He Will Not Return

He woke up that morning and took in some air— not a breath, for our species had not breathed for a span of centuries. Not since late in the 21st, when mankind did away with organic lungs in favor of a sleek mechanical lungs, easily replaceable with larger models as needed to support our growth factor, and placed at the back of our throats. Such a device was necessitated by a catastrophe which began in the year 2061, wherein a series of Oxygen Extractors were detonated on a northern stretch of the Mississippi River on the border between Sotathar and Wisconsin; the details of how this came to happen were never disclosed to the public. Those with the power of the spoken word always stood by their stance that the Oxygen Extraction was an unfortunate accident, but Jean Sans Vie always thought otherwise.

Jean Sans Vie— who was not French, despite what his name might lead one to believe— was not so incredibly jaded or disgruntled with the world in 2323 as to believe every theory of conspiring that he heard, but the history of the “Great Extraction” had always raised his eyebrows. At any rate, it didn’t really matter now how or why the majority of Earth’s oxygen had been removed in the latter half of the 21st century. By the 24th century in which he lived, all relevant organisms had either been fitted with their mechanical lungs or sent to live in the Reserves where a suitable amount of oxygen was continuously manufactured. The great tragedies associated with the Changeover rested more than two hundred years in the past. But still, Jean Sans Vie dwelled on all that loss of life.

He thought it to be the greatest injustice in the history of the world, for corporations such as Riamech and Palmonis to seek a profit in providing life-sustaining essentials, leaving those without capital to suffocate in the shadows of the new world’s rising. And more than anything, he was curious what it must have felt like. To take in the soft breeze of the wind, not just on one’s face, but down past the mouth, into the very core of existence. Numerous writings from the period of Changeover described how those with organic lungs cherished their last days with those living miracles. In the waning weeks of Earth’s old atmosphere, they would spend days at a time just pulling in air, and releasing it slowly… feeling the fresh current slide down their throats, giving them life and vitality. Those who made the transition said that the Changeover was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Even those who had never cherished their breathing lungs were agonized by their absence.

Jean Sans Vie could only imagine. For he had lived his first 56 years with cold artificial lungs just as all the others, and he knew there was no sense in wishing for old-fashioned lungs in a world now completely void of natural oxygen. But still… he fancied a different world, and couldn’t help but think that perhaps he was in the wrong one after all.

These thoughts were commonplace for Jean Sans Vie, and they usually amounted to nothing more than morning wonderings, but on the morning in question— September 9, 2323— they would amount to something. For on that morning, a steel box arrived on San Vie’s balcony. As Jean slid open his door, he could see the wide and slender wings of the delivery drone not far off, drooping down, pulsating like a bird as it ascended up towards the Skyroute where a thousand like-minded drones soared back towards the Commerce Ports.

Was he expecting a little steel box, marred with streaks of grey and blue with shining specks of silver dotting the primarily black exterior? Certainly not. He was a man of no acquaintances, and even fewer friends. Take it on my own authority— I know this Jean Sans Vie quite well.

The first trial he faced was in opening the box. It was smooth all around, with no handles or latches, not a single divot. But as he shook the thing, Jean could hear a little muted jingling coming from inside the box. Metal within the metal, surely. And so Jean Sans Vie, lover of magnets as he was, rushed to his closet and dug out one of his favorites. With the patience of a man of with no life who had absolutely nowhere to be that day, Sans Vie moved his magnet round and round the surfaces of the box, until he the snap of the little key on the inside clicking up against the interior, summoned by the magnetic force.

Okay, he had hold of this little magnetic thing on the inside of the mystery box, now what to do with it? For half an hours Jean played around with it, moving his magnet to and fro, in all sorts of playful lines and designs. But then he realized that no mere stroke of chance was going to open this box. He’d have to take it to a locksmith to crack it open, or— perhaps— no. Jean Sans Vie told himself not to be ridiculous. Surely writing out his own personal credentials would get him nowhere in opening up his box. But he was curious, and so gave it a try.

With the magnet, he spelled out his own name, in its various forms. No luck.

Then he spelled out his birthday, also in its various renditions. No fortune there.

The third time, sadly, was not the charm, for Jean Sans Vie wrote the name Fatima, and sighed a lover’s sigh, for it had been so long since her presence had graced his lonely life.

But the fourth time proved to be quite charming! For Jean Sans Vie, nearing desperation, marked out the numbers “3156”— his PIN for everything— and immediately the box cracked open. Each surface of the steel fell apart, and the juicy inners of the delivery fell on the cheap marble floors of Jean Sans Vie’s apartment.

Very interesting, thought Jean.

It was a sack of entrails, by the looks of it. Sealed inside a plastic bag, with thin little bones curling round the glossy tubes.

Jean Sans Vie was not a fan of entrails— not removed from the body, anyway, and certainly not in a bag from a box delivered by an unsolicited drone. But this box had opened almost by magic when he spelled out his own PIN; this he could not ignore. Whatever the contents of this delivery, they were clearly intended for him.

And so Jean Sans Vie got down on his knees, and ripped open the plastic bag with care. He sifted through the guts and found that the little bones would light up as he touched them… they would also snap into form as he moved them ever so slightly. He flicked up a few more of these little splinters, realizing quickly that they were not actually bones, and they began to self-assemble into a vertical formation. When the splinters had risen to a height of about six feet, thanks to Jean’s help, the splinters then began to snap downwards. When all the splinters had been snapped into place, Jean Sans Vie beheld a little pyramid in his living room: a very thin pyramid, only a shell really, but the splinters were now firm and resolute in their position.

Now all that was to be done was to figure out what to do with the pile of questionable material which resembled intestines. Mr. Sans Vie picked them up like sausages, examining them with the strongest of curiosities. Unlike the little bony splinters, these did not snap together to easily construct a recognizable shape. But there was an energy within these glossy tubes which Jean could readily feel. They nearly vibrated with it. And as he put one up to his ear, he could almost hear things… it was like the impression the hearing, the ghost of a million sounds at once, but at the same time, nothing. It was the strangest phenomenon he had ever come across. And so he did not his experimentation.

He got drunk for the first time in his life, and then took a fresh look upon the madness by his sofa. A pyramid formed by pitiful little twigs, and a pile of nasty tubes strewn besides. He laughed aloud, nearly ashamed at himself for believing this unexpected gift would amount to anything. It was a bizarre mess of no consequence, just like everything else in his life.

But he was drunk now, and for whatever reason, he felt the urge to crack one of those gross things open and pour whatever was inside all over his head. He did so, and immediately began to shiver, and feel a vibrant sensation... the closest thing he could find to describe it was either the feeling one gets after completing a multi-mile race, or plunging into a cold pool, but neither of those does justice to the sensation in question.

What exactly was this juice? Was it radioactive? Was it going to give him an immediate onset of cancer or claim his life mere days later? Jean Sans Vie really didn’t care at this point. It was the strongest thing he had felt in years and so he poured the liquor of it in his eyes, and then a new sight revealed itself.

A glowing orb was now stationed round the little pyramid, spherical with its edges touching each of the pyramid’s points. How long had the damn sphere been there? Probably the whole time, surmised the drunken Jean, but it was only now that he could see it, thanks to the liquid stored inside the glossy tubes. And the orb was not the only new thing in sight. For printed on the orb was a letter, written out in some elegant font. It read as follows:

Congratulations. You may not be able to figure out how to get your socks on around your craggy nails, but I always had faith you’d be able to independently construct the sending end of a time transmitter. Now, whether you decide to make the trip to the receiving end… that’s completely up to you. I’ve never been one to strip men of their freedoms, especially not when the man in question is myself.

Yes, if you haven’t already guessed, you are reading the words of yourself, he who has come to this year 2323 from far-distant 2354. I’ve come for many reasons: to see the sights, try my hand at gambling with hindsight on my side, re-conquering the heart of our lovely Fatima… but, most importantly, to deliver this message to you.

In the year 2350, at the ripe age of 83, I was invited to join something of an exclusive society, full of insightful men who have come to know a great deal of obscured truth. Like you and I, these men have held suspicions for years regarding the nature of the Extraction. And let me tell you with pride, young Jean Sans Vie, we were right.

Earth’s atmosphere was not depleted by some careless accident; it was done by design, by a man not even of our own reality.

This entire Timescape is a result of intrusions by Yanis Tostig, who was a citizen of the year 2195 in his native Timescape. In his reality, artificial lungs did not begin their implementation until 2200. And they were ill-sought. The majority of the populace wanted nothing to do with them, and so they went out of use before they even became fashionable.

It vexed the young Tostig to no end, to see so many people he loved die off, when so many lives could have been saved by mechanizing the respiratory system. And so, he poured a massive fortune into developing an effective means of sending himself back to the earliest Receiver known to exist: that constructed in the year 2056 by the visionaries at Spirido.

Sending himself and his vast resources back to 2056, Tostig then spent the next five years amassing an army, convincing disciples that the world would benefit profusely from a catastrophe that would strip the air of its oxygen, thus forcing mankind into the next stage of its evolution: bodies without the need for breath, which would save infinitely more lives in the future than those small numbers of billions which would be sacrificed in the short term.

In short, Tostig invented a line of capsules capable of ripping the air apart, and in 2061, sent them down the Carlton Canal from Duluth to the mighty Mississippi, and from there, the ‘Tractors began their work both east and west, starting in the heartland of the North American continent. The disappearing oxygen levels raised the necessary alarm, and within years a lungless society was implemented, and the Extractors were shut off… much of Earth having changed very little.

But of course Tostig’s secret could not be kept. Rumors persisted of how Tostig had abandoned his own timeline to leave his mark on a new one. And in 2022, these rumors trickled into the ears of Xeneron, Tostig’s biggest rival, and Xeneron was determined to undo Tostig’s alterations at any cost. He got his hands on his own time transmitter, and sent an army back to that fateful year of 2061, to foil Tostig’s scheme and revert the world back to one where artificial lungs would not be invented for years to come.

The layers now run deep. The two factions of Tostig and Xeneron have been battling along a small river town called Red Wing— on August 20, 2061— for something like fourteen amendments. That, meaning, the timeline has forked in a new direction at least fourteen times there in Red Wing, as evidenced by the gathered documentation of battle plans and strategies from our own forces. It may sound like folly, but I believe that you— my younger self— could be the key to obtaining victory once and for all. The Battle of Red Wing, which has raged on with increasing complexity on the 20th of August, in fourteen variations, can come to a decisive finish if you go back to the date I have set into your machine.

Why do I not go myself, you ask? I am 87 years old. And you are 56— in the prime of your prowess, and now with the resolve to do everything in your power to fight the fight we’ve been longing to partake in for our entire life. I will not force you into a battle you don’t think you can handle, but the largest part of me believes that it’s what you want more than anything at this point in your life.

We at the Postscript Society do feel compelled to issue the following disclaimer to all who are considering a trip into the past: if you do go back, you can never return. And that’s not just us spelling out some nonsensical rules; it would be physically impossible. For once you go back in time, your very presence in the past creates a fork in the timeline, creating a new Timescape. Sure, you could change very little and then go on to watch the world around you progress quite closely to how it progressed in your past, but there’s no guarantee that everything will remain the same. For the Universe has a spirit of its own, and it will never do the same thing twice, unless by its own curious will.

So even if you go back, take one step outside, change your mind, and step back into the machine to come back home… there’s no guarantee that the machine will even exist as it does now in the year 2323. You may have nothing to return to. And if you do, you may find all the world is changed. Yes, the future is always uncertain… the past is the only thing which is written. But like all written things, it can be amended, and that is what we ask you to do now, Jean.

We do not seek to reap the benefits of your journey. On the contrary. According to the laws we’ve just explained, we cannot. For whatever you do in the past… we will have no knowledge of it. Your deeds will belong to your new time… and we will only wonder what it is you did. Just as my colleagues are wondering now about me… I, who left my home in 2354 to return to 2323 and deliver this message to you. My past is now written in stone, and it will change no longer. But I have created a new future, and so too will you.

I doubt this knowledge— that you will never come back— will affect you much. I remember us at your age. We were wanting something more… ready to end it all if not faced with a meaningful new opportunity. Well here I am, giving it to you. I can only dream what you’ll make of it.

—Jean Sans Vie

And so, young Jean continued down the sphere, to a set of detailed instructions which informed him how to activate this time-sailing device. To be brief in an otherwise lengthy account, he wrote out a final testament and placed it on his desk, then broke open every last capsule of the powerful liquid, completely bathing himself in that enigmatic nectar. He then stepped inside the spherical orb, amid the thin pulsating pyramid, and pressed his magnet (any magnet would do, as he would later learn) inside a central keyhole.

And he was gone. Out of this Universe, and onto the next.

EPILOGUE:

To my fellows at the Postscript Society, to be read in the year 2354,

I have since read the account of my younger self when faced with my unexpected delivery, and I can say it is very close to what I imagined it would be. He was wholly intrigued by the prospects of time travel, and had no reservations in hopping inside our device to go back to my pre-set date and coordinates (August 20, 2060, which will give him a year to meet our colleagues in Red Wing and prepare for the fifteenth rendition of that city’s great battle). As I remember, he was lonely beyond reckoning, and had nothing in this world to live for. Now, even if he should sacrifice his life in our war, he will do so gladly and willingly, knowing that his life will be given for a wondrous cause.

For if he succeeds, somewhere in the fabric of time, there will once again be a world where people keep their lungs, and breathe freely in the Earthen air. And all the troubles of our own world will be nonexistent in that which I expect him to create.

Of course, we have sent him back in act of selflessness. For we ourselves will never know the outcome. Just as my friends in 2354 will never know the outcome of my own life. For to them, I cannot return. But I suspect there are renditions of you all, here in this rendition of the year 2354… If I am indeed still a member of the Postscript Society in this Timescape, do read this letter for him in front of the whole assembly. It should be most touching to see him blush before everyone, knowing there’s a copy of himself running around 31 years in the past, and hopefully somewhat longer. But I am old; I will not seek out many more years. In truth, I am fully content at the course of my long life, and I rest now, knowing I have created far more than my hands ever could in a thousand lifetimes. And my younger self… who knows? He, now in the past, may go on to create the greatest of futures.

—Jean Sans Vie, writing from the year 2323.