I cannot say much... I simply do not know enough.
It's sufficient just to note that I was contacted by one Dr. Valentine, Erasmus Valentine - who managed to tell me a little before he died in my arms.
Valentine dropped through an anomaly last week, dying from some haemorrhagic fever, but desperate to pass on one message and it was I he found before he expired - but I am unsure whether he recounted everything there was to be told before he went. It was too compliceted, his illness required complete isolation, upon which he insisted before he'd allow himself to talk... it was that important you see that he did not pass on his infection, he told me in this day and age there could be no cure for it were it to pass into the general populace.
So, with time limited, we did what we could and eventually he felt able to pass on his message, but by then he was so weak. Imagine Ebola and magnify ten-fold, that was what it was like and the only disinfectant known is fire... hot fire, at least 200 degrees Celcius.
His anomaly is positioned some fiftythree years into our future and whilst what little he described of that time to me sounded grim, it was/is/will be unsullied by the MvTV pandemic, as only some other close periods of time further into the future seem to be. It is the otherwise accursed Haemorrhagic Virus which apparently turns out to be the world's saviour then... which sounds back-to-front, but I'll explain as best I can.
January 2062 sees 'nests' of anomalies appearing as has happened in the last 18 months here and now. It would appear that whilst anomalies can open singly in absolutely any time period whatsoever, they appear limited in numbers to what Valentine described as 'nodes' - periods when several to many different anomalies may open simultaneously or near simultaneously as we have experienced and indeed what they experience 53 years hence.
No pattern is yet discernible as to when or why this should be so and it seems that these nodes are extremely rare events, although they are relatively much more common and increasing futurewards and vice versa. It means that anything stumbling between eras; such as we have already seen; will generally find it almost impossible to move through a second, different anomaly to a third time zone... except at a node !
Here I must digress to discuss paradox, which maintains that there is no pre-history of anomalies at this point, in the same way that we know of no history of prior anomalies ourselves even though logic dictates that there should have been evidence in our past of such things. It's to do with something Valentine called Brane-Space - where there actually exists 11 dimensions of time and space, where at least one of the ones we do not (yet) recognise is a second dimension of time. Valentine calls it Perpendicular-Time or P-Time for shorthand. Anyhow, P-Time is the actual governing time to which all lesser dimensions of time refer, including our own version and maybe others - although we still don't know much about that, at least in 2062.
Our concept of time might be imagined as being like an infinitely elasticated band attached to a wholly non-elastic substrate, that substrate being P-Time, whilst our time may stretch and bend and loop howsoever - remaining attached at all times to P-Time, yet infinitely able to alter its alignment thereto, causing sections of what we seem to think of as a steady flow to actually be careening back and forth with respect to that governing, real P-Time. I hope I haven't lost you there, because to tell the truth I found it hard to follow Valentine at this point as his voice was weakening by the hour.
The point of mentioning P-Time is that it is itself 'as straight as the proverbial arrow', yet our perception of time from within the looped mess that is the only one we recognise makes P-Time iteself seem to be the one which is looped about... just in the completely opposite sense, because we imagine our timeflow to be the straight line.
In other words, in real P-Time all of the anomalies actually appear at exactly the same point along the P-Time scale, it is just that on our (shall we say) Subjective-Time scale, that this looks like separate events all over history !
Anomalies are thus occurring at a point upon the P-Time scale where two or more loops of our time meet at the self-same point on the P-Time scale.
There. it could not be clearer than mud, really ! Valentine must have been some lecturer, if that was one of his fortés... I did not have the time to enquire.
Nodes obviously should be quite common, based upon this simplistic approach, but as they are not, then there is more to be explained and upon this Valentine became vague... asserting only that they believe that there is more than one place in P-Time where loops of S-time merge in this way. But, I felt that that made sense anyhow.
My philosophical background maybe helps me to understand these high-concept theories about time and to me, if there is one set of time (S-Time) attaching to another set of time (P-Time) like they have described, it may just be as likely that P-Time may itself attach to a third version, call it X-Time for now - in the same way. Maybe all anomaly events happen at just one point on the X-Time scale ? But that is just my conjecture as an ignorant man in this subject !
So, technically at the very same event-position in P-Time that we started to discover our anomalies, so did the people in 2062 and perhaps many other S-Time time-frames... and they started exploring. One of their first researches took them to some future landscape where mankind appears already extinct, at least in the immediate area where they ventured, but an accident to one of the scientists there results in her infection with the heamorrhagic virus - which she brings back to 2062 unbeknownst to all and sundry.
The Haemorrhagic Virus is potently infective and before quarantine controls are able to be brought into effect, the virus is already out of control and rampages through populations of persons with compromised immunity, killing all, as well as striking down four in ten of the general populace. It is later proven that pretty much 100% of the populace is infected and those who do survive nevertheless suffer terrible symptoms, many losing functions of mobility, sight, hearing and in many cases, organs damaged beyond reasonable repair.
These are the non-lethal effects and infectees take many months, if not years to recover and a large minority of the survivors lose multiple functions and many will later take their own lives.
But then, further anomaly research, now driven underground of course, takes some scientists forward much further and this is where they first encounter the MvTV, or at least its description... literally in a library in an abandoned city found covered in dense undergrowth and with not a single example of animal life discovered in the continental inland area where they were exploring.
The library tells of gene-splicing experimentation, the desperate searching for a cure for the now heavily mutated haemorrhagic virus which is by then killing at least 70% of those it infects and may now be contracted again by those who have already fought it off before ! MvTV is a cure-all, a panacea.
Its secrets were brought back to the world of 2062 and genetic recombination techniques made possible in famous laboratories in the second decade of the 21st. Century were used to recreate this vector and irredeemable human subjects were made guinea-pigs... some survived, apparently cured. Many did not. Further tweaking of the genome occurred, finally a live-plasm innoculation was prepared and indeed, survival rates soared. The job had been done. Mankind had been saved !
Then nature happened.
The MvTV vector mutated, probably swapped some DNA within some random host and abruptly chaos once more ensued. The new vector bacame transmissible in aerosol form and infection spread from person to person. It was not as if this in itself proved the problem, the worst symptom reported akin to bad hayfever, perhaps. But where thsi hurt was that having become infected with the 'feral' version, the original version would no longer 'take' upon innoculation and consequently would not protect from the still uneradicated haemorrhagic fever. The feral MvTV neither protected and so the pandemic was set to begin anew !
Valentine quite eloquently stated the state of panic this realisation produced. The medical fraternity was pressured to come up with results sooner rather than later and he hazarded that this was where the real problem came from.
Someone had discovered that just a little further genetic tinkering would produce a second hard and fast cure for the haemorrhagic fever, but one failed experiment on the way to that discovery had yeilded a very different and interesting result... interesting to a certain kind of person, in a certain type of position.
The failed experiment led to a very different result indeed, not one useful to someone with the Haemorrhagic fever, nor useful to innoculate someone who had not yet been infected by it.
However, once a person was proof from haemorrhagic fever, whether by natural resistance or innoculation, then the new result could come into its own. Innoculate with the new vector and almost immediately the subject would begin to rally and recover from pretty much any ills previously suffered.
This might be the Lazarus cure ! Seemingly terminal patients would be tried with the new innoculant and within weeks, if not mere days thay would be up ans about and well again ! Cancers would disappear, failing organs would repair themselves, other infections would be wiped out entirely !
Not only that, but the guinea-pigs soon reported back their feelings of renewed vigour, gained strengths, improved senses, a return to youthful zest. It was miraculous, but the miracle had a price.
In fact, Valentine claimed trhat there were two prices to pay.
But now, I am sorry, I am afraid that I must leave you with just this information... Those who sought to prevent Valentine and his colleague, Dr. Alvin Frost (whereabouts: unknown; wherewhen: unknown; health status: unknown) from imparting this information are still at large and now I must move on.
I will try to reach another communication portal in the near future. But I cannot stay in one place for any great period of time, in case I am discovered. Valentine stated that any who knew the shake-down would be eliminated and he was living, dying proof of this fact.
I will contact you again. I will finish Valentine's story and I urge you to go tell whoever you can what I have imparted to you already. Particularly, try to find someone who may be able to locate Frost before he is also eliminated. The secret to salvation is his and his alone. Apart from myself now, only he knows the full horror of what MvTV has become, what it has been used to achieve and the terrible prices to be paid !
Only Frost knows how to stop this thing...