In the forest, it is dark. Branches spread confusing constellations against the sky. The light is held out: only a few rays pierce the thick forest cover. But those will be enough. Follow the light as it leads you and you will reach your real destination on the other side.

So little light, and so much darkness! Do not trust too much in those few slender shafts, they never change and cannot lead you along the unpredictable maze of this forest. And they are so few and so dim and so far apart, hardly enough for this overwhelming and ravenous darkness.

The path is clear enough, even if ferns and roots overgrow and distort it here and there. It is not broad, in fact it is really narrow between the gigantic trunks and the grasping roots. But it will not fail, it will surely lead you through if you persist.

In this forest you will find such magnificent clusters of rich fruits, hanging just out of reach if you stay on such a narrow and winding path. Try just one bite and you will be hugely rewarded by the sweet juices running down your chin and neck, giving you new strength for this task. Why is it such an issue to leave the narrow path for them?

These are forest fruits for dwellers in the eternal twilight. Your real bread waits at the plain at the destination, which is flooded with brilliant light. There is no need to eat these fruits with their false promises. Also, you have received enough bread to last you the whole journey.

Who cares what you do under the cover of this forest? Everything you do is veiled, and no one can see clearly here. You can eat the fruit, and do whatever you like, and there will be no consequence, no result.

Everything you say and do and think shows your destination in you, whether it is the future light of the plain or the present darkness of these trees. And there will be others who are lost, whom you must guide, and sometimes you must be humble, to follow the guidance of others. They will know you by your deeds. Everything will be remembered on the other side.

You put too much faith in these promises of light at the end. Would anyone who really loved you lead you through these kinds of obstacles, along this unclear path? Think carefully about that!

Keep good faith! You have been fully provided for, and even if the darkness looks so great, outside the forest the light shines with spectacular magnificence, and you will see it with you own eyes and rejoice in it. Now, look for the next beam, no matter how dim, and pursue the path.

Mark Shutter enters the sprawling laboratories of Ewing Industries in a hurry. He is really eager to hear what Wilfred Ewing has to say about what he had uncovered so far. In his briefcase are a number of Engelhard’s tapes, which makes the case either more mysterious, or wildly and incredibly fantastical. Had Engelhard manufactured the tapes for fun or some kind of cosplay drama? This is hardly unbelievable for some scientific types.

Or could it be possible that he had authentically traveled to 2149 in his own time machine? This is the more overwhelming possibility. If it is true, and if he understood the nature of the thing correctly, then any changes that Engelhard would have made in the past of future would have already been baked in, so to speak. There was no changing the past or the future. The past had already happened, and a similar way the future was irrevocable. Possibly Ewing, even though he was nothing more than a very driven accountant, could find some way to determine exactly what had happened. Mark rather hoped to hear it was just one of Engelhard’s eccentric hobbies.

“Mr. Shutter, good to see you. Please come in.” Wilfred Ewing was in Engelhard’s old office, drinking a cup of tea. He was not tense at all. Clearly he was innocent of this murder, or at least did not feel guilty.

“I have something to show you, Mr. Ewing,” said Mark and he took out the cassette tapes. Ewing raised an eyebrow when he saw them. “Oh?” was his only response.

“I found these in Dr. Engelhard’s house.”

“How did you obtain access to his house?”

“The police allowed me to look around. I’m technically helping them with this case, so they had no reason not to do it. Let me tell you what I’ve found.” He picked up one of the tapes. “They are records of meetings of physicists, but supposedly from many years in the future. I thought they were just pretty curious, kind of weird, maybe something like a prank, or something Dr. Engelhard would create by himself. Do you think this is likely?”

“I think this is extremely unlikely.” Ewing looked intently at Mark.

“The only other possibility is that, and I know this is going to sound unbelievable, that Engelhard had indeed mastered the ability to travel in time.” He looked at Ewing. Again there was just the raising of the eyebrows. Mark continued: “There are many terms in here that I have never heard of before, but it would explain a number of other devices I had found in Engelhard’s home. They are quite possibly prototypes from Ewing Industries, I know you are heavily invested in advanced technologies.”

Mark took out one of the objects he had found in the chest in Engelhard’s home. He could see that Ewing was now seriously interested. “This does have the mark of Ewing Industries on it, but it’s not like anything else being made anywhere in the world right now. Do you have any idea how to explain this?”

Then a strange things happened. Mark was looking at Ewing, and Ewing’s voice, cold and mechanical, replied, coming not from Ewing – his lips were not even moving – but somehow from everywhere in the room: “You have done well, Mark Shutter.”

Mark looked around. Again the voice: “But it is most unfortunate for you indeed.”

At last Mark saw where the voice was coming from. From behind one of the cupboards stepped a figure, an exact copy of Wilfred Ewing. He looked back at the original, but he was just staring at Mark, his eyebrows elevated, his mouth somehow pursed as if he had arrived at a momentous decision.

“Yes, you have done very well. Maybe I can explain to you what has happened.” The second Ewing seemed older, now that Mark could look at him more calmly.

“You… are from the future?”

“Exactly. I see your mental abilities are justly renowned. This has indeed been my secret. This is how I have built my empire in such a short span of time. Engelhard had been very useful to me, but he had the wrong ideas.”

“You killed him?” Mark found it hard to mentally adjust to what Ewing just said, to how momentous it was.

“In a manner of speaking. He was an old friend,” said the original Ewing. He took a pair of broken spectacles from his pocket and looked at them. “Farewell, old friend. I appreciate your service, but your sacrifice is not without a purpose.”

“What purpose?”

Both the Ewings looked at him simultaneously. Then at each other; then at him again. “We have a purpose,” said one.

“Something we are pushing the world towards.”

“It takes time, ironically. But for every misstep, we can go back and change things.”

“The grand design is coming more and more inevitable every day.”

Mark suddenly felt icy cold. “What grand design?”

Then he vanished. Where Mark Shutter had been standing until that second, nothing remained. So did his briefcase, and the devices it had contained. The Ewings looked at each other. “I will go to the past tomorrow and erase him,” said the older one. He smiled. “Clearly I was successful.”

“Like he never existed,” replied the other.

Hope you didn’t see it coming? In case you were wondering, the objects were a time machine, a treasure chest, cassette player, swimming trunks and glasses.

What an unusual and somehow disappointing morning it had been. Mark Shutter had just arrived at the home of the late Dr. Fred Engelhard, to look for clues as to what might have led to his demise, but it was the meeting just before that which had left him feeling puzzled and let down, like a hope had not been realized. It was a meeting with Wilfred Ewing.

Mark had been secretly looking forward to meeting the famed Wilfred Ewing in person and forming his own opinion of the man. He had followed with interest the business man’s meteoric rise, since it was useful for a private investigator to know what was what in the world. He had hoped for a more impressive specimen than the profit-obsessed capitalist he had met that morning. Of course they had talked about Dr. Engelhard’s work on quantum teleportation (“Imagine if we could use it to replace all the airlines in the world! That is a $123 billion dollar market.”) which led to a discussion on the nature of time.

“If it were possible to teleport in time, or travel in time, if you like, then surely that would make you the most powerful man in the world.”

Ewing’s face showed no sign of emotion. “This is possibly true, but don’t you think that if I were going to time travel, there would be some evidence of me in the past. I mean, the past has already happened; if I were able to go there, then we’d be able to see evidence of it today.”

“So you do not believe that we could change the present by changing the past?”

“Yes, that was something Engelhard talked about sometimes too. The equations are ambivalent about it. They can show you the direction of the field flow, but not entirely the results in our conscious world. “

Mark looked closely at Ewing. At least he could throw in a personal question. “So, if you could go back in time, what would you do?”

Ewing smiled, a tired kind of smile. “Well, Mr. Shutter, if I could travel back in time, I would, well… ” and he paused slightly as if to consider carefully. “Yes… I would drink rather more wine.”

It was clearly meant as a joke. Mark did not usually laugh at jokes told by his fellow humans, although he had learned to detect a joke by the way people waited expectantly for him to laugh, as Ewing was waiting now. He knew he should have laughed, but it was such a disappointment. The “great” man was just superficial after all, and only motivated by money. Mark kept staring rather icily at the billionaire.

He was allowed to visit Engelhard’s home by the police. It was an extremely spartan home, except for one room. There was a desk, a chair and something like a large treasure chest to the side. It contained what could only be described as an unusual assortment of junk, probably from Engelhard’s university years. Among other things there were some small devices that had aged remarkably well for items from, probably, the eighties: they looked surprisingly modern and sophisticated, not clunky at all like the walkmans and so on from forty years previous. There was a cassette player too, and some tapes; no surprises here. What kind of music did the late Dr. Engelhard listen to? Perhaps some Queen? Or would he conform to the stereotype and listen only to classical music? Mark inserted a tape and pushed the Play button, but no music was heard. Instead, it was a recording of a voice, or rather a meeting.

“We would like to thank all our members for attending the annual conference of the North American Physics Association…”

As it played, Mark went over to the window, and looked out. The garden was unkempt and overgrown.

“First, I’d like to welcome our honored guest from Belarus, dr. Zelkov. Dr. Zelkov is no stranger to anyone here, having received the Whitaker prize for the year 2149, although his more recent work…”

Mark stopped and looked at the cassette player. “…include contributions in teleportation, and field flow direction…” There were several physics terms he could not follow or had never heard of, but he rewound and played the first part again. As before, it was clear: “… the Whitaker prize for 2149…”

He removed the tape and examined it. Someone had labelled it “N American PA/March, 2149”. He looked at the other tapes.

“April, 2134” and “February 23, 2156” were some of the other labels. There was even one from the year 2282…

These three posts were written in a friendly challenge, to write a story around 5 objects. Can you guess what they were? I’ll reveal at the end of the third story!

Mark E. Shutter hated getting cases on Mondays. Not because he disliked Mondays himself: as a private detective of the most successful agency of its kind, he could pick and choose the cases that would give him most personal satisfaction to solve without regard for the monetary compensation. He really hated Mondays because it seemed to bring out the worst in the average human being. Sleep-deprived, worked-up, on edge, quick to anger, such were they, those strange beings he was surrounded with, but which he never quite understood. Now here was a report that had baffled the police and which was sent by courier from Inspector Lestrade himself. He perused it leisurely.

Police Report 20##/5/12

Location: Ewing Industries R&D Laboratories

Police were informed of unusual activity at the R&D Laboratories of Ewing Industries at 4:17 am on May 12, 2019. Detectives arriving at the scene found head researcher Dr. Engelhard on the floor of his research office. There were several injuries to the head; it seemed that a large amount of blood had been lost. Closer inspection showed that he was deceased. The body was collected by the CSI Unit and taken for medical inspection.

Also at the scene was Mr. Ewing, the majority owner and chairman of the board of Ewing Industries. His interrogation is recorded verbatim below:

• Detective Smitty: Sir, may I ask you some questions?
• Ewing: Of course. I’ll do anything I can to help you. I cannot believe this has happened.
• Detective: Can you identify the deceased?
• Ewing: It was Engelhard, our head scientist. So he really is…?
• Detective: Deceased? Yes, sir. Looks like a hard blow to the head.
• Ewing: Fred never deserved this.
• Detective: Do you have any idea who it might have been?
• Ewing: No. Fred would never have harmed a fly. He basically lived in this laboratory.
• Detective: What was the nature of his work?
• Ewing: He was looking at the flow of quantum-field around elementary particles in the quantum level.
• Detective: Sir?
• Ewing: Quantum teleportation. This was why we started this research. If we can figure that out, we could teleport particles anywhere.
• Detective: Like in Star Trek?
• Ewing: Yes, that is one way to look at it. But also into the past or future, if certain conditions are met.
• Detective: You seem to know a lot about this for a businessman?
• Ewing: I have a masters in physics, my friend. I had started on a Ph.D but decided to found Ewing Industries before I could finish. In fact, that is how I know Engelhard. We studied together.
• Detective: And you say he could not have had any enemies?
• Ewing: Absolutely not. He was the most gifted theorist I had ever seen, but he had not time for humans, except on the subatomic level.
• Detective: What about robbery? Was there anything of value on this location?
• Ewing: Well, there is equipment worth several billions of dollars. But they are huge machines, hardly practical for theft. If they made off with the electricity bill though, I would have been very grateful.
• Detective: Do you have any idea what might have happened?
• Ewing: I’m as astounded as you are, detective. Not only have I lost a friend, but also the main scientist on one of my most technically challenging projects is dead. Even if you found the guy, that would not solve my problem.
• Detective: Thank you for your time, sir. If we have any more questions, could we contact you?
• Ewing: Of course, here is my card. I am very happy to assist in any way I can.

Further inspection of the scene yielded absolutely nothing suspicious. All the fingerprints checked out: only four people were allowed in the personal office of Dr. Engelhard, which is where his body was found.

It is recommended that the case be referred for further consideration.

Signed: Detective Sgt. P. Harris

Intriguing. The flow of the quantum field was only just hypothesized when Mark Shutter had looked into it (he seemed to remember Engelhard’s name); seems like a lot of advances had been made in the field since that time. Plus, this case was interesting on another level. Wilfred Ewing had started Ewing Industries only about ten years before, but in that time he had managed to grow it from a small internet company into a sprawling corporation. It seemed there was not industry or part of life where Ewing’s factories did not produce, sell or compete. This had made him the world’s wealthiest man in a very short time. It was simply unbelievable, uncanny how well he seemed to know which projects fortune would favor, and where he would succeed when others had failed. Mark Shutter was curious: was he perhaps another such as himself? Mark knew that if it had held any interest for him, he too might have been so successful. Instead, he enjoyed the intellectual challenge of solving criminal cases. Managing such a huge corporation must be spectacularly dull.

But this case… Mark got up and walked once round the room. Then he removed his pants. Trousers were surely unnecessarily constricting. He put on a set of swimming trunks and looked down at the comically hairy legs with socks under the baggy trunks.

“Ah, now I can breathe,” he thought and began to walk through the room, from the desk to the bookshelf and back. Desk and bookshelf and back. Desk and bookshelf and back. But he hardly noticed them. “Quantum fields. Fred Engelhard. How and who? Ewing.”

It was more or less confirmed. Any puzzle that could get Mark E. Shutter to pace the room in his swimming trunks was as good as accepted. And nearly as good as solved, if his incredible track record in taken into account.

Welcome! Picture a geek walking into your house, hair uncombed, shirt not tucked in, clothes carelessly assembled, shoelaces trailing. This blog is going to be bit like that, completely unfocused on presentation. The goal is to just put down whatever I’m thinking and then look for patterns. In this approach, more data is better, so you can better establish a trend. There will be some thoughts on movies, some thoughts on dying, short references to all kinds of music and so on. I’ve noticed many spelling mistakes already. So yeah, picture the geek. Or maybe his laundry basket.

If you can see this, that means I’ve given you my password. (For hackers or the CIA, this blog is going to be a total yawn fest, I’d recommend the KGB’s website instead) Then I guess you have already had glimpses of this geek before and his peculiar sartorial taste. He appreciates the occasional feedback and also that he can show you his own style, not the suit he necessarily wears at work or at church, or even the semi-formal attire for parties.

Some things you’ll find more of in this blog:

• Apparently I’m quite insecure. But it seems all but the staunches egotists are. I think I like insecure people.
• It is going to be a bit of a mess, the sentences growing more and more Proustian, branching into more and more unrelated topics, sprouting questions and comments and memories.
• I’m going to try to make it a little more media-rich, since I’m partly doing this to learn the ins and outs of writing a blog.
• Expect many small parts, not always a coherent whole.