by Tom Wells
*****
An introduction into the series called The Encyclopedia of the Future:
There is a cataclysm coming to the Milky Way Galaxy four hundred years into the future. Trillions of sentient beings will be wiped out in a single disastrous event; and humanity will be at the center of the disaster. Though our species did not make this event happen, humanity has been left with the burden of knowing we are now alone. This cataclysm is now referred to the Extinction.
Repeated attempts have been made to go back in time from the disastrous moment to other key moments that led up to the catastrophe. Through these isolated attempts to change history it has been learned that the future of all living beings within the galaxy, what is often referred to as fate, is bound by forces that behave in the same way that the laws of physics govern the movements of all physical bodies within the galaxy. A star that goes supernova in one corner of the galaxy will change the behavior of its neighbors, but the effects are dampened the farther you go from the supernova until its effects are no longer felt by the trillions of other star systems of the galaxy. Everything in galaxy might have been changed for a time by the nova, in the end, the overall momentum of galaxy goes on. The movement of the galaxy and the universe continues to be predictable despite the flashes of great change like a supernova. And so it has happened with all previous attempts to change the events leading up to the Extinction. Each change made the immediate reversal of the target event and the future seemed on track to stopping the fate of the Extinction, but the forces of fate eventually pull the future back into the course that leads to the same end.
For those who were there to see the Extinction and its aftermath, the desire to find a way to stop that end from coming has never ended. This Encyclopedia of the Future is the result of that never ending quest to reverse the inevitable. Fate can be influenced. An individual can influence their own fate through a consistent change in behavior and approach in life. Someone who is born to a poor family dependent on the assistance of others starts out fated to follow that life. Nothing will changed if they let their influences govern their outlook on life, but when that same person born of the same circumstances chooses to improve their lot in life and if that person takes opportunities presented to leave that fate as they come, the person will succeed in doing so. They don’t do it by winning the lottery, or through some one change in their lives, they do it by consistently changing the inertia of their fate set in motion by the circumstances of their birth.
The Encyclopedia of the future seeks to change the fate of the galaxy in the same way. By planting the knowledge of what is to be in the minds of people as far back as time travel technology will allow, the encyclopedia is gently working to influence the course of a galactic fate that is too terrible to accept. To do this, the events of the future must be presented in a way that engages as broad of a readership as is possible. Simply presenting a bland set of facts with dates and dispassionate reports of what has happened would only interest history inclined scholars and would be too unbelievable to be accepted as fact since all of these events are in the future. So, while there will be sections that are presented an a more academic fashion, most of this Encyclopedia of the Future is being presented as works of future science fiction with the personal stories of the people who will have lived the events leading to the Extinction.
This Introduction to the Encyclopedia can be taken as nothing more than the work of fiction of a writer from your time if that is a reality that will allow you to simply enjoy these stories and hopefully hold an interest long enough for you to eventually read the entire Encyclopedia through the course of living your own fate. There are others who will read the texts and maybe come to believe the fate can be changed. The timing of the first introduction of this body of work to the people of the Terran home world, known in your time as Earth, has been chosen to coincide with a time that several anthological works of science fiction have been accepted by some groups of people as glimpses into a future they have come to believe will one day be. Hopefully, this Encyclopedia will evoke a similar following.
In the end it is not the goal of this Encyclopedia to influence everyone on your planet at once. The goal is to plant a new set of mythical ideas that will help influence generations into the future, just like the myths of the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans continue to teach lessons that influence your own fate.
Earth is not the only place this Encyclopedia is being produced because humans are not the ones who brought on the Extinction, far from it. And while the Encyclopedia has been introduced on Earth at the turn of the twenty-first century, the right time to introduce the Encyclopedia on each planet depends on when it has been calculated that the lessons learned will influence that race’s own part in a fate this work seeks to change. Most of those civilizations are much older than the modern human existence so most will have had this encyclopedia for hundreds of generations before the first humans read their own stories. On each of those worlds, the stories and information within their own Encyclopedias will be centered on their own involvement in future events. None of the other races in the galaxy will know who the true humans are that their stories will tell of. That will have to come naturally in the time when humanity confirms the truth about their place in a galaxy richly populated by countless sentient beings with their own discoveries. It may happen like the events portrayed in the Encyclopedia, or it may be that this body of work and the ones on other planets will have served their purpose by then and humanity will have gently been pushed into a new course of events that will alter the fate of the Extinction.
For now at the time of this writing, this is an account of the future.
To see more, visit Wellswriting.com/encyclopedia-of-the-future/