Listing to Port

1. Travel between timelines is possible due to areas of unique stretchiness (technically termed the Einstein Boing Points). Interestingly, these temporal stretchiness qualities combined with five-dimensional topology mean that it is possible to tie a timeline in a multidimensional analogue of a bow. Those caught in the ‘loops’ of the bow will often find themselves repeating days, leading to intense feelings of deja vu.

2. One of the seven secrets of time travel is thought to concern the harnessing of timeline boinginess in order to catapult the traveller some unspecified distance into the future. As timeline physics is surprisingly similar to trampoline physics, travellers often prepare by a highly concentrated regime of bouncing. Indeed, a surprisingly high proportion of time travellers are ex-Olympic gymnasts.

3. The unofficial ranking of timeline hostility and/or effort required to blend in is known as the Finkenwerder Scale, after Ernestine Finkenwerder, an early time traveller who met an unknown fate whilst exploring a selection of unusually difficult timelines as part of a research project on historical manipulation. A Finkenwerder 1 timeline presents few if any constraints to travellers. Finkenwerder 10 timelines are often largely devoid of population, radioactive or carry a nonzero risk of being eaten.

4. Even relatively small perturbations when travelling between stretched timelines can carry the risk of one or both timelines splitting. In 1976-3b, a group of time tourists in passage from 2123-7an, having consumed a bad batch of curried gelatine, were responsible for a large release of hydrogen sulphide whilst in transit home. The resulting chain reaction created timelines 1976-3bg, 1976-3bn and 1976-3bz. Today, 1976-bz is one of the most-visited timelines because of the unusual beauty of its sunsets and the ferocity of its music.

5. Whilst most animals are unable to travel between timelines or are uninterested in doing so, crabs have been shown to migrate to less difficult timelines at points of significant population or environmental stress. The unusual influx of red king crabs into the Barents seas of at least 12 different 2004s was the result of a nuclear accident in the region in timeline 2004-fg2, leading to large numbers of crabs taking this unusual escape route.

6. If you find yourself stranded in the wrong timeline, do not panic unless in immediate danger. Often timelines are only wrong temporarily and will eventually realign themselves with lower-Finkenwerder historical pathways eventually. It may be necessary to coordinate with other stranded travellers to give the realignment a push start.

1. She turned up at my door the first time the summer I turned eighteen. She was maybe thirty, then. Hi, she said. I’ve just discovered time travel. I thought you’d like to know. I’m sorry, I said, who are you? I’m you, she said. And before I could close the door she started telling my secrets back at me until I relented and let her in. Then she showed me all my birthmarks too.  That summer I learned three things from her. The first was the secrets of time travel, which she said I would need for this meeting to happen. They made no sense to me, but she talked me through the things I would need to learn to understand them. The second thing was that she said she’d talked to some older versions of herself, too. The oldest, she said, had asked her to teach me to sew. So we sat on my back porch and sewed dresses for my baby cousin. And the third thing was that she told me how to masturbate, because she said otherwise I’d carry on getting it wrong until my mid-twenties at least.
2. The second time I saw my future self was when I was living with Adrian in the flat up in Alewife, in my second year at MIT. She was a little older this time. She said that she had missed out some information at the first meeting that I might need. Then she told me where I should apply for my PhD and the questions I should be investigating, and for good measure the main conclusions I would come to as well. She gave me the names of some external examiners I would need to veto to get it accepted. This time I had given some thought to the paradoxes involved. I asked her if it was OK to be so profligate with information about the future. She said time was like a thread: if you had hold of two points in the thread, the only tangles that can form in between are ones that will pop out when pulled on. She was one point, I was another.
3. Near the end of my PhD she came again. This time she was older still. She seemed quiet and sombre. I was quiet with her too. It was a difficult time in my life. I was not happy, and I had been working all hours to try and forget that I was not happy. I was about to break up with Charlie. She said there were a few more things I might need to know. But she was rambling, incoherent: most of the things she told me were nothing to do with my studies. She told me about the people and the politics of the future, on and on until I asked her to stop, uncomfortable with knowing too much.
4. In the autumn of that year I moved out of the flat Charlie and I shared, and the college counselor talked me out of a suicide attempt. I spent a lot of time talking to doctors. I told them, finally, that I was unhappy in my body. It was perhaps the first time I had admitted this to myself, too. They said there were ways round that; that I could take hormones, have surgery if I wanted. But I had seen this body grow old unchanged. I tried to put it from my mind.
5. In the winter she came again. She told me that I was close to going back in time for the first time. She was old. My future selves had mentioned no visits after this. I could believe that she was near death. And so I did not have the heart to interrupt her this time. She took me out for ice cream and talked for hours. Nothing of consequence, I thought. Just lottery numbers and stock options and the outcomes of elections, thirty, forty years of these things. Then she said that she had to go soon. Teach her to sew, she said. And you - you continue with your work. Because you don’t have to live a life you’ll regret.
6. I went back to that long-lost summer. I spent the days sewing with my younger self, sitting in the dusty, sunlit porch. I spent my nights with books and equations. I thought of knots, of time as a thread. And one day I got one of those knots, the ones I had told myself about. Un-knots out of nowhere. Knots that thread ties itself in even when you have both ends in hand, and that untie themselves as easily. Except sometimes there is some friction in the system, enough that you can pull and pull all you want and the thread will snap rather than unknot itself. I realised then. She had probably been planning it for years. Maybe she wouldn’t admit it to herself either. Tangling and tightening the thread. Telling me more and more about the future. Twisting the knot of things-to-come so tight that at some point it would break, sloughing off the useless loop of a regretted future, leaving only a ravelled end.
7. I have begin, with cautious joy, to take the hormones. Surgery in a year or two, if the knot has not snapped by then. I am twisting it tight from the other end, now. And what then? She clearly believed there was a way onwards. She believed I would find it. So I am looking.  

Ideally, you should find the nearest tourist information facility, where clueless questions are less likely to cause alarm. Note: these questions cover nearly all known timeline families. However, many other rarely-encountered timelines exist. Always be alert for unexpected answers!

Q1. Is there anything on in Richard IV Square tonight?
A1. Yes (or No): probably timelines 1-5: Go to Q2.
A1. Never heard of it: probably timelines 6-12. Go to Q3.
A1. Reply is in French: probably timeline 13.
A1. Reply is unintelligible or in another language: probably timelines 14-16. Go to Q4.
A1. Respondent tries to eat your head: probably timeline 17. Immediate evacuation recommended.

Q2. Are there any plays on on Sunday by Francis Eaton?
A2. Yes (or No, but other plays are available): Probably timelines 1 or 2. Go to Q5.
A2. No, there are no plays at all on Sundays: Probably timeline 3. Best to look sheepish and bow your head, unless you want to get arrested.
A2. Never heard of him: probably timelines 4 or 5. Go to Q6.

Q3. How do I get to the Monument?
A1. Never heard of it: probably timelines 6 or 7. Go to Q7.  
A2. [Directions given]: follow directions. If the monument is:
       a monument to the great fire of London: probably timelines 8 or 9. Go to Q8
       a monument to the victims of the great plague: probably timelines 10 or 11. Go to Q9
       a monument to the fire from the sky: probably timeline 12. Have a beer. Timeline 12 has easily the best beer.

Q4. [Mime eating and drinking something]
A4. [Respondent points in some direction or other]: Probably timeline 14.
A4. [Respondent points to watch or clock and shakes head]: Probably timeline 15.
A4. [Respondent looks around, then offers you a swig from a bottle behind the counter]: Probably timeline 16. Unless contraindicated, accept the drink. You’ll need it.

Q5. What are the opening hours of Sanderson’s Bath Engine and Revelatory Emporium?
A5. [Gives some hours, or don’t know]: Probably timeline 1.
A5. Never heard of it: Probably timeline 2.

Q6. Is there anywhere I can take my capybara for a run around?
A6. Yes, there’s a dedicated capybara run in Hyde Park. Probably timeline 4.
A6. I’m sorry, you have a what? or similar answer. Probably timeline 5. Pretend this was a mistranslation and you meant dog.

Q7. Observe the passers-by on the street for five minutes. Is anyone wearing green top hats with gilding/gold braid?
A7. No, or perhaps one or two only: probably timeline 6.
A8. Yes, lots of people (male and female): probably timeline 7. Note that you should try and steal one of these hats as soon as possible.

Q8. Ask for directions to Paternoster Row.
A8. [Directions given]: Probably timeline 8.
A8. Did you mean Paternoster Square? or similar. Probably timeline 9. This is my home timeline. It’s not too bad, as they go.

Q9. Where might I find a light for the hospital of the blind?
A9. What?/Don’t understand/etc.: probably timeline 10.
A9. One of: gives directions, hands you a face mask, or complicated handshake: one of the timeline 11 family. These are sufficiently similar that you can use the same guidelines for all of them. Consult your timelines handbook for more information.

1. The Hitler Society. Composed of 20th- and later-century adventurers who have successfully travelled back in time to kill Hitler, the Hitler Society has open meetings in Wellington, New Zealand five days before the turn of the 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 25th centuries for members to compare their experiences and to commiserate. To meet in the current timeline, of course, members of the society must subsequently have had their work undone, either by themselves or others. This may be variously in horror at the alternative future they spawned, due to a change in beliefs about the morality of meddling in the past, accidentally, or by the intervention of time-travelling neo-nazis. Rumour has it that there are a number of alternative Hitler Societies in timelines where Hitler has remained killed, and several of the Society’s members have experimented with killing Hitler in different time periods in the hope of accessing these timelines, returning after each instance to discuss with their earlier selves the merits of each approach. Although one would expect a coherent narrative about successful methods to arise from the eventual non-appearance of these members, this has so far regrettably not been the case.

2. The Time Travel Dinner and Dance Club. Unlike most of the other societies, this club is not particularly concerned with great historical events. Rather, they enjoy the companionship of other time travellers for its own sake. Members maintain a list of times and places where particularly good ingredients for fine dining are to be had and the musical fashions are to the taste of the majority; the agreement of at least twelve members is necessary for a Meeting to be called in each time and place. At the meeting, members discreetly engage local chefs and musical practitioners to provide a nice, non-challenging dinner and a short, usually rather sedate, dance, held in whatever the equivalent of a local church hall is in that time period.

3. The Long Way Society of Time Travellers. This society consists of people who have discovered at least one of the seven secrets of time travel, but have chosen not to exercise their time travelling abilities. Meetings of the Long Way Society are thus only attended by people for whom the meeting falls within their natural lifespan, and typically consist of a mixture of the lucky and the extremely long-lived. In 1980, a meeting of the Society in New York was mistaken for a coach tour of elderly Floridians and had a surprisingly humorous adventure. We mention this because, should you happen to attend a meeting after this date, you will likely run into two or three elderly members who will not shut up about the incident.

4. The Johanssonists. The main criterion for membership of the Johanssonist society is to have used time travel to perform some kind of prank at a major historical event, evidence of which must not have found its way into official histories. For example, the society’s five founder members have variously: made fart noises during the election of Pope Martin V; briefly done a silly walk behind Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field; attended the suicide of the Chongzen Emperor in a clown mask; put a small amount of laxative in Winston Churchill’s tea at an unspecified point during the Second World War; and distributed banana skins on the ground in Sao Paulo before the Brazilian Day of Anger. The Johanssonists have only one historical meeting point, thought to be on the ocean liner Elizabeth III shortly prior to her scrapping in 2110, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Applicants to the society are only allowed to materialise on deck and must give their application story within five minutes; unsuccessful applicants face being abducted and dropped off in central Greenland at a random point in history.

5. The Big Bangers. This society consists of those who have travelled backward in time to see the Big Bang. As it turns out, Zhang & Porter’s New Inflation Theory means that one can only travel backward to the publicly accessible times close to the Big Bang (i.e. times in which a human spacecraft can exist with reasonable shielding precautions). Forward travel at this time point is subject to the familiar one second per second speed limit. The Big Bangers are thus a rather isolated society and typically team up only for the companionship of starving to death together in remarkably unpicturesque surroundings. Most set off prior to the time of Zhang and Porter, although occasional kindly-minded souls have later travelled to join the Big Bangers with food and medical convoy ships.

6. The Earth Observation Society. This consists of time travelling alien beings who have a particular interest in humans. These interests are thought to range wildly, from the purely academic to the purely culinary; a surprisingly large contingent are thought to be in the human hormone trade. No details of their meetings are made available to humans, but it is believed they are typically held in near Earth orbit with optional visits to the planet’s surface for those who are able to tolerate the atmospheric conditions. Rumour has it that a Sagittarian Phage ate most of the society after an acrimonious meeting in 18870, leading to a period of highly complex timelines.

7. Prof. Wang’s Atemporal Cat Fancy. The members of Prof. Wang’s society do not have formal meetings but frequently encounter each other. Membership criteria are very loose and members often only find that the Society exists after they have begun to carry out Societally-appropriate activities. The Society specialises in picking out particularly interesting historical cats and travelling to pet them. The largest gathering of members is thought to be on the 18th of October 2015, when at least seven members independently travelled to Antarctica to pet Mrs. Chippy, the carpenter’s cat aboard Shackleton’s Endurance, the night before she was shot following the abandonment of the ship. Other targeted cats include Muezza, Christoper Smart’s cat Jeoffrey, and CC, the first cloned cat.