The Great Phone Directory of the Earth and neighbouring planets: Chapter 2
Chapter 2
- May I ask you a question?
- Of course.
- Let's say that what you are telling me is true and that you are really calling from the future...
- From 2053.
- Yes, from 2053... Well, I was wondering: if it's really possibile for you to travel back and forth in time... why we never see you around here? Why you never give interviews? Or better: why don't you all go back in time and play the SuperLottery? I mean: why do you stay there, minding your own business, when you could find a minute to warn us, say, not to go into war with somebody; or that a tsunami is heading our way; or that we shouldn't waste our time watching eight seasons of a sit-com if the channel that broadcasts it will cancel it before the end?
- That's a very good question.
- Thank you.
- I would like, first of all, to say that I have no idea what the SuperLottery is.
- It's ok, it's not important.
- As for the rest: it is not true that time travelling is not possible. It is forbidden.
- Forbidden by whom?
- Well, I'll tell you the whole story: for some years after the discovery by Heffenback III, when the news spread that you only needed a toaster and some sunscreen, time travelling was all the rage. We consumed more sliced bread in that period that in all the rest of the galaxy's history.
- Sliced bread.
- Yes. Not the wholemeal type.
- Oh.
- It is important.
- I see.
- Well, you would see people disappear and then come back with vintage cars, antique coins, photos signed by dictators. And this was only the beginning: since every action committed in the past implied inevitable consequences in the future, it might happen that the Ministry of Education had to update textbooks every couple of days, depending on who had changed the trajectory of a given bullet, or had warned a head of state he would choke on a pretzel. Not to mention the fact that some multi national companies took advantage of the situation to speculate on the toaster market, and that for some time, before the goverment nationalised the production, it was almost impossible to find one. Still today, our inflation index is calculated on the weighted average of the prices of different brands of toasters.
- I see.
- And it doesn't end here. For all these reasons, one day they decided to regulate time travelling: all you had to do was purchase a ticket, go to the Embassy or Consulate of the year you had the intention of visiting, answer a couple of questions, fill out a form in which you solemnly declared things like: "I have no intention whatsoever of depositing any kind of refuse in time, even if biodegradable", or "I am totally aware that spoilers are absolutely forbidden", and request a simple VISA - if you were travelling to the past - or an enVISAge, for the future.
- So, getting to the point, in theory you could make a little trip overe here, right?
- No. If you have a little more patience I'll tell you everything.
- Please, go ahead.
- We cannot travel through time and reach you because, after a first period of experimentation with the new system, we realised that uncontrolled bureaucracy had not proved to be an effective deterrent against the fooolish things people do when time travelling. Some would go back in time to do their high school finals over again; others, for instance, would even summon from the future their own self just to get a nice massage or their back scratched .
- Uhm...
- You may have already guessed how we got to the total ban. The more timid ones and deep-rooted singles quickly realised that it was really easy to go from a massage given by our other self to experimenting other types of services. The quantity of people who fell in love with their other self travelling around the space-time dimension really was unexpected; it is also true that during such trips, often two people at random from two different ages would meet, like each other, build a family around officially registered very young mothers and fathers who, according to their papers, had not even been born yet. A movement for the defence of inter-temporal de facto couples was even set up, but the Goverment stonewalled, especially when it did not want to recognise those I would call "non-matched couples", made up by two versions of the same individual, each coming from a different time.
- This is becoming tricky.
- And it will get trickier now: each component of the "non-matched couples" had a perfect clone of the other one at disposal. No time to study your lesson? You just had to send to school your other self from the following year, who had had more time to study. Not to mention how many wives found out only after a long time that the future versions of their husbands would stand in for their present ones, busy with their mistresses or with the "five-a-side" football match.
- A great mess.
- Exactly. For this, in the end, the Supreme Governor decided to deport all illegals to their year of origin, and to forbid, without exception, time travelling. To ensure the continuity of the relations that had been inevitably established, the Congress contracted out to the company that published the Great Phone Directory of the Earth and neighbouring Planets (Jupiter not included) the management, under a monopoly, of TimeCallsTM like this one, that enables me to speak to you. The thing is, they cost a bomb.
- How much?
- I am not sure. On my planet, not including the connection charge, I would have needed six toasters.
- Of course.
- Let's say that what you are telling me is true and that you are really calling from the future...
- From 2053.
- Yes, from 2053... Well, I was wondering: if it's really possibile for you to travel back and forth in time... why we never see you around here? Why you never give interviews? Or better: why don't you all go back in time and play the SuperLottery? I mean: why do you stay there, minding your own business, when you could find a minute to warn us, say, not to go into war with somebody; or that a tsunami is heading our way; or that we shouldn't waste our time watching eight seasons of a sit-com if the channel that broadcasts it will cancel it before the end?
- That's a very good question.
- Thank you.
- I would like, first of all, to say that I have no idea what the SuperLottery is.
- It's ok, it's not important.
- As for the rest: it is not true that time travelling is not possible. It is forbidden.
- Forbidden by whom?
- Well, I'll tell you the whole story: for some years after the discovery by Heffenback III, when the news spread that you only needed a toaster and some sunscreen, time travelling was all the rage. We consumed more sliced bread in that period that in all the rest of the galaxy's history.
- Sliced bread.
- Yes. Not the wholemeal type.
- Oh.
- It is important.
- I see.
- Well, you would see people disappear and then come back with vintage cars, antique coins, photos signed by dictators. And this was only the beginning: since every action committed in the past implied inevitable consequences in the future, it might happen that the Ministry of Education had to update textbooks every couple of days, depending on who had changed the trajectory of a given bullet, or had warned a head of state he would choke on a pretzel. Not to mention the fact that some multi national companies took advantage of the situation to speculate on the toaster market, and that for some time, before the goverment nationalised the production, it was almost impossible to find one. Still today, our inflation index is calculated on the weighted average of the prices of different brands of toasters.
- I see.
- And it doesn't end here. For all these reasons, one day they decided to regulate time travelling: all you had to do was purchase a ticket, go to the Embassy or Consulate of the year you had the intention of visiting, answer a couple of questions, fill out a form in which you solemnly declared things like: "I have no intention whatsoever of depositing any kind of refuse in time, even if biodegradable", or "I am totally aware that spoilers are absolutely forbidden", and request a simple VISA - if you were travelling to the past - or an enVISAge, for the future.
- So, getting to the point, in theory you could make a little trip overe here, right?
- No. If you have a little more patience I'll tell you everything.
- Please, go ahead.
- We cannot travel through time and reach you because, after a first period of experimentation with the new system, we realised that uncontrolled bureaucracy had not proved to be an effective deterrent against the fooolish things people do when time travelling. Some would go back in time to do their high school finals over again; others, for instance, would even summon from the future their own self just to get a nice massage or their back scratched .
- Uhm...
- You may have already guessed how we got to the total ban. The more timid ones and deep-rooted singles quickly realised that it was really easy to go from a massage given by our other self to experimenting other types of services. The quantity of people who fell in love with their other self travelling around the space-time dimension really was unexpected; it is also true that during such trips, often two people at random from two different ages would meet, like each other, build a family around officially registered very young mothers and fathers who, according to their papers, had not even been born yet. A movement for the defence of inter-temporal de facto couples was even set up, but the Goverment stonewalled, especially when it did not want to recognise those I would call "non-matched couples", made up by two versions of the same individual, each coming from a different time.
- This is becoming tricky.
- And it will get trickier now: each component of the "non-matched couples" had a perfect clone of the other one at disposal. No time to study your lesson? You just had to send to school your other self from the following year, who had had more time to study. Not to mention how many wives found out only after a long time that the future versions of their husbands would stand in for their present ones, busy with their mistresses or with the "five-a-side" football match.
- A great mess.
- Exactly. For this, in the end, the Supreme Governor decided to deport all illegals to their year of origin, and to forbid, without exception, time travelling. To ensure the continuity of the relations that had been inevitably established, the Congress contracted out to the company that published the Great Phone Directory of the Earth and neighbouring Planets (Jupiter not included) the management, under a monopoly, of TimeCallsTM like this one, that enables me to speak to you. The thing is, they cost a bomb.
- How much?
- I am not sure. On my planet, not including the connection charge, I would have needed six toasters.
English translation by Paola Corazza
© 2009 Gianluca Neri - All Rights Reserved