About 3 months ago, I received an email from a professor informing me that my essay had not been turned in properly on Canvas. Now, I’m preparing to communicate with a group of researchers from the year 2049. What started as a technological glitch, an eerie but easily explained crossing of wires that created strange encrypted documents, has become the focus of my summer. I’ve been catapulted into a team of writers, scientists, botanists, and fellow equally confused interns. Together, we’ve endured countless surprises with little time to reflect on what it all means. Everything has been about the work, everything has been about the climate, everything has been about July 15th, our first opportunity to understand what truly happened between me and some entity from the all too distant and all too near future.
As we hopefully near the end of our (current) ignorance, I wanted to reflect upon where we all came from. I know that I wasn’t chosen, that the glitch was a fluke, but I look at the people I am working with and couldn’t be happier that we all haphazardly wound up here together. I wanted to share our progress, but more importantly, I wanted to share the stories of my friends. All of these interns were similarly contacted by 2049, and our experiences are what brought us together. The SPORE device is what has kept us here.
Evan Wisdom-Dawson
How did you become involved with Fourcast Lab following the glitch?
Well, after my glitch happened to me back in April, and I filmed the video for Fire Escape Films, I was still really curious about what was going on. So I did some more digging and found out that there was this group of people at the university, the Fourcasters, who were working on this problem, and because my work as an English PhD student is very much focused on climate change and narratives of disaster in fiction and in real life, I became interested in this potential to explore both the ideas about how our planet is changing and what we might be able to do to mobilize against those kinds of changes or roll with those changes for a better future for everybody.
Do you ever feel like you were specifically selected?
I wouldn’t say that I as an individual feel specifically selected. I would say that I’m not surprised that this would be a period in time that would be selected for this kind of sort of communication. I’m not surprised that it would take place at an institution like the University of Chicago, which is already trying so hard to work across disciplines and to encourage new disciplines, creative disciplines, alternative disciplines, to engage in these new kinds of projects. So I do think that there is a point to its being here and now, and because I’m also here and now perhaps I am roped into that.
What are you excited about?
Well, I’m excited to see what happens on Monday at 2:30 PM. I’m excited to see what we can bring to the table—what all of these incoming students, the 2023 cohort, can bring to the table, the brightest young minds in the country around the world coming together to work on a problem like this. I have rarely been so hopeful.
Hurston Mazard Wallace
How did you become involved with Fourcast Lab following the glitch?
Hanging around the MADD center, I noticed increased professor presence, and lots of moving around, hushed discussions, etc. After a while, I approached Patrick Jagoda to understand what was going on, and he brought me on board due to my interest in climate change research.
What has been your experience working with Fourcast Lab since the glitch?
It’s been great knowing the interns and being involved with cutting edge tech (even if I don’t fully understand it. However, every moment leading up to Monday has increased my agitation. After all, we don’t know enough about this technology.
What are you excited about?
I’m just excited about being a part of history. You don’t always get a chance to change the world, but when you do, you take that shit.
India Weston
How did you become involved with Fourcast Labs following the glitch?
Well, my advisor Patrick Jagoda contacted me as soon as he heard I was ‘exposed’—in his words—to one of the glitches. I do a lot of weird things and well, what’s weirder than Fourcast Labs? You can cut that part out.
Do you ever feel like you were specifically selected?
During the glitch, whatever I heard called me—like, by name. It was so weird. But yeah, I don’t know why I was targeted and I’m still trying to figure that out. Maybe it was a mistake. I hope I get answers soon.
What are you worried about?
Do you mean in the short term, the long run, or on a scale of deep time? Because issues of nuclear energy function on all of these levels. In the short-term, I’m worried about H.R. 3053, sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus (R., IL-15). Essentially, this would allow trains to transport massive casks of high level radioactive waste through Chicago on their way to these interim storage facilities in Texas and New Mexico—facilities which are located next to indigenous populations. In the slightly longer run (on the 2049 scale), I’m worried that nuclear energy will be used as a “stopgap” in between the ends of fossil fuel industry and the booming of the solar industry. If this happened, it would be really difficult to decommission those new reactors and because of rising sea levels and new climate change related disasters, it’s incredibly likely that what happened in places like Chernobyl and Fukushima will take place more frequently and on a global scale. On the scale of deep time (and hopefully it doesn’t come to this), how will we signal to future generations where nuclear waste is buried if we cannot assume they will be able to interpret our symbols and language? Does that help answer your questions?
Jersey Fonseca
How did you become involved with Fourcast Labs following the glitch?
Well, once I had heard that this was happening to a lot of different people in the community, I kind of followed up, and I saw that there was a team dedicated specifically to figuring out why these glitches were happening or people that may have been involved in the glitch. So I applied for an internship with them. And here I am.
What do you hope to learn from the transmission?
Well, if I could learn anything, I would like to know how living conditions will be in some type of future where I could…You know, it’d be nice to just see a place where I can be like: okay, I’m living, I can breathe well, and I’m healthy, and I can have kids. So that’s number one.
What are you worried about?
I suppose if that’s not true, if it comes out and they’re like, yeah, by the way, you guys are screwed. And that’s it. That’s the message.
Do you ever feel like you were specifically selected?
You know, the thought has definitely been in my mind, although I try to push it to the back of my head because you know, like, who am I? There have just been a lot of signs that I can’t ignore too much. Only a very specific amount of people received these glitches. Most of them I know personally, and all of them have very specific skillsets. Even more of a sign is just how easy it was to get involved with the Fourcast Lab. And now I’m here, and it’s all happening, so I’m not saying I’m a believer in fate, but here I am again.
Théo Evans
How did you become involved with Fourcast Labs following the glitch?
So I knew some of the faculty involved with Fourcast Lab. After hearing that, that voicemail, I was just really interested in learning more about what was happening and trying to figure out where the glitches came from. So I decided to apply for the internship.
What about the Futures Design Challenge excites you?
I think just the glitch that I got and hearing about others made me very anxious about the future. So I’m excited to have a sort of tangible way to deal with that and try to think about how to solve future problems.
What worries you?
I may be most worried that it’s true. There’s still a part of me that’s just like “this must be a prank or a hoax of some sort.” But knowing that it’s true and also potentially knowing the dire things happening in the future is a scary idea.
