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We finished the Second Episode of our weekly Halloween Podcast serie. The Podcast features a science fiction Story of the Timetraveler written by John Eric Jordan. It’s an ongoing story which will be continued and come to its final end in the 3rd and last episode we ll release next week, a few days before our final TAMTAMTAM Halloween party on the 31st at Kindl Brewery Neukölln.
Click on the comic strip above to see it large.
ahoi J-J-J
TRACKLIST:
bbc radiophonic workshop – exploring the lab (doctor who)
tonto’s expanding head band – judgementor
mahavishnu orchestra – one word
bbc radiophonic workshop – take a closer look
arsenal – folk epic tale
ryuichi sakamoto – tell ‘em to me
STORY (included in the Podcast):
The Time Traveler’s History of the Future
PART II
One such anomaly occurred when I was taking a trip far into the past. The number on my year-counter grew as I went deeper into prehistory. I was somewhen in the vicinity of the Cambrian Explosion, when the machine suffered a sudden jolt, nearly throwing me to the ceiling. Checking the instruments, I noticed that the year counter no longer displayed the year. It didn’t even display numbers. An esoteric pattern of cryptic symbols rolled across the screen. About the same time, I noticed the cabin of the vessel becoming unbearably hot. I was worried that some of the unknowably complex machinery was overheating. I had no choice but to stop.
I knew not the time or place where I brought the machine to rest. Most of the sensors were going haywire, but I was able to discern that the air was breathable and the temperature bearable. With the utmost precaution, I exited the vehicle and inspected the hull. There was no damage that I could see. Maybe letting it cool down would be enough. I decided to give it some time in standby mode and made brief forays into my surroundings, always keeping the machine in sight.
The area was flat, with small bluffs dotting the landscape. The atmosphere was thick and wet, suggesting a coming storm, but there were no clouds. The flora was unusual. No flowers bloomed. Dry twisted branches reached out from short trees that I would have called shrubs if it weren’t for their very thick trunks. I realized what was so strange: I was taller than everything in the landscape. After scouting the machine’s perimeter, I headed south for a half kilometer before hearing noises. Voices? The wind? Cautiously, I crept toward the source of the murmuring.
From a dense tangle of the dwarf-trees on top of a low bluff, I looked down over an open area cleared of brush with a huge bonfire at the center. Between me and the fire, about 50 meters away, I spied what seemed to be animals huddled together. Undeniably so, but something about them was terrifyingly odd. At first sight of them I was struck with a chill up my back. Hairy, scaled, feathered; I couldn’t recognize any one animal, but they possessed the features of all kinds of different fauna. Then I realized what was so strange. Despite their different kinds of hides and heads, they were all shaped like anthropoids. These were creatures from nightmares or myths. I could only describe them as monsters.
My scientific curiosity got the better of my fear and I managed to stay put, using all my willpower not to flee immediately to the ship. The animal people were gathered in some kind of ritual, chanting rhythmically and surrounding the only green thing I had seen in the entire landscape: a frail sapling. Creatures came from the edge of the circle with armloads of kindling to add to the already enormous fire. The higher the flames leaped, the louder and faster the chanting became. It was as hypnotizing at it was terrifying. I was startled out of my trance with the crack of breaking branches. A squat hairy beast was practically on top of me, gathering firewood from the tree under which I hid. I watched, paralyzed with fear, as it’s hideous claw reach for my arm, obviously mistaking it for a branch. The creature’s touch made me instantly recoil, sending the startled beast tumbling back. As I stood to run, it gave the most awful soul-piercing cry my ears have ever heard. The chanting stopped and the entire horde looked up at me. Before I could turn, they were upon me: running on all fours, running upright, slithering. A few of the brush-gatherers must have flanked me, because a small phalanx of creatures blocked my path back to the machine. I doubled back the way I had fled, but cut around the side of the bluff to avoid the brunt of the onslaught. I found myself in the clearing. Maybe I could get a torch from the bonfire and hold them at bay. I could hear their wild braying. It seemed only an arm’s length behind me. I made a b-line for the fire, directly through the site of the ritual. I felt it, and heard the wild exclamation from the horde, before I realized what had happened. In my wild haste, I had trampled the sapling under foot. The cry that rung in my ears was one of mourning, anguish and hatred. I didn’t stop. I didn’t think. I ran for the bonfire and grabbed a firebrand from the edge of the leaping flames.
I swung around, waving the torch in front of me. I expected the mob to run at me like a torrent, but they were huddled around the sapling. Despondent moans and cries emanated from the field around me. The green sapling. In this dry and wretched expanse, it had been something important. I destroyed something these beasts cherished, possibly a key to the future of this world.
The animal men seemed to no longer notice me. My retreat to the machine was unhindered. It waited for me, dormant. It responded to my commands and I was able to return to the continuity with which I was familiar. The year counter showed that I was back in the Cambrian and I continued on my intended voyage. I never found out where or when that strange world had been, or the consequences of my actions.
– - -
Travel in time long enough and you are bound to find other cross-temporal adventurers. Some even became pioneers of a culture based on time travel. I hoped that following these threads could unlock the mystery of my own machine and when it came from.
Early breakthroughs in time travel technology culminated in an era I dubbed the Messenger Age. At that point, no matter – let alone passengers – could travel at rates faster than the present or in a direction other than the future, but a brilliant pioneer did manage to send information back in time. His first messages were aimed roughly toward the Middle Ages. The experimenter was hoping to share helpful knowledge with the era in order to hasten scientific progress and bring The Enlightenment centuries sooner. Although the messages were received, he failed in his intent. Most of the middle-agers who received his transmissions and tried to share the knowledge with the masses were burned at the stake as heretics and witches. A lucky few were just ignored.
The technology improved and messages were sent to more reliable sources in the future. The benefits of this relationship between the Messenger Age and the future age with which they communicated cannot be overstated. The Messengers gained priceless knowledge and the means for improved technology. The future was able to fill many holes in their own anthropological record and strengthen their evolutionary theories with direct access to a prime source. Not just communication, but also commerce became very strong between the different times. It became the first Cross-Temporal Age and offered whole new levels of enlightenment to humankind. Not surprisingly, one area of research to benefit immensely was time travel. The barrier to matter traveling in time was overcome and the two cultures were finally able to meet, emigrate to each others’ times and even interbreed. By the time the early Messenger Age reached the late Messenger Age via normal chronology, the version of the future that the messengers first contacted was a thing of the past. Both ages had coalesced into a homogenized culture that was greater than the sum of their original parts.
It was during this period that I chose to send a message home. I had been gone for millions of years and felt nostalgic. Not only that, but I wanted to arrange a meeting upon my return. I sent a cross-temporal transmission back to 2009 with an invitation for my friends and select luminaries of the era to meet me on the night of October 31, 2009. I could take as long as I wanted to continue to travel so long as I scheduled my return accurately.
– - -
As I mentioned before, even with all the incredible things I witnessed, I still found myself becoming nostalgic for the early Twenty-First Century. For a long time, I lost my desire to travel. I became indolent, spending days at a time in my penthouse overlooking eon-spanning Megatropolis. All I could think about was the barrier that I could never cross, not even in my incredible machine or with the advances of contemporary humanity. Providence may have bestowed upon me an amazing vessel for navigating outside the temporal trap, but I was still only skipping stones on the surface of an impossibly deep ocean. Traveling in time does not conquer it, or free us from the entropy of the universe. It merely remixes continuity.
After my vast cross-temporal journey, I came to realize that I am far from understanding time, let alone escaping from it. No matter how much I traveled – no matter how deep in time I journeyed, no matter the elaborate and elegant new connections I drew across disparate chronologies – I was still limited by another kind of time – my own mortality.
TIME TIME TIME. The Tyranny of Time. In the end, we are still temporal animals, fated to live for a mere 30,000 days. No matter where in history those days occur, entropy catches up with us and we, as individuals, must always come to an end.
As a warm up for our upcoming TAMTAMTAM 6 “Halloween – Timetravel Gone Wrong” on the 31st of October we will release a Podcast Serie and an ongoing Comic Strip each Wednesday now, which will be a little Feature to get all of you into the mood.
The Package is compiled by the 3 J’s (John-Eric “Halloween Mastermind”, Joe “Mr Ben Butler and Mouspad” and Johannes “Hermann the German”)
Comic Strip(by John-Erik)
Podcast (by Joe and Johannes)
Science Fiction Story (which is included in the Podcast – by John Eric
*also as a little update: Ben Butler and Mousepad (Joe and Bastian) confirmed that they will play at the 31st.
__________________________________________________
Tracklist of the Podcast pt 1
haruomi hosono – cochin moon
chris & cosey – put yourself in los angeles (intro)
phillip glass – lady day / man parrish – hip hop be bop (don’t stop) pt. II
steve hillage – fourever rainbow (intro)
crash course in science – mechanical breakdown
magma – mekanik kommandoh
black dice – nite creme
cromagnon – fantasy / caledonia
kiem – time doesn’t heal
roger limb – nyssa is hypnotised (bbc radiophonic workshop)
The Time Traveler’s History of the Future
(featured in the Audio Podcast)
[The following account was transcribed from an audio cassette tape discovered by archaeologists digging in Western Australia. Although the surrounding strata was dated as having formed between 500 million and one billion years ago, the tape, embedded in solid rock, could not be accurately dated.]
PART I
… where was I? Ah yes, how to travel in time. The problem is that we’re thinking about the present as a location in time – a place in history. But no, the present is always the present, so it must be something else – yes, YES – the present is a rate of travel in the fourth dimension!
So in a way, we are all time travelers – speeding through our universe at a rate of one second per second …
But I was impatient. I wanted to travel at a rate beyond the present – to visit a future that I would never reach within a normal human lifetime, if traveling at the normal rate. Unfortunately, my early experiments yielded results in the opposite direction. With the aid of a psychotropic solution as the de-chrononization agent, I did manage to travel in time, but on a path inverse to the rate of travel I intended. I became trapped in a three second loop for seven days. It almost drove me mad …
- – -
For the record, I didn’t make the time machine. If it hadn’t been for The Event, my research would not have progressed. I would have been stuck in the present. I should have been stuck in the present. It was too improbable to be coincidence. Sure, some people are lucky, but the laws of the universe don’t bend to accommodate even the luckiest among us. I was studying biological samples that I had brought on my ill-fated time excursion (no discernible effects), when I was temporarily blinded by a white hot flash in the middle of my lab. When I regained my vision, a giant hexagonal jewel hovered inches above the floor. The surface emitted light, but didn’t seem to reflect any. It was a uniform matte silver, barely casting shadows on itself. I found the only break in it’s uniformity, a tiny panel, pressed it and a side of the vessel opened like an aperture. Before I could look inside, two corpses toppled out. They were dressed in some kind of opalescent fabric the likes of which I had never seen. Whoever they had been, they were too badly decomposed for me to discern much. If their suits hadn’t been holding them together, I would have found two piles of bones in the seats. The instruments inside the jewel told me exactly what it was – a time machine. No, how could this be a coincidence? Time machines don’t just appear in the labs of scientists trying to discover time travel! I had a hunch that there was more to this. Someone must have sent it for me …
- – -
I encountered a race of humans a few hundred years further into the future. I ventured into the community from my machine’s clandestine location in the nearby woods. I wouldn’t take any chances with being discovered as an outsider again. This precaution proved futile when I saw the first inhabitants of the time. I noticed two humanoids walking towards me on the otherwise abandoned path. I immediately noticed the translucent bags sitting on (or was it growing from?) their heads. Shaped somewhat irregularly, the bags were filled with some kind of gas, and moved, seemed to breath really, ever so slightly. When they noticed me, the elder one screamed and his younger counterpart fainted. I should have been more discreet. I should have realized that my form would have been just as shocking shocking to what passed for normal in that epoch.
- – -
… they were covered in what looked like a horrible fungus – spreading from their necks to snake down their backs and arms, sometimes sprouting and fanning out. I would have believed that the humans had been conquered by mold if it hadn’t been for their completely serene demeanor and obvious intelligence. Clearly, the human/fungal relationship was symbiotic. As hosts, the humans received ample energy from the parasites, allowing for a boost in brain power not seen since the Cognitive Revolution of 30,000 years before my time. All the problems we called “the human condition” were no longer a part of life. The symbiotic relationship with a lower organism was echoed in their culture and architecture – perfectly integrated into the natural world. Even fashion was affected. Some people trimmed their fungus like topiary, often growing them into magnificent capes. In fact cape length seemed to be a status symbol. The fungus appeared to be, if not the source, then at least a major catalyst in humanity’s astronomical (and peaceful) development.
- – -
I was mightily encouraged to see humans thriving like this and hurried several hundred years deeper into the future, eager to see our humble race, the descendants of curious apes, rise to ever more glorious heights. But what I encountered was a crushing disappointment. The zenith of the Cape Age and its many developments was in ruins. Living furtively among the empty shells of a once great nation were a frightened and filthy people. Living in conditions, and with skills, not much better than our cave-dwelling ancestors. What had happened? I skimmed the interim period from the comfort of my ship. Watching backwards to witness the symbiotic relationship falter. Some virus had affected the fungus, making it sick, it started to die, and with it, all the accumulated knowledge of mankind. The humans had taken their mental enhancements for granted and now were utterly stranded without the aid of their parasitic benefactors.
- – -
I ventured several thousand years deeper into the future. I had been shaken by my last encounter with people and wanted to put some time between myself and that particular version of humanity. I felt that the human race could use some time to find their bearings again. I stopped the machine once I spotted a copse of trees sprout up nearby – a good hiding spot. The machine’s scanners didn’t pick up any of the telltale signatures of human habitation – radio waves, heat signatures from dwellings. I got out to investigate and saw nothing. No people, no buildings, not so much as a rusty soda can. Back inside the machine, I toggled back and forth by a decade or so to get a feeling of the surroundings, but it was all the same. A pristine, green and tranquil world. Was the future bereft of human life? Had we finally destroyed ourselves, leaving the healing planet in peace?
My answer came at nightfall. When the red sun set, the night sky came alive, not with the familiar constellations, but with the gleaming traffic of satellite cities, the future of humanity spread in vast nets of light across the night sky. Pointing my machine’s antennas skyward, i was able to pick up a startling cacophony of broadcasts. The human race lived on, quickly filling a previously vacant evolutionary niche – sub-orbital …
- – -
Needless to say, seeing other times is merely tourism and eventually gets boring. After several weeks of traveling (in my timescale) I decided to tinker a little. I chose projects that would not alter the course of history (not too much). I bought three DiscDroid DJ Bots from a retailer in about the year 4500 and took them to 18th Century Vienna, where I enrolled them in the finest music academy. With a real education and some culture, I wanted to see what these glorified appliances could do. I was not disappointed. In fact, I plan to bring them back to my time where they can bestow a new form of music upon the charlatans calling themselves “artists” these days.
- – -
My experiments have had drawbacks. The more I tinkered with time, the more anomalies I discovered. I am now positive that my doings have caused these glitches in time – glitches in time – glitches in time – glitches in time …
After PLAYberlin made its way into the Podcast world this week, we have the PLAYberlin Radio Podcast Serie#1 available now for download and listening. It features a 59 minutes Set of KINDER▲KINDER. See the Tracklist below and check out the other Podcasts.
Photo by yuves@FlickR
Tracklist:
The Residents – Swastika On Parade
Jawoll – Taxi
Duran Duran – Girls On Films
Lizzy Mercier Descioux – Fire
Scott Walker – Jackie
ImpLOG – Breakfast
Belle Epoque – Miss Broadway
Devo – (I can’t get no) Satisfaction
James Chance – Bedroom Athlete
Mika Miko – Capricornations
Disconcerts – Window Shopper
Blurt – Puppeteer
Chrome Hoof – Mad Air Punch pt 2
Fire Engines – Facs =-= Groobbbee
Ohne Untertitel – Keine Zeit
Sprung aus den Wolken – Bevor Sie Dich Töten
Abe Vigoda – World Heart
Palais Schaumburg – Morgen wird der Wald gefegt
Joachim Witt – Tri Tra Trullala
Martin Rev – Secret Teardrop
Four gigs, four videos. Enjoy.
Also check out lead vocalist Blaine Harrison’s blog for an extensive review of their week in Berlin.
Finally – enjoy a little collection of clips from last TAMTAMTAM party. Featuring Basketball, Company Fuck, Eric Green + Brandon Johnson, O Tannenbaum DJs, The Crystal Wolf Fighters and Theo & Claire (in this order). Recorded July 9th at Atelier Frank Zucht, Kunstfabrik.