North - How to invent everything : a survival guide for the stranded time traveler

I didnt write this guide. I found it. It was wholly encased in bedrock, and I know that because I was the one who broke that heavy granulite stone open. I was working construction for a few weeks because I heard it paid well.

It did not.

I can tell you that I personally dont have the technology to place a book inside solid stone. Nobody does. Ive tried to have the book carbon dated, but thats impossible: whatever exotic polymer the guide was printed on, its one that doesnt include carbon. The stone I found it in can be dated, of course: its Precambrian, which means it predates humans, dinosaurs, and most life on Earth. Precambrian rocks are some of the oldest rocks on the planet.

So, no help there.

There is obviously the possibility that the text youre about to read is part of a well-constructed and incredibly expensive prank, accomplished using technology unknown to the rest of the world, including the technology to insert objects inside solid rock while maintaining a profile tolerance of under 10 -4 mm. It seems unlikely. But the alternativethat time travel is possible, that somewhere it is being practiced, and that our entire universe is but a copy spun off from their original at some unknown point in the pastalso seems impossible.

Ive researched all the claims made in this guide. Everything that can be verified has been, and the text appears to be an honest, sincere, and accurate effort to explain how to rebuild civilization, from scratch, in any time period in Earths history. All historical events mentioned in the text line up with our own, though with the guides focus on technology and civilization instead of nations and people, there are fewer dates and individuals to compare against than you might expect. Their world appears to be much like ours, only better: they have a higher level of technology, a greater understanding of history, and, of course, consumer-market rental time machines. Theres a chance that we also might one day invent time travel, in which case the claims made here could finally be verified and we could discover when, and how, this impossible book ended up embedded in the solid rock of what would eventually become the Canadian Shield.

On the other hand, we might not.

The guide that follows is presented in its original and unaltered format, except for the endnotes, which I added in two cases: when I thought clarification or references to supplementary texts would be helpful, or when a claim was being made in the original text that reached beyond our current science, engineering, or historical knowledge. Footnotes are presented as in the original text, and no other changes have been made to content or presentation. The original illustrations in the guide, credited to one Lucy Bellwood, have also been included. There is an artist working under that name in our world; she claims to have no knowledge of this book or its origins, and I have no reason to doubt her.

Finally, I should touch on what is perhaps the most unlikely note of all in this. The technical writer responsible for this guide shares his name just once, and then only in a footnote. It is the same as mine. Part of me knows I cant read much into this: there are a lot of Ryan Norths out there, and Ive emailed most of them. Our writer could be an alternate-timeline version of any of us. Or he could be someone new, someone with no parallel in our world. Maybe a time-travel accident left this book embedded in stone somewhere in our distant past, stranding the traveler there, or in some other time, changing our world in small but significant ways that we may never tease apart. Maybe thats why we dont have time travel.

Or, again, maybe this is all just part of an incredibly expensive prank.

I know what I believe. I know how incredibly, cosmically unlikely it is that I would ever find this guide and share my name with its author and know a Lucy Bellwood too. And if you think perhaps Im involved in some deception with this text, I will repeat what I said at the start of this section: I didnt write this guide.

At least... not in this timeline.

Im thrilled to share, for the first time, a complete and unabridged copy of what was originally titled The Time Travelers Handbook: How to Repair Your FC3000 Time Machine, and Then How to Reinvent Civilization from Scratch When That Doesnt Work.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, philosopher, essayist, and poet

1905 CE

Those who cannot remember the past are cordially invited to revisit it.

Jessica Bennett, CEO of Chronotix Solutions, proud manufacturers of the FC3000

2043 CE

INTRODUCTION

Congratulations on your rental of the FC3000! The FC3000 is a state-of-the-art personal time machine that allows you to experience the entire range of human endeavor, from the earliest chimpanzee-human divergence (in 12,100,000 BCE, the backward limit of this rental unless you have purchased the Protoprimate Encounter Pak