Sometimes things aren't really what they appear to be, a homeless person could be a time-traveler, and a little old lady could be the Queen of the Solar System, it all depends on who you ask...  Just don't forget to ask the right questions.

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Chapter 33 – What Just Happened?

Somebody gently lifted a strange hat shaped thing from my head.  I blinked a little and asked, “what just happened?”  Looking around I saw that I was in the quantum computer Heaven again.  Ender was there, standing in front of me with a team of scientists.  Ender said, “Congratulations, Squint, It worked!  You just became the first person to ever dolphin punch themselves!”  Everybody seemed very excited.

“How did I do?” I asked, letting Ender interpret the massive amounts of data.  “Well, we had to do it over about 17 times.  And you were a little heavy-handed in some parts.  But that last run seemed to do the trick.”  He said, nodding at some of the scientists who all nodded back to him.  “In fact, it looks like your past self went home believing that the entire ordeal was really just some kind of lame vacation.  Oh wait,” he said with a little concern, “You checked into a mental hospital a couple of weeks after getting back home,” he said as he was reading the data, “But you were only there for a few days and then they let you go.”  Ender looked at another scientist and said, “How do you pronounce that diagnosis they gave him?”  The other scientist looked closely and finally shrugged, admitting that they had no idea how to say the word.

Ender asked me, “How do you feel, Squint?”  I told him I felt fine.  “No crazy thoughts, or voices in your head, or anything like that?” He asked.  I thought about it for a moment and even listened in my mind for any voices, but I didn’t hear anything like that and said, “Nope, nothing.”  And David Ender smiled at the good news.

He told me that the AI’s had already planned my next mission based on the data provided by this first one.  He explained that this second mission was extremely simple.  All I had to do was go back to a time before I left to go on that trip, and do one specific thing.  He told me that doing it that way would create another parallel universe wedged between the others which would make it impossible for anybody between that era and now to go back in time and stop us from saving the Earth, in other words it would create a paradox which would ‘tie-off’ the first mission.  I asked him how time travel would have been possible in the distant past, and he reminded me that the Shadow Government had alien technology which might be able to send something back.

“Are you ready, or would you like to take a break first?” He asked me.  “What, are you kidding?” I said, “Let’s do this.”  I leaned back in my chair and someone put the thing back on my head.  The next thing I knew I was in my bedroom at my uncles house, back in the past.  I was already sitting down at my computer.

I looked at my computer for a moment and almost laughed at the comparison between what was in front of me now and what the future people had.  I reached out to the mouse and began working on my computer.  First I had to surf the web, then I needed to find a specific banner advertisement that had been circulating the internet recently.  Finally, I found the ad on a torrent downloads website.  Clicking on it revealed that I just won a free video game console.  Hurray!  It only asked that I fill out a form so they would know where to send my free gift.  Here came the fun part.  I filled out the form, but only half-right.  For the phone number I entered 1 (202) 456-1414, and the address I entered was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washing DC (The White House).  Clicking on the Send button, I wondered if the President would really get a free game console.

Back in the future again, Ender was congratulating all the scientists.  Then he came over and told me that I did a good job.  “You just gave the President's phone number to telemarketers,”  He said, “I wish I could stick it to the man like that.”  We both laughed, and he said, “They’ll pass laws against things like that eventually, but you did it before it was illegal, so you’re safe.  However, now that you’ve gotten a lot of serious people’s attention, we need you to go back again and try to live a normal life for a little while.  Keep them guessing a bit longer.”

Prime Minister Ender went on to say, “We’ve installed a panic switch in the interface.  If you ever need to escape the past, or if you just need to take a break, then just think about your friend Ali and imagine her at a party with Jesus, really visualize it.  That’s your way of signaling the computers to pull you out of the past.”  He looked me right in the eyes and said, “You can control years of your past in just seconds with this interface.  This is going to need to be a long-term mission.”  I nodded in agreement.  Ender added, “We’ll be monitoring everything from here.  And we’ve got other people in the past now too, you’re not alone in this.  Just remember, our goal is not to make Shadow Government star ships fall out of the sky, we just want to stop them from ruining the planet.  If we can make this work, then there will be a new parallel universe where the Earth is still a paradise.  Our people will be free to travel between this world and the new one, not just like visiting the computer worlds, we'll really be able to really go there physically.”  I smiled at the thought of giving both the Planet Earth and the Human Race a brighter future.  That's the point when I began trusting Ender a little too much.

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