Temponauts of the Gods

by Shaun Lawton 

I have scanned our days and all the ways we've planned our normal activities, searching for evidence that we may have been visited from the future, and I have found the only anomaly that fits this description to be ourselves. Before allowing disappointment to fully settle in, think about it this way. The future is that which already exists in eternity because every decision we make during our lifetimes literally creates the past. We are still in the process of mutually shaping that history because we are the agents sent from the future. One of the side-effects Temponauts must necessarily deal with is a complete disorientation with space-time; those who undergo being sent back into the past invariably come to believe that space and time are separate (to name but one of many bizarre hallucinations). 

A time machine operates in a manner that is analogous with a boomerang.  It also parallels the scope of an iris.  Our descendants originally set the scope of their time machine to a series of certain dates, (thereby seeding portions of the galaxy with "in-utero" clones of themselves) in a bid calculated to alleviate the boredom of eternity with a "closed-loop system" of sufficient size to allow more variations. The experiment met with equal measures of success and failure. Their failure amounts to our creation. 

Because while they aimed to merely maximize the variety of flavors within their closed loop (in an attempt to increase their menu of lifestyle choices) by purposefully setting the bar as high as possible ("aiming for infinity") what they managed to achieve went beyond their greatest expectations and escaped their wildest dreams:  They accidentally created us all and (impossibly) themselves in the process!  This unequivocal success generated the next paradox, and there remain whispers today passed along the generations that paradox itself runs the engines of creation.  

The real nature of our descendant's time-machine experiment may only begin to be grasped when the realization sets in that every human being without exception was "seeded" from one such time traveller, and that we temponauts inhabiting Earth today have only incidentally come to be known as Earthlings. Our innate curiosity about extra-terrestrials stems from this great time travel experiment. What distinguishes us is the fact we didn't so much "arrive from the future" (remember, that is our own misconception as effectively "lost temponauts") as we arrove from Elsewher'n, that is to say, from outside this space-time realm altogether. 

Our forefathers were bored and therefore created the Milky Way Galaxy as a time-machine experiment by which to re-launch themselves in their own image by sending their own stem cells with neutrinos to certain specified loci outside their own quantum realm thereby creating our portion of the universe. What they didn't exactly expect was to succeed in granting themselves an eternity of variants to further absolve them from boredom, except for the small issue that their own Temponauts grafted of their very genetics  were doomed to endlessly perpetuate the very existence they had intended for themselves. 

And so They wait, our Temporal Masters.  They sigh, and perforce must await the day their travelers, spawned from their own dna, eventually return across the great expanse of time to their side. The masters of the human race have long ago learned from their mistake. Rather than succeeding in alleviating their own boredom, they rather accidentally created new lives which have been chasing after adventure ever since. The trick toward understanding this expanding dynamic lies in realizing the Gods themselves have come to question their own immortality even as they await their great time-travel experiment to come to fruition, all the while leaving us strewn in their path as their lost children growing to question our own sense of mortality.    

Second Exodus

by Shaun Lawton 

The Phaetonites were an advanced civilization which existed on a dwarf planet that was fifth from their life giving Star.  The habitable zone which encircled their Star in a vast ring encompassed most of the area in between the fourth and sixth planets of that system.   As in the formation of most solar systems, this widespread zone was heavily populated by many small planetoids and a higher frequency of interceding comets and asteroids.

It came to pass that the Phaetonites loved astronomy the most, and had devised advanced forms of telescopes with which to examine carefully their solar surroundings.  Their scientists had discovered a particular large asteroid heading towards them in a trajectory which was bound to collide with their own planet at a certain date in the future.

They had long known about the cause and nature of their habitable zone, and knew it to be gradually shrinking over an extended period of time.  They knew that eventually it would recede entirely away from their location in space, to accommodate the fourth planet of their system, named Warszawa.

The story of their timely escape from Phaeton brought this advanced race to Warszawa, where they were forced to start everything over again.  They lived upon this fourth planet for many generations, preserving their way of life and science, finally bringing themselves to the height of advanced civilization once again.

But they knew their habitable zone would not last, and that it continued to shrink. They foresaw that it would ultimately leave the confines of their second home, and recede even closer to their great Star.

So they planned very carefully for another exodus.  Having gone through a similar one before, they were better prepared than ever. The future of their race depended upon yet another successful skip over to the next planet, the third one from their Star.

They were presented with a new challenge, however.  Their scientists' highly sensitive data mining technology determined that the third planet was not going to benefit from the habitable zone quite in the same way that they needed for  their particular biology.  After all, this planet was of a different size, and the cosmic energy ratios from their Star to this planet were different.   So they set upon the completion of an unprecedented task.

One of their greatest scientists was a mathematician and architect named Salamanus.  He proposed that if a satellite of a particular mass were set about the third planet, it would result in tilting the planet's axis just the required degree to fine tune its relation to the Star within the new habitable zone.  They worked extremely hard for many years perfecting the design of this giant plumb bob, fashioned of iron.  They were able to launch it into space piece after piece, and reassemble it in orbit, and repositioned it to their future home, before beginning their long-awaited migration to safety there.

And that is the story, in a nutshell, of the man who made the moon and the origins of the human race.

Starship Venture

When speculating: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

This is why speculation must become our enterprise.




What if ...there were no such thing as extraterrestrials;

rather, only post-terrestrials and pre-terrestrials?

What if ...the entirety of outer space contained no life;
and that only across happenstance could alien sentience


emerge before or after us across the vast oceans of time?

What if Earth were the virtual center of our creation?


What could that exactly mean, anyway?


Just who are we, to be referred to as our?


Do we belong to each other . . . or not?


Must each individual face oblivion alone?

We like to think of space as a wide open area,


like a sort of vast empty room; when in fact,


outer space really has no shape of that sort.




(It appears more like an intricate labyrinth
comprised of the narrowest interlinking


passages in an interminable array of


coiling gravitational twists and turns.)

Are the wide arcs of sprawled star points
spread out across our night skies really
in fact just the illuminated remnants
of long dead Hosts now reaching our eyes?






(If so, the only living portions of our universe


would be those branches of our Host—our galaxy:


These arms would extend from the Head of our star


in two spiraling directions; One, toward

the core of our Milky Way Tree; and Two,

toward the emptiness of the void to one side.





Both of these directions curve toward and
away from our blind spots. These extend past

the shoulders of our cosmic horizon. The stars

spangled and glittering across our night sky

remain a backdrop afterglow from the heat

death of long forgotten Suns still haunting us.






Then only the remaining body of our own galactic


Host must extend in two directions from our Sun;

The Vine to be glimpsed here and there sunken


brightly amid the glare of all the long lost systems!

The Law of Inversion

by Shaun Lawton 

Ghosts may appear as traces of electromagnetism lingering here on Earth before surrendering to the cold void.  The Ghost in the Machine refers to the collective portion of galaxies which have long since burned out and cooled off in the vast cauldronic core of our universe. When we peer deep into the nucleus of our cosmos, we necessarily gaze in a direction diametrically opposed from that spot which has been established as being our own planet.  

All telescopes since their advent in the early 17th century here have one thing in common:  their function is to magnify details that are not farther away than us and our terrestrial location in space (for that would be impossible, and in direct contradiction to the nature of our position in creation, which incidentally happens to already be, by definition, that which exists the farthest away from all remaining points in the universe), therefore, a telescope's function is to zoom in on the various details which comprise the deep inner essence of the macrocosm (itself the central core making up the heart of creation).  

In other words, telescopes are in actuality that which allow us to observe deeply into the interior of reality. Microscopes are the instruments which in fact bring to view the farthest and outermost territories of our expanding universe.  Our typical understanding of the difference between how microscopes and telescopes work is entirely backwards.  In short, telescopes look in, and microscopes look out.  This unassailable fact is such an obvious and fundamental truth that it should really go without saying.  I repeat it here in the Asylum of Starry Ghosts due to my sneaking and ever-dawning suspicion that most of us have been quietly assuming otherwise for the greater portion of our lives; for us to have understood it the other way around.  

Speaking for myself at least, I can testify that I have certainly been perceiving it backwards for most of my developing adult life.   That is why I am grateful to have ascertained what I now refer to as the Law of Inversion, my place-holder or label, if you will, which I feel best encapsulates into a nutshell what I consider to be my own philosophy.  

To further focus in on the essence of my philosophy, one need only take this Law of Inversion and apply it to all aspects of one's perception of reality.  In deed we appear to be the latest development along a startling evolution having resulted from an endless series of such inversions so that in effect we have come to now stand upon our world without being able to absolutely determine what in reality is actually "up" or "down"; "in" or "out";  and "real" or "fantasy;" such is the condition of our lot, trapped out here in our ultimate solitude and freedom amid a crowd of lost stars.     

Welcome to the Asylum of Starry Ghosts, a sanctuary where souls interact largely oblivious to one another's presence.  A sort of mirror held up by dancing pixels for us to peer into and see ourselves from a different angle in order to gain new perspective.   A web log representing a single gleaming nodal point amid a vast interlinked network of hypertext documents comprising digital reproductions of most all of the knowledge our species has gathered over the course of human history since the dawning of the Paleolithic era.  

If you are reading this currently, congratulations.  You are literally the cutting edge of the blossoming essence of creation itself.  You have made it to the farthest possible fringes of our expanding universe.  There is absolutely nowhere further you could possibly explore, except for what lies directly about you in your particular area of the world, with nothing but time on your side.  It's up to you to take your adventure ever further.  Perhaps we will meet someday at a point beyond this horizon.  If not, may your journey into the unknown fare well.  Hello.