Message in a Bottle from 2087

I found it at a flea market.  That is about the quickest way I can begin this story. 

That’s part of the flea market allure, not knowing what you might find and making sure you’ve looked with the intensity and patience of an archaeologist.

Then, just like that, I found it. It was a bottle of sort – a cylindrical glass about two and a half inches in diameter uniformly from bottom to top, not your typical bottle indeed, and about ten inches tall with a flared rim at the mouth plugged by a glass stopper sealed by some kind of epoxy material.  It may have belonged in a laboratory or some chemistry department from some high school. Inside were rolled up pages of paper, yellowed or off-white as seen through the transparent glass.  The young seller with a ponytail joked about what I might find inside while pretending to ignore my half-hearted haggling.

It was two months later on a lazy rainy afternoon, after a boring football playoff on TV, when I decided to open the bottle. I cut it open near the bottom end with a diamond cutter. 

I was sort of disappointed that it was not parchment paper or even yellowed in color once outside the bottle, to indicate age.  There was a blank page on the outer roll that obscured the type-written documents on the inside pages of ordinary 8-1/2 by 11 inches bond paper.  The papers were way too modern though and the type set had to have come from a high end printer in clear, easy to read fonts. It established without a doubt that I was definitely suckered into a piece of junk and a not-so-funny hoax.

I unfolded several pages and began to read. It was addressed to no one in particular, not even a “to whom this may concern”…

So the message begins.

Whoever you are, wherever you are now, and whenever in the future you are, I hope you are well and found this bottle at a better time than when I wrote this message.  I am thirteen years old and I’m a girl.  Today is the year 2087, October. I cannot wait to fast-forward from these troubled times and I hope that since you found this message you are at a better time and place in the future, better than the present where I am now.

(Wait a minute!  What is this girl talking about?  Today is just 2024, January.  What is going on?)

I continued reading.

My father is a physicist at a super-secret lab here in the state of California nearby where we live.  My dad practically raised me by himself since I can remember from when my mom became sick.

My country – I do not know where you are from – is in big trouble.  The world has changed so much and is changing ever more.  Why do I worry about these when I should be having fun like all the boys and girls I know.  Well, truth be told, I just know them but we’re not friends.  Actually, there are just a handful of them (literally in one hand) I consider friends.

There are three USAs today as I will explain below but this USA, my USA, is not number one any more, although I really don’t know what that meant, except when my dad’s old friends would talk about it.  Our country was always number one in the Olympics, they’d say, for example.  I only read about it but the Olympics are no longer.  There has not been one held anywhere for years before I was born. 

My USA is not number one anymore.  I read that neither is Russia or any part of Europe. China had a good run but fizzled after more of its billion people had enough of its government. The million people protest in every major city from week to week crippled its manufacturing economy and today China is turning into agriculture just to feed its people. India tried to fill the void but its own exploding population was a drag to its development.  These were not trivial changes, so when these countries kind of failed, I am told, the Olympics that cost billions to host became frivolous and went out of style, my dad’s friends would say.

I may just be thirteen but I understand world politics better than I knew what teenagers love or talk about these days.  I wanted to grow fast and grow old, ever fearful of my mother’s fate.  I worry like no teenager should.  I worry about the future but my dad and his friends talk about the past as much as they talk about their project – the big project - which is about the future.  So I learned history so I can keep up with them.  But trust me I knew too about what they were working on.

History told me that Japan was written off five decades ago as a nation of any significance due to many setbacks in its past.  Just after I was born I was told that Japan came back like it had never before.  It formed a group of nations, a United Southeast Asia (USA) that is now the economic and military power in the region. It achieved what the EU (European Union) never did or could. Almost 90% of Japanese brands are manufactured outside of Japan, now deeply rooted all over Asia; over half of Japanese born from two generations ago were either born outside of Japan or are now living or working around the region.  For the first time one currency and borderless economy (even across open seas) has worked. An island nation of Japan and across a vast region from Thailand to Tibet is one unstoppable power.  

The other is the United Sovereign Alliance (also USA) – not exactly a nation or group of nations but rather an international entity with no specific national identity.  That much I understood about the new balance of power.  Asia and an ideology of people are the two other powerful USAs. Asia, I understood because numbers like gross domestic product, import/export ratios, currency values, etc. are expressed in numbers and I knew and loved numbers.  Ideology, I did not care much about because they were mostly words with very little numbers although this entity of people were in all governments and they wielded power in more secretive ways that I never took the time to understand.  All I know is that my USA is in trouble. 

How you got this message in a bottle is perhaps my USA’s last contribution to science and technology.  By the time you read this, you will have understood how it was done and you may even know what happened to me and my dad and his friends.  Or, perhaps this may not make much sense to you at all.  It is also impossible for me to know when in the future my message had gone to or where geographically.  Meanwhile, let me take you back to my time and explain as best as I can.  

She went to explain but it was way too complicated for anyone, like me, with 2024 knowledge of technology and zero understanding of  a yet to be discovered branch of physics 

There was a lengthy, very technical story behind how the message was sent by the thirteen-year-old girl.  She thought she was leaving a note for someone to read in the future. which would have been no different from how historians read leftover manuscripts from long ago in ancient ruins. 

Unbeknownst to the young girl, she thought she was sending her message to the future in a machine that was being developed by a government entity headed by her dad. The idea was to develop a technology that can establish contact with the future to solicit help in solving problems at the present time.  Money ran out and the project was about to shut down.  The young girl, worried for what was happening, convinced her dad to let her try to send the first test message, even though the machine was not fully tested to work. But then the funding ran out.

The message did not make it to the future.  Instead, it was transported back to the past - her past - and to the 2023-2024 present.  It is still a long story as to how, but here we are with one wild cautionary tale.  Farfetched, you say?  Is it not that history, from which we have not learned very much, simply kept repeating itself?

Back to me now. I can't quite explain why and how I came to write the sort of fantasy fable of a story above but it is not so outlandish if indeed we found something written by someone, say, from the city of Thebes at the height of the Egyptian Empire; or Athens or Rome; or by some scribe from Angkor Wat at its peak during the time of the Khmer Empire; or by a young student from sometime between 1368 to 1644 at the zenith of the Ming Dynasty, and so on and on.  The one big difference, of course, is that we could be reading them all from the perspective of history, messages from the past about each writer's concern for what was happening to the once powerful homeland they grew up in.

What we have here is merely a "future" history that is about just as repetitive as every history we know about so well.  A once and future cautionary tale about another repetition, just another historical stage play with different actors and players, different scenes and locations but the plot is the same.

 

Resolved? To be Resolute? :2024 Resolutions?

At some point or another, if not a regularly recurring pledge from one year to the next, we have committed to one or more New Year's resolutions in our lives.  At one point we actually resolved to be resolute in achieving our resolution/s. Can anyone be more empathic than that?

Apparently, despite the low success rate, a mere 8% according to one research, if we can believe that, most folks still make New Year's resolutions anyhow on a regular basis at the turn of every new year.  But, when asked based on their personal assessments, 45% believed they succeeded.  We can leave the disconnect there because it would be neither here nor there to dispute what is often one of a personal nature.  

Actually, the origin of resolutions was not rooted in personal pledges if we go back to ancient times. And I mean, as ancient as about 4,000 years ago.  Known to be the seat of civilization, according to most historians, was the Mesopotamian region that was where the ancient Babylonians lived.  Their new year did not begin in January as presently celebrated but sometime in the middle of March, approximately the Spring Equinox, when planting of new crops began.

The Babylonian subjects of the empire would renew their allegiance to the reigning monarch or celebrate the crowning of a new king, as the case maybe, to coincide with the Spring Equinox.  The people would also collectively promise to their pagan gods (plural) to pay their debts and return the things they borrowed, followed by a 12-day religious celebration welcoming the new year.  It is believed that that was the forerunner of what we consider today the traditional new year's celebration and resolutions. But why is it January now and not in March as the Babylonians did?

After about twenty centuries, the Babylonian empire long gone, emerged the Roman Empire.  Julius Caesar tampered with the calendar and made January the beginning of the year.  Janus, from which January originated, was one of the pagan gods whose profile had one face looking back and the other looking forward, symbolizing a look at the previous year in preparation for what was ahead in the coming future year. If anything, this tells us the arbitrariness of the calendar.  Why so?

Well, the calendar year, as the ancients fully knew, was one earth revolution around the sun - a circular orbit that those living in the northern hemisphere understood to be divided into four seasons as the earth's tilted axis changes the orientation of the area's exposure to the sun.  The really ancient people of Europe actually believed that the sun  actually disappeared in the winter time and re-appeared in the spring - the celebration of its reappearance - which ushered the beginning of the growing season.  It was natural for people then to believe that the new year would begin in Spring.

The Julian calendar changed all that.  January 1 became the beginning of the New Year.

Technically speaking, because the earth's orbit is a circular one, we may begin the year at any point along the circle.  Imagine earth's orbit as configured on the platter of a turntable.  Individually, each individual's year begins at birth.  After one revolution, a year had elapsed and the individual was a year older.  Now imagine further that the platter on that turn table is now like a revolving giant carousel of the world's entire population. A baby's birth is the equivalent of one individual life hopping onto the carousel; an individual hopping off the carousel signifies one's passing.  That is the circle of life and the passing of another.

Perhaps then, shouldn't the New Year's resolution be a pledge at each individual's birthday.  It does make sense if we are to make our resolutions a personal one.  The question then becomes:  What do we try to resolve in the next 365 days? Furthermore, does that mean then that if one were born on February 29 (there's a number of you out there) he or she only gets to pledge once every four years?  But then ..

How serious should New Year's Resolutions be?  

"My new year's resolutions is to stop procrastinating.  I am not starting until next week though."        --- Anonymous

But this too is a resolution, isn't it?

Exercise more .. or less .. Gym enrollment peaks in January/February each year in the U.S.  

--- Maxine

Sale of exercise equipment reaches a crescendo in December, and then .. the best time to buy them is:

"And though you’re likely to see the deepest discounts in January, deals may well extend or revive in February. About 80% of Americans ditch their New Year’s resolutions by February, so you have potential to buy recent returns that are priced attractively to resell. In addition, more retailers are participating in Presidents’ Day sales events—so fitness gear may be on sale then, too".

--- NY Times "Wirecutter"

I mentioned in an earlier blog that weight gain is primarily a First World concern and a pesky problem for some. Weight loss in extreme cases can become an obsessive burden - mentally and/or physically.  In underprivileged countries, weight gain is a welcome symbol of high status, a visible sign of plenty.  It is a mother's wish for a growing child. 

In the developed countries, at every start of a new year a collective gasp can be heard:

But, to be fair, there is a fine line between being overweight and under-height  😎.  But is it fair that for a creature that swallows its food whole without chewing would be the epitome of "slim and slender" - namely, the snake; while a long distance swimmer that is the blue whale that can swim  between Alaska and Hawaii has little to show for a waistline? 

And there is no truth that there is a talking scale, when strained, will say, "Step on the scale one person at a time, please ".  Or, the one that says, "Surely you knew that a pound cake really weighs more than one pound, didn't ya?

Maxine has another statement:

Where does this leave us?  "No more new year's resolutions!"  You see, even Congress that passes all kinds of resolutions, is never accountable for any of them.

A more appropriate summation, perhaps, is that in the course of a year, "we gain some, we lose some".  We gain more knowledge, maturity, deeper insights, and who cares if we gained the dreaded pound or two?  We gain as in more money saved, or lost as in the devaluation of our savings in one form or another.  We gained a friend or lost one; sadder when we lose a loved one.  

We can plan, we can dream even. We can work towards achieving something new or different.  We can aim.  All of these do not need to be resolutions. They can be in the category of just simply living a life.

One Flu Over the Cou-Cough"s Nest

I can make light of it now.  But not over two weeks ago.  (My apologies to the producers of the classic Jack Nicholson movie, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). The New Year, starting on the eve of the 31st, ushered one of humanity's oldest punishers to visit and  inflict a successful invasion into one's physiology (namely mine) that from long ago had already forgotten what it was like to suffer from it.

Ordinarily, coughs and sneezing do not necessitate a doctor's visit.  Two days and nights of chills and achy joints will.  

After a 30-minute wait for the lab results the doctor came in, "I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that you do not have Covid.  The bad news is that you have the flu".

"How is that possible, Doc? I had the flu shot as I always had annually for over a decade now between Thanksgiving and the start of winter".

"Well, it's not always a 100%. Look at it this way.  Your symptoms could have been worse had you not had your flu shot." He replied. 

Since I had the lab test and was prescribed medications (2), I made it to the CDC statistical data bank.

From October, 2023 thru Jan. 6, 2024, CDC estimates said that there were 14-26 million cases of flu. I was one of 12 million who went to the doctor, but not one of 320,000 who had to be hospitalized; thankfully, not one of as much as 28,000 who did not make it through.  CDC states that these are estimates because it has no way of capturing all the cases. Take it for what it is - one of a few annual cautionary tales about this or that seasonal contagion.

This invasive visitation requires re-visiting the age-old question: Is a virus a living organism?  If not, what is it really? There was not a whole lot a flu-sickened person can do but to immerse oneself into the hidden micro-world of these tiny creatures.  

The Invisible Body Snatcher

Yes, indeed!   Standard light microscopes, using only natural light and a lens to magnify tiny organisms were all that were needed in 1675 when Anton van Leeuwenhoek invented the first device.  Bacteria for the first time was revealed. But it took another three centuries before scientists could have a grainy picture of the "invisible" virus. Viruses are so tiny that it took cutting edge microscopy to get a glimpse of it, namely, the electron microscope.

Whether a virus is a living organism has always been debated.  It does not fit the standard definition of a living entity because it is not able to reproduce on its own and it does not really metabolize nutrients like every living thing is able to do.  Below is one unique description by a research paper from the prestigious Cleveland Clinic.

"A virus is a small piece of genetic information in a “carrying case” — a protective coating called a capsid. Viruses aren’t made up of cells, so they don’t have all the equipment that cells do to make more copies of themselves. Instead, they carry instructions with them and use a host cell’s equipment to make more copies of the virus.

It’s like someone breaking into your house to use your kitchen. The virus brought its own recipe, but it needs to use your dishes, measuring cups, mixer and oven to make it. (Unfortunately, they usually leave a big mess when you finally kick them out.)"

It is not a parasite the way parasites affect their hosts.  But a virus is the ultimate survivor, a true alien invader and very resourceful at adapting to its environment for something so invisibly tiny.  How tiny?

A human hair is 75,000 nanometers; however, one nanometer is only  a billionth of a meter.  A virus is only 120 nanometers. Roughly, a virus is over 600 times smaller than the width of a human hair.  But how can it cause so much damage to animal physiology (birds, monkeys, humans, etc.) billions of times bigger than it is?  And why does it try to and at times actually does destroy its host?

Indeed, why?  It is both a scientific and philosophical question.  Let's set that aside for now.

Not only have we coexisted with microbes throughout our evolutionary journey for thousands of years, tiny organisms occupy our entire body, inside and out, and our very survival depends on over a 1,000 different species of trillions upon trillions of them residing on our skin, mucous membranes and in our gastrointestinal tract and gut. Not only do they present a barrier against harmful organisms, they actually synthesize vitamins and breakdown food into absorbable nutrients but stimulate our immune systems as well.  These organisms are so tiny that in sheer number (not by weight or volume) there are ten times more of them than there are human cells in our body.

We've cultured, synthesized, developed antibiotics against bacteria but not against a virus. But we can "train" our immune system to recognize, neutralize and attack viruses through prior exposure.  Exposure means our immune system recognizes the invader once an earlier assault was thwarted (and we survived that attack); or our immune system is exposed to a weakened strain of the virus in vaccines which  equates to a controlled exposure.

Interestingly, genetic researchers discovered that the human genome contains genetic codes associated with viruses in our distant past developments.  It is not too far fetched to conclude that in some ways or another, viruses may indeed have contributed to our development as a species. It would seem that our immune system today is what it is because  generations after generations of warfare and battle experiences have produced a standing army of reservists and veterans (whose traits, training and resolve became part of their nature) ready to defend. Or, like Spartans retaining the tradition of courage, physical traits and bravery handed down from parents to offspring, fathers to sons over generations of tradition. Okay, I was too over dramatic there but lightheadedness from the meds will make one's mind wander off. 

One important question is how does the virus manage to get through?  Is a virus a Trojan horse? 

Viruses actually have an easier entry than Homer's depiction in the Iliad of a giant wooden horse filled with Spartans left by the Greeks that the Trojans brought inside their fortress.  

Cold, flu and Corona viruses enter into our system as easily as we breathe in, as if by invitation. There is no quicker way to get to our circulatory system than through our noses, then into our lungs and through our blood stream.  Cleverer entry is via a hypodermic needle of the mosquitoes' proboscis through the pores of our skin, as in Malaria and dengue fever invasions.  The AIDS virus can literally be transmitted via an actual hypodermic needle in blood transfusions.  So, there it is.

New studies have postulated a new insight (new to me anyhow) into why colds and flu show up during the cold weather.  Supposedly our first line of defense relies on the warm interior of our noses and mucous membranes for our immune cells to work at maximum level for total readiness in combating microbial invaders. Exposing ourselves to the cold weather outside reduces that temperature that makes our immune cells weaker than usual. Viruses may enter through the air or, i.e., through door knobs, for example, and the moment we have our hands touch our noses, a few viruses can gain entry to do their mischief. We can take that theory with a grain of salt because viruses spread as easily in tropical weather and in relatively warmer climates.  We don't know what to conclude.  But  mothers have always warned about children and adults staying too long outside when the weather is cold.  And hence, the common cold illness.  You, the reader, be the judge.

Now, is the virus a living entity?  Not if we look at it from the perspective of how we define life.  It is just an entity, a genetic code, precluded from being a living cell. But it depends on a living cell to propagate itself. 

We can go off-tangent, and I mean really off-tangent. It is not just a survivor, it can lay dormant for years in any organism's lungs and when the conditions are right, it activates itself.  It can also move intra-species, as in the AIDS virus jumping from monkeys to humans, or the bird flu, or for Malaria transmissions via mosquitoes and microbial transfers from tsetse flies to humans, etc.  It is off-tangent to think that a virus is an extra-terrestrial invader.  It can survive under harsh conditions, it can mutate to fall under the "radar screen" of our defense system and what a clever way to replicate itself by tricking our own cells to make copies of itself.

However, the virus can also be deemed to have helped us along our evolutionary journey.  There lies the ambivalence of the nature of the virus. There also lies the conundrum for those who believe in The Creator, when asking the purpose of creatures deemed harmful to human life can lead to philosophical questions that will ultimately challenge one's faith.

On the other hand, for those relying mainly on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, the virus can be viewed mainly as an accessory to our development, except for the collateral hurt to the few, relatively speaking, for the greater good of the many.  The argument is that despite all the pandemics from the bubonic plague to the Spanish flu that killed millions, the human population is now at 8 billion from when it was a mere 450-475 million, that was drastically reduced by about 50-75 million after the plague.  Some people argue that viruses and bacteria may have killed so many but the survivors were made strong as a result.  And who knows before written history, how many virulent visitations had occurred without really hindering population growth.

Life has and has always found a way to survive. We are not equipped to fathom the mind of The Creator but to accept, if we adhere to the concept of creation, the idea that creatures great and small  each has a purpose we can never fully understand.