I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for a good fringe-theory or conspiracy. As a Gen-X’r I was raised on old black and white reruns of The Twilight Zone from the 50’s and early 60’s, late night Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes, and later was transfixed by The X Files.
The Twilight Zone, in particular, was way ahead of its time. The show's creator, Rod Serling’s, writing was about as creative and superb as it could be, and I think it helped to sculpt my open mind more than anything. All three of these shows had something in common—each of them nudged you to imagine beyond the obvious edges of what most people consider to be reality, to leave room for the unexplained. I think most humans enjoy that little tickle in the brain we get when something makes us believe that there’s still magic and mystery beyond what mainstream science tells us is real.
Using my imagination in this way, to imagine a little beyond, has served me well when it comes to writing fiction. It’s also led me down quite a few rabbit holes in real life. Frustratingly, fringe topics like the paranormal, time-travel, aliens, exotic physics, and the like usually lead to one of two places either a hoax or an informational dead-end and can’t be verified in any way, shape or form.
Despite this, there’s still a part of me that believes “the truth is out there” somewhere and we can’t possibly be alone in the universe. I always fall back on the idea that humans can’t possibly be the best thing an omnipotent intelligence could create. We have potential, yes, but we have oh so many flaws.
Of all the fringe theories, none of them are any stranger or more difficult to wrap your head around than time travel. Even though I know that most of these conspiracy theories lead to disappointment there’s still one, every now and then, that initially reels me in and piques my interest. The following video about a self-proclaimed time traveler John Titor is one of them.
The video tells the story of the John Titor mystery: an anonymous poster who appeared on early-2000s internet forums claiming to be a soldier from 2036 sent back to retrieve a 1975 IBM 5100 computer.
Here are some of the the more interesting snippets covered in the video:
- In 1975 IBM released the 5100, one of the first mass-produced portable computers (about 50 lbs with a tiny built-in screen). It contained a suppressed hidden function that let it interface with IBM System/370 mainframes in ways no desktop machine was supposed to.
- On November 2, 2000, a user named TimeTravel_0 (later John Titor) began posting calm, highly technical descriptions of a time-displacement machine on the small Time Travel Institute forum, then moved to Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM boards. He made 151 posts over four months.
- He said his mission from 2036 was to retrieve an IBM 5100 because its hidden capability could translate between old IBM languages and later Unix systems to avert a catastrophic 2038 timeout error. He claimed his grandfather had been one of the Rochester, Minnesota engineers who built the machine.
- Years later, original IBM 5100 engineer Bob Dubke confirmed the hidden function was real, was his personal contribution, and that IBM had ordered the team to keep quiet about it. Almost no one outside that small group knew it existed until Titor described it in 2000.
- Titor described his device as a C204 gravity-distortion unit made by General Electric, powered by two contained rotating micro-singularities that created a “standard offset Tipler cinazoid.” He cited real theoretical work by physicist Frank Tipler (1974 paper on rotating cylinders and closed timelike curves) and the Kerr metric.
- He posted photographs of what he said was the unit mounted first in a 1967 Corvette and later a 1987 4WD truck, plus pages that looked like an operations manual and field schematics. Some forum members called them fakes; others noted the unusually high production effort for a 2000-era troll.
- In his claimed timeline a U.S. civil war began around 2004–2005, Russia launched nuclear strikes on American cities in 2015 (killing ~3 billion worldwide), the U.S. fractured into five regions with the capital moved to Omaha, and survivors lived in small, low-tech communities using CB radios and manual printing presses. He said his world line diverged from ours by about 2.5%. This could explain why some of his predictions didn’t come true.
- He said he was born in 1998 in Tampa, Florida, joined a military unit at age 13, and that his 2000 visit was a personal detour to see his toddler self and collect family photos that would later be destroyed. Time travel in 2036 was an open military tool developed by CERN and GE; his unit of seven people mostly targeted 1960–1980 for lost technology.
- His last post, on March 24, 2001, was the cryptic line “Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road.” The account never posted again. He never asked for money, followers, or belief and told skeptics it was a mistake to give anyone unwavering faith.
- Later, readers noted several smaller remarks that aged strangely: repeated 2001 warnings about mad-cow disease in the U.S. beef supply (first U.S. case confirmed December 2003), comments during the 2000 Florida recount treating it as the start of a deeper national fracture, and descriptions of expanding domestic surveillance tools that would later be used on citizens. He never predicted 9/11 itself.
This is all intriguing to say the least. Whether true or not I’ll admit this one got my imagination spinning. The thought of being able to travel to a different timeline and possibly change the trajectory of the future gives you a lot of food for thought.
I, personally, think it’s good to imagine a little beyond what we think is possible and to have faith that there's always more to discover. How else can we become better, more capable, learn, and evolve?
Do you have any fringe theories that have captured your attention? What are some of your favorites?
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.