Altering the Fabric

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Story 1.

Trains, Planes, and Time Slips.

History is littered with the disappearances of people who vanished from the face of the Earth whilst travelling routine journeys.

Many of these instances have proven frustrating to investigate, as neither the transportation that was involved nor its occupants were ever located.

And in a minority of cases, tales persist of vehicles reappearing in impossible locations or timeframes, long after their travels should have come to an end.

Our civilization is constantly striving to improve upon the manufacturing techniques and technological achievements of the past.

On a near-daily basis, every aspect of society is under an unyielding state of scrutiny in search of methods which will enable the evolution of our creations towards ever safer and more efficient successors.

And in no field is this more evident than the transportation industry.

Every new vehicle that is conceived, be it for land, sea or air, is built in the shadow of the limitations and flaws of those that have gone before.

Transportation is an industry which continually pushes itself to manufacture vehicles which are faster, more efficient and safer.

And yet, even with such constant analysis and refinement, Each year, millions still lose their lives whilst traveling from one point to another.

Despite the invention of satellite communications and GPS tracking, ships and planes continue to vanish from across the globe, leaving no trace of their passing.

Simultaneously, the remains of mysterious boats wash up on remote shorelines, their identities long since removed by the effects of weathering and decay.

It has been theorized that there are places on this Earth where time operates in a somewhat different manner, where some invisible portal or corridor is capable of propelling a vehicle and its occupants to a very different moment in history, both in the future and the past.

Could it be that this outlandish theory is the reason behind some of the inexplicable disappearances that take place on a near daily basis?

In the summer of 1911, shortly before the Great War, which would forever change the face of the European mainland, a small Italian manufacturing firm situated in Rome was seeking investment for a new railway project.

Having successfully constructed a prototype locomotive, the directors of the Zanetti Company sent out invitations to local investors and dignitaries, offering them the chance to be part of a luxurious demonstration journey.

On the morning of July the 14th, The Zanetti engine set off from Rome's principal train station, travelling up and along the railway lines which led to the northern city of Milan.

It pulled behind it three heavily laden passenger cars occupied by a total of 106 company employees and guests.

Spirits among the travellers were soon riding high as their mode of transportation wound its way up through the idyllic Italian countryside.

Several hours later, the passengers found themselves crossing the southern regions of Lombardy, not far from the end of their journey.

The plains they were passing through gradually started to give way to much rockier terrain.

This marked the run-up to a mountainous region which they needed to negotiate in order to reach their destination.

It was at this point, as the locomotive was approaching the first in a series of tunnels which had long ago been carved into the base of the mountains, that some of the guests began to experience an unexpected phenomenon.

Several reported to the stewards that they could see a mysterious white haze forming around the train's exterior.

At the same time, an ominous and deep humming sound began to pulsate through each of the carriages, causing some of the passengers to experience a degree of nausea and vomiting.

One of the travellers pulled down the window nearest to where he was standing.

He peered up ahead of the train, looking beyond the filthy black smoke issuing forth from its funnel, and then cried out in alarm.

The milky fog fog that was smothering the train seemed to be pouring out the mouth of the tunnel that they were rapidly approaching.

As this vapour continued to envelop the carriages, it became so thick that visibility inside the compartments was reduced to a shadowy half-light.

By now, despite the best efforts of the train's staff, fear and panic began to take hold.

As the engine rushed on towards the foreboding tunnel entrance, there was a panicked rush towards the doors of the three carriages.

Passengers jostled and pushed one another in a desperate effort to exit the train, with two successfully managing to break free and hurl themselves out onto the ground.

The two escapees watched on in terror as the train and its three carriages barreled on into the tunnel, disappearing from sight.

It would take several hours for word of the incident to make its way back to the company's offices in Rome, who in turn alerted the authorities in Milan.

Soldiers and mountain rescue staff were immediately rushed down to the tunnel network in a frantic bid to locate the missing locomotive.

But no trace of the Zanetti engine or its passengers were to be found.

Troops and rescuers accessed the tunnel network via the northern end of the line, only to emerge in confusion at the point where the missing engine had entered.

There was no wreckage, no bodies, and no sign that the train had ever passed through the tunnels.

Eager to avoid damaging the reputation of the country's rail network, the authorities moved swiftly to cover up the incident, working closely with national newspapers to minimise coverage of the story.

Over the next few years, private searches of the tunnels were organised by relatives of the missing travellers, without success.

Eventually, after sustaining damage from Allied bombing raids at some point during the Second World War, the tunnels were closed down and their entrances blocked off.

The Zaneti train became little more than a distant memory, a ghost story told to local children before they went to sleep at night, until a mysterious incident nearly 40 years later and 2,000 kilometers away from where the train vanished.

On October 29th, 1955, a railway signalman in the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol reported to his superiors that a mysterious train had passed through the crossing he had been working on.

He described the train as being very old in appearance and pulling three carriages all with their curtains drawn.

More concerning still, he insisted that not only had it passed directly through the crossing barriers but had also crossed the railway line at a point where there were no corresponding tracks for it to travel upon.

The mystery train was witnessed several more times travelling through the Ukrainian countryside, most recently in September of 1991, when hikers reported having observed it passing through a crossing near the city of Poltova.

These sightings prompted university researchers in the country to investigate the history behind the ghostly locomotive, and were shocked by what they discovered.

Apparent references to the train may have been made as early as the Middle Ages.

Monks in the Italian city of Modena wrote that they had witnessed a great metallic creature travelling across the fields near their monastery, with three similar entities following behind it.

They further described how it spouted suffocating black smoke from its snout, before disappearing from view.

There is also a report that over 100 patients were admitted to an asylum in Mexico City during the summer of 1845, after they were found wandering the streets in a confused state.

The detainees claimed to be Italian, having travelled to the the city by train, even though no documentation or witness to their arrival could be found in the city's railway station.

Did the Zanetti train somehow enter a portal or doorway that caused it to travel both backwards and forwards through time?

Is it still trapped within a winding and unpredictable corridor through space-time, reappearing in various locations, only to come to a distressing and inevitable conclusion in 19th century North America?

With very little in the way of verifiable source material, it defies belief, much like the next case we will examine.

On the morning of the 9th of September 1992, a year after the Zanetti train's alleged last sighting, air traffic controllers at Venezuela's Simon Bolivar International Airport were surprised by the unexpected appearance of a new target on their radar systems.

As the small symbol steadily made its way across their screens, repeated efforts were made to establish radio contact with it.

Finally, after several frantic minutes, a controller named Juan Dela Corte managed to elicit a response from the pilot of the unknown aircraft.

The conversation was stilted, with Juan finding it difficult to make sense of what the American aviator was telling him.

As each of his questions were answered, Juan quickly scribbled down the response, his fellow controllers crowding around to read the notes he was making.

The pilot identified his aircraft as Pan American Airways Flight 914, a Douglas DC-4 airliner which had set off earlier that day from LaGuardia Airport in New York.

He then went on to explain that he and the other three members of his crew were carrying 57 passengers and had been heading towards Miami when they had lost sight of the ground.

Juan found himself clarifying the flight plan several times with the pilot, struggling to believe that the aircraft had managed to arrive at a location over 2,000km away from its intended destination.

A low murmur broke out amongst his colleagues as they began to survey various maps and charts in an effort to understand the route which the American plane must have taken to arrive at their airport.

As the airliner finally came within visual range of the control tower, some of the controllers made their way outside to observe its approach.

At this point, the pilot's tone changed abruptly, with him now demanding answers from the Venezuelan tower.

He began to ask questions about the various aircraft he could see moving around on the ground ahead of him, seemingly confused by their appearance.

Juan tried to answer as best he could, but was confused by what the pilot was trying to ascertain.

Suddenly there was a commotion from the nearby balcony, and one of the controllers shouted that the airliner appeared to be in trouble.

One again radioed the pilot, asking what was going on.

When the reply came, he could hear yelling and clamouring in the background before someone cried, oh god, we're going again.

The men outside saw the DC-4 bank sharply and turn away from the airfield.

As one continued to try and re-establish radio contact with its pilot, there was another commotion from the balcony.

The airliner was gone, having disappeared into a nearby cloud bank.

Seconds turned into minutes, but it failed to re-emerge.

Emergency services were dispatched to comb the area around where the aircraft was last seen, but no wreckage was found.

Much like the Zanetti train before it, Flight 914 had simply disappeared.

In the aftermath of this occurrence, one and the other controllers also logged an an incident report with Pan American Airlines, but this simply confused things further.

There was no record of a Flight 914 taking off from LaGuardia on the morning of the 9th of September 1992.

There was, however, a Flight 914 which took off from LaGuardia on the 2nd of July 1955, 37 years in the past.

It had disappeared shortly after take-off, and no trace of the aircraft was ever found.

Despite the story of the missing Pan Am airliner having been circulated in a number of newspapers, there is a stark lack of official corroboration, which would seem to indicate that it's completely fabricated.

Some versions of the tale have the airliner landing, before its crew panicked and took off again.

Others have it flying to Miami, where both it and its passengers were seized by the American authorities.

Could it be that all official records pertaining to both the loss of the aircraft and the subsequent encounter in Venezuela have been officially suppressed, and the survivors of Flight 914 hidden away by the government?

Are they still trapped in some sort of time loop, oblivious to the nature of their unending journey?

Or is it just another tall tale, another internet creepypasta, to add to the ever-growing list?

Whatever the degree of authenticity relating to these two tales, they are only two examples of a much larger cachet of supposed incidents, indicating that there may be cracks in time, which both machines and the people who pilot them inadvertently fall through.

We have already examined some rather curious cases of alleged time slips, as well as reality crossovers.

Another notable example is that of Gilles Perez, a Spanish soldier who was stationed in the Philippines during the late 19th century.

One evening he fell asleep whilst on guard duty in Manila, only to wake up in Mexico City's main square, on the other side of the world.

He was detained by the Mexican authorities and interrogated at length, only to be released when the Spanish government confirmed his identity and that he was missing from his post.

Our time slips the true cause of such notorious disappearances as that of Flight 19 or MH370.

Perhaps the USS Cyclops may one day finally arrive in Baltimore, its crew unaware that they have been missing from the seas for over a hundred years.

Or is such a concept one that is merely limited to the pages of science fiction and fantasy, used as a comforting alternative in the aftermath of such disasters?

Was the loss of human life so harrowing in these cases and the circumstances so inexplicable that the relatives of those who were involved embraced the idea of something extraordinary in a desperate effort to accept and understand the tragedy.

Sadly, with no viable or convincing evidence to substantiate them, stories of time slips all too often prove easy to dismiss as fabrications, dependent only on the word of those who claim to have witnessed or experienced them.

For now at least, what we are looking at here are two intriguing but completely anecdotal tales.

Perhaps in the future, scientific study or even hard evidence will finally come to light that either proves or disproves the concept.

Only time

will tell.

Story 2 In the Fullness of Time

In previous episodes, we have examined cases in which people have allegedly travelled through time, alongside common inconsistencies that are all too often associated with the reporting of such incidents.

At some point in the far future, has humanity discovered the means to journey back to its distant past, or are we so enamoured with this concept that it somehow blinds us to logic and reason?

Stories of individuals travelling through time, either of their own volition or through some misfortune, can be traced back in various forms for several centuries.

But amongst the wider field of unexplained phenomena, much like UFOs or shadow people, detailed and documented instances of time travel remain a relatively recent concept.

In the oldest of such examples, Many cultures possess similar tales in which notable figures have fallen into a deep sleep and have somehow been propelled into their own future or dragged into the past to commune with themselves or their ancestors.

For the vast majority of these stories, the time traveller is relatively helpless, finding themselves unable to influence the strange force being exerted upon them.

They end up spending the duration of the tale acting as an unwitting pawn.

moving around at the mercy of some higher power.

It would not be until the turn of the 19th century that protagonists in such stories would be presented as having some degree of control over their own fate.

The idea of humanity developing the ability to visit a specified point in time under controlled circumstances quickly became popular in literary circles.

Gradually, Stories of time travel involving the use of arcane spells or magical totems came to be replaced with the construction of a machine or electronic device.

From this point onwards, mankind would utilise science rather than magic in order to achieve its desired goal.

And this notion would come to a head in 1895, with the publication of an iconic novel by British author H.

G.

Wells.

The description of the device utilised in the time machine changed public attitudes towards the concept of time travel virtually overnight.

Suddenly, readers began to believe that such technology might one day become a reality, like so many of the author's other predictions.

In time, the line between fact and fiction has begun to blur, as rumours and reports of people who have apparently been encountered outside of their own timeline have found their way into the mainstream media.

Many of these stories have now been accepted as genuine examples of time travel, only for closer scrutiny of them to suggest otherwise.

But it was with the advent of internet forums and chat chat rooms that belief in time travel and of visitors from the future finally achieved a foothold in society's perception of such things.

In this episode, we will examine three of the most famous examples and try to divine how much, if any, truth there is in each of these cases.

In the closing months of 2000, Internet chatrooms became saturated by rumours of a time traveler from the future who was visiting modern-day Florida in order to recover legacy technology.

As more and more people began to search out his work, in February of 2001, this enigmatic stranger finally revealed his identity to the world as John Titor.

Titor's description of the future he had travelled back from was bleak to say the least.

Towards the end of the noughties, America would be consumed by a vast political civil war.

This would rage on for several years, finally culminating in a global conflict, during which the US and Russia exchanged nuclear ordnance.

With large parts of the United States subsequently rendered uninhabitable, the survivors formed new city-states, with the nation's capital relocating to Omaha in Nebraska.

As the conflict had been coming to an end, Titor was fighting as an infantryman for the state of Florida, but then went on to join the newly formed National 177th Temporal Recon Unit.

Career soldiers such as Titor had been selected by the authorities to utilise newly created technology in order to return to the past to collect essential resources.

These would then be used to repair and update what hardware and devices had been salvageable following the end of the war.

At the time of his writing, Titor explained that he had initially travelled back to the year 1975, as at that time, his grandfather had been working at IBM as part of the team developing their 5100 computer model.

This particular device contained several unique features, which could be used to cleanse and repair similar technology in the future.

As more and more people began to question his account, Titor gradually revealed more detail.

He explained that having acquired the device, he had chosen to stop off in this timeline to collect personal belongings and photos from his old family home, but would soon go on his way.

When asked about his time machine, Titor replied that he was a soldier and not a scientist.

Although he did not know the specifics of the science behind the device, via his training, he did possess a working knowledge of it and some understanding of its component parts.

Amongst these, he listed cesium clocks, an electronic injection manifold and magnetic housing units.

During the course of a four-month period, Titor posted somewhere in the region of 570 replies before announcing that he was finally ready to return to 2036.

After this, all further contact with him ceased.

and in the years since his apparent departure, elements of his story have gone on to provoke fierce debate.

Experts have come forward to confirm that components described by Titor as being part of his device were consistent with scientific theory about time travel.

Alongside this, the intricacies he described in relation to the IBM 5100 do exist and would not be familiar to anyone outside the computer industry.

In addition to these findings, several incidents mentioned by Titor in his account of America's future have also come to pass.

His description of an imminent pandemic in the country was quickly followed by an outbreak of mad cow disease, although some now believe he may have been referring to a more obvious candidate.

He also identified that no evidence of atomic weapons would be found following the fall of Saddam Hussein, as well as predicting a high-profile Chinese space launch in 2003.

But critics are keen to point out that in the 20 years since the Titor messages were were posted, many more of his predictions have not come true.

These include the Olympic Games being indefinitely cancelled in 2004, the outbreak of the US Civil War in 2008, and a nuclear conflict in 2015.

So is this proof that this alleged time traveller was nothing more than a fabrication?

Proponents of his writings point out that by choosing to post his glimpses of the future, Titor may well have changed the timeline himself.

They also argue that other incidents such as a disputed general election and a rogue US president, whether you believe that refers to Trump's unpopularity with the mainstream media or alleged controversies around Biden's win in the last election, indicate that Titor may simply have been mistaken about the dates he gave.

Several high-profile investigations into John Titor have been funded over the years, with a number of individuals identified as potentially potentially having pretended to be him, although nothing has been conclusively proven.

As more time passes since he made his predictions, Titor's believers have gradually dwindled, even though America has not been so politically divided since the Civil War.

It may just be that his prediction of a new civil war is not as far-fetched as originally thought.

In March of 2003, a number of media outlets in the United States broke the story of how federal investigators had arrested and charged a stock trader with fraud.

It was alleged that the man in question had managed to accrue a $350 million portfolio from an initial investment of just $800.

Naturally, this eye-watering level of profit had alerted the US Security and Exchange Commission, who had in turn contacted the FBI.

As a result of their investigation, federal officers had then managed to identify the individual concerned as 44-year-old Andrew Carlson.

It was reported that on the morning of January the 28th, FBI agents had conducted a raid at Carlson's home address, where they had detained him and then removed him in handcuffs.

After a four-hour interrogation at the local field office, The trader had subsequently been charged with fraud and remanded in custody for a court hearing.

The reason this story was more widely reported than other such crimes lay in the alleged testimony offered by Carlsen during his interview with the agents.

When asked how he had successfully made so much money, his reply was that he had travelled back in time from the year 2256 and had used historic financial records which he had memorised to make his vast fortune.

It was further reported that in an effort to have the charges against him thrown out, Carlson had made a number of spectacular offers to the investigators.

These included divulging the location of Osama bin Laden to the United States government, as well as revealing cures for certain viruses.

With his attempts to gain freedom falling on deaf ears, elements of the media readied themselves for what promised to be a spectacular court hearing on the 3rd of April, only for further apparent intrigue to take place.

The hearing had been cancelled, as the defendant was now nowhere to be found.

It was claimed that a mysterious individual had come forward, fronting Carlson's one million dollar bailout bill, and no sooner had he been released from custody that the alleged time traveller then immediately disappeared from the face of the earth.

During the 17 years which have elapsed since the incident, it has proven impossible to verify any of the elements concerning the case.

There is nothing to confirm Andrew Carlson's birth or death, with no documents to be found pertaining to his alleged arrest or arraignment.

Many believe the story was a work of fiction, crafted by a smaller news outlet and then unwittingly amplified by larger media organisations.

And yet, there is still a significant number of believers who state that there is an explanation for this lack of evidence.

If Carlson had travelled back from the future, there would be no record of his birth as he had not yet been born.

And if the US government had accepted his offers of information, it's quite possible that they secretly liberated him from prison or even killed him, ensuring they had hidden any possible evidence that he had ever existed in the process.

Whilst doubts over the existence of our first two alleged time travellers exist, the same could not be said for the third and final case study, a Missouri resident named Mike Markham.

He achieved notoriety when in 1996 he claimed to have created a working time machine, but his movements and ultimate fate following this remain an enduring mystery.

There is no question that Mike Markham was a real person.

with birth and banking records for him easily accessible, as well as documents detailing his subsequent brushes with the law.

During the early 90s, he was to be found residing in the city of Stanbury, where he was studying to be an electrician.

Then, in January 1995, Markham was arrested by officers from the Gentry County Sheriff's Department following the recovery of stolen property which had been located during a search of the 21-year-old's home address.

The items in question were six powerful electrical transformers, which had been stolen from a power station in neighbouring King's City.

Upon being released from prison several months later, Markham had proceeded to give an interview to a local radio station, where he had admitted to stealing the transformers.

Whilst he had been using them, he had inadvertently caused a localized power outage, and it was this that had brought the police to his door.

He went on to explain that prior to the incident, he had been experimenting with a modified CD laser to reduce the air resistance between two poles.

As he had done so, he had noticed a circular vortex of heat forming in the continuous arc which was now passing between the two points.

Mystified as to what this manifestation could be, he had tossed a metal screw into it.

The item had promptly disappeared.

only to rematerialize a few feet away.

On making further efforts to replicate the phenomenon, Markham's equipment had overloaded and caught fire, which is what had prompted him to steal the higher spec transformers.

Mike Markham used his interview to announce that he believed he was close to achieving time travel, asking for help and financial support from the audience, so he could travel back in time and win the lottery to benefit both himself and his backers.

A year passed before Markham was then invited back onto the radio show to provide an update.

Emboldened, he explained that he had used donations from listeners to successfully replicate a rotating magnetic field within his machine and that he was not far off using it to make his first attempt to travel back in time.

Not long after this, Markham was reported missing and a search of his home address by the police found no trace of him.

save for large amounts of electrical equipment.

For several weeks, local residents puzzled and speculated over the fate of the missing student before an unknown caller contacted the same radio show with some intriguing information.

They claimed that in the 1930s, an unidentified corpse fitting Markham's description had been found lying on a beach in California.

The body was that of a young male, who was apparently crushed to death inside some kind of metal cylinder.

When the authorities had managed to free the remains from inside, they had located what sounded very much like a 90s-era mobile telephone, clutched in one of his hands.

It is indeed an intriguing theory that Markham somehow successfully managed to travel 60 years into the past, only to die in the process, but more rational explanations have been put forward, with some claiming that he fled public attention to live elsewhere in the country under a newly assumed identity.

More recently, a number of users of internet forums claim to have seen him living homeless on the beaches of Hawaii, begging for money to get back to the mainland and to help fund his continuing experiments.

Certainly, in Markham's case, as opposed to those of Titor and Carlsson, there seems an outside chance that the mystery surrounding his disappearance may perhaps one day be solved.

The overwhelming lack of tangible evidence surrounding the cases of alleged time travel that we have already examined, such as those of Rudolf Fence or the Zanetti train, seem to be in keeping with the overall subject matter itself.

Few scientific ideas have produced as much fierce debate or oppositional theory as time travel.

From the exact mechanism of how such a feat may be achieved, to the potential consequences or side effects of accomplishing a successful trip to the past, It seems that the scientific community is still no closer to agreeing on the finer detail of the concept.

The inclusion of propositions such as wormholes and infinite dimensions only add further argument to the debate, raising yet more questions than answers.

And it is argued that the fact there has never been any definite proof of a visitor from the future successfully arriving in the past is clear evidence that the technology does not and will never exist.

It could be that such visitors have already arrived, but have gone unnoticed by society, or or perhaps choose to keep a low profile out of fear of their presence altering too much in the future.

Perhaps, in the fullness of time, we will know one way or the other.