An open letter to the Astonishing Legends Podcast

An open letter in response to a recent series on the podcast Astonishing Legends discussing an intriguing book called The Vertical Plane.

I listened with great interest your recent episodes concerning the book, “The Vertical Plane” and found it very informative and well produced. Thank you for bringing this work to the fore and treating the topic with curiosity and critical thinking. Well done. 

Some years ago, I anonymously wrote a small book called “Conviction of a Time Traveler” and in it, I deconstructed the John Titor posts from 2000/2001, followed investigational leads that many before me had never considered and presented the evidence others had never discovered. The John Titor narrative was my entry point into the ‘time travel’ sector of the paranormal and continued research has not disappointed. Subsequently I adopted the pen name “Temporal Recon” or simply “TR” for short for communications such as this. 

In the years following publication, I continued my research in private and, over time, I slowly realized that not only is ‘time travel’ real, but it has been with us for a very long time. The scope of the efforts, undertaken by many different Programs, is on a scale so vast that it boggles the mind and I am very nearly positive that I have yet to find the edges of that scope. 

The book “The Vertical Plane” does more than merely tell an interesting ghost/time travel story that, for all intents and purposes, is mostly true in its telling. TVP takes the well-worn tropes of mad scientist or secret government program and replaces them with a new intermediary element to the genre: the group calling itself, “2109.” I can tell you that this group is legitimate and is a (somewhat) known quantity to me. I have encountered their activities else-when, both directly and indirectly. 

What makes “The Vertical Plane” unusual is that it is NOT necessarily a story where people are communicating across time via a magical deus ex Machina/McGuffin “Leems Boiste.” If that were merely the case we could say we’ve read this story many times over (The Lake House as but one example). No, instead, an intermediary is present and facilitating the communication to unknown ends. And, lo and behold, the intermediary and all he represents is real. It is of this ‘real-ness’ that I wish to expound.  

(As an aside, considering the typical “poltergeist” activity experienced by the group, who’s to say that OTHER examples of poltergeist activity in completely unrelated examples do not implicate 2109’s presence? TVP was unusual because 2109 made their presence known to their rats in the maze. Why was this necessary in this particular case?) 

In addition to your fine commentary on the book and its players, I’d like to humbly provide a bit of context to some of the analysis and discussion you provided. This context is by no means complete or all-encompassing. 

At one point in Ken’s story, as a method of proving that 2109 is who/what they say they are, he asks 2109 to provide the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem. 2109 responded with an unanticipated and (even to my eyes) overly dramatic response. Paraphrasing, 2109 indicated that he would provide the answer if and only if the requestor was willing to give up his soul! You correctly responded to 2109’s response critically and skeptically which led to the tentative conclusion that 2109 was either not legitimate or, at best, less legitimate than what might be expected from a scientist working within a government ‘time travel’ program sometime in the far-flung future. While this is understandable, it lacked the proper understanding of ‘time travelers’’ modus operandi in general to fully understand why 2109 responded in this way. 

(As a second aside, I might draw your attention to the notion that 2109 is not necessarily so far flung into the future as it sounds, and I might humbly suggest that we take 2109 down from the pedestal that its name might imply.  

If 2109 is in fact their origin year, of which there is no evidence, then bear in mind that 2109 is a mere 84 years into our future from 2022.  This would be akin to we/now speaking to individuals in 1938. Would you assign yourself living here/now in 2022 some esoteric sentience or all-knowing Magic Eight Ball? Then why apply it to 2109?) 

The mistake Ken made in requesting the answer to Fermat’s Theorem was the answer 2109 was to provide. No ‘time traveler’ will generally ever make any purposefully accurate predictions (mistakes have been made, yes, but they are also corrected to the extent possible). There are a variety of reasons for this, however it must be understood that, by giving Ken the solution, 2109 would be robbing the solution from the researcher who would eventually publish it (leading to his own boons) and meritless-ly giving it to Ken and his group. This would be a sharp attack on Free Will that, under normal circumstances, is carefully managed when executing ‘normal’ ‘time travel’ missions. 

To whit: How many years of education, apprenticeship, training, work experience and study by the original researcher would have been utterly invalidated in an instant by 2109’s careless answer? Similarly, how might history be changed unpredictably by transferring ownership of the solution from the original researcher to Ken? How would Ken or his friends’ lives change if they had an answer to an unsolvable (at the time) maths problem? I might hazard a guess that Ken himself, or the other non-mathematicians among them, could do nothing with the solution, thereby requiring an outside, expert opinion on the solution.  What would that person do with the solution? What questions might a professor at a local university ask regarding the solution’s provenance? You get the picture. 

Now this result is not an argument for or against some sort of temporal-accountancy and some Hollywood mumbo-jumbo stating that “the balance must be restored!” No. The key here is the manner of historical changes that would result and proliferate from such an answer: namely unpredicted results. 

Remember, the true power of a ‘time machine’ is knowing the sequence of historical events ahead of time. These events are (partially) premised on their predecessors; change the predecessors and you change the results.  These modifications are done in a manner that is highly analyzed with an understanding of probable outcomes and in pursuance of a very large-scale aim and goal for Humanity itself.  

I ask: Within this context then, what possible benefit could result by providing Ken his answer? Would providing this answer do more harm than good? 

2109 had no intention of answering Ken’s question. 2109’s response was not meant to create or offer some bargain or barter to Ken. It was meant to illustrate the scope and scale of what providing him an answer would represent and 2109 illustrated this in an unusual (even to my eyes) manner. 

Diving a bit deeper on Ken’s request, he makes the same mistake as many others have; he treats 2109 as if they are a psychic and asks for a prediction. The rules of engagement are fundamentally different for a ‘time traveler’ as compared to a psychic.  Or, better stated, a psychic has only the rules they themselves establish where a legitimate ‘time traveler,’ acting at the behest of a larger context, definitely does have limits to their actions. When one understands that a legitimate ‘time traveler’ will not (cannot) provide unveiled or otherwise overt predictions, then time-wasting validation questions can be avoided.  

Ken’s mistake was a common one and is oft repeated. Had Ken instead asked when Fermat’s Last Theorem was to be solved, 2109 likely would have been unconstrained in their answer. Free Will would be preserved, and the predictable sequence of events (history) would have been disturbed only to an insignificant level. Of course, the evidence they asked for would be put on ‘lay away’ and they’d have to wait several years to assess 2109’s legitimacy. Such is the nature of the Game. 

Learning to read and understand how ‘time travel’ claimants interact with us is a key piece of understanding the larger picture that they represent. And, it would appear, 2109 is predictably no different in this regard. 

So, how does one assess the legitimacy of an individual or group claiming status as a ‘time traveler’ without making the mistake of requesting predictions? Well, first of all, recognize that the request for proof is rooted in the ego and the desire for its preservation.  Pain Avoidance (looking foolish for believing the unbelievable) is baked into our psyches. My first recommendation is to strip away this programming and be willing to be wrong. Even in exploration of a fraud, one learns things. How much time was wasted in 1984 trying to determine if the group was being deceived (ego protection) when that time could have been better served by any number of interesting questions to Lukas/Tomas or 2109 themselves? Opportunity squandered. 

Secondly, a good metric to assess the legitimacy of a person/group claiming to be a ‘time traveler’ is to assess their actions and compare these actions against other examples. I think even the part-time researcher will discover there is a great deal of commonality in this regard. “By your actions, I will know you” is the rule of thumb.   

Of course, playing The Game takes time and a dedication to dispassionate observation to arrive to any meaningful conclusions. Because of this, people opt for the ‘tell me the lotto numbers’ shortcut.  Doing this bumps up against the very real constraint of Free Will and fails every time leading to incorrect and erroneous errors (Is that a Type I error or Type II error? I always get those mixed up).  

The Game is entertaining, but like every game, there are rules and learning those rules takes time, ironically. 

Good luck in the ‘future’ and keep up the good work. 

As Ever 

Temporal Recon