. The future is infinitely sensitive to the past, no thresholds for sensitivity, truly infinite."

"Exactly!" Jim smiled happily. "An initial perturbation, no matter how tiny, propagates and creates more changes, which create more changes, which cascade into the future until everything is changed."

A'moth looked thoughtfully at Jim. "Okay..."

Jim continued. "In normal physics, chaos maximizes the diversity. But we're inside a time loop. It's a self-organizing phenomenon, a driven system with positive feedback. The time loop is allowing the future to influence the past. The future is self focusing in order to be in a state where it hands off reality to the past at loop reset. Within the restrictions of loop reset, we still have free will. But there are some things we're powerless to change..."

Isabelle spoke up. "Think of a hurricane mom. That's a self organizing phenomenon too. You see it coming, but you can't stop it. You still have free will, but there are some things you just can't change. Time loop physics is very tricky, but the free will is still there. The normal diversity of the universe is being focused by the time loop. Quantum reality converges rather than diverges, which causes the classical-level reality to converge too."

A'moth was silent for a while and then gave a deep sigh. "I dimly see what you're getting at. I can still make choices, but my power to change reality is limited..."

Isabelle nodded. "... by the loop! You have it! The paths leading to certain events are still undetermined, but the loop imposes some boundary conditions on how the future will evolve. The time loop creates destiny, and the Ring is destined to be on Aina. It has to happen."

"So we're doomed? All of humanity is doomed?"

"Not quite," said Jim. "But we'll have to break the loop to get free..."

Ah, memories... I looked around from my lounge chair, looked at the barriers and the pristine Chevy and Mercedes. After all these years, they look so familiar now...

We made a lot of progress that first year. All five of us worked on how to decode the new internet packets. By June of 204,856 we were all busy learning to understand the WFM's spoken language. The words are different, sure, but it was amazing how much of the basic structure was still the same. All through our second year here, that's what hit us the most, how little progress has been made. The WFM has had the slip ships for 200,000 years, and they only made a few test flights to nearby stars around the end of their war...

Most of the test flights were in the years between 2120 and 2130. In the year 2120, the WFM officially declared victory in their war against the Equalists. Even after the fall of Hawaii, they were paranoid about the possibility of unknown pockets of enemy, especially in Africa, a continent they never spent much time with. But the WFM was the only society with the incubator technology, and when you can reproduce and your enemy can not, time becomes an ultimate and invincible weapon. By 2120, the youngest fugitives would have been 110 years old, and the WFM finally decided it was safe to ignore the possibility of their existence.

Their philosophy of mass producing people was frightening. By the end of the year 2059, they had over thirteen million incubators running, churning out two million babies a month, almost all females. There were just a few males conceived for breeding stock, and the WFM was already busy with their sick goal of destroying male reasoning abilities. The next generation had the rate up to ten million babies a month by the year 2090. Thirty years after that, the WFM stabilized the population at around four billion. And then they did a few test flights with the slip ships.

And then... nothing! How is that possible?! Well, maybe a few more test flights three thousand years later. There was a brief burst of curiosity and a few more flights, mostly to the outer planets in the solar system. And then... nothing! They've had the keys to explore the universe for 200,000 years and they never bothered! How is that possible?!

They did turn Earth into a garden planet. I'll give them credit for that. It's beautiful, and mostly wild and free and pristine. They cleaned up all the wastes and carnage of the wars. The planet is also very well monitored, at least around their population centers. If we ever leave our retreat, we'll have to be careful how we do it...