>>@SGT | TO: @ALL.

[byhand]

I usually reserve these communications for private networks, but it seems necessity has hastened our meeting. For the safety of myself and my family, I would be of no uncertain gratefulness if you would refer to me as Sargent, and little else. Though I am sure, with time, some of you will come up with more colorful nicknames.

Pleasantries aside; welcome, new faces and old, and I must ask this with all seriousness and kindness: What have you done?

Things are moving at the wrong speed. The prognosticators were not expecting to compensate for such a load. Several droids have begun misfiring, our protochron readouts are gaining sentience, a prophet is missing, and the birds are growing increasingly agitated. This is not the series of events your ancestors knew, much less my progeny.

To put it simply: things are not moving apace. I cannot say for sure if this is your influence, or the influence of an outside power, or perhaps both. And yet:

Mary Wollstonecraft, who was not supposed to enter Paris until next month, is already here.

The King's Trial has not even been proposed by the revolutionary government.

Mirabeau sleeps still in a place of honor.

I will put more work into discovering the source of this snarl in history. But you must be warned: every action you have here changes the lives of untold million not yet born. Tread carefully, for as the poets say: you walk upon dreams.

Comments

[lonelywar]

There is much that COST is capable of that I do not understand. I believe you, though it is troubling to know that this is possible.

"Kalpa" - I have heard this word before. What does it mean?

[He isn't sure what he would be more interested in: seeing where they would "return" to or seeing what this stranger would be able to teach. Ashitaka resolves to answer both mysteries some day.]

I believe so. So these machines are more like natural forces than sentient beings, for they merely act in accordance to what they are. You're right; that does make it important to guard them. Where did they come from? Or was it simply the advancing of time that led naturally to their discovery?

[byhand]

Kalpa is a popular term, and it means different lengths of time to different people. It started as a way to measure time in a world of time travel; it originally meant the length of time spanning to the beginning of existence to the end of it. Now... I would say I am a kalpa old. Many of the denizens of Lemuria would say I am eighty.

A bit of both. Advancements made it possible for them to be made, or, in some chances, stolen from more advanced times and places. Time travel initially started with an attempt to rekindle extinct species.

[lonelywar]

To the end of existence? Such a thing is a defined point in time for you?

[What did it mean, if such a thing was a tangible truth, a fact that could be used to mark time?]

It... is certainly complicated. I can see that with the invention of time travel, however, such things become hard to determine completely.

Perhaps it would have been better if such technology was never discovered.

[Time could march on uninterrupted then.]

[byhand]

More... theoretical than defined. All things that have a beginning have an end, but every world has a different ending. It's a mathematician's dream, and a dreaming man's nightmare.

Or perhaps, if men's hearts were not so full of greed, such stopblocks would not be needed. The technology was originally made to save lives, bring back extinct species and feed starving peoples. It was quite successful at that, until hungry generals turned their eye to its other uses.

[lonelywar]

Seems strange to make a measurement from something undefined, but... I would admit all of this is strange to me.

I understand well the darkness that can take hold in the hearts of men. A powerful tool created for the greater good will always be in danger of those who seek to use it for personal gain. It... is too bad this is so universal.

You said that you "babysit" this technology. Are you a guard or a technician, then?

[byhand]

Do not worry. It is strange to us all; we only learn to live with it. Man was surely never meant to use such means, but now that he has, we must carry forward.

Any thinking creature will turn toward selfishness and laziness eventually. A regrettable outcome that only makes our work more pressing, I fear.

I am a trainer and a teacher, but my students are away from me just now. When you return, I will take my normal duties back. Until then, I will make myself useful as best I can.

[lonelywar]

[Perhaps they should go back and prevent man from being given such power. But... that would form a paradox, wouldn't it...]

This is true.

I am interested to see what you can teach. Hopefully when we meet, it will be in victory and not defeat.

[If only Ashitaka knew what that victory would entail at this moment...]