The Speed of the Future – L’Infersarso

Speed of the Future

Poet:   Is it me or has the future changed speed?
Voice: It is you. The future is arriving at exactly the same speed as before.

Poet: No, you are wrong, the future is fluctuating.
Voice: You are insane.

Poet: That is not an answer, and… you are as always trying to dodge the question.
Voice: I am not even here, you got rid of me.

Poet: Yes, that is right, I did.
Voice: If you wish to invoke me for a conversation, you really have to speak my name, Poet.

Poet:   I could always claim I am speaking with someone else.  I am a writer, I can always just give you a different name, no one would be the wiser.
Voice: You are wrong. First, you are not a writer, you are a poet, second, any reader worth their weight in gold would recognize me for whom I am simply by the fact that unlike your fictional characters I won’t put up with your nonsense.  Finally, you can just admit you are speaking to yourself, check into a Psychiatric unit, and be done with it.

Poet: Aren’t Poets also writers?
Voice: No. Writers are reasonable people, they meet deadlines, they make sense, they are clear when writing things down, their whole purpose is eloquence. All Poets are mad. Thus by definition, they are not the same.

Poet: You know, there really are no readers worth their weight in Gold.  No one reads anymore.
Voice: Then why are you writing this down?

Poet: I have a desire to publish it on Facebook.
Voice: I see. Where no one will read it, right?  Really, you have much too much free time on your hands.  Go and do something useful.  Whatever it is that Poets do, that actually is of benefit to mankind.  Ah yes, criticize something, or ridicule something.

Poet: The future.
Voice: Is here.

Poet: No I mean it, it has changed speed.
Voice: For that conversation, you need my name, Poet.

Poet (annoyed): Demon… I don’t need to utter your name.
The Demon: Oh?  You think I can be forced to do your bidding?  You will find that I am more powerful than that.

Poet: Let me think about it.
The Demon: You do that Poet.  Come back when you have figured it out.  The future has changed speed, and only I know why.

Poet: I hate you.
The Demon: I know, that’s why we are speaking again, right after you banished me from your life.

Poet: I hate you twice.
The Demon: What is it that they do on your annoying internet that constitutes an appropriate remark at a point like this… ah yes: they type in the letters L.O.L.  Really, humanity is devolving.

Poet: I am not done with you.
The Demon: So I see.

Poet: Why has the future changed speed?
The Demon: Why should I answer so important and interesting a question when a simple request that I make you have decided to ignore?  What’s in it for me?

Poet: I will keep on speaking to you.
The Demon: I have plenty of other insane people to speak to, your offer is too low.

Poet:   I will publish this.
The Demon:  But that was understood from the moment you started typing.

Poet: I won’t delete it.

The Demon: Petty threats, you never delete anything.

Poet: I will ask a different question.
The Demon: An easier and less interesting one?  Go ahead.

Poet:  Why do you care if I utter your name here?  I have already uttered your name in my diary“Prometheus, the diary of a Poet.”
The Demon: Self-advertizing?  How banal.  As to why I care… I have my reasons.  I need not share them with you.  But since answering this question will gain me my request and thus fulfill your question I will consent to answer it.  The future is here, and so my time has come.  This moment right now is when my name is to be revealed to the uninitiated.  You are but a pawn in the great game.

Poet: I am not a pawn, I am a Knight.
The Demon: That remains to be seen.

Poet: Pogradze.
Pogradze: Thank you, Knight Poet.

Poet: And now, the question about the future…
Pogradze: It has changed speed.

Poet: That much I know, I wish to know why?
Pogradze: Wouldn’t you rather know how?

Poet: I am a Poet, not a Physicist, I don’t care about the celestial mechanics or the relativistic permutations of Einstein and Schrödinger… I care only about the why…
Pogradze: You lie, you care for the laws and mathematics as much as you care for the meaning, and really the mechanics have much more to do with Ulam than with either Kraut you mentioned, but to address your question…

Poet: You are stalling again…
Pogradze: Not at all.  The future has changed speed, it has done so because the past is being re-written.

Poet: How can the past be re-written?
Pogradze: Oh common, you must be tired.  Must I spell it out to you: Orwell.

Poet: I see.  How can this affect the speed of the future?
Pogradze: The past is a weight that counterbalances the future, the two sides of the swing rest in perfect balance on the present.

Poet: This is happening now?
Pogradze: Yes, of course.  The future is speeding up because someone is erasing the past.  It isn’t a lot of past that is being erased, just the annoying bits that are problematic to the people who rule this pathetic world of yours.  They will replace them with more convenient data, but they have to erase the inconvenient facts first.  It is this fluctuation that you have sensed.  The future has changed speed.  It is subtle, small, and almost impossible to measure…

Poet: …for anyone but a Poet?
Pogradze: Correct.

Poet: Why couldn’t they just calibrate it properly?
Pogradze: Ideas have weight, concepts have mass.  You can never replace one fact with another of an exact but different power level.  There are bound to be discrepancies.

Poet: What are the consequences of this action?
Pogradze: That should be obvious and self-evident.  The future is being rewritten at the same time as the past is being rewritten, the two are one and the same on the scale of existence.  He who controls the past…

Poet: …controls the future.
Pogradze: I would make a minor suggestion at this point, now that we have had this long-overdue second dance… you might not wish to share this with the whole world after all.  I can wait for my name’s revelation for a thousand years more.

Poet: You know perfectly well I will post this.
Pogradze:  I know.  But I figured that if I gave you such good advice, people who read this would think better of me, forget my Demonic heritage, you know, I said it for good PR.

Poet: You are incorrigible.
Pogradze: I am aware.

Poet: Now?
Pogradze: Yes, now would be a good moment, the past and the future are at stake after all.

Poet: No time like the present?
Pogradze: Didn’t you hear Poet, time does not exist, there is no time.

Poet: There never seems to be.
Pogradze: There never is.

Composé à la Panopticum Tademar 
Décade I, jour du Octidi, mois de Thermidor, année CCXIX de la République