Chronopunk: A novel (Episode 5)
If you went back in time, what knowledge would you gift the past to save the future?
Chapter 15
For two years, Simbi labored as a cleaning lady, maid, and did other odd jobs to stay under the radar. Her status as a former underworld queen was a liability. Wanted by both the police and a notorious Belgian drug cartel, her only option was to sink to the lowest layers of society, where no one would think to look for her. She found herself a shabby apartment in Vallejo, near Oakland, California, and took on work across the Bay Area.
She had deliberately chosen to enter the U.S. like any other undocumented worker, even though she could have easily paid off lawyers to secure a business visa. Nothing was left to chance. She changed her legal name to Laura Assani, but for some strange reason, she kept her nickname, Simbi. She toiled, kept her head down, and endured.
But even a woman of focus and conviction like Simbi had her limits. After two years of scrubbing toilets and helping elderly people relieve themselves, she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Two years is enough. And quite frankly, I don’t see the difference between this crappy life and jail anyway.”
So, Simbi ventured out of her migrant worker lifestyle. Her second mistake was falling back into old habits. Selling pills to Berkeley students was just too obvious a career choice. After all, Berkeley had been an epicenter for both Nobel Prizes and drug-infested college dorms for nearly a century.
“Where else do you get such a fantastic market? People here are so full of self-righteous illusions that they actually think downing pills enhances their creative juices and helps them save the world. Whatever.”
Simbi had no interest in judging her customers. Whether they were nerds, hippies, or wealthy international students, Berkeley was like a bustling Starbucks at 7 a.m. on a busy Manhattan corner—only here, students lined up for pills. It took her only a few months to establish a flourishing business.
She was careful not to tap into any European supply routes, which was easy since drug trafficking in California was largely controlled by East Asian gangs. Even the Mexican cartels had lost their grip on the Golden State. Simbi was glad for that.
She started with a dealer in East Oakland but quickly realized the profit margins were much better if she sourced her pills directly from the Port of Oakland. As her business grew, she needed a crew. Expanding from retail to wholesale meant protection was now essential.
That’s when she made her third mistake: getting back into the fight game. Like any relapse, it began innocently enough. Simbi found some promising fighters and offered to manage them. But her real weakness had always been the gambling side of the sport. Before long, she was back to writing slips.
As a woman on the run from both the police and the mob, Simbi had to be extra careful about how she conducted herself. One particular obsession of hers was avoiding romantic entanglements at all costs.
“Sex is dangerous. Love is lethal for a person in my situation,” she often lectured herself in the mirror.
That all changed when she first saw Mounir. It was at an MMA bout in Reno, Nevada, where she watched an incredibly handsome fighter snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. He was all but beaten—pinned on his back, mounted by his opponent, desperately fending off punches with his elbows. Then, in a sudden shift, he moved his hips slightly to the right, feinted left, and within seconds had his opponent in a chokehold. Tap.
When the referee raised Mounir’s hand in victory, Simbi instantly recognized that stoic expression—the look only natural born fighters possess.
“This guy isn’t just some athlete chasing gold. He’s a true fighter,” she thought.
Simbi recognized talent instantly.
“You’re a scrappy technician,” she told Mounir later, after they had made love in his hotel room.
“Hm, you’re not happy with the act?” Mounir asked, genuinely thinking she was talking about the sex.
“Nooo, come on. What is it with you men? It’s not always about how you perform in bed—I meant your fighting.”
“Oh. Well, I was raised on the streets of Casablanca and trained Brazilian style. That’s what you get—scrappy and technical. That about sums up my MMA career.”
Simbi couldn’t get enough of Mounir. It had been almost three years since she last felt a man inside her, and Mounir exuded masculinity from every pore. He was driven when necessary, yet also laid-back, never taking life too seriously. Simbi, however, was the complete opposite—relentless, intense, and now, with her appetite for sex finally satisfied, her energy and ambition surged toward even bigger goals. Everything had to move fast—except the sex, of course.
At first, Mounir tried to slow her down, but eventually, he let it go. What was wrong with a life full of fights, luxury hotels, glamorous weekends in Mexico, and a woman who was both a business genius and a whirlwind of sexual energy?
And before long, Mounir started winning—fight after fight. Simbi was like dark energy in the cage: invisible, undetectable, but undeniably present. Mounir drew power from places he never even knew existed.
Chapter 16
Simbi’s vision of a life with Mounir—full of excitement, love, and success—was too perfect to be interrupted by reality. But professional fighting and Berkeley physics don’t mix well. At some point, they would have to choose a path.
As his manager, lover, and the mother of his son, Simbi carefully guided Mounir’s career through the maze of athletic challenges and academic responsibility. He liked it that way. Now a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore Lab in Berkeley, Mounir’s focus shifted increasingly toward cosmology and the parametrization of time symmetries.
Time travel emerged from the uncanny marriage of quantum physics and artificial intelligence. Quantum physics seeks to make sense of the universe by understanding the behavior of elementary particles and their interactions—a bottom-up approach to deciphering nature. In contrast, AI learns and remembers enough of these interactions to replicate accurate models of the world. This same principle underpins time travel: the goal is to create a model of the multiverse capable of precisely capturing and reproducing its trajectory across time.
Mounir was particularly interested in the relationship between efficiency and performance—or, as he put it in one of his TED Talks:
"Fundamentally, the question is: How much do we need to remember to accurately recreate trajectories along the time dimension? As it turns out, this question is far more nuanced than it seems. For instance, does the color of the leaves on a tree matter when reconstructing a specific sequence from a person’s life?"
Questions like these deeply engaged the scientific community throughout the 2040s.
"The problem with precision," Mounir explained, "is that it’s a moving target. How far into the details do we need to go? Must we account for the arrangement of matter—atoms, or even subatomic particles? Where does precision end? What does precision even mean? And while we’re at it, what exactly is time, and how do time and precision connect? If I measure events in picoseconds, will new insights emerge—or will they not? Take dark matter, for example. Since the 1930s, scientists have puzzled over it. We know it exists, but we don’t fully understand what it is because we can’t observe it directly. Now, imagine we redefine how we measure time. What if a second is longer or shorter than we assumed? That would almost certainly shift nearly every cosmological constant, since most depend on time. And if we alter those constants, we change how we perceive nature itself. Physics begins to look different, and dark matter might simply be a sign that we’ve been mismeasuring cosmological constants all along."
Mounir’s work focused on astrophysics and time symmetry, with a particular emphasis on reconstructing planetary trajectories. Leveraging rapid advancements in quantum hardware and corresponding algorithms, he successfully generated trajectories spanning several light-years—a feat regarded as a major breakthrough in the early 2040s.
"If I can program it, I understand it," was Mounir’s motto, inspired by academic luminaries like David Deutsch and Richard Feynman.
"Building generative models to reconstruct planetary trajectories brings us ever closer to the underlying dynamics of the universe," Mounir mused poetically to an enthusiastic crowd at his latest seminar in Zurich.
"There are two key questions here: How much do we need to remember, and how far back must we go? Take this rock, for instance."
He held up a fist-sized piece of volcanic rubble.
"It’s been around for millions of years. How do we reconstruct its temporal trajectory? What information truly matters? Clearly, most of the millions of years it spent lying on a Maui beach are redundant—we don’t need to store all that data in the model. But some events still matter. Which ones? How do we decide? This, my friends, is what physics grapples with today, and we’re inching closer to some form of resolution. As it turns out, nature provides clues—clues our models exploit to intelligently filter the algorithms, retaining only what’s essential. It’s a marvel. Perhaps that’s how our own brains evolved. How did cavemen know what to remember when hunting for protein? Clearly, memorizing every leaf on a tree wasn’t necessary—or was it? Maybe the color of those leaves revealed seasonal shifts or animal mating patterns. Perhaps that was useful information for planning a hunt. Our generative AI models, though remarkable, have yet to fully capture such subtle nuances. And let me be clear: as challenging as it is to work with rocks, it pales in comparison to tracing the time trajectories of living organisms. This opens a door of profound philosophical significance. What distinguishes a rock from life? What is life? My friends, we are venturing down paths our ancestors knew existed but never dreamed we’d tread. True understanding of life begins and ends with the ability to reconstruct its temporal trajectory. The difference between my work, which focuses solely on inorganic matter, and that of my colleagues studying eukaryotes, is precisely the divide between non-life and life."
As the crowd erupted into enthusiastic cheers and a standing ovation, Mounir stepped backstage and kissed Simbi, who was holding the hand of their eight-year-old son, Mody.
“You’re the best. Makes me want to study cosmology,” she whispered in his ear. Mounir beamed with joy. What more could a kid from Casablanca wish for?
Chapter 17
In many ways, Simbi and Mounir were a perfect match. He was a strategic thinker, skilled at evaluating options and winning fights, while she was a hyperactive go-getter with a soft spot for courageous (and handsome) men. Simbi wasn’t one for pondering solutions. Instead, she acted first, later aligning the outcomes with whatever the current problem demanded. Now, she faced a challenging situation. As Mounir’s manager and the mother of their son, she had to navigate a delicate decision: whether Mounir should retire from MMA. True to form, Simbi wasn’t overthinking it. On the contrary, her actions outpaced any logical analysis of the circumstances.
Mounir, now in his mid-30s, wasn’t too old for MMA, but he was undoubtedly on the declining arc of his fighting career. Meanwhile, his work at Lawrence Livermore Lab in Berkeley was gaining momentum, earning him invitations to give talks, deliver lectures, and even take on assistant professorships. Unfortunately, Simbi couldn’t afford for Mounir to retire from MMA just yet. He was reading a scientific paper when she stormed into their living room, hands raised.
“We are going to make mooonnneey!” Simbi exclaimed, stretching out the word for emphasis.
Trevor Leason, a former UFC champion, had agreed to fight Mounir for the interim belt of a prestigious promotion. It wasn’t the UFC, but the payout was still impressive. In fact, Simbi called it “awesome.”
Mounir’s reaction, however, was far less enthusiastic. The idea didn’t sit well with him.
“Listen, Simbi,” he said, his tone measured. “I’m not sure I should go back to camp and fight Trevor. There’s a reason the money’s good. Trevor may be out of the UFC, but he’s got comeback potential. He’s not some washed-up has-been. I don’t think I’m at his level.”
“Fair,” Simbi replied, undeterred. “But why do you care? Your best asset is your defense—he won’t be able to hurt you. If you lose to someone like Trevor, no one’s going to hold it against you. But what if you win? What happens then?”
Mounir paused to consider her words. Beating Trevor would indeed shake up the hierarchy in his corner of the MMA world. For starters, it would guarantee him a title shot. Though his promotion wasn’t the UFC, a win could still secure a solid six-figure contract. And the UFC itself? At his age, he was likely too old to be signed—but then again, you never knew.
“And what if I lose?” he asked.
“Then you retire with an L against a former UFC champ,” Simbi replied with a smirk, her unmistakably sexy confidence shining through. “That’s not the end of the world, is it?”
Chapter 18
After an intense eight-week training camp, Mounir was on his way to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The location struck him as odd for a fight of this caliber, and his suspicions deepened when he saw the venue. It looked more like an old warehouse than a proper arena—hardly suitable for hosting such a high-profile bout. Upon arriving, Mounir checked into the fighters’ hotel and took a nap to recharge. Later, he headed to the medical checkup, where fighters undergo a battery of tests to ensure they’re fit to compete. There, he was also briefed on the rules and any special arrangements for the fight.
Back in his hotel room, Mounir met with his nutritionist and athletic coach to finalize plans for the last stage of his weight cut. That evening, his head coach, Jason, joined him for a detailed rundown of the fight strategy. Mounir had already studied Trevor Leason inside and out, but the night-before briefing was a ritual neither he nor Jason would ever skip.
“Where’s Simbi?” Mounir asked, a hint of nervousness in his voice.
“Have you seen her?” Jason shook his head, but the negative response didn’t faze Mounir much. It was no secret that Jason and Simbi didn’t get along. Simbi’s hard-driving style rubbed most men the wrong way, and what frustrated Jason even more was her refusal to share information. Growing up surrounded by thugs and the constant threat of violence had made Simbi fiercely protective of her privacy. She trusted only her inner circle. Back in the day, that meant her brother Ashley and her boyfriend Aston. Mounir didn’t even know who her current lieutenants were—a sign he should’ve noticed that her trust in him was limited too. He was kept on a need-to-know basis, even about his own fights, which Simbi guarded like state secrets. It wasn’t that she intended to deceive him; she simply couldn’t bring herself to trust anyone fully.
So, Jason not knowing Simbi’s whereabouts didn’t strike Mounir as unusual. Later that night, Mounir endured one final sauna session to shed another two pounds. His weight dropped to 156.5 pounds. “Half a pound to go,” Jason said, patting his shoulder before letting him rest.
“Weigh-ins are at 8 a.m. We’ll wake you at 6:30 a.m. You’ve probably lost that half pound overnight. If not, twenty more minutes in the sauna will do it,” Jason said.
The next morning, Mounir checked his phone—no message from Simbi. He had indeed dropped the half pound while sleeping, meaning he was set for weigh-ins. But a nagging unease crept into his nervous system. Simbi was wild and unpredictable, yet she’d never disappeared before a fight. That wasn’t like her—unprofessional behavior was the one thing Simbi never tolerated. Mounir made a few calls, but no one knew where she was. After a successful weigh-in, Jason escorted him to the massage room for an hour-long relaxation session. By 10:30 a.m., Mounir was eating his second breakfast. Regaining weight after the cut was crucial, but it had to be done carefully to avoid taxing his digestive system. His natural walk-around weight was about 175 pounds; he’d shed twenty to hit the 155-pound lightweight division limit. Fighters cut weight to avoid facing bigger opponents—a practice that, over time, had morphed into its own bizarre sport. Commentators had griped about it for decades, and MMA officials had tried tweaking the rules, but the weight cut remained stubbornly entrenched.
Svetlana, Mounir’s nutritionist, meticulously managed his carb and protein intake on a precise schedule. By early afternoon, he was ready for his final nap. Exhausted from the weigh-ins and the careful replenishment of nutrients and water, he found the rest surprisingly refreshing. But when he woke around 5 p.m. and still saw no notifications from Simbi, he took an unusual step. Against his normal instincts, he consulted his AI assistant to reconstruct the last few hours. Jason was furious.
“Mounir, you know the risks of generating a time trajectory this close to a fight,” Jason snapped. “For god’s sake, you should know not to disrupt time symmetry and seriously jeopardize your performance.”
“I hear you,” Mounir replied, his voice firm. “But I haven’t heard from Simbi, and I won’t step into that cage unless I know where she is and that everything’s okay.”
Consulting the generative AI agent only worsened Mounir’s unease. There was no trace of Simbi, which could mean only one thing: she had deliberately ensured the AI couldn’t track her movements. His mood darkened further. Evading a generative AI’s reach took serious effort, and with Simbi, that rarely spelled good news. She was a master at this. Her past as a drug dealer, sports bookmaker, and who-knows-what-else had honed her skills in “trajectory management”—the AI community’s term for erasing one’s digital footprint.
By 7:30 p.m., it was time for Mounir to enter the fighters’ lounge. This was where his final checkup would take place, his gloves would be sealed, and last-minute instructions would be given. Reluctantly, he agreed to step inside. There was no turning back now. The fighters’ lounge offered only two exits: the front door, leading to the cage, or the back door, leading home—a forfeited loss. Most critically, all outside communication was cut off. No cell phones, no Neuralinks, and absolutely no access to AI. For the first time in years, Mounir would enter the cage without hearing Simbi’s voice of encouragement.
At around 9:45 p.m., security signaled that Mounir was five minutes from his walkout. As he marched through the crowd to his trademark theme song, “Middle Child” by J. Cole, he managed to push aside his worries about Simbi. A fighter’s theme song is like an alter ego, an acoustic embodiment of their persona. Cole’s mellow beat rolls smoothly beneath tense lyrics about aggression, struggle, and respect, mirroring Mounir’s own duality.
‘Promise I am never letting up. Money in your palm don’t make you real…’
The lyrics of “Middle Child” captured Mounir’s fighting style perfectly—and not just that. They mirrored who he was as a person. As his Brazilian coach always said:
“You roll the way you are. The mat doesn’t lie.” In other words, “You fight the way you are—you can’t leave your personality outside the cage.”
“Middle Child” perfectly captured Mounir’s character—his mellow demeanor, scrappy fighting style, and relentless drive to win. Beyond that, it reflected a life philosophy aligned with his personal ethics: it’s not just about money. There’s more to life than wealth—for starters, there’s love. Simbi was the love of his life, yet she was absent at this critical juncture in his professional fighting career. How could this be? Where was she? There wasn’t time to dwell on it. The fight was seconds away.
Referee Mark Jacobson signaled the start, and Trevor Leason came out swinging, unleashing an expected barrage in the first round. His notorious kicks were lethal, but Mounir was well-prepared for this style and avoided serious damage. Around the three-minute mark, Mounir blocked a kick and seized the moment, launching a takedown that landed successfully. The crowd erupted. With Trevor on the mat, Mounir targeted his right arm for a kimura—a move that, if executed, would compromise Trevor’s arm and force him to tap out, ending the fight. But Leason, with his veteran instincts, wasn’t about to fall for a basic jiu-jitsu technique. He rolled out from under Mounir and countered with a choke attempt. Both fighters excelled at grappling, which often meant neither could secure a win through jiu-jitsu alone. It was like two chess grandmasters playing to a draw.
But MMA is more than grappling chess. As they returned to their feet, the fight shifted to boxing exchanges—unsurprising to the commentators, since neither Mounir nor Leason was known for their stand-up game. Fighters often target their opponent’s weaknesses, and boxing wasn’t either man’s forte. When Mounir threw a punch, Trevor ducked and shot for a double-leg takedown. Caught off guard, Mounir lost his footing and hit the mat. Now Trevor was on top, raining down fists in a ground-and-pound assault. Jason remained calm. As Mounir’s head coach, he knew how well Mounir thrived under pressure. Sure enough, Mounir executed his signature escape from ground-and-pound, flipping the script and taking control.
Ground-and-pound is one of MMA’s most dominant positions. Losing it often saps the aggressor’s momentum, leaving them momentarily disoriented—an opening the opponent can exploit. The crowd was on its feet, roaring. A comeback like this could etch Mounir’s name into MMA history books. Escaping ground-and-pound against a former UFC champ was headline gold. The bell saved Trevor, marking the end of the round.
Round two began more cautiously, with both fighters adopting a strategic approach. Trevor realized Mounir wasn’t a pushover, while Mounir confirmed what he’d suspected: Trevor was a cut above his previous opponents. Trevor’s tactical shift in the second round put Mounir on the defensive. Throughout fight camp, Mounir had prepared for an aggressive Trevor—constant kicks and takedown attempts. Now, Trevor flipped the script, hanging back and letting Mounir come to him while focusing on defense. From the corner, Jason bellowed at the top of his lungs:
"Pull him in, don’t approach!"
For some reason, Mounir lost his usual composure and felt an irresistible urge to attack. He threw a punch, then ducked and lunged for a takedown. That’s when Trevor caught him—perfectly executing a high kick to the cheek. Mounir dropped like a felled tree.
Trevor wasted no time, immediately pouncing on him and unleashing a brutal ground-and-pound. But luck was on Mounir’s side—Trevor got ahead of himself. While hammering down elbows, he lost his balance. Seizing the moment, Mounir managed to escape and even counter, but Trevor was ready. He dodged the counter and fired back with a vicious elbow straight to Mounir’s nose.
Blood now covered Mounir’s face and spread allover the floor. Jason glanced at the clock—twenty more seconds, and the bell would save Mounir. Trevor unleashed a flurry of brutal punches to his face and body. At this point, Mounir focused solely on defense, trying to limit the damage.
Then, the bell rang. For now, Mounir was saved.
"You can't let this guy trick you like that. He wants you to give up your defense. Don't. Keep your defense and wait for an opening."
Jason yelled while Mounir's bloody face was being treated. Round three started with an immediate attack by Trevor. If Mounir thought Trevor would play his tactical chess game again, he was wrong. Trevor took to the offense and went for a takedown which failed. He tried again and failed again. Now things calmed down. But Mounir was injured. Blood started flowing from a cut above his eye, impeding the sight on that eye. Trevor knew how to take advantage of this fact and started hitting this side of Mounir. It was the liver kicks which got Mounir. Liver kicks are the stealth bombers of MMA. You don't see them coming but when they hit, you are in terrible shape. Getting hit in the liver compromises a person's blood circulation and chemical balance. As a consequence, nausea and breathing problems seriously limit the fighter's ability to act.
"It's more mental than physical," Jason said after the fight.
"No matter how physical this sport is. It's all about the mental capacity to counter your opponent's moves. If you lose that you're done. That's why small people can beat large, muscled monsters in this sport. Hit him in the liver and you're seriously limiting his ability to think!"
That's what happened to Mounir. Trevor kept hitting the same spot again and again. Even with defense such hits can hurt and compromise the inner organs of a fighter. Now Mounir was seriously struggling to keep his defense. Jason thought about throwing in the towel but then Trevor took that decision off his hands. After a series of kicks to the liver he executed a perfect back turn and kicked Mounir straight in the face. Mounir dropped and the referee immediately stopped the fight.
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