World-Mind Reconstruction

A Story by AWWLMw

Where are we headed? What is the meaning? What is time or what can it be?

James didn't really like this process, although every time it was finished he felt better. He knew it was necessary, most of the people no longer needed it - it was only necessary due to the line of work that he picked. There were few ways he could undergo the process, but he always preferred the manual, non-technological, approach. They said it was as reliable as the other ones so why should he allow someone to "laser out" his neurons, also it was a little slower and he liked to use this time to drift away into his day-dreams. He knew, he was supposed to be thoughtless during the process, but he couldn't help himself, also they said it is the intention and time that's important, not the actual thoughtlessness, so he presumed he was doing it right.

He entered the neurofixing room and sat down on the floor, closed his eyes and begun. It was quite simple actually, the aim was just to focus your focus on one thing. In the past generations, this was called meditation, prayer or trance - it is actually funny how people kept doing it even thou they didn't really know why or how did that work.

He, of course, knew - was taught by his parents and teachers:

"Every time we live an experience the neural structure of our brain re-adjust. Some experiences are desirable others are not. When we experience something considered morally bad - this neural adjustment can cause quite significant repercussions in our future behaviours and cognition, in order to account for that - we need to re-adjust. Fix our neural network, by either readjusting the network connections or wiping the neurological structures."

in 2073 the device was patented for neural adjustments and most of the people underwent the procedure. Some chose manual process but very few actually. At the time the neural networks of most of the peoples' brains were so infected that manual neurofixing was very slow in comparison to technological solutions, and not everyone were willing to spend months in isolation. To be honest the manual process itself was frequently causing the infestation and had to be repeated over and over. It took three decades for the "neural-vaccine" to be propagated throughout whole population and then it was only few people that had to continue on with it.

For James it was all just history, he was born after the invention, so he only experienced the world as it is now. In 2104 barely anyone needs neurofixing any more. But James found a book when he was a 10 years old, book was written in the early 20th century, the journal written during second World War. That left a huge scar in his neural network, especially that he kept it secret for good few months before his parents discovered. They fixed it of course, but it did set a course of his life. He learned then that he wanted to fix all the wrong doings of the history and that led him to the profession he was doing now - time fixing.

Neural degradation was essentially one of the job-hazards that came with the profession.

He just jumped from 1950s. Fixing time was very rewarding, but also tedious. Changing history bit by bit, carefully day by day, hour by hour. James was getting better and better every jump. As a matter of a fact, he was probably the best in the department. The most crimes solved, the most childhood traumas fixed.

After so many years of travelling his understanding of time deepened. He talked to his colleagues but none of them seemed to share his thoughts and beliefs. He suspected that it might have been due to the fact that he was the only one that for so many years chose meditation over the technological neural adjustments. With understanding came calmness - he knew that he probably wasn't really fixing anything, that it all didn't matter as all the timelines existed whether he will continue on or not. That he was just jumping from branch to branch on the time-tree with a hope that he will one day reach the trunk, the core-timeline that everything originated from - what will happen then... he wasn't sure. Just few more years and all recorded "bad" will be erased and then his consciousness and he will hopefully reach the core. Maybe that was what the monks that he met during his travels called nirvana, he wasn't sure. Regardless of what this will be, he was not afraid.