In temporal diplomacy news, the Future issued a formal apology for sending time travelers to the present without even leaving a note.
“We’re really sorry about not calling while we were in the century, but it will be a zoo around here the last few months, and to be honest, it just slipped our mind,” the statement read in part.
Michigan Technical University (MTU) researchers Robert Nemiroff and Teresa Wilson spent hours trolling the Internet for prescient information about Pope Francis and Comet ISON. When they failed to find any, they assumed that time travelers may not want to be found, and may be good at covering their tracks.
Upon hearing this, a representative of the Future expressed shock. “Are you kidding? We love Pope Francis and the ISON comet! We figured you guys would be tired of us coming back and acting like a bunch of fanboys, so we made a pact not to bring it up unless you did first.”
One novice traveler, who requested anonymity because he had killed his own grandfather and was erased from history, described his efforts to communicate. “I remember a day next year in particular. I walked right up to Teresa Wilson and introduced myself. She just smiled at me and explained that she was technically not searching for physical time travelers, but rather informational traces left by us. So I vanished from existence before she called campus security.”
One problem establishing a dialogue between Now and Then arises from technological hurdles. “Since iTelepathy became so cheap, most of the social media of your time, InstaGoog and Facetube and YouTwit and the like, are used almost exclusively for government-funded cat videos,” explained Dr. Francis ISON III of the Michigan Technical Unimind (MTU).
Asked about a time-traveler party held by British physicist Stephen Hawking back in 2009, Dr. ISON explained that he would have loved to attend, but he had a conflict that night. “Besides, Stephen would have been bored if we showed up and confirmed his theories about time travel. He hates when theories are proven, because it screws with his fantasy physics league.”
One veteran time traveler, who will retroactively request anonymity when he returns to the Future, explained that he frequently traveled to the Past on business. “What with the upcoming monkey apocalypse, the robot apocalypse, and the destruction of the Earth by unconfirmed* hostile, star-dwelling creatures from Gliese 526 during the Lone Signal War, I don’t get a lot of time for socializing. Besides, remember that big nuclear war back in 1974? I spent a week preventing that from happening, and now people act like it never happened! Talk about ungrateful!”
Dr. ISON III promised the social faux pas would not happen again, and immediately apologized for the fact that it had happened again in 2027. “Mistakes will have been made,” he told reporters.
* Pope Francis has scheduled a Confirmation Mass on Comet ISON for Easter 2018.
(Click on the picture above of Comet ISON hurtling toward a 2015 meeting with Pope Francis, or possibly the other way around, to read the original story.)
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