by SASKATCHEWAN KOLONOSCOGRAD, Alternate Reality News Service Philosophy Writer
If you were about to sip your first spoonful of soup, you would have a vision of fanning your lips and trying to ignore the numbness of your tongue. If you had just posted a witty political joke on your Farcebook wall, you would have a vision of 17 vitriolic responses. If you were in bed sleeping, you would have a brief dream about being in bed sleeping.
Flashing forward to a point years, months or even weeks from today could have profound effects on human beings. Flashing forward only 23 seconds, not so much.
"One moment, I was making love to my husband," said Ingersoll resident Inclementia Pavanerol, "the next I had a vision of us sitting on opposite sides of the bed, arguing about who had broken the mood. And, sure enough, 23 seconds later that is exactly what we were doing."
That was only the beginning. Twenty-three seconds after the first flash forward had happened, everybody in the world flashed backwards 46 seconds, forcing them to relive the initial flash forward. So, if you were gulping water to cool down your mouth, you would flash back to the point where you flashed forward to the point where you were fanning your lips and trying to ignore the numbness of your tongue. I think. I was considering if there was something else on the TV I would rather watch when I flashed back to the point I started watching The Big Bank Theory, at which point I flashed forward to the point where I realized that I wasn't enjoying the show. Probably.
The whole phenomenon was very confusing.
"The flash...back and forth and, for all we know, over, under, sideways and down, posed an interesting philosophical dilemma," said noted Italian semiotician and author Umberto Eco-Chambers. "Was it possible to change the future we saw, or was it fixed, like an elephant in amber? If it could be changed, what was the point of showing it to us? I could have used those 23 seconds to write half a sentence in the paper I'm working on about the influence of the Commedia dell'arte slap stick on 21st century notions of political economy. And, in any case, where would one get all of that amber? On the other hand, if the future can't be changed, what does that do to our concept of free wi - ooooh, somebody fan me - I feel another paper coming on!"
"Oi! Noodnik!" replied Rabbi Herschel "My, Oh, My" Maimonides of the Fish or Cut Beth Greater Israel synagogue. "You wanna bring up the whole 'free will' mishegas? How much free will can you exercise in 23 seconds? Whether you put that French fry in your mouth, or smear it down your cheek? Should you put your finger to the left, or should you put your finger to the right, maybe? Whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or -"
"Hey! - aren't you the one who is supposed to argue that it needs only take a second to decide between good and evil?" Eco-Chambers interrupted. "If that's the case, you could decide between good and evil 23 times in the time it too to have the flash forward!"
"You have a point," allowed Rabbi Herschel. "This whole phenomenon is very confusing!"
Twenty-three minutes later, everybody in the world flashed forward 23,000 years, a vision which was made up entirely of black. Religious leaders immediately condemned the vision, insisting that it didn't prove that there was no such thing as an afterlife.
"Of course there is such a thing as heaven," Catholic Cardinal Francesco Abbatori argued. "It's just that it's a place of infinite joy, something the finite human mind cannot comprehend. So, like a movie screen where the film had burnt up in ecstasy, we ended up staring at a blank wall."
"Of course there is such a thing as heaven," Protestant minister Aloysius Pentacle agreed. "However, when the Lord, in His infinite Mercy, saw us flashing forward to a point beyond our own death, he waggled a finger at us and said, 'Uh uh uh. That's not for you.' I'm not saying He censored our flash forwards. He, more...edited them for an impressionable audience."
"Cowards," responded Eco-Chambers.
As it turned out, not everybody flashed far forward to a black image. Twenty-three people claimed to have had flash forwards that contained visions of living in a hut in a tropical rainforest or living in a hut in a desert. Depending upon where they lived in the present, people who had this experience were either chased through their city's streets by a pitchforks and torches wielding angry mob that assumed they were vampires, or mobbed by medical researchers who hoped the experience had given them some insight into cryogenics.
(If most people only saw black, how do they know they flashed forward 23,000 years? Apparently, the flash forward comes with a built-in timer. Does this make sense? Has anything in this story so far made sense?)
It has been 23 hours since the hot flashes (they're trending on Twitherd) started, and people are not sure how to deal with them. "The things I saw. The things I did," mused Ingersoll non-native Reginald Plantain. "Were things I would have done anyway. The whole phenomenon was very confusing!"