"How To See The Future...And Why You Don't Want To" (Creepypasta)

it's been a long while since I've heard a story that I thought was worth sharing this is definitely one of them in Greek mythology Cassandra was given the power to foretell the future but so cursed that no one will believe her prophecies when roberts shared the following story with me I couldn't help be reminded of how fate often mocks us as I did Cassandra Robert was a colleague of my friend Steve and new to our little circle when that circle includes a few psychology graduates some deep and meaningful conversations tend to be par for the course for example this free will exist or as every decision we've ever made and ever will make already determined before we were even born does the future already exist can it be predicted or changed you know the usual circle-jerk philosophy questions great thinkers have debated over for millennia for us these discussions were just a way to pass the time we never really expected to have a definitive answer but when Rob tells us he knows the truth and had a mind-bending story that could prove it we listened closely he would even share with us in detail the experiments he had run to test the hypothesis but also warned us we may not like the answers with such a buildup how could we not pay attention within psychology circles it's somewhat cliche to say that the concept of now is really an illusion for example the very instant that you're reading this text it has taken light some time to travel to your eyes for your eyes to convert those photons to electrical and chemical stimuli and for those signals to travel to the neurons and synapses in your brain to process then for your body chemistry to react what we think of as now in reality has already passed a few fractions of a second ago we're forever living in the past as our brains are constantly playing catch-up our reality is merely an illusion I meant a hologram created by the mind to interpret all the data flooding in from our senses Bob and his research partner care while looking to test that idea as far as they could if time and perceived reality is purely a mental construct could the mind be trained to respond to it differently could your brain for example be conditioned to think faster or slower could your perception of time be significantly slowed see a reaction times correspondingly increased it would be like accessing deeper levels of your mind inception style at will if it were possible it would have revolutionary implications for fields as diverse as education economic productivity health science and technology Robin Carroll spent months figuring out how best to create practical easily reproductive all experiments that could test their hypothesis and after much debate and tinkering they developed an ingenious device they dubbed the inception ater to do just that it was a comparatively simple system that consisted of three basic parts a virtual reality headset like a crude version of the oculus rift that fully covered a volunteers eyes an attached camera that projected images to the headset and an image processor that could modify the footage from the camera for inception ators were created for their tests Carol and Rob would personally use one of each with the other two being given to two volunteers Alice and Dave who weren't aware of what was being tested and so would act as a control group for the first few days they acclimatized to wearing the headsets and got used to going about their daily routine with a device set on a normal 30 frames per second after this calibration period the experiments could properly begin the first of their experiments involved reducing the frame rate from the camera stream by half dropping to 15 frames per second so each frame lasted twice as long though time was passing at the same rate the world through the lens seemed to slow down for all of them they themselves moved around the real world like they were walking in molasses they found that their own thoughts also slowed down and felt more relaxed than normal after a few days they switched over to the second set of tests they doubled the frame rate to 60 frames per second everything seemed like hyper-reality a lot more fluid than usual but otherwise had no appreciable impact on their perceptions or abilities for the third experiment they flipped the projected image to be upside down this would test of a perspective change would also alter their thinking processes at first was completely disorienting and they constantly found themselves bumping into everything for all intents and purposes they seemed like drunks wearing strange headsets much to the amusement and laughter of all observers but after a couple of days their minds had adjusted and adapted and that could function perfectly normally if I'm heading to the experiment they barely even noticed that the image was upside down anymore it actually replicated how the eyes really saw the world and their brains software had no problems flipping it around but once adapted there seemed to be no difference in perceptions or thinking ability well these were all fascinating it was the next set of experiments that were the real tests and the ones and changed everything this time it would introduce a slight delay to the video feed so would no longer be in sync with the real world initially this delay was set to half a second it was a very small lag almost imperceptible but a big enough impact for them to seem like they'd been smoking pot all day the reactions were just too slow for the most basic of tests like catching a ball thrown at them room to play any sports like the previous test however Alice and Dave managed to adjust after a few days and could function as normal more interestingly these two could react to events before the visuals were even displayed on their headsets for example they were now able to catch a ball thrown at them before they could actually see it leaving the throwers hand their minds were perceiving the subtle movements in the throwers body and the auditory cues and compensating to anticipate events as they were happening they were in effect experiencing the actual now and their brains were working fractions of a second ahead of what they used to be Carolyn robbed themselves didn't show any progress and adapting and so dropped out of their roles as participants they focused instead on being observers and documenting the experiments in greater detail they tried further doubling the lag on the inception either from half to one second for Dave this proved too much of an increase after several days he still I could look a stoner wearing tech gear on his head showing no progress he was dropped from the experiment shortly thereafter but Alice was a different story after just 24 hours she had fully adapted her brain had fully compensated for the lag somehow she was now able to anticipate events before even the subconscious cues will be signaled through the headset but the most unexpected and credible result was what happened when she wasn't wearing the inception eater rather than being in sync with now her mind appeared to be working ahead of time her senses seemed heightened super-sensitive levels she would know if someone was at the door before the son of knocking could be heard she could tell you that your phone was about to ring during one lunchtime walk through a park she suddenly ducked barely dodging a football that otherwise would have hit her head and knocked her over she was developing what Rob was affectionately calling spidey-senses swearing secrecy on the project they continued what they're testing but now solely focused on Alice they increased the lag time again this time to two seconds it took Alice just 14 hours to adapt her skills became astonishing in seemingly impossible Alice could now call the cards and randomly shuffled facedown deck one by one before they were flipped over or called the outcome of a coin toss with 100% accuracy but only if the results were revealed within two seconds of making them if the delay was more than two seconds they would invariably be wrong most of the time she started to develop the habit of finishing other people's sentences implausible as it sounded the inception ATAR was somehow training her mind to actually run ahead of reality Carolyn Rob wanted to see how far they could push this ability they increased the lag time with three seconds and then five seconds ten men a full minute each time after shorter and shorter periods of adjustment Alice would adapt her skills were now at full blown freaky proportions she knew what you were going to say before you said it as if you were reading your mind she could predict the entire deck of cards before they were spread open one weekend they even had the bright idea of testing her skills at blackjack in a casino they won over 17,000 before the pit-boss accused her of card counting and had them banned it was clear that her mind was somehow seeing into the near future and they had the tool to train this ability it was an incredibly exciting time for all of them though they had some debates about the ethics of continuing this experiment the promises of this incredible scientific discovery were too tempting to resist they were on the cusp of being able to explain the great philosophical questions about the nature of space-time and causality to prove if the fusion was written in stone if the flow of the great river of time can be rerouted but they needed more specific experiments designed to test specific variables there seem to be rules and limits to what Alice could predict her accuracy was strong only within her lag time limit or temporal horizon as coined by carol outside of that her guesses were not better than random chance this itself was creating new paradoxes that they needed more time and tests to explore and unravel for example why did this temporal horizon exist was it because the future knew what choices she would make or was it simply able to predict them because she had already made them or did she by making a prediction lock the future into a certain outcome up to the temporal horizon they wanted to be very thorough and very sure before they made their research public another unexplained side-effect of the experiments was that after months of conditioning with the inception ater Alice's brain no longer required it to continue owning her abilities over time she pushed her temporal horizon to 5 minutes than 10 minutes than an hour then six hours then 12 hours but her newfound powers were also starting to take their toll her body seemed increasingly out of sync with her mind she became restless and fidgety as if her body was trying to keep up with her thoughts her body started subconsciously reacting to events well before they happened she began suffering from frequent bouts of narcolepsy suddenly falling asleep mid conversation then jerking awake screaming about nightmares she was also becoming increasingly erratic and paranoid she spoke of seeing phantoms that were future echoes floating in and out more disturbingly she occasionally would shriek vaguely about entities that weren't human and shouldn't be here it was around this time that Carol and Rob decided the experiments had gone far enough and to publish and go public with their findings this was Nobel prize-winning research if it could be peer-reviewed and independently replicated in other labs around the world it would have bigger implications and Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA Max Planck's quantum theory of subatomic particles it was also increasingly clear that Alice needed urgent medical attention Carol and Rob invited Alice to their office that afternoon and informed her of their decision Alice reacted vehemently refusing to cooperate in saying the experiments were already too late to stop she refused to see a doctor screeching it would lead down a path where she would simply be a medical curiosity to be strapped to a chair and experimented on for the rest of her life she also would not allow the research to be published as it would lead her down the same path the argument escalated when Carol bluntly stated she was going to publish it anyway and it wasn't Alice's decision to block at stake was a nobel prize fame fortune and immortality in the history books Carroll wasn't going to throw that opportunity away the shouting match only ended when Carroll stronger to the room with Ellis screaming you will never publish it never do you hear me she slammed Carroll's chair violently against the wall with a loud cracking sound as after reinforced her point before leaving herself later that evening Carol and Rob met for dinner to discuss their options by the time they departed they both agreed the best option was to have Alice sedated and then put under medical observation she was increasingly paranoid and a danger to herself and others as the instigators of the experiments they had a duty of care they should have exercised long ago while they were swept up in the excitement of their discoveries it had been a tense day and by the time Rob got back to his home he was exhausted it didn't take long to fall asleep but he was awoken suddenly during the night to see Alice standing over him in the dark watching him sleep pressing her finger tightly to his lips she whispered in a raspy voice Shh she pointed all around her with her other hand we are not alone Rob tried to yell but found Alice's hands wrapped tightly around his mouth before he could emit a sound he looked around in the darkness but could see no one else Alice's head jerked from side to side as she surveyed around the room they can hear they see you they know what you're doing she softly hissed they both stayed there in silence for what seemed like half an hour Alice then finally released her grip and headed out towards the bedroom door she moved with a jerky shambled gate with known evenly slow and then rapid pace as he left the room Rob took a deep breath to gather his thoughts before he reacted was then that he noticed that her shadow was still silhouetted against the wall and only drifted out slowly to follow her long after she'd gone robbed quickly got out of bed to relock the front door wondering how she even managed to get in he was freaked out by the whole incident and wasn't sure if he had dreamt the whole thing his heart was pounding he was just about to dial the police we decided it would be better to talk to Carol in the morning first he double checked the locks and then went back to his bed to a shallow fitful sleep when he awoke the next morning he felt groggy and terrible he had a panic to that list when he realized he missed his regular morning alarm by a couple hours that somehow been switched off when he did finally arrive at his office three hours later than usual it was to a scene of chaos as firefighters were putting out a raging blaze that it consumed half the building the forensic investigation would later declare it to be an accident caused by a cracked power socket next to Carol's desk care sparking a fire when she turned on her computer in her panic she had accidentally toppled over the piles of books and research papers stacked around her trapping her as the fire spread rapidly consuming her their research and their equipment Rob would later find his personal backup files and the ones at Carol's homes were missing and all their online backups of the research was deleted it was becoming obvious that Alice knew what they had planned for her how could she not she was ten steps ahead of their every move after dealing with the authorities Rob went to Alice's home a few days later to confront her he found a front door was unlocked he barged in and almost wretch to the sight before him Alice was disheveled and her previously youthful features had seemed to have aged decades overnight her hair was a tangled mess matted and clotted with blood he was horrified to see that she had deep bloody gouge marks all down her face neck in arms tiny strips of dried flesh hung from her long jagged dirty fingernails along with the remains of two eyeballs still hanging by their optic nerves she stared at Rob through the gaping holes where her eyes used to be in hissed she stalked around the room more gracefully than she had in weeks like a tiger sizing up its prey when she spoke it was with greater clarity and power than ever before oh why the pity the horror and revulsion you feel when you gaze upon me I'm not proud of her work it doesn't offend you does it disgust you this wretched walking corpse you see before you it's but a pale imitation of what I saw when I look upon everyone I see like death unwilling screaming pitiful you all are already dead you just don't see it yet but [Laughter] Alyce's maniacal laughter filled the room Robert had to run from the room to puke outside after wiping his mouth he pulled out his phone to call for the police in an ambulance but the time they arrived a few minutes later Alice had already gone leaving only a fluttering curtain blowing over an open window the police filed her away as a missing person she still hasn't been found nor was it expected that she ever will be over the years rob moved around the country and even tried to replicate the experiment once a sirens call of rebuilding his research was too big a lure to resist but he never got any further than the first week all his volunteers got freaked out claiming to see a disheveled and mutilated face just outside of their vision in phantom fingers brushing against their arms and face when they have the headsets on at night a few would see that face staring at them in the background of a mirror Rob finished his story by asking if any of us were willing to be his new volunteers and to share in the glory of his discovery we looked at each other not quite knowing what to think none of us took him up on the offer he chuckled and said that he wouldn't either the universe tends toward equilibrium and what the gods give with one hand and they take away with the other immunised second law of thermodynamics or simply stated there ain't no such thing as a free lunch he had resigned to himself that research would never be completed after all how could I possibly have smart an opponent who already knows how the game will end if you made it this far I hope you'll follow me on Twitter all right King spooked creepy also if you're feeling generous I'd appreciate it if you donate even a dollar to my patreon over at patreon.com slash King spook every dollar helps the hope is eventually I'll be able to get enough through patreon that I can do this full-time thanks for watching

Channel: KingSpook

Views: 55,727

Rating: 4.8914971 out of 5

Keywords: creepypasta, kingspook

Id: 6IxHhEW0oGc

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 19 2018