Futures Past

I just finished watching Twice Upon a Time (Doctor Who). It struck me as funny, watching it again (spoilers), that they were at the Christmas Armistice of WW1. As I was watching I couldn't help remembering what I've thought before, which is that The Doctor isn't doing all this for himself, but that there's something he is heralding, hiding behind the veil, waiting for the time to step forward.

Imagine a moment where everyone fighting a war decides to stop fighting and start singing. Soldiers from both sides come out and greet each other. It's almost inexplicable from the perspective of every day logic. It is the Holy Spirit from my perspective, instilling hope in all that were there, that despite a long fight to come, it would be better in the end (spoilers again).

But it also made me think of the first man to sing in that scene (although truth be told it happened on a number of fronts that day). That man was The Bard of that battlefield. It made me think of my (The) Muse as well.  It made me remember that, in this case, music can truly shape history, even after it is thought to be fixed. After every die has been cast, and it is thought that all is lost, there is still that hope, and the chance for one person to make a difference.

***

The end was long over. From far in the future, they came to catalog the history of Earth. The far future was bleak, in the way that every society structured so firmly and becoming so advanced becomes bleak. Everyone went through the motions, there were no surprises, even death had been eradicated there. It was called heaven in the native tongue, and all those who would consider such a stale existence hell were long since gone, but it was hard to say if anyone truly experienced anything at all.

Then they uncovered something previously unseen. Only a few pages not found before, and they quickly learned why. Of the thousand timelines known at the time, of which they claimed origin from each, it was only found in one, this last one to end, the last one to be cataloged. New information was a bit of a novelty here.  It was thought that all had been discovered or at least anticipated, given the results of the other excavations, but this new information was brazen, downright garish. It was from a man who had been considered on more than one occasion to be insane, apparently due to the fact that he never gave up on love. Not just the term, although that had been long since discarded here, not just everyday love or what others described as true love, but Soulmate Love.

The testers quickly set out to disprove the notion, and expected to make short work of it, but the more they calculated the if/then, expecting the whole house of cards to collapse, the taller it was built. Supervisors, managers, and eventually executives demanded updates and conclusions, but with the explanation that followed, the concept invariably gained new support. It is far easier to hope in a thing when all else is known, especially considering that outside of a single concept, all hope is lost. So opinion shifted, from nothing to support, and soon the entirety of this future people had dedicated all resources to the last remaining timeline, discovered to be an unlikely offshoot of the original they had found, after the man had died only to be miraculously revived more than once. They dedicated themselves wholly to the idea that not only was he right, but that he could prove it to everyone in his own time.

Minimal direct interference was allowed, although the systems and authorities of the day were thwarted constantly from hindering his efforts. By this point in their time his concept had been proven, and their timeline was rewritten as a result; they had already secured for him a seat of honor should he fail.  But all of future society waited with baited breath, with a sure hope that he would succeed, turning everything they thought they knew of their history and experience on its head, and reshaping their heaven into one worthy of the name.