268 The View From Here

Twenty lightyears away, the dwarf planet, Epimetheus, was stabilized in one location via quantum-entangling the bulk of its mushy inner core with the molten core of Earth.

I was installing the EarthScope and just about ready to initiate. The idea was to place a telescope 20 lightyears away and look back on our planet to review the goings on 20 years previously.

It was designed as a checks-and-balances method to get Earth's story straight. With history being revised on a daily basis, as desired, by God-knows-who, a way to put to bed, finally, an objective record was proposed.

My trip to Epimetheus only took days, thanks to the Inflasion Drive power system, now the standard propulsion for spacefaring. Even better, communication was faster—practically instantaneous. From Epimethius, the EarthScope could tune in everywhere on 20-years-ago Earth and etch the recordings into the metallic substrate of the small planet itself. It's 1600-mile diameter meant enough room for nanoscripts storage for up to two million years.

All geared up, the harsh environment of the place was not an issue. I ran through the checklist and came to the final [ENTER].

The crackles signaled engagement of the Curvaperms of lenswork, meticulously crafted by the HindSight Corporation, whose mottos was, "Yes, Do Look Back."™ The power of this telescope was only one-score-lux, but newer scopes were planned to reach back hundreds of years.

While taking a hundred years to get to a telescope that only allowed you to look back a hundred years ago was no better than having recorded things in realtime at that time, the Inflasion Drive allowed us to get there faster than the time traveled looking back with visual optics obeying the Einstein-Lorenz equation.

I hit [ENTER].

I dialed in the coordinates, which were where I knew I had been exactly 20 years ago. I waited for the specific time indices.

I wanted to visualize the murder of my wife, a case that was till open. Someone had broken her neck, but spared me. That's because it was me.

When the data was etched into the substrate, I placed the MagneTor over it, destroying that worrisome tableaux forever. I looked again.

I looked good 20 years ago!