The Company

The moment I stepped out of the empty loft designated by the Company as ground zero, I knew I had a problem. As anticipated, I did come out into a trash strewn street, with dilapidated, graffiti-covered buildings. However, instead of addicts strung out on the decade's drug of choice, crack, the street was deserted. I walked towards the corner and everywhere I looked there were huge signs: "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength." And the icing? They all featured the beady-eyed, mustachioed "Big Brother." And a football field above me was a tv screen bellowing the same messages.

What?

My orders, the entire purpose of the mission, was to visit 1984 and send back intel to help the Company make a monumental decision. Having solved the riddle of time travel, they wanted to use that ability to change the future of the world. To make it better, of course. The information I was to relay would help them decide if the plans to reset time in an effort to give humanity a chance to not self-obliterate were worth pursuing, or if it was better to let the world spin to its natural, perhaps fatal, conclusion and to instead, fast forward plans to colonize Mars.

Apparently, the coding used to send me to 1984 had a glitch.

One reason I was chosen for this role, aside from the integral part I played in the development of the foundational documentation in support of the Company's long-term objective – to save humanity from itself - was because I was a teenager and young adult in the 1980s. The Company decided I would have more concrete memories to draw upon to ensure I returned to the right time and place.

You see, time travel is not just an intricate set of code or a displacement of molecules from one point on the timeline to another - nor even, a point on a parallel timeline (we have not yet managed to breach that wall). Rather, time travel works with the mind of the traveler, following the complex neural pathways to the lived past. Thus, we cannot yet return to prehistoric times or any time prior to that lived by the traveler.

So where was I? Clearly, I did not return to the time of my youth, but rather, to the pages of an assigned reading my senior year of high school: George Orwell's 1984. Ironically, read by me in 1984.

How this was even possible was beyond my understanding. Yes, I have a vivid imagination and live stories when I read them, but the Terminal, or Master Time, as we called the highly advanced, interactive computer system that made time travel a reality, should have sent me to an actual time, not some imagined dystopian reality from a 20th century novel.

Which led me to conclude that we did not conquer the time, space continuum. I suspected we had managed only to send our successful trial travelers to a place in their minds. In which case, I was literally walking down memory lane, albeit a literary one, in my head.

More pertinent to my present predicament, there was no way I could blend in here. I was prepared for 1980s New York -- big hair, hip hop, rock, Madonna, the crack-cocaine epidemic, AIDS, rampant murder, graffiti covered buildings, dirty streets and air... However, if my supposition was correct, the men in black, brass-buttoned uniforms carrying truncheons and heading my way were not New York's Finest.

"Comrade Thyme, is there a problem in this sector? There have been no radio transmissions in this regard."

Comrade Thyme? Assessing the situation quickly, I realized I had somehow been written into the novel's storyline (What is going on??) That I was being looked upon and spoken to with a modicum of respect (dare I say fear), led me to believe I had the fortune of being part of the Inner or Outer Party, not the prolos. Perhaps even a spy. Appropriate.

I looked down my nose (even though the speaker was a good foot taller than me) and said, "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Comrade."

"Blessed be," he responded, stepping aside.

With a raised eyebrow and a nod, I continued walking, turning at the corner with the idea of looping back to the insertion point. I needed to contact the Company and pulling out my T-Phone in public (T for Terminal), was not an option.

"We have a problem, Master Time. I am not in 1984."

"Yes, in fact, you are, Elena. Or should I say, Mistress Thyme."

Mistress Thyme? What? "This was deliberate?"

"Anticipated, yes."

"That makes no sense. This is a waste of Company time and resources. I have a mission that I cannot accomplish revisiting the plot of a novel I read nearly 40 years ago."

"Ah, Elena, think. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else."

"Okay..."

"So, whether you visit the 1984 of your youth or of George Orwell's imagination, they are both real to you. Were you not trembling in fear at the sight of the Thought Police?" If it weren't a computer, I'd think he tittered in glee.

"Irrelevant. I need to bring back information to help guide our decision. You know this."

"You already know the answers. I didn't send you back to Airstrip One in Oceania. You did that yourself. I just have the benefit of knowing everything ever input into my system as well as the minds of all those with whom I have interacted, and being able to synthesize all I know within nanoseconds...”

“Braggart.”

“Observant.”

“Master Time, why am I here? Did we even conquer time travel?”

“Why 1984? Did the year actually matter in terms of the information sought?”

He continued before I could think of the list of reasons the Company, I, delineated in choosing 1984. “Wouldn’t any year do? Wouldn't you find variations on a theme of humanity no matter what year you visited? Kindness, greed, generosity, cruelty, love, hate, faith, hopelessness, creativity, mediocrity, ambition, laziness, acceptance, curiosity, pain, joy, suffering, happiness?”

“Yes, but…”

“Have there not always been societal ills including inequality and injustice, brutal wars, senseless destruction, merciless diseases humanity could not conquer?”

“Yes, but…"

“As long as men have recorded history, have there not always been examples of those who seek, find and hold power, and those who follow? Those who hand over power and serve? Some seek power for itself, some seek power to serve the greater good, they say, but ultimately, are not the results the same?”

I thought to argue that we, the Company, would be different. But then I thought, perhaps we would start off that way…but perhaps not, given that the Company was formed in what might be considered the greatest democracy the world had ever seen. The preamble to its Constitution was beautiful, but was it meaningful to all those who lived under it when it was written? Or even 200 years later? The Company had written an exquisite mission statement that could become a constitution…what would make us different, ultimately? Were we just another small band of intellectual elitists thinking we knew best?

Were we not seeking to escape what we considered a failed experiment doomed to join all the other failed governments around the world, dragging the populace down to depths not seen before within its borders? Did we not feel the government no longer served the majority but rather those who managed to gain a seat at the table because of the purse they carried? Did we not feel only the wealthy had power and voice? Did we not believe justice to be a word sullied by subjectivity and political ambition? Did we not feel words no longer had value? That facts could be twisted and battered to support anyone’s “truth”? That truth and honesty were shouted down by screaming in support of one’s team, regardless of the message? (“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”) Did we not see people repeatedly vote against their own best interest because not doing so was seen traitorous to one’s Party?

Had we not arrived at a place where one’s every move could be monitored? Did we not make it easy by throwing our thoughts willy-nilly in every digital public space? Or even talking privately in our homes near a smart phone or tv?

Hadn’t fear superseded rational thought making taking control that much easier?

Wasn’t the Company taking advantage of the moment to slip into the vacuum made available by the myriad teetering governments, spreading wars and hopelessness people felt because of socioeconomic and political travails?

“I chose 1984 because of Orwell?”

“Yes, because you already knew the lesson you needed to learn.”

I sighed. “Most if not every totalitarian state starts with a well-developed, guiding ideology. Yes, the generic beady-eyed leader may be grasping for power from the first, but he gathers a following by offering something people want. Change from the status quo. Money. Land. Influence. Power - albeit more limited than his own. But the Company…”

“What right have you to decide the fate of humanity? Do you really believe that the outcome of your actions either by rewriting the past or creating a new civilization on Mars will be superior to every other social experiment in the history of humanity?”

I was silent because I had to admit, if only to myself, that history was not in our favor. After a moment, I said,

“I guess I can return now, Master Time. I know how this story ends.”