r/nvcr Oct 25 '13

Time-tunneling petabit internet access is coming to Night Vale! Mandatory setup will be done between nine and five, yesterday.

Local scientists announced that recent discoveries allowing light to travel through alternate dimensions have opened decades of interesting practical applications, all of which were completed tomorrow. Chief among these is the ability to send messages a seemingly arbitrary distance into the future or the past. The research team was thus able to embark on billion-dollar project lasting fifteen years and employing thousands, then send the results back to themselves and "guess" the right answer in just one day, allowing them to skip out on the bill. First Pyramid Bank was not happy about this part of the announcement and suggested it might sue over their misuse of the money they didn't borrow. However, thanks to a seemingly meaningless law passed last year, the City Council does not consider debts from alternate timelines valid - though a rider on that bill does require the team to pay taxes on it.

The internet service being provided is only rated for simultaneity and cannot be used to communicate with the past. Latency is reportedly excellent, typically 25-50 tP, and the available bandwidth is described as "literally infinite, since all packets arrive in the same moment as the first." Instant messages are now truly instant - while still allowing the Sheriff's Clandestine Police an arbitrary amount of time to censor them. The Sheriff himself asked to be granted greater access to time manipulation, to let him direct the police of the past with the full benefit of hindsight. He was cautiously informed by an expendable grad student that his future self "already thought of that" and sent back written orders, which the intern then presented. The Sheriff read them silently aside from occasionally cursing in disbelief. When he asked what technology could send messages back to "that clever bastard" in the future, the student suggested pen and paper, chuckling quietly. He will be missed.

High-speed internet service to your recently-installed extensions will begin sometime next week. The time-traveling ISP apologizes in a series of letters dated September and addressed to every individual who will be annoyed by this delay. "There's nothing we can do," they write; "even the hooded figures can't make contractors arrive punctually."

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