X5 Ians Plan
Ch 12.5 - Ian’s Plan
Ian was holding court with moist bare abs. He had started to talk over his ideas when Alan asked a question.
“What is your plan and what did you learn here, Ian? I’ve learned quite a bit here as well. Maybe I am ready for fatherhood? I should go find some kids and become a father…” said Dr. Grant.
Ian misted his abdomen and smiled at Alan. “That’s a great thing to learn, Alan, but that’s not what I had in mind.”
He had sat up but left his shirt up, “Order theory. It’s clear the world is heading for more order.”
Dr. Grant countered, “Order! Did you just see what happened to us? This isn’t order!”
Ian glistenly said, “Sure. In any particular instance, the world can be chaotic, but look at this.”
Ian looked on the floor but carefully kept his shirt up off the moist areas, and found a broken matchstick. He pressed the match together and it bound in his hands. He flicked the head and it flamed into a red inert blob on the tip. He looked inside his shirt pocket and found a matchbook missing a single match. The repaired match fit the box and joined its siblings as if it never left.
Ellie said, “Yeah. We’ve all done that as kids, Ian. We all know that things fix themselves and get better and simpler over time. That was humanity’s message to us all. Simple and not too complex. Don’t overbuild or you’ll make poison clouds.”
Ian wetly offered as he sprayed himself again, “Ellie. How can the world already know things like a match or how to improve things over time? That would require a goal. We’ve seen just here that nobody has a goal. Humans, like any other group in the world, have a collection of assholes as a subset. They are not more or less noble than dinopods. In fact, they might be worse. This is my key social theorem that I call Ian’s Universal Asshole Axiom of IUAA, ‘any group of more than 20 sentient beings will contain at least one asshole more than half of the time.’”
Ian drippinly continued, “Humans were no more perfect than we are, Ellie. Consider a cosmological cause for all this knowing. The universe has no plan at all, but if time itself repeats over and over again. Not a loop, but like a tennis match, going back and forth. Sometimes time moves in one direction and order theory rules our existence, but consider if time ran the other direction.”
Dr. Grant looked puzzled, “Time moving backwards?”
Ian sultryly lectured, “Time moving in a direction, Dr. Grant. Backwards and forwards is all relative to a given perspective, no? We can tell, however, that this timeline is heading to order. Perhaps the next, in pure fairness, will reverse to chaos. Consider what humans would look like in reverse order.”
Tim’s eyes widened, “They would make the poison cloud and not be super cleaners!”
Ian walked and dripped, “Exactly, Tim. And what would happen to this park?”
Ellie helped Tim get to the conclusion, “There would be a Jurassic Park. Dinopods would be in the park. Humans in the jeeps. The giant volcanic eruption that ended human society forever? That would be a comet strike in reverse. Dinopods would be extinguished in favor of humans.”
Tim cried a bit, “… humans who would kill the earth eventually?”
Ian soddenly comforted the young man and Tim’s lined face looked up with rheumy eyes, “Tim,” Ian waterloggedly said, “It’ll be ok. I have a plan to solve this.”
Tim and Lex brightened at the idea of a plan versus just doing nothing.
Ian’s moisture-driven genius continued, “We will leave a record in the soil itself. I will spend my life making sure that if the ball passes through our age again, we will prepare ourselves for the comet and defeat it in the chaos timeline!”
Dr. Grant looked skeptical but said, “I think I can help. I know how to place things into the earth. I inter.”
Ian dewyly smiled and they began their work.