The Million Years Answering Machine

"50 Million people are going to die!!!"

(12 monkeys)

Hi, Rigoletto here, would be nice if you could take me to a trip into your time.
Please send a time machine to:

30.04.2006, 12:00am
9° 21' O
52° 06' N

Beacon would be nice, entrance access is "timetrip", to prevent visits unexpectedly.

@Rigoletto: you got in there and posted my post before me. oh well.

I would leave the following message to the millionth generation:

"Congratulations on not following the path of my people. Gone and far behind you, though we may be, you must remember that a species devided is a species that is doomed to extinction.

All empires fail, and ours was no acception. They fail for the same reasons, and will always fail. So never allow yourselves to regress to imperialism.

Should you find yourselves on the brink of destruction, and even if not, do as we have and survive compendiums of your knowledge.. that it is not lost to the next civilization as the majority of knowledge from our ancestry was lost to us.

It is by retaining the knowledge that we gain, and teaching of our errors to our succeeding generations that we will break the cycle of ascending, self destruction, and regression.

As our knowledge is passed to you, so must you pass it to the generations of your distant future, that what happens to us befalls no one else and our species lives until it's extinction cannot be avoided."

The password is "Sw0rdf1sh", not "Swordfish"

Edit: I really like Rigoletto's

"I licked the speaker your hearing this message from, wet willy "

I dont know how they would say however... Further more this would be stupid if they dont have a speaker agenst their ear.

"hey i was just calling about the problem your having with the sink. do you want me to come over now or would 1 million years be good for you?" i think they chose 1 million years. ps WOW this is old post i just think its kind of fun

Nah, I remember "Dave".(Good one fastlane)

"Has Tusk shown up yet???"

I'd be interested in leaving a message. But I really have no idea what I'd put.

It would have to be something smart and inspiring.

[on the mankind answering server] "Dave? Who's Dave? What? He's located 5.6 MB behind me? Ask him to call me back on this number would you? Thanx!"

I would leave the following message : "A sphincter says what?"

I'd say, "tag you're it"

for resurrecting this thread..

Yea, yea, I know, but c'mon, that was hilarious

My message to the future, and a warning until then.

Do you run on electricity? Congratulations, it was only
a matter of time. Ack.

You dont? The secret is to BANG THE ROCKS TOGETHER guys.

"No, Dave is outside. Can I take a message?"
*ERROR, Message System Ram sharing violation. Memory location shared with Pod Bay Doors*
Resolving: Pod Bay Doors disabled.
"Please record your message at the beep." *BEEP*

10kb is actually a fair amount of space.. about 2048 words. That's enough space for a -very breif- recount of human history. Alternatively, you could fit a 100x100 8-bit colour image in that space.

What would you write in such a 2048 word history then??

I'm sure you are aware of this, but even if you would take mankind's technological advancement as the main focus, there's no way you could fit everything into just 2048 words.

hmm.. I guess so..

What about a colour image? you might have a picture of the earth before the plate tectonics moved the continents to their 1000000-years-from-now positions:

That image is in 8-bit,100x100 image.

But since it's compressed, it's only 6.9KB. So you could add a caption:


The way it was, when we were there.

Hmmm....

"Please reconstitute my DNA."

or maybe

"Here is my recipe for Cuban Black Bean Soup. Please enjoy the taste and the musical accompaniment."

Seriously I'd love to leave a thought provoking message but I have to believe that any intelligent race that survived that long would find 99% of our culture very strange.

*if you get this, i was right. if not, it doesnt matter anyway*

edit: heck, even i find american culture strange. and im not that old or intelligent.
on the other hand, i find people strange too.. in general...

Back to the subject:
No, i won't put a message because when he arrives i'll be dead then.

I'd leave a public message, there is no reason for leaving a private message since my grand^10sons/daughters would only be interested in a more detailed explanation of my person. Therefore, 10 kb are not sufficient.

Here's my public message:

"I'm lookin' for a tap and die, and some WD-40!"

What message would be so important that everyone (ie. mankind) should know about in a far far future from now?

Even without knowing the exact future setting I think very little would make actual sense.

What's bad and is likely to never change and hence would be worth mentioning?

"The answer to the reason of life, the universe and everything is..." *stop*

And let them try to "reconstruct" the ending of the message, even though there is none.

Wow, this thread is anticque. I think that if we wait long enough, this thread would still exist in a million years, and there would be no need to leave a message

Worse yet, we might have totally forgotten what an 'Answering machine' is by then because communication will have changed even more than it has for us now in the last century or so.

Its funny how people feel that they have to leave some legacy of their existance. As if being dead is not so bad as long as someone remembers you...