The Paradox of Time

The Paradox of Time

 

They visited last night. I travelled with them. They came to me and offered to show me something. If only I could forget what I saw. But it's ingrained now; indelible. I can't erase it and neither can I change it, any more than I can influence the future. A future which they showed me. 

 

This is from the field notes of Miles Brunner, or at least what remains of them. As well as his written notes, we have voice recordings, in which he speaks of shadows and reflections. He has documented his theories on what he believes to be a life form that he's had contact with. We don't know if the entities or beings he speaks of are aliens, ghosts, demons, or something else. Doctor Brunner though is convinced that whatever these things are, they are with us and we are inclined to believe him, based on what we have seen and heard. We have heard voices besides that of Doctor Brunner in the background of his voice recordings.

 

We are The Forteans. We are an independent organisation, not financed by government or private commerce. We took our name from Charles Hoy Fort, an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena. We continue the work of Charles Fort and publish our findings by whatever means possible. We have to maintain a degree of secrecy as there are powers and machinations at work which would have us silenced, for we research and report on things which those powers would rather be kept secret. 

 

Sometimes we post reports on the internet but those reports are often removed before the Internet Archive or Way Back Machine has had time to archive the web pages. Therefore we rely on old-fashioned printing methods, or private individuals; specifically bloggers. Those who don't want people to know can't keep constant tabs on every blogger's website. They find us in the end but our network of bloggers allows us to move things around; always one step ahead. So if you're reading this, thanks is due to the person who showed it to you. You are a seeker, seeking information which we share.

 

Our colleague Miles Brunner has practiced and written papers on lucid dreaming; a state which he describes as being somewhere between the conscious and subconscious; of taking control of one's dreams. He believes though that the beings he describes variously as "The Others", or "Them", "They" and "Those" actually control our dreams.

 

In one of Miles' papers, he used the analogy of a termite mound, where humans are termites: they have an organised society, a hierarchy and governance. Although the termites occasionally leave the nest to explore, hunt and forage, they are insular to the extent that they are ignorant of anything other than prey or predators around them. This includes humans. By extension, Dr Brunner theorised that as a race, we may be unaware of other beings which exist in a form which we don't recognise as physical and yet they are all around us without our being aware of them. "Life...", wrote Doctor Brunner "...as we know it, is merely part of an ongoing existence, the greatness of which we don't yet understand." He quotes Arthur C. Clarke in the same paper: 

 

"I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long."

 

"We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return … The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation … the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began."

 

"The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life — much less intelligence — beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime."

 

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

 

Brunner goes further with his theory that whatever these things are, they are with us and always have been. They are all around us and he uses a further analogy by way of explanation: that of ghosts; or what we refer to as ghosts. Brunner suggests that these apparitions are actually a protrusion - perhaps accidental - of these beings into our dimension; our time and space.

 

Much of Doctor Brunner's notes is missing but he refers to ancient civilisations which once made Earth their home; those we refer to now as the Aztecs, the Incas and the Egyptians. He refers to cave paintings, ancient glyphs and structures, which he suggests could have been made by previous civilisations or visitors, of whom we may have been born. He refers to Drake's equation, which even when the minimum values are applied to each factor to determine the possibility of life elsewhere, points to us not being alone in the universe. But the distances involved are so great that we may never know. Therein lies the paradox.

 

The remainder of the doctor's notes are as follows:

 

We travelled vast distances. Distances which my mind can hardly contemplate, just as the human brain cannot contemplate the concept of infinity or nothingness: they showed me both. These dreams are so vivid as to be almost reality. They are visions and insight into something and somewhere I wish I'd not ventured. 

 

You don't know they're there; you don't know when they've been there before and you don't know when they'll visit again. 

 

They are visitors from the past; from the future. But they exist now, all around us in shadows and reflections. They see us but we don't see them.

 

They told me of my future. A future I have no control over. They told me what will happen to my children: events I have no control over because they told me that I'll be gone before my children. They showed me what I can't change.

 

We have no control over our destiny any more than we do of our past. If we had control of our past, we may not exist. It's the paradox of time travel: if you travel back in time and murder your own father, you yourself will cease to exist.

 

They are ghosts from the past and the future. They have seen your future, over which you have no control. They have returned to show us what has happened and what will happen. Returned as they've been here before: we just didn't know. We can't change it or them. They are with us.  

 

They manifest themselves in our vision in a form which they feel we might find acceptable as it's representative of our physical form. Most of the time they get it right and we don't notice them as we see them as one of us; or even ourselves: in the mirror; in our shadows. They're fallible though. Sometimes they make mistakes and protrude into our world as what we call ghosts. That shadow, reflection or peripheral vision; that which doesn't quite seem right. 

 

They are time travellers. They are able to travel ahead of us: sometimes a long way ahead; sometimes a split second. They are in control. They know what is about to happen for they have seen it; they've been there. 

 

The knock on the door; the telephone ringing. When you answer, there's someone there. Most of the time. They were there first though: they knocked; they called, because they control all. The person at the door or on the other end of the phone was sent by them. That person just doesn't know. They are with all of us and all-seeing through us. 

 

But they do make those mistakes: when the door or the phone goes and there's no-one there, there's the silence; the absence. Or that's how we see or hear it. What we actually see or hear is them. 

 

But we can't see or hear them.

 

Watch out for them. And listen. For the door or the phone. 

 

They are calling for you.

 

(C) Steve Laker 2014