How – Why Alan’s thoughts
We had the choice to speculate within the body of this book as to how the building of our past from our own future might take place (or ‘have’ taken place). On balance we decided that this would not be the best course of action, not least of all because Chris and I did not agree on each potential point and possibility. We have been researching and writing together for a long time and in the main our ideas converge, or else we discuss our approach, chapter by chapter and, if it is necessary, achieve a compromise. On this occasion, since we fully admit we are ‘guessing’ as to the way events will pan out, (even if those guesses are of the educated sort), we thought we should compose a piece each and present these outside of the book, which is based as strictly as possible on hard evidence and not conjecture.
The Way Forward
Having thought about this situation a great deal it seems to me that when it comes to the building of the Earth’s past from a place that lies in the future of mankind, there is likely to be a particular point in that future which will become, as it were, the ‘headquarters’ of the Human Intervention program. How far into our future that period will be can only be a guess, though bearing in mind how quickly our technical skill and understanding of physics is progressing, the period in question will probably not be more than a century into the future.
I foresee humanity’s co-operation with artificial intelligence as being fully established by that period and it seems to me that there will be one, established body responsible for temporal incursions into the past, probably overseen by some future version of the United Nations and for all sorts of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article I estimate that the headquarters of the whole enterprise is likely to be in what is now the Pentagon in Washington DC in the United States of America. However I also think that various parts of what will be a massive project may be run from many different parts of the globe.
In my estimation of events I expect that there will be only one, quite massive incursion into the past. It will be the most expensive and also the most complicated adventure humanity will ever undertake. Rather than trying to supply or resupply the agencies that are actually ‘in’ the past by way of frequent time travelling, the expedition will take with it on the one journey back to a period just after the formation of the Earth, everything that would be required to create anything necessary to its needs across the long span of time between the terraforming of the Earth and the creation of the Moon and now. This would not require the material needs one might at first expect because for the more massive parts of the engineering project, (for example breaking up the planet Phaeton and using parts of it to bombard the Earth and create the Moon) the forces of nature itself would be employed.
I do not foresee this being a journey that will be undertaken by human beings but rather by a race of biological machines that will be created for the purpose. These ‘avatars’ would be ‘stripped down’ versions of human beings that would, in all respects, resemble a typical ‘alien’ form, examples of which have appeared to many individuals across human history and which are well known to all of us thanks to the efforts of Hollywood. The avatars would be small in stature with large heads, big eyes and well developed arms and legs; they would be gender neutral and would possess only the most rudimentary brain. In reality they would not even actually be ‘alive’ in the sense that a human being is alive because their remit would be to act as the ‘legs on the ground,’ to follow instructions fed to them from the expedition headquarters in the future. I estimate that keeping in touch with the past remotely, via an extremely sophisticated means, would be much easier than having to travel back and forth, since communication would not involve the movement of ‘mass’, as would be the case each time a specific journey took place. I do not underestimate the complexity of establishing this sort of contact across time but in my estimation this would be the only way such an expedition could work.
Once launched into the past, the components of the expedition itself would remain for most of the time in a suitable space vessel, which could be navigated to the necessary parts of the solar system for any part of the mission – in the first instance to the place where the asteroid belt is presently located but the region that was once the orbit of the planet Phaeton. The vessel would later be brought back to a position in close proximity to the Earth – perhaps ultimately with a base on the dark side of the Moon.
The ship, with its cargo and the avatars – perhaps twenty or more in number, would then remain in close proximity to our planet throughout four billion years or so. Its needs would be catered for on a ‘self sustaining’ basis, though these requirements would not be great. This would be because during the vast majority of the period the avatars would not be active but would remain in suspension, only being called to action on relatively few occasions across the great span of time – to carry out specific missions or when it was necessary to service the expedition vehicle – also to replicate or ‘grow’ replacement avatars if necessary etc. Power for all the needs of the expedition would be obtained via solar collectors, and stored in batteries that would be self sustaining and far more technically sophisticated than anything available in our time. Smaller space vehicles would also be carried on the expedition ship in order to facilitate journeys back and forth to various parts of the Earth.
Human ‘handlers’ at the expedition headquarters in the Pentagon would, when required, establish communication with the avatars at any point on the expedition ship’s four billion year journey and could effectively but remotely ‘wear’ one of the avatars like a remote suit in order to carry out a given mission. Such a handler could ‘see’ through the avatar’s eyes, ‘hear’ by way of its ears, ‘walk’ using its legs and ‘speak’ through its mouth. To all intents and purposes the human handler would ‘be’ wherever and at whatever point in time the avatar had been called into action and could undertake any task as effectively as if he or she was actually physically present.
The expedition would be backed by a massive, world-wide team of operatives, dedicated to all manner of tasks – not least of all scouring history to ascertain those instances at which intervention might be undertaken to achieve a particular objective that was already written into the Earth’s past timeline. One example in Chapter 10 of this book, which describes the events relating to the Pentagon on the day of the 9/11 attacks, furnishes a good example but there would be many others.
When it was ascertained by those whose job it was to examine the past for possible temporal incursions that a particular human being or organisation at any point in the time line was required to intervene in a specific event in Earth’s history, an avatar could be called out of suspension to approach the person or persons in question. These individuals could be temporarily and surreptitiously fitted with an implant that would make them susceptible to instruction from expedition headquarters in the future. It is even possible that such a ‘target’ might be, unknowingly on their part, ‘controlled’ to take specific actions as if they were themselves avatars.
Despite the fantastic resources necessary, in terms of organisation, technical requirements and research facilities to such a project, the expedition itself would sail on serenely through the fantastic period of time involved. It would very rarely be called into action and ironically, everything that was necessary throughout this massive period of Earth’s history and of course that of the Moon and Ceres could be accomplished from mission headquarters in a generally short period of time. This would be the case because from this one geographical location, in the Pentagon, any period of history could be accessed at any moment. It might not be an exaggeration to suggest that the whole adventure could be accomplished in a year or two, from the perspective of those taking part a century or so from now. Ultimately the expedition itself, with its invariably sleeping avatars would arrive home after a four billion year journey, at the very point in time from which the whole adventure was being conducted.
Interventions into the history of the Earth would include, of course, the first seeding of DNA from the Western Australia of today, onto the turbulent, infant Earth, and frequent interventions might also be necessary in the extremely long period between the creation of the Moon and the appearance of humanity on Earth – for a whole manner of different reasons and requirements.
Once humanity had appeared, and when it achieved a certain degree of sophistication, we know from our own past research (See our books Civilization One and Before the Pyramids) that a good deal of ‘conditioning’ of our species would be necessary. In particular the basis of the number systems upon which our part of the solar system relies, and which are inimical to our understanding that ‘a message’ had been left to us, would have to be taught to certain groups of developing human beings. These ‘lessons’ (delivered by what would appear to be gods in the comprehension of the stone age and bronze age people in question) would take the form of measuring systems, highly memorable but of a nature far more complex than these infant tribes of human beings could ever actually need. The unfolding of history shows that these sophisticated systems would indeed be remembered across a long period and would eventually form the basis of measuring systems still in use today. They would also highlight the intended number relationships that led us to our ultimate conclusions about our part of the solar system.
Exactly how many temporal incursions would be required in order to furnish us with the world we inhabit today could only be presently guessed at. It would take the skill of many people, using every facility in terms of history, paleontology, archaeology, geology and a wealth of other disciplines to decide when an intervention might have happened and what its nature could be. We have no notion of what would happen if any of the necessary temporal incursions that form part of the time line did not take place, since we cannot at this time know whether to ‘fail’ to do what ‘was’ done, might in itself somehow ultimately alter things for the future. It will not therefore be enough to simply accept what self evidently ‘did’ take place when a temporal incursion was apparent if our presence was not part of the scenario. To try and insert a temporal incursion when one had not actually taken place could only presumably lead to being ‘locked out’ of that particular time frame, whereas to miss a temporal incursion, in particular a significant one, might prove to be catastrophic.
These are the brief details of my own thoughts on the situation regarding humanity’s intervention into its own past. My assumptions may be correct in part or they might be totally wrong. One thing is certain. Without wishing to appear flippant – Only time will tell.
A Personal Temporal Incursion?
Early in this book we mentioned what we saw as the somewhat humerous situation that arose regarding the movie ‘Moonfall’ and the fact that this science fiction blockbuster had come about as a result of the director Roland Emmerich reading our book ‘Who Built the Moon?’ It seemed at first that Mr Emmerich had played a joke on us because the somewhat ‘unlikely’ hero of the movie was named K C Houseman. The initials K C were a reversal of Chris Knight’s initials, whilst the name Houseman was a synonym of my surname, Butler.
It was only later that we realised things were somewhat more peculiar than we had first thought. The character, K C Houseman bore a striking resemblance to me, especially so when I was younger and like both of us he spoke with a Northern English accent, which was slightly odd because everyone else in the movie was American. Of course all Roland Emmerich had to do to continue his joke regarding Houseman and us was to look at some pictures of me on the internet. It was obvious why he had used me as a model for his somewhat eccentric and disheveled hero, rather than Chris because, as I commented to Chris, “On most of the images of you that appear on the net you look like a company director, whereas on the majority of mine I could easily be a tramp!” As for K C Houseman’s apparent point of origin, the most superficial research would have indicated where Chris and I originated. However, when I came to watch the movie I was forced to conclude that there were aspects of K C Houseman that continued to parallel me and about which Roland Emmerich could not have been aware.
Late in the movie Houseman is prevailed upon to take a trip to the Moon. He is clearly far from happy about this eventuality and complains bitterly that not only does he have to take several different sorts of drugs for his various medical issues on a daily basis, he also makes it known that he suffers from panic attacks. There is a clear assertion that K C Houseman is something of a hypochondriac and if I am going to be absolutely honest, this is an accusation that has been leveled at me by my family and friends on more than one occasion. What is more, I too am forced to take a number of different medicines each day. Finally, and probably most puzzling of all, in an earlier part of my life I was also subject to frequent and quite severe panic attacks. This is not a state of affairs that I was ever inclined to shout about, so it is not widely known.
What makes all of this seem significant is that we have here a series of situations, each of which, when taken in isolation, could be a coincidence. This state of affairs closely parallels the whole nature of the research Chris and I have been undertaking for well over the last two decades, both concerning our work on ancient metrology and more recently regarding our part of the solar system. The conclusion we have always been forced to reach is that if one is confronted with a series of apparent coincidences so striking that they quite clearly go beyond a credible state of affairs, what one is looking at are not coincidences at all – but something very different. I would dare to suggest that unless Roland Emmerich has gone to great trouble to access details of our lives that are not generally known or in my case especially situations that are never talked about in my professional career, there has to be something else at work here. As a result, a temporal incursion cannot be ruled out in this case. If this is so, it may simply be intended as a ‘badge of recognition’ to Chris and me for our dogged determination and persistence. But whatever the reason for our own personal temporal incursion might be, it is at least good to recognise that our future selves will retain a sense of humour!