Time Traveling Saviors

The tension in that college study hall was thick and jammed pack with people. High emotion and volatile language discussing the harm being done by humanity unto planet earth. The globe's ambient temperature was on the rise. The climate was changing and its equilibrium all askew.

Too many vital resources had been, and were still, carelessly dug up and pulled from the earth. The mere extraction process of these minerals and rare metals, that reckless and brusque human touch, resulting in tremendous amounts of vast billowing toxic effluent bilging forth. It was gross.

Those earthly cavities were being left wide open like gaping canker sores, or worse, talks of filling them with waste from landfills or who knows what. Like some ill fated compost bin. Totally unsustainable. Meanwhile, waste clouds emanated across the globe from the innumerable coal energy power plants, with ever more on the docket. How could someone not see how this was going to end?

As the discourse of the heated open forum reached a critical denouement, scattered crying was breaking out as some attendees had become overwhelmed. Their thoughtful dedication was so far advanced that their mental state was in collapse. No way could this environmental carnage be reversed to make the earth safe for future generations. It was already too late. 

Strongly enough did many feel, their dedication to save the earth, that they were committed to the mission of not prolonging humanity, closing the loop on those future generations. Their safety precaution, these collegiate waifs, was to have no children.

They would voluntarily end the troublesome cycle by simply ending humanity. They were willing to do their part by pruning enough branches from enough family trees, their goal, they collectively hoped, would yield the desired victory for the earth. Cull the herd. Damn the humanity.

The hysteria rose. The content of the discourse degenerated further to sloganeering and unintelligible emotional outbursts. The crying of some led to the crying of more, then many, with the occasional wail.

One person in the room, having been silent, patiently absorbing the distress of his neighbors. Maybe it was time to challenge the mood in the room with a particular thought he'd been banging away at, in his quiet moments of reflection. It had long played out in his head. It was, after all, the company line.

He found it soothing, this idea, especially when he felt precarious questions probing into this increasingly tremulous future. Maybe today he would bear it out, expose it for critical discernment. Share it with the group, field the challenge to allow the open-minded to titrate out their own conclusions. This was, after all, a prospective outcome to which he was directly involved.

A test by fire. 'Why not now,' he thought to himself finding, to his surprise, that he'd already stood up to command his say.

He gently cleared his throat, raised his hand, and hesitantly waved it in the air. A vague back and forth motion. No smile on his face, as he was not prone to public speaking and was wrestling with the discomfort of so many eyeballs upon him.

Their attention commanded, he had the floor, by the curiosity of his unpracticed poise, and he hadn't even spoken a word yet. Be careful, he thought to himself, not to convey condescension, no jocularity, and don't give away too much. They turned and looked at him. It went like this.

"Maybe there's another way."

"Another way for what," said one, snidely.

"For the future to play out."

"You haven't listened."

"I've listened. I think, maybe . . . I don't subscribe."

"Subscribe to what?"

"The idea that humanity ends the earth."

"What don't you get, man? How does this not end badly," a mischievous smile on the heckler's face, thinking he'd have an easy scamper over this naive dullard.

"Because of the time travelers."

He stopped here, as if, somehow, everyone would know what he was talking about. They didn't, of course. So out of the blue was his remark, a proposed solution so unexpected, that it took a few seconds to register. Then everyone started looking around at each other, as if looking to see if anyone else understood. Which they did not. Nobody did. Eyes resettled back to him.

"Dude, what are you talking about?"

"The time travelers."

"Who? Where and what are you talking about," his countenance spoke of trouble. His depth of climate discussions, none had ever gone in this direction. His voice wavering as dramatically as his compromised confidence.

"Time travelers will come to keep us going."

"Time travel. Not yet invented, dork. Ergo, there are no time travelers."

"Not yet, but it's coming. Humanity merely need keep this bus humming along well enough, and long enough, for science to advance until that invention of time travel."

Again with the pause, people looking at each other, then back at him. Still no smiles. No head nods of affirmation. Nothing signifying that this was a joke, which it was not. Were they being played, the collegians considered, the weeping whelps? They knew not, so the probing continued.

"What?" Someone had chimed in. Engagement still at hand.

"In the future when time travel is invented, time travelers will be sent with their advanced future technology and science. They'll apply fixes needed to their past to preserve the future. They'll preserve their own future, their very existence, these time travelers, humanity, by fixing our present situations, with their technological donations from the future,"

"Donations?"

"Their intentional and purposeful technological gifts of knowledge. They're called donations."

"Technology to fix what?"

"Don't know, but future humans will know. They'll time travel backwards to the past and leak out future technology to spark invention or environmental developments. That's how humanity will save itself, and the globe, by prolonging its own longevity."

"First off, you're nuts. Second off, first rule of time travel is that you can't change the past." Some amongst them remained unruly, a smugness suggesting that they'd gotten him, which they had not.

"There'll be no changing of the past, only changing of the present. Well, their past, the time travelers, but our present. That they can do."

"That's changing the past, dude."

"Nope. It's changing our present, as it occurs. There will be no altering of the past. No history books to be reprinted or updated. So no, past is not being changed."

Again people looking at each other. A few nervous snickers. Were they being played? Or swayed? Has all their environmental alarming been for not? Are time travelers in our future? Not yet ready to yield, were some. Additional challenges hit the floor.

"How would they get back to their own time if the time travel technology doesn't exist in the present?"

"They wouldn't get back. It's a one-way trip, like that dog sent up to space by the Russians in the '50s."

"I thought it was a monkey."

"The monkey was in 1983. The dog was 1957."

"Stop with the dogs and monkeys. Back to the human time travelers. If they exist, or will exist, at some point they'd be found out. Why haven't we encountered any?"

"Encountered time travelers? Who says you haven't?"

"Well, I mean, dude, where are they?"

"If a time traveler were to admit that they were a time traveler, an unwavering argument, escalation-inducing vigilance, because it was truth, what'd happen to them?"

"They'd sound crazy."

"Agree. Anyone claiming to be a time traveler, and not steeply backpedaling from that beachhead with alacrity, they'd probably sound crazy. Add the lack of present day documentation and ID numbers . . ."

"So humanity is being saved by crazy people?"

"They'd probably not be crazy initially, the time travelers, like when they first arrive in our present. But the stress of time travel would have to be tremendous. I bet that'd be a lot of G-forces hitting a brain. That'd maybe push them there, into crazy territory."

"Again, so we'd be saved by crazy people."

"The contention is that they're not crazy when they arrive. But the time travelers would have a time challenge, not just for their travel, but the efficacy of their mission. They would likely need to complete their mission of future-knowledge transmission, their knowledge donation, before they go crazy induced by the biological stress of time travel."

"I think he's making sense," was a distinguishable remark amongst the mutterings from the back of the room, and like the sweet susurration of slicing a thick tray of brownies, a few 'yeahs' started to make their way forward.

Still though, many people were not certain if he was joking. The guy showed no give. I'll be damned. He believes it, thought some collegians. He believes that time travelers are really going to save humanity.

"How does he know so much," asked one.

"Wait, are you one of them? The time travelers? He's gotta be, right," posed a second.

He paused, then muffed a weak, "Well, that'd be crazy," failing to hide a smile, which did more reaffirming than denying. Whispering could be heard throughout the room. The converts accumulated, but all were not yet swayed.

"I don't think you know what you're talking about," halfheartedly challenged another, piously prolonging the idea that he who is most upset about the climate loves the planet the most.

"Maybe I can't explain. I just know. It's like, I can't explain quantum computing, but my lack of ability to explain doesn't prevent quantum computing from actually existing, because it does, and I can't." 

The probing died down. He had held his ground, possibly with too much vehemence. Truth is, he knew his side of the discourse to be true. He was, in fact, one of the aforementioned time travelers sent back to save humanity.

He sat down, gathered his things, and awaited a distraction where he could safely extract himself without commotion.

His mission had been successfully peddled. His mind would soon give way to the encroaching insanity induced by the bodily ravages of time travel, a known debilitating consequence.

He and his time travel cohort had cognitive tests to conduct daily, furnished by Operation Command. Because that daily testing is designed to confirm a time traveler has started that final descent toward insanity, the enthusiasm for that test dissipates like the carbonation in a long left open soda can.

He was months deep into his mission, the knowledge donation safely conveyed to those present day humans best positioned to advance that knowledge forward. The means by which conveyance was made was nebulous, but necessary and effective.

With that portion of his mission concluded, he was not eager to confirm his inevitable mental struggle. His sanity was slowly and certainly leaking out of him like a bucket with a tiny drip. Only, that drip would expand until it ran out like an open water faucet, until there'd be nothing left. At least, that's how he imagined it. That was his future, what remained of it, he figured, so why rush it.

His thinking had lately grown loose. A test could confirm it, but really, why now. So, with his accustomed deliberateness, he deliberately stopped his daily sanity testing.

In the meantime he occasionally amused himself intermingling with the hysterics. It had been mostly listening until this afternoon. This was his first time daring to speak truth. What could it harm, he thought? They'd just call him crazy, which he was, or would be soon. The consequences of time travel.