The Future Makers

By Andrew Burward-Hoy

First Draft

In the not-so-distant future, a team of ten is chosen, to complete an unprecedented odyssey, and a mission. The plan: travel to the given point, before Jesus of Nazareth began his teachings, resulting in his crucifixion, and kill him.

In the not so distant future, the two dominant religions in the United States became a fusion of narrow-minded Primitivism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Judaism, and the other, a dominant, extremely aggressive, radical form of reformism, forming reformist, prevailing Christianity. The reformist group, numbering hundreds of millions has done the unthinkable. Guided by misfortune, adherents of the new Christianity have found their way into power. Rival Senators with clearances, have wrestled a share of the nuclear arsenal, and given it to the Reformists. They attempt, now, to hold the future of the planet for ransom, by threatening to destroy the Moon---endangering the inhabitants of the Earth, and all its inhabitants. The enjeu: convert to their militant strain of reformist Christianity, or die.

Elsewhere at about the same time: a French mathematician and one of the only supporters of the self-proclaimed claim to understanding Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, had a breakthrough. In an invention that he suggests, a way around the time barrier has become apparent. One need only create the machine.

The machine built, endowed with wings and a sort of VTOL fusion engine, and given a mask of invisibility—contemporary technology to cloak its behaviours in the past—the machine undergoes a secret test in the deserts of Sierra Madre. The task accomplished, the machine waits only to be given its first mission

A team of ten men and women is chosen. Three Americans, the French mathematician, a Tibetan holy man, three Chinese experts, a New Zealander, and an Englishman. The President has spoken. An older man, he looked once with fondness on Christianity. So horrified at the state of things, and completely paralyzed to find the unique launching base for the Reformists, he assigns the Ten to do the unthinkable. Travel to the past, first to 50 A.D., to establish the exact point when Jesus lived, and then travel further back in time, to kill him.

The world at present, in total disarray, makes an attempt to return the aircraft, to return and inform the President, virtually impossible and a waste of time. Climatic change, population, pollution, human error, pestilence and now the Earth being held captive to militant Reformists obscene, the mission, is all.. Happily, women, for the first time in human history, have never looked better. Now, with five women on board with the Ten, the mission is all. If a success? Wipe the slate clean, and begin again. If they fail, the future inalienably the same. If they succeed, either a parallel history of the Earth, a hope, or total annihilation of the disastrous paths of humankind and the planet Earth itself.

The Ten men and women execute their plan beautifully, and it is accomplished. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Christ, as a young man, is dead by an assassin’s bullet. They return to the future, but where once were buildings and the remnants of the twenty-first century, ruins. Heartbroken, the Ten board their aircraft moments before being attacked by giant ants, and cockroach-like creatures as high as five story buildings in a landscape of red sand and windstorms.

Traveling back to what was pre-World War II Nebraska, in an altered future, they check into a sturdy, cheap abandoned hotel, using invisibility. After showering, eating their rations, they talk at length about what they can do. They have lost everything. Their families, friends, gone---they never even existed.

They devise a full-proof plan to undo the damage: go back in time to the precise point when they killed Jesus, and kill themselves as they were at the beginning of their mission, as they were, at the moment about to kill the Christ. They all might vanish at the exact point they kill themselves, but the Earth will return as they knew it. It was a hope.. At that point, with the President, or acting alone, they can continue on accomplishing something else, something that might free themselves and the future Earth, and their loved ones, their sons, fathers, grandparents, etc.

They succeed at killing the two-man team that killed Jesus who is at the age of twenty-three, as he sat, pondering a Roman gladiatorial event---the exact point when they, as their earlier selves, killed Jesus with a sniper’s bullet, as He momentarily gazed at the sniper, moments before. Strangely, the new mission accomplished, the two, self-assassins did not vanish in the blink of an eye. Realizing the scientific enormity of their discovery, the two assassins of their former selves bate a trap for the other, former eight to capture them, and inform them of why they killed the two-man team. They succeed with three, and after untying them, inform them what had happened. The three of their former selves immediately tell them to destroy the time machine. Stop. Just stay in Judea and pray that the task is done, the effort to destroy their unwittingly satanic mission. The three captured and released former team members guide the Ten from the future back to the coordinates of the other five. Now there are two time machines, and a team of eighteen.

Returning to the future, sadly, the eighteen once more find themselves heartbroken. The present is virtually identical to the last moment they returned, inhabited by swarms of insects. This time, there are more flying insects, than before, but virtually the same future. Barely escaping, again, the two vessels scour the Earth for safe habitation, somewhere, for where humanity might still exist. After ten months, they conclude that they are the only humans left on the planet Earth. The eighteen find the vestiges of life forms that once reassembled mammals, and the women among them advise that they start, anew, to regrow humanity again where they are, right under their feet. They do so, but at terrible costs. One of the time machines gets destroyed by a herd of giant mammalian reptiles, and three of the team get killed in the endless quest for food and house building efforts.

Giving up, the fifteen take the last time machine, the earlier version, back to a point, to mix with the local human inhabitants. Care must be taken to travel further back than the time of Jesus, to the waning days of the Pharoahs, the Roman Republic, Ancient Hellenistic Greece, China, India and Persia. Their, depositing themselves one by one, like archangels on a mission from God, to do no harm, avoid almost every living soul, and act like savant seers, to foretell the future, and to change, for the better, the path of all the beings of the planet through dialogue—and the occasional rabbit trick, from the unknown future they once knew.

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The Future Makers Part II

By Andrew Burward-Hoy

First Draft

Fudge, the VTOL time machine's cat, in the odyssey that was the first story, is back. Wandering off the VTOL aircraft as the two-man sniper team sent to kill the Christ left the aircraft, he sprang down like a lunatic as the two rappelled, and disappeared, only to reappear eleven days later, well-fed and watered. The Ten knew that he most likely didn’t get into trouble, probably dead, but the cat did get into trouble.

In Ancient Rome, one of the savants walked along a dark corridor, her face ashamed and covered, traces of disease about the mouth and forehead. Their Earth-born remedies having long since exhausted them, more primitive strains of syphilis, and the like, won the day.

A man kidnapped her, dressed like a white clad Bedouin, and took her with aids to a small hut-like habitation, like a manger, with tables and chairs. Afterwards, having controlled her, the Bedouin announced to a seven-year exile from the future that he comes from another dimension, he knows the whereabouts of the other fourteen, and he would like her to, as he says, care for an animal, for him and him alone.

Reassembling the fifteen, after taking the unearthed VTOL by air to various way points, issued by code to all, and amidst the utter incredulity of most, the diseased savant convinced them all to agree to the other dimensional being’s request. Why? They said, He desires for them to travel to another world system to unobtrusively observe a starving and parched cat, shorn of its hair and having had his tail removed. Observe the creature, unobserved for three days, and capture him before he reaches the sea—the car's final destination. Preposterous. They all suspected, it has to be Fudge…The man said the cat would be rescued, and this must not under any costs happen. Word had leaked, the fifteen concluded, and they assembled to unearth the machine, again, from being momentarily hidden away in a deep, high-ceilinged cave. The reward? “More riches than they could possibly imagine.”

Agreeing, especially the savant from Persia, the fifteen embarked, trying their best to remember the piloting buttons. They raised the VTOL, wondering, questioning if it still worked.

When they arrived at their time destination, they were dumbfounded that the coordinates fitting the time destination, were more or less the exact time they arrived to rescue the Christ from themselves, but fifty miles to the East.

Finding the cat, the fifteen alternated playing chess, reading, talking, eating, chewing gum, defecating and literally watching and walking the cat in an invisible state, the cat to the beach, they to nauseum. Becoming more intrigued, but completely forbidden from touching or interfering in any way with the cat in the desert, they all awaited the cat's approach, to water.

Eventually, as foreseen by the strange man who sent them on their task, the cat reached the beach, indeed as expected. Three of the savants conspired immediately to let the cat be captured, kidnapped, as he was destined to be, and simply tell the strange man in the past that everything was fine. Find a similar cat, shave it, knock its tail off, and take the gold, rubies, diamonds, whatever. Stick it.

The women, the last holdouts, finally relented though and found the cat once more, using the VTOL. The influences induced on the others over the years was just too much, the women said. The fifteen-time travellers followed, led by the women, and the cat, destined to a young girl of eight or nine, who finally kidnapped the cat at the lake and carried it away further down the beach and away. The man she delivered the cat to, patted the little girl’s head, telling her no, it is God’s will, but in the end he too relents, and the two take the starved cat.

A day later, one of the female savants, sat with a book in an invisible state, and tried to pay attention to a Hebrew conversation between the little girl, and her thirty year old cousin, Samuel, a light-brown haired man in washed and flowing raiment. The others had gone to find another cat.

As the scene between the little girl and her cousin developed, and the book reading savant takes the time to freshen her Hebrew, she overhears a word, a name, that upsets her, in an hysterical way.

She ran like a lunatic in an invisible state, passing through people as she did, like a ghost, until she found the Persian savant losing his temper, rummaging with beggars and thieves in an old temple, also one which sold animals, looking for a cat. He’s wasn’t interested. She grabbed him by the arms, The little girl, the female savant said, said the name, she said, of a man. A man named “Peter". They two, returned to the cat and the little girl. Yes, not only is Samuel's name Peter, he's a fisherman, and he has a brother. It couldn’t be, they all said, all the fifteen said.

They did the unthinkable. Instead of obeying the strange man's mission, they decided to observe more, in an invisible state—weeks if they have to, months.

Peter, they find, is so attached to his dear uncle the father of the little girl, and so moved by the state of the cat, he feeds her for days and days, mends her wounded tail, all to the glee of his dear uncle's daughter, the little girl, so the very thought of leaving the cat was unconscionable.

The savants discovered the utterly baffling afterwards, and it immediately made them fathom who the other dimensional man is, or was, or will be, or all three. The cat, as it’s hair grew, was none other than Fudge, indeed, under the grime, severed tail, regrowing hair and wounds. The man? SAINT PETER. And due to his mending and caring for the cat, unable to go fishing on his expected days, missing Jesus completely, all twenty eight years of Him. Time, and the slight change to human history, the missing cat, not exactly, not entirely Jesus's assassination, was responsible for the dramatic change to the Earth, creating multiple dimensions. Stopping Jesus from being shot by a future man's rifle bullet was only half the battle.

The fifteen immediately took the cat, but realized it was too late. The fifteen returned to the VTOL. They once more returned to the starting point, found the cat and have to fist fight their fifteen other selves, before they had reached the cat's final destination, the beach, rescuing the cat. As in another part of Judea, Christ is being saved, from being shot by their former selves, by their former selves. There are now four sets of the same people at the same point in human history (one team of ten, one team of ten, one team of fifteen, and another team of fifteen), in ancient Judea. Two pairs trying to undo what had been done previously, by themselves. One pair going to kill Christ, one pair trying to stop it, one pair fighting with their conscience and their fists, very far away, over a cat, and the last pair in mortal combat with the third pair, all attempting to rescue a cat.

The fifteen who knew who the cat was, Fudge, knew the implications of what was happening, and succeeded in overpowering their perfect opposites, their adversaries, despite hunger, exhaustion and slight dehydration. Knowledge gave strength to their veins.. They took the cat away, fulfilling their mission, the fifteen former selves overtaken, having taken off to somewhere unknown only to slam into a mountain and perish, and the fifteen left, discover the identity of the multidimensional man. He was none other than a man from another planet, sent to restore the Earth to its former state, this after a schism was created, creating five alternate Earth-life multi-dimensional stories. The cat finally delivered to the man, he pets the cat, and vanishes.

The fifteen stare at each other. They take a gamble, seven years after this ridiculous odyssey has begun, and take the VTOL back to their twenty-first century starting point, as the President awaits them, at Andrew’s Air Force Base. They’re back, and so is the Future they’re familiar with, they think, they’re almost certain, and Fudge—much, much more beleaguered than before. The fifteen, seven years older, except for Fudge, and the former, garbed in a variety of costumes from different parts of the ancient Earth, disembark. The dead sniper team greet them, now alive once more, but thirty seven years older, and far wiser. This restores the fifteen to seventeen. The female, diseased savant gets an injection in the arm, from a doctor, as the eighteen get taken into quarantine on base not long after. The three killed in another dimension, gone. The fifteen who slammed into a mountain, gone.

The President shakes their hands, and tells them, Ah well. Better luck next time I guess. I’m so sorry about the three.

Days later, over brandy and biscuits, the President uncircumspectedly whispers to them all, after conversation, So, do these time machine VTOLs still work? The seventeen, and the President, burst out laughing.

Deep in the middle of night, the healed, once diseased Roman smissing the woman, with Fudge and her cubs, sneak onto Andrew's Air Force Base amidst the silent melody of The Carnaval of the Animals by Saint Saens in the background. She opens the beast, turns it on, pulls out her smartphone, amidst the clamour of half asleep soldiers rushing the airplane with guns. She adjusts the time coordinates dial to an arbitrary point, breathing heavily, in the past, raises the metallic beast and disappears. A few seconds later, a heavily tarnished VTOL aircraft reappears. Within, the same Roman savant, with shorn hair, completely naked, red beyond recognition, missing a broken off arm, within wounds all over her body, and a VTOL brimming to the hilt, with cats.

END

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“The Seven Sharp Video Game Experience”

A Satiric Video Game

Target market: New Zealand, United States, Europe

Target Audience: Poo-Pooers of Virtual Reality, Video Games

Approximate Video Game Duration: Ten, Twelve Hours, Highly Scripted

Suggested Tagline: “No Guns. No Time. No McDonald’s French Fries”

First Level: Finding Sir Peter with Jojo

Sir Peter must be found, during a Gay Pride parade in Auckland. His suspected whereabouts is high up in a palatial suite of the Sky Tower, a dead ringer for Howard Hughes in his final days. Invisible bird men, GM monsters must be found and ferreted out as the Seven Sharp host with others ascend the Sky Tower to the top. The Seven Sharp in drag male host Jeremy finds him, with Waititi dressed as Adolph Hitler, only to find the knight droning on about his next faux-indie epic film to be developed, with long stringy hair and long nails called “Attack of the Shitty Cockheads.” They all escape by plane to Wellington, only to ward off more invisible bird men at the top of Wellington’s famous giant severed hand installation, along with a velociraptor with the brains of Fran Walsh. A stray shot hits the base of the severed hand it goes careening down into the street only to explode into many pieces. Sir Peter escapes via NZDF Merlin helicopter with the Seven Sharp cross-dressing host and Waititi.

Second Level: Hilary and the Prime Minister Ardern Cornered by Aliens at the Fair Go Studio

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson has been summoned. High above the Fair Go studio, the NZ Police are staking out aliens who have the Prime Minister and Hillary cornered. The Prime Minister has been calling and communicating with the Beehive via smartphone, and Hillary is just too busy looking for lunch in the Fair Go refreshment area to really care about any of this. The aliens have placed an oblong, cricket bat shaped UFO over the studio. Grant Robertson has been told by telepathic message in his head, the aliens, that he is to autograph an All-Blacks rugby ball and hand it over, or they will kidnap the Prime Minister and Hilary immediately. After assessing the situation and talking to Hillary by smartphone Jeremy travels to the Beehive. The Beehive is deserted, but a Māori security guard, after talking with Jeremy and three or four NZ1 reporters out front, agree to have Jeremy assess the situation with Robertson. Jeremy is led to an office where Grant Robertson, adorned in a full Hazmat uniform, along with five or six others likewise adorned, are desperately trying to figure out how to satisfy the aliens’ demands, and avoid a blood cell arriving on the ball with the signature.

Meanwhile, a traditionally costumed Māori negotiator shows up at the Fair Go Studio at the Police’s request. The aliens, using telepathy, continue to spout their demands. They insist that the only negotiators they will accept will be from the Hare Krishna Temple in Wellington. The NZ Police send in the negotiator to talk to the aliens in the building. The Māori performs a Haka and enters, on his guard. Moments later, Jeremy notices the sun travelling at a break neck speed overhead, the moon as well, and suddenly it’s dark with stars. A lightning bolt leaves the UFO from above, and moments after, the sun arrives and travelling rapidly, returns to it original position overhead. The negotiator leaves the building, with frizzy hair and smoke ascending from his head, followed by ten other full-sized clones of the Māori negotiator in pursuit. Looking momentarily confused, they all perform a Haka. Jeremy tells the police he thinks Fozzy has found his next All-Blacks team. The NZ Police finally acquiescing, send in the Hare Krishnas, just as the autographed Rugby ball arrives, and the ball, via the Hare Krishnas, is delivered to the aliens. There is a blinding flash of light. The alien spacecraft begins to leave and hovers directly over the heads of Jeremy and the Police stake-out. A loud flatulence sound erupts from two opening doors and a beam of light emerges, upon which descends two women replete in red and black Burkas—none other than the Prime Minister and Hillary, famished, who are taken away by ambulance and the level ends.

Third Level: Jeremy, Pole Vaulting, Rowing in Christchurch with Olympians Eliza McCartney and Lisa Carrington and a Pursuing Pack of Italian Werewolves, Just Offshore

The news reports that two superyachts from Palermo have just pulled into Christchurch’s major port. Jeremy and Hillary arrive with guests to welcome the yachtsmen. The NZ Police arrive to inspect the two yachts. They board the yacht and all hell breaks loose. Running for their lives, from fifteen cologne-doused, gold-chained werewolves who spring from the lower decks, Hillary and Jeremy trying to recover from the stench, quickly run along a pier, only to find Eliza McCartney and Lisa Carrington looking suspiciously odd on the pier as well, descending one of the Italian yacht’s staircases. The two athletes carry two chianti bottles and a pair of wine glasses. Terrified as the werewolves fast approach, they all get into a car and head to a spot where Lisa Carrington has left her canoe. Eliza has a pole vault waiting there as well. With the werewolves in pursuit, Lisa Carrington has them all get into the canoe, and Eliza starts pole vaulting over a variety of objects in the streets with Jeremy. with Hillary to desperate to get away, an extra canoe awaits the pair, a spare from Carrington’s car roof, and they have just the time to get it into the water and paddle furiously along the coast, the werewolves in pursuit from the shoreline. When they manage to fend off the werewolves with their oars, pulling into a small islet, the NZ Police await them. They expend their weapons on the werewolves, with a little broom action from Jeremy and Hillary, and all is right again with the world. The werewolves rout, and Hillary and Jeremy thank the two athletes and they all part ways. Throughout the entire level, Jeremy is wise-cracking to the two athletes about their ill-fated Latin-smooching intentions with the Italian yachtsmen, these latter, taken away in handcuffs by the police.

Fourth Level: Chasing Away the U.F.O. over Wellington CBD

Hillary arrives with Jeremy at the Seven Sharp studio. A UFO arrives, this one saucer shaped, and everyone in Wellington is communicated a telepathic message insisting that everyone in Wellington eat less meat. Animals are suffering, and the Earthlings are developing a very, very bad reputation throughout the galaxy system. Jeremy wisecracks that they all want to turn us into cattle for the galactic food market, as people out on the street s start throwing bits of trash up at the UFO to go away. The NZ Police waste all of their ammunition on the force field of the UFO. Running completely out of ammo. The Police frustrated, and not knowing what to do, accept the invitation of a gangster, ad descending a house staircase, replenish their weapons, and equip themselves with three javelins, an RPG and several grenade launchers. The Police tell the gangsters they will be arrested after this. The gangsters tell them to sod off. Returning to the UFO, they let the UFO have it. The UFO crashes into the ugliest building in downtown wellington amidst the clamour of applause from bystanders, and telepathically tells them all, again, insisting, to eat less meat please, for the sake of the animals, please, and it leaves.

Fifth Level: Jeff Goldblum, the Wellington Zoo and Capturing the Invisible T-Rex

Life, momentarily begins to turn to normal once more. Hillary and Jeremy return to the studio to begin rehearsals for their next show. One of the features in tonight’s show is an interview with Jeff Goldblum about Jurassic World. Jeremy is to go on location to the Wellington Zoo, dressed as Professor Malcom from the first motion picture, when suddenly an invisible T-Rex breaks out of a cargo container just near the docks and makes its way to the smell of food, the Wellington Zoo. The thunder of T-Rex footsteps can be heard, as the T-Rex momentarily reappears to gobble a bird or other creature at the zoo. Jeremy and Jeff, aghast, run to two golf carts and make to escape. The problems arise when the golf carts, the T-Rex attracted to the movement, only accelerate to ten miles and hour, top speed. With the T-Rex shaking the golf carts, the T-Rex literally bursting out in laughter at the hampered flight, Hillary finally calls Jeremy on the phone and describes the most succulent hamburger she has ever tasted in her mouth at that very instant, gifted to her at the Seven Sharp Studio. Jeremy reports that they are really very busy right now so he will have to call her back. The T-Rex tips the two golf carts and Jeff and Jeremy take shelter in the orangutan exhibit. Looked at strangely by the apes, Jeff and Jeremy sit dead still and pretend to be apes, the entire time being looked at strangely by the residents of the exhibit. Jeremy makes a clever phone call to the NZ Police, who show up and rescue the two men. The T-Rex approaches by the scent, but the two men sit dead still. The T-Rex sniffs them both, but looks confused and eventually wanders away. The level ends with the distant but audible hammerings of the T-Rex’s feet over a bluff, and a ferocious roar that echoes everywhere.

Sixth Level: The My Angels Escorts Brothel and Il Duce Lives!

Jeremy climbs into his hot tub after all of this, relieved the day is finally done. The Seven Sharp episode done, he just wants to relax. His phone rings. Picking up, an anonymous man on the phone who sounds just like Jeff Goldblum tell him, anonymously, that all the strange things that have transpired throughout the day aren’t metaphysical, not extra-terrestrial. The whole thing was a carefully, mischievously created plot intended for laughs, perpetrated by the remnants, the underground Fascist remnants of the Italian Fascisti! The man ends the conversation by telling Jeremy to call the police and meet him at the My Angels Escorts building. He says in finishing, you’re not going to believe your eyes. Not believing it, Jeremy gets into his yute and travels to the My Angels Escorts building, after a quick call to the police. A fire blazes near the roof at night as half naked prostitutes flee the building in every direction. Jeremy sees that a ram raid to a hardware store has gone neglected by the Police, too busy to concern themselves with it, and he goes inside. Not permitting this madness any further, he equips himself with a hoe and a chainsaw with half a tank of gas. Leaving the ram-raided store, the police laugh and suggest Jeremy’s up for a fight. The police give Jeremy a bullet-proof police shield, a pair o thermal goggles, and they all write phosphorescent numbers to their helmets. This is, the Police say, all about cloning. The Police, followed by Jeremy, festooned with a hoe, a chainsaw, a bullet-proof shield, and thermal goggles, begin to enter the building….