Born roughly 10,000 years into the future, and having suffered through one 28 year coma, and a millennia-length cryopreservation, Slade has come back in time to tell his story. But due to time-traveler fatigue, TWID will do their best to pen it.
Each and every time paradox be damned, Slade has just re-emerged from the year 3012. Still smelling of hyper-nitrogenized ectoplasm, Slade is here in 2012, to relay a general message encrypted with highly sensitive data. And to future the future of time paradoxes.
Slade does not own one V-necked article of clothing. He is like nothing that has ever travelled back in time from the futurity. He knows nothing of flying cars, hovercraft, pill-sized meal portions, or galactic conquest. Slade however, has survived both of Earth’s apocalypses, and has learned to weather the rigors of the predictable and subsequent tribal cannibalism that typically follow.
During one of his travels, sometime in the Summer of 3012, Slade was downloaded. At that time, as surprising at is sounds, a technology once thought to be obsolete was revived. The floppy disk had not only made a ridiculous recovery, but had also realized its full potential. For three months in Thirty-twelve, Slade was in fact, a floppy disk. He was green, and read-only.
Later on that year, on August 27th to be exact, Slade was finally himself again... for the most part. It’s not that he wasn’t himself in appearance or personality, it was that by this time, he was property of The Republic. The Republic took the liberty of uploading Slade back into the animate entity he was previously accustomed to. The Republic was a country of fiercely like-minded individuals who seceded from The Society shortly after the great debate of 2945. Shortly after Mother Earth’s second apocalypse, it became common convention to settle disputes via debate. With most of the ingredients for explosive weaponry stripped down to the Earth’s mantle, war just wasn’t economical anymore.
The next task thrust upon Slade was the first ever time travel experiment done under government supervision. Slade was still contractually obligated as a servant to the government through write protection from when he was a 3.5 inch floppy. His contract was to be up the very next day, but just like many schemes executed by The Republic, this one was quite dastardly. Why not send him back in time 1000 years so that he is effectively under edit-proof contractual control for another 1000 years and a day? A dastardly scheme it was indeed.
That is what brings Slade here, to present day Asia, high into the Ural mountains. Please take note that in a thousand years time, the surface of the Earth goes through many topographical and locational changes. Luckily enough for Slade, Time Traveler, he is biologically equipped for cold temperatures. When you’ve been frozen for an entire millennium, a few degrees below zero is not the least bit distressing.
So how is Slade from the past? The answer to that is pretty simple. While fleeing from Julius Caesar over a dispute of domestic animal malnourishment, Slade found his escape in a time rift created by The Republic in their first time travel experiment over three thousand years later. You’re probably thinking: wait, wouldn’t this be the second time travel experiment conducted by The Republic? No. It was the first, since that is how Slade arrived in The Republic’s custody in the first place.
Now, you’re probably thinking: but wait, wouldn’t that prove it’s the second, and the earlier experiment described was the first? Wrong again. Slade travelled into the future through an alternate dimension via a circuitous path along a time rift and came to a stop in the year 3095 and on Republic soil. This probably leads you to surmise that this is just one big contradiction.
That is incorrect as well. Recall earlier in this article, but later in time, when Slade was downloaded onto a floppy disk? Well, in the future, you can download software from the future. Therefore, at the effective time, this was The Republic’s first time travel experiment. Not until Slade was downloaded from the future and then uploaded into the past did the earlier experiment take place after the first experiment. Let the Eureka effect settle in.
Thankful to have escaped from the clutches of Caesar, Slade did not quite understand how this miraculous event could quickly turn into misfortune.
Slade would travel 3000 years in the future to only leap back 1000 years into the past and arrive around 2000 years ahead of what he once called the present.
Slade grew up in the ancient Roman empire, but was born in the year 12000, just prior to the Earth’s third and final apocalypse. Knowing of this impending apocalypse, Slade’s mother and father had a decision to make. Do they take Slade with them to Venus, and see if the newborn can survive extended space travel and the extreme volcanic climate of Venus? Or do they send him so far back into the past that it is nearly impossible for him to experience even one apocalypse of Earth and possibly hear the music of Justin Bieber? Slade’s parents chose the latter.
While the pod carrying Slade’s mother and father went on to Venus, a separate pod carrying Slade and copious freeze-dried breast milk reserves travelled opposite the Earth’s rotation and orbited her at great speed in order to reach his historic destination.
The pod of Slade came to a fiery landing on the coastline of the ancient Persian Gulf. The year was 93 B.C. and the climate was arid and wholly brutal. The pod finally came to rest in its newly formed crater, two telescoping hydraulic poles extended to open the hatch in a hissing canopy-like fashion...
TO BE CONTINUED...
