HOURGLASS

“Time is not linear.”

The instructor stood at the archaic chalkboard and drew a long horizontal line. This was the very first orientation and each of us knew all that would be covered. We wouldn't be here if we didn't.

“Time is also not a circle or a sphere or a torus. Time is not a thing. It is a perception, a perspective, a measurement. Time is not tangible and it is not changeable. Get that through your thick skulls. I repeat: Time is not changeable.” He stared at the lecture hall, scowling. The instructor was the definition of grizzled. Old, bent, crotchety. Scared and burned. His whole physicality said I've seen stuff and done stuff that you will never understand.

“But,” he continued, “if that was purely the case, then we wouldn't be here And if you are going to survive and understand, truly understand, what it is we do, you do need to have a concept in your head.” Without turning from us, he reached back and tap tap tapped the board with the chalk in his hand. Bits of yellow shrapnel broke into the air. “Any series of events in time can be seen as a line. At one end, we have the start of it all, the big bang. At the other end, well, the end. The collapse of the Universe into nothing. That line is a history. One history.”

“First, just think about the future.” With two swipes of the eraser, he removed the line and then, in the center of the chalkboard made a sharp X. “This is a point in a history, a now. One series of events creates one future history.” He drew out a line from the X, extending to the right. “But if events are different from this one starting point, we get a different future history.” He drew another line from the X, this one moving at a slight upward angle. Then he drew several more, all to the right but at different angles, creating a fan of lines. “All different histories. And of course at any given point along any of these histories, a different history can form.” He drew branches of a few of the other lines. “Simple. Easy to understand.

“But what about the past? Time is just a perception. You can only ever be in your own present. You can only know and witness what is in front of you. And even then it is filtered through light and particles and then through our organs and then through our own brains. And then, an instant, later it is just memory and we all know how slippery memory is. Keep that in mind.”

He drew new line from the X, horizontal but moving to the left. “This is a past history. A series of events that led to the now.” Then he drew another line extending to the left but at a shallow up angle. “And this is a different past history: a series of events that lead to this now,” he said, tap tap tapping the X. “The same now that the first history led to.” He paused, either for affect or to take a survey of the faces in the lecture hall.

“What we think of as history is just a collection of individual recollects. Highly unreliable. If this first past history starts at a big bang and has series of events (formation of the planets, evolution of life, growth of civilization) that arrive at this now, this second history starts at a great turtle god creating the universe and pooping out the planets and peeing the rivers until we get to the now.”

A few laughed in the room. “Don't. It is not funny. It is possible. That is the thing: Any series of events that could, in anyway, lead to your own personal Now, does exist. Just as any series of events that can lead into the future from your personal now also exist.” He turned back to the chalk board and drew new lines off the X and to the left, a mirror fan, creating a bow tie or hourglass.

“I am way over simplifying here. While the histories in either directions are infinite, there are more options in the future. And as we get closer to the Now from the past, the options become more and more limited. The farther in the past you extend, the more our perceptions of what has happened become clouded. There are only so many pasts from five minutes ago that could lead you to a now where you remembering me standing here. But more options of ones where history books include our view of the Battle of Waterloo. This creates a past history set the resembles a concave cone and a future history of a convex cone.

“But this is all hogwash. Just a way to look at things. Because all of this also means that all Nows are Personal Nows and relies on your own perspective. You can have a history where all of us in this room are just what you think we are: a too old instructor and a room a new recruits, just like yourself. But you can also have a history where the rest of us are all robots, playing a part. Or that we are all manifest ghosts. Or that you are viewing this all in a computer generated simulation. So none of it actually matters.” The instructor erased the board quickly, smearing the lines more than erasing them.

He turned back to the hall and frowned at them all.

“Over the next two years you will learn to move from history to history, from Now to Now, up and down the hourglass. We are searching for a history with the best possible future. A history with the least suffering. One where the world doesn't keep falling into destruction. You'll explore and chart the infinite choices in the past and future to get to the the most blissful existence.”

The instructor paused again, this time a slight grin upon his face. “You'll lead us to Heaven and to God.”