This is installment #1 of a sci-fi serial. Installment #1 was posted 1/23/21; appropriately a numerically-ordered palindrome. Follow the links forward from the last sentence and backward from the first sentence of each post.

I am not a scientist. I have no advanced degree. I am not an expert in any field. I am merely an observer here to record what I see.

Your year is 2022. I sit in one of approximately 20,000 warships each with approximately 1,000 inhabitants that include approximately 100 military personnel. “Approximately” because in a space voyage such as this, there is attrition. Each ship has an observer; technically part of the military but typically with no military experience. Twenty-thousand takes on an invasion to overthrow your leadership and appropriate control of planet Earth. We will do so by force and there will be many innocent and seemingly unnecessary casualties, but our intent is not to wipe out your entire population. Once superiority is established and possession is assured, we intend to incorporate the remainder of you into our civilization. We intend to work together to create a livable and mutually beneficial habitat.

You see us as aliens, and you see this as an alien invasion. We can see your news reporting and we understand your fear. We have been in place for 6 weeks. Enough time for the fear to build and enough time to allow us to better assess your defenses and intent so we may fulfill our destiny, your destiny, as efficiently as possible. You do not know our plans. There has been no communication in this 6 weeks and there will be no communication in the next 2 weeks before we strike. It is interesting to watch the worldwide debate between those who want to believe we are peaceful and those who want to strike the first blow.

There are many ways your civilization could come to an end; asteroids and comets, supervolcanic eruptions, stellar explosions, nuclear weapons, climate change, environmental damage, pandemics, unaligned artificial intelligence, unexpected results from scientific experiments, back contamination from space exploration, nanotechnology, an out of control tragedy of the commons, information hazards, biotechnology – to name a few. Six weeks ago, extraterrestrial invasion was nowhere near the top of this list of possible threats.

I will back up by going forward.

My year is 2275. In your year of 2060 one of the aforementioned threats will end your civilization and render Earth largely uninhabitable for centuries or perhaps millennia to come. In your year of 2042, a contingent of humans, in anticipation of the coming end, will leave Earth to colonize a distant habitable planet; though I should clarify that in 2042 the rock we found was technically not a planet. I am a descendant of that first group of colonizers. So you see – I am not an alien, I am one of you; one of us. And though it may seem otherwise, we are not here to harm you, we are here to save us; you simply don't understand yet that we are you and you are us.

We have not mastered time travel, but we have grasped the fundamentals. In this rudimentary stage, we have found that time travel into the past can and does alter the future and (partly because of this) time travel into the future is wildly unpredictable. On our way here we left a small fleet in the cusp where we may communicate with outlying ships on this side and they in turn begin a chain of communication through the cusp and out the other side to your future selves on our new planet. This is one way they will monitor our progress and know if and when it is safe to begin the recolonization. Our future civilization is in danger. We must come back to Earth. But first we must save you from yourself; we must save us from you; we must save you from us; we must save us from us.

This is our fifth time-travel journey back to Earth. Of course, in our present day, 2275, we have ships observing an uninhabitable Earth, but if we are successful in our efforts here in 2022, we are uncertain the effects of what will surely appear as an instantaneous alteration of reality, or if it will appear to us at all; thus our chain of communication. Each of our five trips, we have utilized this chain.

The first two trips were experimental and exploratory. We came to 2052 then to 2045, and in those trips we confirmed 2060. To do so, the trips were necessarily spaced 8 years apart our CalendarTime; 2223 and 2231. (You were not aware of our presence and we changed very little. We gathered information and we planned.

Our third trip to 2030 (our CalendarTime 2246) we sent several teams of scientists, diplomats, and experts in multiple fields to approach some carefully selected world leaders and explain. We identified ourselves, verified our advanced knowledge and expertise and explained the urgency of worldwide cooperation in the development of certain technologies that would be necessary to possibly avert the coming disaster. Due to circumstance, these technologies had to come about on Earth. Our presence was once again largely unknown. We were received as we thought we would be. We were taken seriously in this first contact. Problems arose when this first set of world leaders, with our support and presence, approached less forward-thinking leaders. Problems led to disputes which led to military actions which ultimately led to a small world war which due to widespread nuclear capabilities kept ground casualties few but nearly, (in multiple close calls), ended in a nuclear holocaust. Fortunately, this outcome was avoided, but due to this intervening conflict a decade passed and by then we knew it was too late to develop the technology to avert the cataclysm to come.

That third trip to 2030 led us to our discovery of preponderant sequentials and the determination that our fourth trip to 2025 should not occur before our CalendarTime 2258 to ensure a revergence allowing that first group of colonizers to be safely off. This fourth trip was planned to follow a script similar to the third trip but with the addition of a strong military presence. We again made contact with a selection of world leaders but this time presented our military force to all of Planet Earth at the same time these leaders were explaining our presence, what would happen in 2060, and the need for worldwide, universal cooperation. The result, (played out on a diverged second possibility track from 2025 to 2030, and on a further diverged third possibility track from 2030 to 2040), was more disastrous than that outcome on the second possibility track from our 2030 excursion, once again nearly making the 2060 event irrelevant.

So here we are. 2022. Our CalendarTime is now 2275, again 17 years later to ensure, (even lacking a revergence), that those first colonizers (on the first possibility track) begin their journey of their own accord so as not to create a divergence extending to our time. By this time – 2275 – we are feeling the urgent pressure of our own impending planetary plight but also utilized these last 29 years to better understand preponderant sequentials. And though we would like even more time for study, we feel we have no choice. Due to this newly discovered Law of Preponderant Sequentials, we are now unable to come back anytime between 2025 and 2040. And any time before 2022 the volatility quotient appears insuperable. After 2040 it will be too late to implement the necessary technology for a chance to avert the coming threat of 2060. So here we are.

The Law of Preponderant Sequentials? It has to do with possibility tracks. Though I don't completely understand the science, apparently to land at a specific TimePlace there must be three possibility tracks very close together. And as long as only one possibility track has been traversed, this is always true. But when a second possibility track is taken, if there is preponderant sequential change that creates a significant divergence, then there is no landing spot. If a landing is attempted in such a TimePlace, it is believed that the craft continues through the surrounding cusp on an unknown path to a further-flung TimePlace. One can think of the cusp as a surrounding sheath to each grouping of three possibility tracks. When a divergence is created, this not only widens the gap between the two possibility tracks, but also enlarges the surrounding sheath thus weakening its walls. A craft can successfully approach the desired TimePlace possibility tracks but is unable to gain solid footing on fewer than three. So, if a landing is attempted it is theorized that the craft topples, falls through the weakened walls of the cusp and upon exiting at cusp speed is immediately projected into an unplanned (depending upon its topple-trajectory) cusp and must land on proffered possibility tracks in order to assess location and recharge-reset for SpaceTime speed if desired or even possible. We have lost three explorer fleets to this Law of Preponderant Sequentials.

There is a great sadness that we have come to this. Though we have seen your future on Earth, some thinkers opposed interference in 2030 and 2025 where you turned against yourselves with no prompting and no casualties attributed to us, the extraterrestrials. We are not alien, but yes, we are from outside the limits of Earth. And though we identified ourselves as such and we verified our knowledge and we drew a direct line from you to us, in hindsight we realize that we are and always have been considered outsiders. And this is the basis for those thinkers who opposed that interference. Opposition not based on good intention, but rather based on separation of time and place, (which of course we have found is actually only separation of place), and perhaps more so based on your inability to connect the dots. Though you would argue, your thought is primitive in that you still see each dot separately. And according to these opposition thinkers, there is no such thing as a dot-connecting-consensus. One cannot just go along with majority thought, opinion or action. One must buy-in; completely. These opposition thinkers predicted the results of 2030 and 2025 essentially as they happened. In this two-hundred-plus years our thought has advanced to where we see that each and every individual, (each and every dot), must decide to reach out fully, 360 degrees, filling their surrounding field with understanding and compassion and empathy, and we recognize the connection, not as a connection, but as an overlapping; an intertwining; an entanglement; a fusion. You are not able to do this, so your world is in danger.

Those thinkers opposed to the incursions of 2030 and 2025, agree with our current military action. There is no other way to save you; to save us. We will advance your civilization more than 200 years by destroying powerful and dangerous individual thought and by subduing less powerful but still dangerous individual thought. Many of you recoil when you hear this, but you misunderstand. We do not want to destroy individual thought. We have to destroy powerful, dangerous individual thought. We see no other way. Once power is destroyed, we subdue less powerful dangerous individual thought by creating more opportunity for productive, beneficial, compassionate individual thought. Individual thought no longer has to be divisive. For millennia, divisive thought was critical for survival. Today, divisive thought is dangerous.

So here we are. 2022. Cusps are everywhere, each one housing three possibility tracks. It is not knowing where to look; it is knowing how to look. Since our arrival six weeks ago, we have dropped operatives into your civilization as far back as 1970. In two weeks we intend to wrest control of the world's nuclear arsenal. We know we will not be entirely successful, but if we are not largely successful, you may destroy yourselves before we have a chance to save you; save us; save you. And yes, there will be many innocent and seemingly unnecessary casualties; on both sides and because of both sides. It has taken considerable effort for us to regress and think again in terms of us and them. If / when we have secured your nuclear capability, we will selectively eliminate danger. Then we will begin creating opportunity for productive, beneficial, compassionate individual thought. And perhaps by doing so, we will avoid the coming Apocalypse and grow once again into us.

So here we are. 2022. Though there is no such thing – it is time.