Jennifer B Stranded

[jenniferbstranded]

So I realised I never really shared all the pictures of the Displacer itself. Well I found them! So here you go, a big bunch of images showing me building the Displacer to get me home to 1998, built on Beacon Isle in 2018...

[jenniferbstranded]

Success!

If you’re reading this automated entry, the experiment on April 12th was a complete success.

I’ll see you all again soon I promise!

[jenniferbstranded]

A long time coming

Well, I haven’t posted in a while but I think now is as good a time as any.

The Displacer is complete and stands ready to activate tomorrow. The day after that, the house is being demolished, so... I am cutting it a little fine. I’ve been having so much fun, I lost myself a little, lost sight of what I was doing.

I must return home.

I’ll update on how it goes. I think I need to get an early night, though. Big day tomorrow...

[jenniferbstranded]

Birthdays In (and Out of) Time

I was recently talking with a good friend about birthdays. She was surprised to discover I hadn’t mentioned that mine was July 22nd. “We should do something!”, she said.

But as I pointed out, what birthday am I celebrating? How old am I? Technically this should mark my 38th birthday. But currently, I’m 18, so you would be forgiven for saying it’s my 19th birthday. But relative to me, I’m still only 18 and 6 months old. I left 1998 in November, after all. So I’m not 19 yet either.

To my body, it should be February 25th, 1999. Corrected for temporal displacement, my new birthday (when I’ll be 19, assuming I’m still here) then would be 5th December 2018. She wouldn’t have it, though: birthdays can’t change in her mind!

It’s all a bit of a mindbender. Marty Mcfly never had this problem, but then he kept his visits short. Doc on the other hand, spent a good 9 months in the Old West. I wonder if he tried to figure out his birthday...?

[jenniferbstranded]

Displacer Log #1

So I’ve been working on the Displacer unit for a while but I haven’t really written about it. Well, fear not, I’m going to bore you with all the details!

Firstly, bending spacetime enough to insert molecular patterns where they don’t belong takes power. A lot of power. About 2.3 Megawatts, in fact; enough to supply electricity to about 1,000 households. In fact, power generation is one of the key major demands of the project.

Obviously, I’m not hooking this up to the mains because my benefactor doesn’t want to cause the whole island a blackout (and neither do I). What I needed was to construct my own power generating solution.

This turbine is capable of producing some serious wattage. It will be driven by steam from the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR), but I’ll come to that in due course...

[jenniferbstranded]

Living the Good Life

Well things are definitely good right now. I’ve been given my own little place and it’s absolutely perfect. Work on the project is going slow, but really I have all the time in the world... am I right? Hehe.

I’m constantly comparing things to 1998. I can’t help it. It’s like being in a foreign country; it’s all the little things you notice. Food packaging is obsessed with things being “natural”, even though a packet of crisps has about as much to do with nature as a turbocharged V8. People talk different, especially people my age. Now I know how it felt to be old in my own time. And not only does everyone have a mobile phone, they expect it. I suppose I should get one.

But, I feel I just need to say it again (I’ve said it to many): Wikipedia is really the most amazing thing. I can’t believe how everyone’s just “yeah, its okay.” It is AMAZING, okay? And they run on donations, but nobody I ever ask is donating to them. Really?

Wikipedia is easily the greatest achievement of the last 20 years. Trust me on this one.*

( * - I suppose the Internet deserves some credit, but still)

[jenniferbstranded]

All goes well

Since my last entry, things are looking much better. I’ve returned to work with my benefactor again. I feel much better now, thanks to some wonderful friends.

I’m making good progress on a new Displacer, although not without some hurdles. I’ve even caught myself wondering: do I even need to go back to 1998? Only for a second, of course, it would be silly of me to think about staying here. It just wouldn’t work.

But then, what about this version of 2018? Would it cease to be, once I finally return? With everything I’ve learned, all the insights I have now on how the next 20 years will be, my actions on returning will inevitably create a new and (hopefully) better future. So what will happen to this one? Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any more experienced an authority on this than me. And I don’t have a clue.

[jenniferbstranded]

Stranded Even More

Oh god, I’ve ruined everything.

I hadn’t even got around to writing a post about how great things have been. That’s always the way, isn’t it? When times are good, you’re too busy enjoying them to make a note of it. When times suck... then the pen comes out.

Well, anyway. I blew it. I had a place I was working at. All the machines I could hope to toy with, and my own little spot where I could continue my important work. My benefactor is an interesting man, very friendly. He seemed happy for me to do the little maintenance jobs and I was happy to have something to take a break from my project.

Today he invited me out, we had a good time... then somehow we just got a little too close. I don’t want to seem like he forced himself on me. He didn’t. There was a lot of back and forth... I didn’t know what to do. I can’t get involved with anybody here! It’s just too complicated. I mean, he’s older than me in either timeline (and that’s weird in itself). But more to the point... there is someone else.

Anyway, his wife walked in on us. She got the wrong idea. Or the right idea, I guess... but anyway, the rest was a blur. She told me she never wanted to see me there again. Later I tried to talk to him, he told me to get lost.

I feel like someone shot me in the chest. On the one hand, bitter rejection. On the other, I lost my best chance of getting home. All just because I got carried away with stupid relationships.

Ah, fuck.

[jenniferbstranded]

Impressions of 2018

Alright, so I’ve been here a while now but there’s a couple of things I keep coming back to.

First, its not as different as I was expecting. I was thinking, like, flying cars! Teleporting or whatever. It looks almost exactly the same, apart from the fact things I’m used to being in one place are now somewhere else. Even the cars don’t really look that futuristic. Apart from that Honda. You know the one.

Second, yeah, your smartphone is really neat. But people just keep going on about them. I get it; they’re thin, and computationally powerful. Waaaaay more powerful than my Pentium II, for sure. But then the stuff that runs on them is so basic. And don’t even get me started on trying to access the core of the operating system. Did I say I hated programming? I meant that I hate that I love programming.

Today I was playing Final Fantasy 7 on an emulator. I will admit, that is really cool. Also; I was getting homesick, needed something familiar.

Can’t believe Stephen Hawking is gone. I don’t want to be here anymore.

[jenniferbstranded]

Stupid!

So I figured out what I did wrong. Argh, it’s embarrassing.

The Displacer’s chronometrics were indeed only off by about 5%. That should have meant my 3-second jump would have been 3.15 seconds instead. Except, due to my -STUPID!- mistake there was an integer overflow in the multiplexer. 3 seconds became 20 years, just like that.

Ugh, did I ever say I hate programming?

(so it turns out hashtags are metadata... theres some weird metadata out there)

[jenniferbstranded]

Well, I’m here. For a while.

I don’t really know what I’m doing.

That should have given me pause at some prior point, yet here I am. 2018! I was excited when I arrived, but now I have a sense of creeping unease. I’m overwhelmed. There’s good things and bad things, but probably the biggest problem is getting back.

I’m not.

At least, not until I can devise a way to return. When I set off the Displacer, my watch gave the date as November 3rd, 1998. When I arrived last week, it was still giving that date. Only everything around me was telling me it was now March 19th, 2018. That was NOT supposed to happen.

I haven’t quite figured out what went wrong yet. The Displacer was only meant to move me three seconds into the future. Then i could compare my watch and check it was working as I thought. I was dead certain the calibration was no more than a few percent off at worst. Yet suddenly, here I was: 19 fecking years in the future.

Of course, nobody here believes me. All my old stuff has been claimed, sold and moved. I can’t find my old friends and I didn’t really have family. My best friend might be able to help... if I can find him.

Anyway, more later. I need to rest and think.

.. what the hell are #tags ?