Chronopunk: A novel (Episode 7)
If you went back in time, what knowledge would you gift the past to save the future?
Chapter 23
2061 Mission Control
Mody's mission is to prevent Ben Bernanke from purchasing bonds in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
"This is unprecedented," Lisa says, her gaze intense and unwavering. Worry etches lines across her usually composed face, a tell tale she usually avoids to display. Mody isn't just her employee; she loves him, and that’s why she’s concerned.
"You'll be transported back nearly sixty years to halt a chain of events that, over the decades, has plunged our nation into financial chaos. The ballooning deficit, pervasive government overreach, and rampant partisan politics plaguing us today all stem from this pivotal moment in America's economic history. "
She glanced about, a bleak melancholy deepening the intensity of her stare.
“We have a constitutional crisis which is caused by financial cancer.”
"What does Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing have to do with racial gaslighting in Washington?" Mody asks, his tone tinged with confusion. He genuinely can’t grasp how a Federal Reserve Chairman’s actions from half a century ago could shape today’s political landscape.
"It’s always about the money," Lisa replies, her voice icy. Her expression sours, anger flashing across her features.
"Listen, you don’t need to understand the why right now. What I need you to focus on is the how. It’s a daunting task. The real challenge is figuring out how to influence events back then without disrupting the time symmetry parameters of today. In simpler terms, if you alter the trajectory in 2008, you’ll shift the part of the multiverse we’re in now. We’re not entirely sure how to do this without causing collateral damage. The last thing we want is for you to go back, stop the Fed from buying bonds, and accidentally trigger World War III or some other disaster. Our goal is to improve things, not make them worse. That’s the tricky part."
Mody stared at her, his face etched with alarm.
"What are you saying? Are you telling me you haven’t figured out how to do this safely?"
"Really, Mody!" Lisa shot back, her frustration boiling over.
"Did Columbus have everything mapped out when he sailed to America? Did Apollo 11 know every detail before landing men on the moon? Did SpaceX have all the answers when they tackled Mars? Come on. You’re a scientist and an athlete—you know great endeavors always carry risk. That’s what makes them great, isn’t it? The uncertainty, the stakes? We know enough to launch this mission. And frankly, the country’s teetering on the edge of collapse. Our national debt dwarfs our nominal GDP—which, by the way, is artificially inflated anyway. We’re staring down bankruptcy, and Washington knows it. There’s no other option. Either we go back and fix this mess at its source, or we stumble into a future far more uncertain and dangerous than anything we’re facing now. That’s why Congress and the White House greenlit this top-secret mission. And get this, Mody—it’s so dire that it was a bipartisan decision. Both sides agree the debt’s spiraling out of control. Interest payments alone outstrip what we spend on welfare and defense combined. We’ve been papering over it with accounting tricks, but the bond market won’t be fooled forever. The reckoning’s coming—literally. It’s on us to stop it. If we don’t derail this money-printing train, our society will crumble into a totalitarian nightmare even Orwell couldn’t have dreamed up. We have to act. And you’ve been chosen to go back and fix it. You’re the Neil Armstrong of time travel—‘one small step for you, one giant leap’… you know the rest. Your orders are to stop the Fed. Start by trying to block the QE program through legal channels. If that fails, we move to Plan B."
"What’s Plan B?" Mody interjected, mid-bite into his sandwich. A chunk of ham and cheese sprayed across the table as he spoke.
"Hey, manners, please!" Lisa said with a laugh, shaking her head.
"For now, you don’t need to know anything about Plan B. We’ll relay those orders if and when they become necessary. We have to be extremely careful about preserving time symmetry. Telling you what Plan B entails could affect how you approach Plan A, so that’s off-limits. Your mission is to go back to 2006, hire the sharpest, most aggressive law firms in the country, and stop the Fed from buying bonds to bail out Wall Street. You’ll push for a nationalization of the Wall Street banks, followed by a recapitalization and then re-privatization. On top of that, you’ll lobby for legislation that bans the Fed from ever monetizing debt again. In short, your job is to land in 2006, block the Fed from monetizing debt, and ensure it’s legally locked out of trying in the future. That’s the objective. As I’ve said, you’ll tackle this through legal channels first. If that doesn’t work, we’ll switch to Plan B. You’ll receive detailed instructions as the mission unfolds. For now, your orders are to arrive in 2006 and blend into society. Your primary goal in the first year is to assimilate—become one of them. You’ll recall from training that one of the toughest challenges is acting like a contemporary while carrying knowledge of the future. It’s a delicate balance. You can’t cross that line. You’re allowed to use your foresight, but only subtly—never in a way that shifts broader trajectories, with one exception: the heart of your mission. You must stop the Fed from buying bonds after they start doing so in late 2008. That’s why we’re sending you back."
Chapter 24
Now (2007)
Winter in Chicago is a relentless battle against the elements. Mody bundles up to leave his apartment, but as he steps outside, a frigid gust smacks him square in the face. He retreats, swaps his sweater for a thicker one, and tackles the cold again. The five-minute walk to the L feels like twenty, the wind clawing at him every step of the way. He’s on edge. Today marks his first Neuralink transmission back to control center—the first intergenerational communication in human history. Well, in the history of humanity within Mody’s slice of the multiverse, to be exact. But today, Mody isn’t in the mood for scientific nitpicking. Multiverse or not, this moment is make-or-break for the project, for him, and for humankind.
Lisa picked a blues club on Chicago’s South Side for the inaugural transmission. She used to haunt the place during her University of Chicago days—maybe it’s nostalgia tugging at her. More likely, it’s strategy. As one of the few grad students who ventured into this part of the South Side back then, she knew it’d be a low-interference zone. That’s critical. Mody’s existence in 2007 is a tightrope act. He has to balance living an unremarkable life—avoiding any major ripples—while steering one pivotal event that, according to Lisa, will reshape the nation’s future. Since no one’s ever pulled this off, success and failure are still just theoretical musings. Until today. Today, everything could shift.
If Mody manages to link up with the control center, bridging more than half a century from frozen Chicago to the future, it’ll be more than a proof of concept. It’ll mean the technology actually works.
“That’s why they stuck the poor here,” he mutters to himself.
Historically, Chicago’s South Side was the city’s industrial heart. In the late 19th century, steel mills, oil refineries, and other heavy industries took root here. It was also where Rockefeller planted the University of Chicago, a calculated move to rival the Ivy League’s East Coast dominance. Mody’s orders are strict: steer clear of the campus. As he trudges from the L stop toward the blues club, the street unfurls a grim parade of shabby dollar stores, liquor shops, and pawn brokers flanking both sides. Unnecessary interactions are a no-go. The last thing he needs is a run-in with the police. He doesn’t blend in—his outsider vibe makes him a potential mark. Training drilled him on navigating places like this: keep low, stay sharp. In 2007, there’s no constant Neuralink feed to law enforcement—a development social scientists later credited with slashing violence nationwide. For now, as Mody moves down the block, he can’t help but think how people here are left to fend for themselves.
“No wonder this place is a powder keg,” Mody thinks. “No police, no Neuralink, no cameras—just a free-for-all.”
His instructions are clear: head to the blues club, grab a table, and link up with the control center. The music and ambient chatter will act as a buffer, masking the transmission from interference. Time travel hinges on agency—only information deliberately directed at a specific person can disrupt their time symmetry and carry across the years. Random background noise, like the hum of the crowd or a wailing guitar, stays neutral, leaving the temporal parameters undisturbed. Plus, it has a bonus: the clamor helps shield Mody’s brainwaves, keeping them from bleeding into anyone else nearby.
“Think of music as a protective shield,” Lisa had said during one of their briefings.
That’s why she picked the blues club. Stepping inside, Mody’s caught off guard by the mix of younger faces—likely students—mingling with the local crowd. It’s early evening, and the place is still sparsely populated. Ordering a drink, he catches a girl staring at him, her gaze unsettling. His nerves twitch, but he brushes it off, turning to claim a table near a group of young adults. Their rough edges and casual swagger mark them as locals, not campus types. Onstage, the band’s gearing up—the guitarist tweaks his strings, the drummer taps the hi-hat and snare, testing the sound. Inside, Mody’s coiled tight, senses sharp. But on the outside, he’s a picture of calm, a skill honed through relentless training.
“We should’ve been actors,” he’d once quipped.
Controlling emotions, syncing them with facial expressions and body language—that’s an actor’s craft, after all. But tonight, Mody’s not in the mood for theatrics. He’s minutes away from one of the most groundbreaking technological leaps humanity has ever attempted in his corner of the multiverse. Every ounce of focus is locked on that, leaving no room for stray thoughts. Despite countless studies and lab trials, no one’s certain how Neuralink will hold up for intergenerational communication. Interference from people around him is a risk; a glitch in the tech is another. He waits for the band to kick off, the signal to activate. As the music swells and he tunes his mind to the target frequencies, a piercing shout from the back of the room jolts him, snapping his concentration.
“Are you at Chicago?” the girl who’d been staring at him from the bar shouts over the opening chords of the band.
“No, I’m not. I, uh… I’m just here for the music, you know. I like the band.”
“Me too! It’s pretty rare to see someone like you around here. We’re students—I’m in my second year of a philosophy PhD. Name’s Chloe. What about you? Where’d you go to college?”
Mody’s ready for this one—he’s rehearsed it to death. He delivers his line smoothly: “I studied physics at the Polytechnic in Zurich.”
“Oh, you’re Swiss?” Chloe fires back, her eyes lighting up.
“My grandparents were Swedish, actually. I grew up in Wisconsin. I’d love to visit Sweden someday. What’s Switzerland like?” She asks, her gaze playful and flirtatious.
Mody’s forced to think fast. He can either shake off the girl or scrap the Neuralink connection. Judging by her vibe, she’s not the type to be brushed off easily—stunning, sharp, and radiating confidence. Rejecting her outright would either spark suspicion or draw attention from others, maybe even peg him as gay in a place like this. Saying no to Chloe isn’t subtle. He opts to abort the Neuralink. Inviting her for a drink instead, he spends the evening chatting her up. As they step out of the club, she leans in, kisses him, and asks for his number. Mody rattles off his digits and hails her a cab. She hops in and takes off.
Trudging down the block, he’s kicking himself—disappointed he didn’t link up with Lisa or seal the deal with Chloe. Then, out of nowhere, the cab screeches back into view.
“Hey, I forgot to ask,” Chloe says, leaning out of the cab window. “What are you really doing on the South Side? Are you, like, an FBI agent or something? You’re not a student—why come down here?”
“I told you,” Mody replies, keeping his tone steady. “I like the music.”
Mody swings open the cab door and slides in, directing the driver to his place in Bucktown. Chloe proves to be exactly as she appears—smart, sexy, and brimming with energy, a fact Mody discovers firsthand in his bedroom that night. The next morning, they grab breakfast together, followed by another steamy session before Chloe heads off. At the L stop, she waves goodbye, bound for campus and her classes at the University of Chicago. Mody waves back, relieved, then descends the station stairs.
He’s all too aware of the mess last night’s fling with Chloe has stirred up. For one, the South Side blues club is now a no-go for Neuralink transmissions to the control center. Lisa had a backup plan ready—another blues club up north near Evanston, just in case something like this happened. Mody’s not sure how Lisa will react to his getting tangled up with Chloe. He tells himself it was purely professional, a calculated move to avoid blowing his cover. Still, as he steps onto the platform, he can’t shake the thought: You never know.
The next window for contact is in two days at the backup blues club up north, near Evanston. This spot’s an old Prohibition-era haunt, its walls lined with faded photos of Al Capone and his fellow mobsters. Rumor has it there’s a tunnel beneath the stage, a relic from the days they’d slip out during police raids. Mody couldn’t care less about the history lesson. Tonight, his mission is simple: no distractions, no girls—just establish a clean line to the control center. He’s here to connect with his peers in 2064.
The bar’s buzzing, packed with people—a stroke of luck. The thicker the crowd, the more Mody blends in. He orders a drink and picks a table tucked far from the stage. As the band kicks into gear, he focuses, tuning his mind to the assigned frequencies. Then, clear as day, Belal’s voice crackles through, brimming with excitement: “Hey, Mody! You’re live!”
“A small thought for you, but damn, a giant leap for mankind,” Belal exclaims, his voice buzzing with triumph as he connects with Mody.
The first intergenerational transmission is a success, and the world keeps spinning on its axis—no catastrophes yet.
“You couldn’t keep it in your pants!” Lisa snaps, her anger crackling through the link. Mody stifles a laugh, unable to help himself.
‘So that’s the historic first Neuralink call in our multiverse—a woman chewing out her guy for sleeping with someone else’, he thinks.
“Sorry, Lisa. Look, I was trained to blend in. Hooking up with that girl was the natural move for a guy like me. Anything less, and people would’ve started asking questions. I get that you’re pissed, but can we drop it and move on?”
“Of course we can, you asshole,” Lisa snaps, then cuts her Neuralink feed, leaving Belal to handle the debrief.
“You’ll reach out to two law firms in the city,” Belal begins. “Both specialize in federal finance and government affairs. We’ve pinpointed two contacts—activists who’ll assist with filing the lawsuit.”
Belal streams the details through a wireless phone—standard tech for 2007—and saves it to a hard drive. Since Mody’s barred from using anything from 2064, he’s stuck with the tools of his 2007 contemporaries. He opens the file, pulling up a photo of the first contact. A grin spreads across his face.
“Well, this should be interesting,” he chuckles.
Lisa selected Deborah Fidler as Mody’s first contact—a constitutional lawyer with a razor-sharp grasp of finance. Originally from Slovenia, Fidler earned her law degree at the University of Chicago and a PhD in Finance from Princeton. By day, she’s a partner at one of Chicago’s top white-collar crime firms; in her spare time, she teaches at Purdue and Notre Dame. Her niche? Constitutional law and government finance.
“She’s the one you call when you need to drag Washington bureaucrats into court over financial dirty tricks,” Belal explained during the debrief.
Chapter 25
Deborah’s reserved, almost somber presence stirs something in Mody. They meet at a Starbucks in the Loop, steps from her office. She plays it cool, brushing off any hint of flirtation with practiced indifference, but Mody’s still drawn in. Her sleek black Italian suit—tailored just right, with a neckline that teases enough to throw off his focus—hooks his attention from the jump.
“You’ve got something to discuss?” she says, cutting to the chase. “My partners mentioned you’re an intriguing case. So, what’s your story?”
“Oh, I’m interesting, alright,” Mody shoots back with a sly grin. “Probably the most fascinating case you’ve ever had—or ever will.”
Chapter 26
Since the dawn of the millennium, the U.S. economy has lurched from one upheaval to the next. The dot-com bubble burst, then 9/11 struck, and the Great Financial Crisis loomed on the horizon by 2008. When Mody touched down in 2006, Wall Street was already on edge, rattled by the swelling debt in the housing market. A lethal cocktail of high finance, greed, and sheer recklessness had transformed Wall Street into a sprawling casino. Everyone saw the cracks—unsustainable didn’t begin to cover it—but no one could hit the brakes. Chuck Prince, ex-CEO of Citigroup, captured the mood with his notorious line:
“When the music stops, liquidity dries up, and things get messy. But as long as the tune’s playing, you’ve got to dance. And we’re still dancing.”
Chapter 27
When liquidity evaporated in the fall of 2008, chaos erupted. Lehman Brothers collapsed, and within days, Wall Street’s façade crumbled. Even seasoned insiders like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs CEO, couldn’t predict the scale of the fallout. Global finance ground to a halt. The system’s interconnectedness was its Achilles’ heel: one bank defaults, it stops paying others, those banks falter, and soon no one trusts anyone. It’s a financial vacuum, sucking cash dry. With Wall Street reeling, all eyes turned to Washington. Calls for bailouts grew deafening, and Congress raced to draft the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). But, as with any blockbuster issue in D.C., it hit gridlock. Republicans recoiled at handouts; Democrats demanded broader rescue packages—why save Wall Street when GM, Ford, and GE were sinking too? TARP eventually passed, but the delay was costly.
The root problem was stark: Wall Street banks had poured massive loans into real estate. When the housing bubble burst, those assets turned to dust, leaving banks insolvent overnight. TARP aimed to buy up the wreckage, but it crawled through Congress. Enter Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke. Seeing the lag, he stepped in, buying the toxic assets directly to prop up the banks. This move, later dubbed Quantitative Easing (QE), was a slickly named bailout—and it worked. It cemented Bernanke’s legacy, even earning him a Nobel Prize in Economics. But the real cost wouldn’t hit for decades.
QE cracked open a Pandora’s box: moral hazard. If the Fed bails out one bank, why not others? Why not entire industries? Bernanke morphed the Fed from a referee into a player, picking economic winners and losers. This birthed a new industrial policy—a toxic stew of crony capitalism and performative social justice that infected the U.S. and other Western democracies. As economic theory warned, it fueled wilder financial swings, each demanding bigger interventions. By the 2050s, Washington had become a PR machine for government overreach, and the national debt ballooned to multiples of GDP. Interest payments alone dwarfed welfare and defense spending combined, yet the deeper rot was how government influence had metastasized across the economy. When deficits outstripped the cash flow of most S&P 500 firms, traditional wealth creation withered. Innovation and private enterprise shrank to mere footnotes.
By the time Congress greenlit a covert mission to rewind history and stop Bernanke’s QE, the U.S. was a shell of itself. Politics turned venomous—partisan extremism, racial strife, identity wars, and hyperinflation ran rampant. But the breaking point was plummeting birthrates, a demographic time bomb ignited by soaring costs. Hyperinflation jacked up education prices—once a gateway to jobs—into the stratosphere. By the late 2050s, an “elite” university degree, essentially a pass to cushy government-backed gigs, cost millions per child. Faced with that, would-be parents opted out of having children altogether. Senator Charles Von, the Republican lead of the secret QE reversal commission, pinned hyperinflation—and thus the birthrate collapse—squarely on Bernanke’s 2008 debt-monetizing gamble.
Von teamed up with his Democratic counterpart, Atifa Benkader, to form a clandestine congressional committee to tackle the crisis. That it had bipartisan backing underscored the gravity: only existential threats unite D.C. like that. Hyperinflation, shrinking populations, and unchecked bureaucratic sprawl were exactly such threats. In early 2061, Von and Benkader launched “Stop the Fed.” It took three years for Lisa’s team to recruit and train candidates for the time-travel mission. From a shortlist of six, Mody emerged as the pick. In early 2064, he was dispatched to 2006 with a clear directive: embed himself and gear up for a legal showdown with the Fed when Bernanke moved to buy Wall Street’s bonds in 2008. The trickiest part? Convincing lawyers to fight a battle over events they’d see as hypothetical, while Mody knew they were certain.
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