The Question of Time

[Spoken]
Some time later in the future, near the end of time, a parallel universe devoid of any semblance of reality was found in the end not to be real. Or, at least, it was all extremely unclear

We had learned to say anything. We called things the opposite of what they were. Time was measured by progress, but things were deteriorating so rapidly that one felt time was going backwards. We owned neither the world nor time. We know that now

Space and time, some quantum gravity theorists say, are most likely an illusion. The philosopher Augustine famously argued 17,000 years ago that space and time are creatures of existence and the universe, born with it, not separately standing features of eternity

"That's not the way the world really works anymore," the arrogant official argued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality, judiciously as you will, we will act again, creating other new realities which you can study too, and that's how things will work out. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we're doing. People don't have the right or ability to define for themselves what's true"

He sees the future as something even more far-reaching. "You have a choice. You can either create your own future, or you can become the victim of a future that someone else creates for you. By seizing the transformation opportunities we offer, you are seizing the opportunity to create your own future"

We don't have time today to cover simultaneousness, but we will be discussing wormholes: tunnels through space connecting distant points to travel in time, holes called Einstein-Rosen bridges and how gravity would slam them shut. When we went in one, all we could hear was raging, crashing, thudding, and smashing from the flooded ruins of a campsite. Even this inordinately frightening experience, accurately predicted by the Man Above, was still frighteningly unclear