2032: Or, Empaths and Imprompterga in a Blighted State

Does holography presage dictatorship? A time-traveling author gets entangled.

Note: This speculative tale has been written for Brian Reindel’s Lunar Awards Season 2 speculative fiction contest of May 2023 here on Substack.

To better appreciate my story, readers may enjoy reading Brian Ó Nualláin, “Revenge on the English in the Year 2032!” in The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (2013). The Irish-language original version of O’Nolan’s story was titled “Dioghaltais ar Ghallaibh ‘sa Bhliain 2032!” and published on 18 January 1932 in the Irish Press.

Dennis Gabor, father of Holography and Nobel Prize winner in Physics, 1971 (Photo: Wikipedia)

As I made a turning toward the quayside, a sudden fear gripped me: that London was just too far. Alas, my imagined electrical train, the one of my own homeland’s future aspect, wasn’t reciprocated on this foreign shore. I looked back dismally as at a wake, and indeed, at the wake presently being created by the sleek ship that had borne me, now hungrily devouring the waves, disappearing at speed back to Dublin. I thought, so this is Holyhead, eh? The other tourists dissipated. I alone was surrounded.

“Indeed, Holyhead- still,” said a cheerful female voice. “I’ve been expecting you.”

THE EMPATH’S EXPLANATION

“Beg your pardon?” I said to this stranger who’d literally just read out the words populating my head. She was a quare one alright: sandy-haired, uniformed in matching turquoise-and-dun sweater and cap, a perfect usher from the horse-show, save for the lack of horses… It occurred to me what she wanted; I put down the big heavy bag which I had suddenly found in my grasp.

“Yes, constable, I’m bringing Irish whiskey into your country. Concerning the scarcity”-

“No worries,” she replied, flashing a radiant smile. “I’m not from Customs, nor the police.”

“Who are you, then?” I asked, mystified. “And how do I get to London?”

“I’m an Empath,” she said. “From the Entropy Reduction and Neural Reordering and Assistance Branch.”

“A what?”

“Your… kind isn’t expected to understand,” she said coolly. “I read your anxiety over not finding what you expected to guide your journey to its goal, London. As an Empath, I’m here to listen and empower you towards greater mental clarity and a holistic sense of purpose- and particularly, to reduce systemic entropy to manageable levels.”

“Huh? What’s that to do with Rudolph Clausius?” I said sourly. “I wasn’t ‘born yesterday,’ you know.”

“Well, quite,” she laughed. “Not entropy in thermodynamics. Later, around… your time, entropy was…. borrowed by psychology, similarly to how you as a promising author have borrowed and will borrow things… in time, the term stuck. I merely helped prevent your total disintegration on British soil, having noted from your dream you had entered a Swedenborgian hell.”

“Whoever that is, it figures,” I said, feeling a strange vindication of my premonitions during the nocturnal crossing. “So, I’ve died and gone to England. How appropriate.”

“Good, good,” the woman said encouragingly. “Now you’re returning to your old self. Tell me, what’s the date printed here?”

“The… twelfth? But I thought it was only the eleventh!”

“That’s lovely!” the Empath cheered. “Here, the date is whatever you think it is, so you’ve arrived right on time. And, for the New Moon! There’s still hope for your mission. Most people aren’t as stubborn anymore, but you being from another time- you’ve stayed true to yourself. That’s why we brought you here.”

“Sorry?” I said. “I just overate after Christmas and thought how to take it out on John Bull. It’s a joke”-

“Hush,” she said nervily. “Others might hear. We can’t risk the disintegration of your mission.”

THE TRIP TO LONDON AND THE IMPROMPTERGA MACHINE

The car that conveyed us had no driver; it drove not on the road but just above it, as if gravity was less desirable in England than elsewhere... Well, I’d chosen 2032, after all-

“You’re a big talker,” the woman responded, though I hadn’t talked at all. “Better you keep quiet. Don’t draw anyone’s attention here.”

“What, so everyone’s a mind-reader here?”

“No, just trained Empaths with certain technological advantages,” she replied. “I sense you’re feeling calmer now that we’re heading to our destination, yes? You see that sign for London… that’s lovely, Paddy. Your dopamine levels are rising and your entropic load is steadily being ameliorated… Just be a good lad and enjoy the scenery.”

Confounded and insulted, I stared out the glass at the fast-passing trees and occasional houses. But she was right- my anxiety was gone.

Then I looked over and saw the Empath’s strange contraption. I realized it must explain her impossible mind-reading powers. Set in her hand, it resembled some much more modern Comptometer, but unlike any I’d seen: barely solid, a diamond-edged book centered by floating images emerging from a black central whirlpool… all, interlocking and upleaping, like a mercury concoction in some alchemist’s den. I felt a dizziness…

“I thought you’d never ask,” the Empath quipped. She explained that in 2032 England, the primitive adding machines of my time had long been surpassed by sophisticated crystal holographic computational devices, compatible with neural linkages and capable of generating and storing vast amounts of information. These devices, known as Imprompterga, could display the output of complex questions or descriptions as both text and multi-dimensional holograms. Fascination gripped me, and the Empath smiled.

“A handheld Delphic Oracle, you’re thinking,” she concluded. “Not quite… At prototype stage, no one expected- the problems began in 2028, when Imprompterga were commercially released to the public. With this version’s release came Hegemonoprompting, which made Supraprompting and Aesthanoprompting obsolete. Even common people learned to alternate timelines to suit their fancies, and began populating them with holograms appearing very realistic- just as real as the hologram of yourself I’ve kept going for today’s mission! You can imagine the confusion this has caused! Very silly, but it’s human nature, I suppose.”

“Wait,” I protested, alarmed. “I’m… a hologram? I’m not real”

“Don’t think too much of it,” the Empath said, smiling gently. “The concept of the Real is at best arguably found in Ancient Greek philosophy, so what should it matter to you? Perhaps it’s overrated.”

SOME CURIOUS ENGLISH PRACTICES

“So why me?” I protested, as we entered London. “I can’t end your horrid technological dystopia. I hardly even”-

“Au contraire! You’ll ensure its very existence, as I’ll explain tomorrow,” the Empath said, laughing. “Holography has benevolent uses. King Henry’s Great Act of 2030 protects the citizens from themselves in splendid ways. To limit entropy induced by discursive misunderstandings, for example, speech has been restricted to the hours of noon to teatime, on Fridays exclusively. This Act also created the Ministry of Empathy, where I work, to predict and prevent entropic disturbances, and help people stay focused on their goals.”

“So no one talks? That’s hardly progress”-

“Well, while limited, public thinking does ascend to the Cloud, from where it can be approved by government and then enjoyed by all,” she said, positively beaming. “King Henry allows cloud-seeding on weekends, to coincide with sport-circuses and public intoxication, when the people can do their least harm to public order, the timelines and, of course, themselves. Great Britain is thus well-run, thanks to the reduction and control of entropy!”

Reeling from this informational barrage, I sat and watched the sulking cloud-stretched sky engulf the tops of fabled buildings that I knew from picture-books and cinema.

“Well, it’s cloudy,” I said dumbly. “Some things about England never change.”

“Oh, government keeps the clouds well-fed,” the Empath said. “Otherwise, the solar flares would roast our electronics… and the punters are not happy when their holographic hobbies are disrupted. But go try living elsewhere in 2032- you’d think it was 1532, or worse.”

MY MISSION REVEALED AT LAST

A fine hotel awaited in London; the porter took my bag and showed me to a well-outfitted room with terrace, avocados and pears in a bowl, and even a small refrigerator with wine and sparkling water. The end-table boasted a vaguely Oriental piece: two wooden figurines, poised in battle formation. ‘Teak Thais,’ I dubbed then, and resolved to borrow them upon departure.

The Empath collected me after breakfast the next morning. As we walked through the city, she said the very same timeline in which Diarmait the perfidious had invited the Norman mercenaries of Henry II into Ireland was also the one in which 2,000 brave Corkmen were not killed almost a thousand years later in the Dublin of my recent fanciful imagination. And yet it was essential that I preserve every detail, she said.

“But why?” I replied. “It’s a joke- and only funny if one can read Irish”-

“The causal chain between your story and this device is too complex to explain,” she said, waving her Imprompterga in my face. “But if you don’t write it, eventually a certain Nazi official does not become lost in the entropic distraction of plotting Gaelic mind infiltration, at precisely the time when the Hungarian physicist Dennis Gabor must flee to Britain, in 1933. Your story, Gabor, and the civilization of 2032 only exist if our common timeline is preserved.”

“Who’s Gabor?”

“The forefather of holography- we can thank him for devices like this,” she said, flashing her diamond-ringed Imprompterga. “That chap made many clever contributions to science and said many clever things, like, ‘the future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.’ Now, we live by these words. You must ensure Gabor survives the war.”

CROSSING THE CITY; HEGEMONOPROMPTING REVEALED

“War?” I replied, as we passed Nelson’s Column. “Why, we already had the war. Don’t tell me”-

“Hell goes round and round,” she said.

“Why, that’s a good one. I think I’ll use it.”

“You will and you won’t,” the Empath replied, obscure as the Sphinx.

“Well, I’m not even twenty-one… I mean, 121, I have time”-

“Not even half that,” the Empath said grimly, turning the Imprompterga toward me; I shuddered at the unspeakable upleaping image that infiltrated my soul with the chill sadness of death. I could not grasp how the Empath and her detestable England might interpret their sacrosanct misbegotten word; for I was suddenly living proof that Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change.

“Certainly, here,” she said cheerfully, reading my thoughts and handing me an improbable bottle of whiskey. “Take courage and warmth. And leave the ‘tragic’ part of the narrative to those who will never know you- they are no better than these louses.”

She pointed to the aimless passers-by not even looking at my open drinking, being stuck to their own Imprompterga machines, every one of them dreaming their own holographic worlds…

I felt better and warmer at once. Logically, this disturbed me greatly.

“If I’m just a hologram you created, how is the whiskey altering my thermodynamic state?”

“Good on you,” the Empath said, laughing. “Sure, Clausius exists in our shared timeline- unless you muck it up at the bridge! To make a perfectly functioning simulation of you, the great author, who would travel, obey, sleep through the night- who would be tempted by ‘Teak Thais,’ shower, dress, eat breakfast and accompany me and drink this whiskey- you can’t fathom the complexity or intensity of thought, the computational Hegemonoprompting”-

“What’s that word again? You said it yesterday.”

“Hegemonoprompting is a technical and mathematical computational process, using complex linguistic and image cues, to elicit complex systems and sustain phase-changes over time and space,” the Empath said. “Not so simple, but every teenager’s doing it nowadays. Yesterday, a child was even Shakespeared to death in Liverpool. Can you imagine? Such a painful way to go.”

“I see why your King Harry’s keeping on guard,”

“Too right, Paddy,” she cheered. “Come, we’ve almost reached your goal.”

THE FINAL, UNEXPECTED SHOCK

As we walked, she pointed into the distance, past some herd of people fixated on their Imprompterga machines. My own idle fantasies and scientific imaginings seemed very meagre by comparison. Could the world really have changed so much in a century?

“Don’t worry about that now,” she said, again entering my thought. “After crossing that bridge and returning, we’ll send you safely home- you’ll be wiser than other Irishmen, and not boast of your great London successes.”

“I’ll be silent as the tomb,” I said, spying a curving bulk over steel-grey water- the Thames. “What must I do?”

The Empath explained, promising to guide me remotely from the bridge’s close side. I had only to take the 18 January 1932 Irish publication from my pocket, and deposit it along with three older coins, placing these all into the outstretched hat of some beggar on the bridge’s bloated midsection. I crossed the bridge, half-empty with pedestrians, none of them paying me any attention. I was surprised none collided. But how could they? After all, at least half were only the simulations of some remote and imaginative holographic generator, possibly from another timeline, too…

Too much thinking! Reaching the end, I turned back across. I felt I was the last fellow in England with any reality to his name, even if that reality was merely the unfathomable sum of innumerable calculations… my mind reeled and I could barely stagger on… Then, my temple felt the lightest of cool caresses; it was the Empath’s remote removal of entropy. Suddenly, with newfound purpose, I relaxed and spied my target.

The white-bearded beggar occupied the midriff of the bridge, sitting on cardboard. Being generally ignored, he peered up curiously when I dropped, as if from Heaven the old Irish coins and the journal from 1932. In rapturous joy, he devoured my antiquities. That is, he passed them up to the light of his Imprompterga machine!

In what country is this, I thought, where the poor unfortunate beggars have the latest technological devices? A quare one…

It was too late; he’d recognized me, though no one was paying attention.

“God, it’s you!” he shouted in disbelief. He began typing, febrile in the half-light. A sudden afterglow of information rose into a triumphal fluttering column; it resembled an older and unfamiliar version of myself. I felt sick, seeing my future flash before my eyes…

“All those years I spent studying your works, and no one believed when I predicted you’d return- and precisely on this date!” the beggar shouted. “I was flung to the curb, a laughingstock! Just wait ‘til I tell them! I’ll have my revenge yet!”

Very much shaken, I rushed away from the half-crazed man. The Empath congratulated me.

“Who in Hell was that?”

“Your greatest admirer, a former scholar,” she said. “And now, thanks to your providential Second Coming, and after we holographically simulate the alien invasion of London tonight, he’s the one who’ll restore the British Empire!”

A horrible feeling of utter futility gripped me. The English, that alien race in their alien land, had the times and the technology on their side… whereas I’d given away even my cab fare home. After all my good-will, the joke was well and truly on me.

“Well, we mustn’t tarry,” the Empath said. “Time to get you home again, Paddy. We thank you for your service to England.”