Christmas Tales Part 3

I don't have much of an excuse today, but fuck it here's another story I wrote for one of my friends last Christmas because I'm creative and cheap... Alan isn't on the internet so I can't link to him but he lives in Colchester and has long blonde hair and looks like a wizard feel free to question him or follow him should you see him around.

Alan Bolster: Time Wizard

First there was nothing. Of course, as anyone with a advanced understanding of the entropy can tell you, nothing is almost exactly the same as everything but for the sake of basic scene setting, there was nothing. The nothingness had been there forever. Unfortunately the concept of time in an infinite sea of nothing, or everything, is truly meaningless, the nothingness may have been there for billions of years or for a fraction of second. Observed from the outside the nothing barely existed for a few milliseconds but from within it was infinite. At some point the nothing would become something, or perhaps it already had been something or in fact everything. After several infinities or less than a second there was something in the nothing it was a complicated something but no more complex than the vast simplicity of the nothing but it was complicated enough to talk and it gave voice to the first, or possibly the last, or even the only, word that had ever been.

“Fuck.” Said the something. The something was most accurately described as a collection of fundamental particles coalesced in a way to give the appearance of mass. It was more simply described as a man. However it was best described as Alan Bolster, time traveller, wizard and competitive beard growth regional semi-finalist. A more specific description of would have included the words perplexed, curious and pine-scented. He glanced at his watch only to see it reading all times simultaneously before giving up and just showing the face of a particularly confused gazelle, this was particularly baffling as it wasn't a digital watch. Alan shrugged his shoulders and pulled out a small video camera and after some fumbling began to record.

“I have arrived some point before the beginning of the universe, I can't be more specific than that as time is problematic when dealing with near infinite entropy. However, I believe my presence in this space as a low entropy state should get time running from this point onwards. Now that time has begun running I intend to remain here as long as possible and witness the commencement of the universe.” Here Alan paused, he pulled the camera close to him so as not to drop it before realising that it was literally impossible for anything to happen to it and left it hanging whilst pointing towards him as he reached inside his pocket and removed the necessary accoutrements to create a joint. “Now it is my belief that what I'm doing here will be the only act of creation that occurs today... well not day but you catch my drift.” After an incredibly difficult to specify amount of time he had finished creating the small stick. “Now if you are watching this then and find this troublesome.” He said holding up, although again direction is a bit vague as well, the freshly prepared drug delivery system. “Then I will remind you that the planet earth isn't going to exist for roughly nine billion years and as such it is impossible for me to break any laws... even the physical laws of the universe do, as yet, not apply.” With that he popped the joint in his mouth and lit it with a snap of his fingers. “Now I have no idea how long it'll take for the universe to start, as time doesn't exist yet.”

***

Time resolutely failed to pass

***

After what seemed like a vast amount of 'time' but could even have been before Alan had actually arrived he'd run out of both weed and Subway sandwiches. The situation was starting to become desperate, well not massively desperate as the complete lack of physics meant leaving would be incredibly easy, it could be accomplished with little more than a thought, although it would be an unusually complex thought. However to leave without definitive proof that the universe was not created, that no booming voice had shouted “let there be light” at the nothingness and called forth the multiple facets of reality, evidence that life and a place in the universe was just a cosmic lottery prize, a place only held on to by those with the tenacity to fight for it was not an acceptable outcome. The idea of returning to what some laughably referred to as creation without the all time trump card in the history of human debate was not to be considered.

This mission had been embarked upon not just on a mere whim but with a nobler purpose. Freedom. To finally be able to show, empirically, that religion was a horrifying lie would be to un-tether mankind's scientific advancement in a way that had never before been seen, and that would be the only way to save the human race.

***

Alan had learnt mastery of the wizardly arts many centuries ago and had used his powers to unlock all manner of advancements, eternal life, cold-fusion and a way to create an iron-free shirt that didn't actually require any ironing, but it was only recently that his attempts to create a working time travel device had succeeded, although in truth he'd cut out a lot of the really hard work by travelling back in time instantly and helping himself with a lot of the development. As soon as he'd justified his own curiosity on the subject of Jesus, a third rate con-man, JFK, shot by a jilted ex-lover of Marilyn Munroe and the Tunguska Incident, crashed space ice-cream truck, he'd decided to see what the future held for humanity. What he'd discovered was chilling. Every single time he visited he saw the latest scientific ideas destroyed by the faithful, always under a different guise be it the Christians, Mars Worshippers or the out of control remnants of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He'd seen it a thousand times over, until finally his journey into humanity's star-spanning civilization had brought him to Terra Omega.

Terra Omega was the end of the human race and they knew it, on a single near-lifeless planet there was a solitary city clinging to life beneath the last days of the final star in the entire universe. When it collapsed in on itself all that would remain was a near-infinity of decay followed by the actual infinity of the heat death of the universe. All of human achievement was there, recorded in the city's vast database. He'd helped the city's finest minds try to discover a way out, a way to open a doorway to another universe or ascend to a different plane. Failure would render every single thought of every single human utterly meaningless, success would mean that every single nano-second of human existence would have been another step on the way to something so much greater, but even as they worked there was strife in the city. There was a faction who believed that God would save them if they only showed faith.

War had come to the city that quicker than Alan could've possibly imagined and within days the last of the scientists was dead. God never came for his 'chosen' people and Alan had been forced to watch from a distance as every future hope for his species had disappeared in the blink of an eye. He'd left downhearted and tried to return to a more hospitable time to live the rest of his life in a state of contentment, but peace of mind had never come, even when he was spectacularly high. Then one day the idea had occurred to him. If he could prove that religion was a falsehood it would derail the time-line and remove religion from the city at the end of time.

He'd decided that the early twenty-first century was the best time to make the attempt, with the Occupy movement that would see the reformation of human society was at it's height and the support for organised religion would soon enter a dip that would see it almost die out over the next fifty years, only to suffer a huge re-emergence during the first inter-stellar war. So here he was with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

“Oh just fucking start already!” Alan proclaimed. Almost instantaneously there was a huge deafening roar and a feeling that was indescribable in the purest sense of the word. Suddenly everything just happened the and Alan was bombarded by the vast waves of particles that until seconds ago hadn't existed. There was a vast wave of light, the brightest that would ever exist and then suddenly he was hanging there watching the cosmos begin to be. He looked into the camera.

“It seems that I may have inadvertently just started the universe. Not massively inexplicable really, outside the realm of physics the existence of a consciousness could well turn thought into physical action.” He paused to think for a moment. “I'm definitely not a God though and I will be really angry if anyone wastes time worshipping me. It's actually possible that seeing as time has no meaning once times arrow has stopped that this is exactly how the universe was always going to start.” He turned off the camera slipped it into his pocket. As he turned away from the beauty of the newly formed cosmos he could only think how much he was looking forward to posting the video, all of his papers on time-travel and a personal memoir on rationalskepticism.org... but maybe he'd stop off at the Vatican first. Smiling Alan winked out of existence.