This essay was a finalist in the How We Saved the World essay contest, where people wrote as if it was 2050 when the world was working, saying how we got there starting with something they did. Here's the intro to this presentation of results, with links to the other finalists and an invitation to make comments about the contest.

8

A Message from the Future

Dear Suzanne, I hope 2024 is treating you well. I ran across the following text on the website of the ELA radio-telescope. It was in a section where they post data about anomalous signals they pick up from time to time. This file stood out from all the rest: it’s a simple transcript of an English language broadcast of a speech, received from the direction of deep space — a direction where there shouldn’t be any human broadcasts. I was very surprised to find some familiar names mentioned in the text — but you should read it for yourself:

 

Greetings, citizens of Mars. I want to wish you all a Happy New Year, 2050 CE.

I’m Dr. Edgar R. Bradbury, Mayor of Mars City. Tonight, it is my honor to welcome Director Kiser, founder of Earth’s Global Awareness Institute as the keynote speaker at our first annual Future of Mars Conference. I, myself, am a proud graduate of the GAI.

Director Kiser has been instrumental in discovering, researching, synthesizing, and disseminating a model of not only how the universe works, but the role of consciousness within the universe. Over the course of the last 26 years, he and his wife have worked tirelessly in their efforts to bring humanity to a new level of peace, prosperity, and awareness. They have helped to facilitate the beginning of the end of some of the worst, most persistent problems the human race has faced throughout its existence on Earth.

And now, before I risk stepping on his oratory toes with my effusive praise, please join me in warmly welcoming Director Kiser to our ‘Shining City in a Crater’, and to the Red Planet! Director, the podium is yours.

Thank you, Mayor Bradbury. It’s a pleasure to be here…I can’t believe I’m standing on Mars! I’m turning 94 this year, and when I was born, no one had yet even been into low Earth orbit — we’ve come a long way in my lifetime.

As most of you are already aware, my wife SuAnn and I founded the GAI in 2024 to research the root causes of the biggest problems facing mankind, to find solutions to those problems, and to implement those solutions. Today, 26 years later, the results we have achieved are beyond any reasonable expectation we might have had back then. We were inspired by two things, an essay contest we both entered that was put on by renowned consciousness advocate, Suzanne Taylor, and a tiny scrap of paper.

Let me start the story where all great adventures begin, with a good meal!

I had taken SuAnn for a romantic dinner at Chef Chu’s, to celebrate Valentines Day, and talk about our future. At that time, we were semi-retired children’s book authors, and we both loved our careers in writing for children, but the question of the night was, what are we going to do with ourselves now? Gardens, chickens, and rocking chairs all came up —but these ideas didn’t really satisfy any of the deep-seated needs we both held to be of more use to the world.

By the end of the meal, we were no closer to an answer to the question of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Then the waitress brought us fortune cookies. The fortune I read that night was so profound at that pivotal moment that it literally changed our lives. I still keep it in my wallet — let me read it to you: ‘The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.’

I had never really thought of life in those terms before. I said to my wife, ‘What if we replace the ignorance in the world with knowledge, do you think that would cause the evil to be replaced with good?’

At that moment, we decided to fix the world.

The first thing we did was to create our non-profit, the Global Awareness Institute, by gathering a few talented, creative, heart-centered people, mostly my Stanford Business School classmates and SuAnn’s author friends, along with lots of passionate volunteers.

Our research showed that the problems facing humanity — war, corruption, climate change, poverty, disease, and so on — have one common factor, just as my fortune said: Ignorance.

And as you all know, having lived through those times, the solution our research found is also exactly what my fortune said: Knowledge.

Knowledge — real, scientific, experimentally-confirmed, mathematically-rigorous knowledge — has been the driving force behind the last three hundred years of accelerated change and improvement of the human condition. And yet, 26 years ago, our knowledge-base was still woefully inadequate. Cosmology was in crisis; free-will was in question; and quantum physics couldn’t even decide how many forces there are in the universe, much less how to reconcile all of them.

With dedication and a higher purpose, the Institute began working hand-in-hand with many of the Earth’s greatest scientists to answer some of these questions.

The most important answer we found was one that had been known for thousands of years, but had often been shrugged off, because it had no scientific foundation. We experimented and tested and found that foundation, and now almost every human being knows the ultimate importance of the principle of oneness. Our research showed that all people, indeed all creatures — all forms of life — are part of the same unified web of consciousness. What you do to any one of your fellows — people or creatures — you are doing to all of us. Whether that is kindness or violence, your every action also impacts yourself. This was tested in every possible way, down to the quantum mechanical level. No action you ever take is done in a ‘vacuum’; it always has an impact, on everyone.

The path to this understanding was long and convoluted. Many questions about the nature of the universe and life had to be answered along the way. The more deeply we understood the fundamental laws that govern the universe, the more effective we became at making positive changes for mankind, and indeed, for all life on Earth…and Mars and Luna too.

We also realized that we would never change the world by going against human nature; that’s why we had to find a way to change human nature. We noted that human nature in private is very different from human nature in public. Things we would do under cover of anonymity, we would never do in the full light of day.

With that in mind, we reinvented the Internet. The mythical oneness of everyone became a technological reality through GAI’s introduction of the InnerNet.

We used AI to read thoughts directly from users’ minds through EEG electrode caps, and to surround them in a virtual reality world where everyone could directly see what everyone else thought and felt. We advanced the technology to the point that it disappeared. No more keyboards, tablets, mice, phones, or screens. Users’ brains were wired into the new network at all times. Motives and intentions were displayed directly through the user’s avatar. Nothing could be hidden anymore. Anyone who tried to do business the old-fashioned way was suspect, because it meant they might be trying to hide nefarious intentions.

Relationships deepened, circles of friends and acquaintances expanded, and soon it was impossible to cheat someone or to be cheated by someone. Negotiations became transparent. Business was always above board, and win-win-win for everybody involved or affected. Language barriers and skin-color prejudices faded away. Political boundaries became fuzzy and politicians had to either bare their souls or change professions.

Scientific collaboration advanced exponentially too. It was quickly found that when the exchange of ideas was fully free-flowing, many of the big questions of physics, astrophysics, chemistry, biology, and the other sciences were easily answered with combinations of knowledge that we already had and new crowd-sourced ideas.

As a sneak-peek at one of these new discoveries, I will tell you that we are working on a quantum wormhole technology that will allow us to communicate instantaneously between Earth and Mars, instead of the ten- to forty-minute signal round-trip delay we currently have to endure. One theory even suggests that we may be able to use the technology to send messages through time! What do you think, should I send a recording of this speech to my younger self? That would be a hoot!

Back to the story — we used the InnerNet to open our School of Global Awareness. We taught the new scientific truths of the universe at every educational level to help society realize a clear vision of how to advance humanity toward a utopian ideal. Divisive teachings, like most religions and older forms of government, were revealed for the draconian systems they were, and were replaced with open inclusive teachings, and the Global Awareness mindset.

And now our graduates are out in the world, leading many institutions, in almost every field, from science to medicine to politics, and the world is a better place. We still have a long way to go, but the future is bright indeed.

And now I’d like to make some announcements.

The Global Awareness Institute is pleased to announce that we are expanding to Mars and simultaneously changing our name. The ‘Global’ is just too limiting as we expand our research and teaching to Mars, to the Moon, and even out to the asteroid-based colonies. And who knows when we may be joined by alien beings? So, from now on the Global Awareness Institute will be known as the Universal Awareness Institute!

And on a personal note, tonight, my lovely wife SuAnn and I are announcing that we are not just tourists. We are moving to Mars permanently to start the Mars branch of the UAI. We will be facilitating the creation of the infrastructure for the Martian InnerNet, and as soon as the quantum-wormhole technology is ready, we will be connecting the Terran InnerNet and the Martian InnerNet. Any of you who still have family on Earth will be able to visit them virtually at any time, with full-sensory, real-time, virtual reality connections.

SuAnn and I also plan to grow a hydroponic garden, fund a poultry pod to raise Martian chickens for eggs and pets, and as soon as I can, I’m going to 3D print us some rocking chairs!

I’d like to leave you with this thought: we collectively create our own reality, and we collectively live in that reality, so why not collectively make it the best reality we can imagine?

Thank you. I hope you all find your own fortunes, and may all the forces of the multiverse be with you.

 

Well, that’s it, Suzanne. Pretty weird, huh? I tried to contact the staff that runs the ELA radio-telescope, but no one will talk to me and they took down the file.

I don’t know what to make of this — is it really a message from the future? Is the Director really me? All I can think to do is enter this in your contest (since I guess I wrote it…will write it?), and take my wife out for a Valentine’s dinner at Chef Chu’s. You know, just in case.

Sincerely confused, Kevin Kiser.