{"id":8870,"date":"2024-07-31T23:40:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T05:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8870"},"modified":"2024-07-31T23:40:02","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T05:40:02","slug":"retroscopy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8870","title":{"rendered":"Retroscopy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rob Tyler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night Godzilla blew through town, Jake fought claustrophobia with a hundred other people in a bomb shelter beneath the basement of their cold-war-era apartment building. The ventilation was bad and the only light came from a string of bare bulbs hanging from the vaulted concrete ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He sat on a rusted iron bench next to the cute blonde he\u2019d seen coming and going from 7b. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis room was designed to withstand a 20-megaton airburst directly overhead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She turned to him. \u201cGodzilla could crush this building like it was made of papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 and bury us alive under 30 feet of rubble,\u201d she said, \u201cWe\u2019d suffocate in hours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had pale skin and big hazel eyes. He liked her shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you do for a living?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m a salad holographer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs there much call for that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVegetables are scarce and they don\u2019t last. People pay me lots of money to take holographs of fancy salads they make for special occasions. To decorate their dining table, or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The all-clear sounded. Someone opened the lead-lined blast door and they filed up a dank, narrow stairway to the laundry room, between rows of washers and dryers, past a wall of electric meters, and up another set of stairs into the lobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRetroscopy. I\u2019m a relevancy evaluator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRelevancy of what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople,\u201d he said. \u201cDOD nineteen sixty-five to two thousand fifteen. The Hindsight Project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They walked out to the street. The sun was setting behind the shattered downtown skyline. A warm breeze, bearing the minty smell of benzene, came from the river. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCool,\u201d she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. \u201cWhat, exactly, makes someone relevant?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf they might have made a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat kind of difference?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou name it. There are thousands of criteria. I evaluate for precognition.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo kidding.\u201d    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the street, debris crashed to the sidewalk. A small Asian man in a dirty white tee-shirt and khakis shoveled drywall and a broken toilet through a crescent-shaped gap in the wall four stories up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey made Godzilla movies a hundred years ago,\u201d Jake said. \u201cIncredible likeness\u2014same fiery breath, same screechy cry. Someone precogged him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of good it did us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just it,\u201d he said, \u201cthey had no idea what they were dealing with. Ya gotta wonder, what else has been overlooked?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo\u2026you\u2019re a government agent, rummaging through the past, trying to change the future?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid I mention,\u201d he said, \u201cthat if I told you all this, I\u2019d have to kill you?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She laughed. They walked to the corner and crossed to the park, wending their way past splintered maples and a dry marble fountain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said, \u201cWhat do you do when you find someone relevant?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSend back a message. Point them in the right direction. Help them prevent this,\u201d he said, spreading his arms. \u201cFor what it costs per kilobyte-year, we can\u2019t say much, but it\u2019s better than nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Michael Crichton left the nondescript ranch house in the LA suburbs and headed home to his place in Monterey. He\u2019d just spent four hours on the astral plane with a spiritual guide, traveling through time. The experience had left him exhausted but exhilarated and absolutely convinced\u2014after years of doubt and experimentation\u2014that there were vast realms of psychic power that were being ignored by the scientific establishment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’d just published Travels, which had been received with mixed reviews by readers who had come to expect from him a steady stream of science fiction and fast-action thrillers. By contrast, in Travels, he explored his adventures across careers and continents, and to the puzzlement of many, his experience with psychedelic drugs, altered states, and prognostication. His editors urged him to stick to what he was best known for\u2014money-making page-turners like The Andromeda Strain and Westworld. But his imagination extended far beyond cheap entertainment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideas blossomed in his head as he drove. He was in a unique position to change conventional thinking about the capabilities of the human mind. He had scientific credentials, celebrity status, and wealth. He envisioned a foundation for psychic research, funded in perpetuity by royalties from his novels and movies\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he got home, he sat down to compose a message to his agent. As he waited for his PC to boot, his modem came to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat the hell,\u201d he said, \u201cThat\u2019s not supposed to happen.\u201d Then the monitor turned itself on. QUIT SMOKING, in blocky DOS characters, flashed across the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019d never been hacked before, but there was a first time for everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFuck you,\u201d he said, and shut down. He lit up his 35th cigarette of the day and concentrated on balancing his chi. If his computer was compromised, he\u2019d buy another. Meanwhile he could develop his ideas for the foundation. He took a deep drag and exhaled with satisfaction. There was plenty of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

ROB TYLER<\/strong>\u00a0lives in a barn on thirty acres of scrubland in Upstate New York. His short stories and flash fiction have appeared in\u00a0Jersey Devil Press, The Chamber Magazine, 10 By 10 Flash Fiction Stories, Pif Magazine, the Schuylkill Valley Journal,<\/em>\u00a0and elsewhere, and have been produced as podcasts by Manawaker Studio and by Disturbing Frequencies, a project of Rochester Speculative Literature Association. When not writing, Rob can be found wrangling his feral cat, pulling up knotweed by the roots, or shooting pool at the local watering hole.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob Tyler The night Godzilla blew through town, Jake fought claustrophobia with a hundred other people in a bomb shelter beneath the basement of their cold-war-era apartment building. The ventilation was bad and the only light came from a string … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8864,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8870","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-2j4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8878,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8870\/revisions\/8878"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}