Major John Titor… never returned home.

 

Chris has been wanting to do this episode for years. Oh sure, time travel is our thing and all, but what you don’t know is, Chris encountered Mr. TimeTravel_0 online while he was working on Further Information in 2000.

It was very brief, as Chris didn’t watch his antics for too long. While typing on the book in one window, Chris had another open to a bulletin board, probably the one then at the Time Travel Institute, if his memory serves and has not been tampered with. The conversation had gotten around to the typical complaint that if there were time travelers, why hadn’t we seen any yet. Chris was considering jumping in with the explanation that time travelers would be de facto powerful, and they would neither need nor want to be encountered. You can invite Dick Cheney to your backyard barbecue, but that doesn’t mean he’ll show. But before Chris could formulate just what to say, up popped this–

TimeTravel_0: I’m a time traveler.

Chris looked at that for a long moment, then just grinned and said aloud, “NAAAAAAAH!” He watched while the other visitors let loose a flurry of excitement and annoyance upon the self-proclaimed chrononaut, but soon closed the window.

Folks, John Titor was a fisher. He seriously wanted whatever attention he could get. This either meant he was enjoying jerking people around, or he was assigned to do so. Possibly both. Either way, time travel was nigh-certainly not involved.

Our take is that it is at best a benign hoax, and at worst an attempt at spin controlling the gullible into accepting rising oppression as Destiny, something which only ever serves oppressors (and is indeed their hallmark). Closing off hope was something Titor often insisted he wasn’t doing, and yet it always came around to Russia nuking “American Empire” cities, and stuff like, “No one likes you in the future.” Forging one’s way through life, amidst the forces of fate that surround us all, is challenge enough without whispers of inevitable war coming from some ASCII Ancient Mariner of the Multiverse. Narcissist, indeed.

If John was but an uncommon hoaxster, he gets a slow-clap from us for his ingenuity. But if he was some hired scum out to help frontload people into our current times of 24/7 “terror”, we sincerely hope that he’s toodling along one day in his 1987 Chevy Suburban when a honkin’ huge SPIDER falls out of the aether onto his face, and chews his #@¢%ing neck off.

 

Still tweaking color on this one, but Chris is pleased the initial post looks better than the last few. Also, credit where it’s due: Our Titor matches in color scheme to Jeffrey Rowland’s Titor.

Vote incentives by… Friday? We’re haunting Dexcon. It’s more of the same scene, but things get weirder, of course. Time travel, people. Buckle up. Also, the previous ep’s color is close to done; yay, catch-up!