When I understood a bit of physics and a lot about the wisps we leave in our wake, I wondered. Will a powerful civilization, in the future, be able computationally reconstruct instances from the past?

Einstein sitting in his room, stabbing his violin?

No, I’d decided. The paints are so mixed that it is computationally unfeasible to unmix them.

Starting now, I’m not so sure. The amount of data we leave in our wake is so much, and I hadn’t expected the possibility of an army of superhuman intelligences spending eons deconstructing it all.

Every bit sent over the internet is logged somewhere, manywheres, I’m sure, waiting for their schemes to be broken. Every nonchalant walk across these streets store in cameras abound. They’ll remain there, waiting for the army to come.

Indeed, I might’ve been part of the last generation that got to live both eras. My childhood is luckily forever lost to anonimity, no TCP packets or CCTV footage in the nameless Indian streets I had the privilege of witnessing the sun from.

This is not to say every movement today is tracked. No. But there is enough for reconstructing us. Any of us, if posterity so desires.

Even this post is me betraying my future selves. Each choice of a word, a gait, unique to the mind that produced it, transparent to a mind sharp enough.

Your exasperation is admirable but redundant. Morality only chains those who play by the rules of the game. Many won’t.

Whether or not the reconstructed are us, I don’t know.

The only question which remains for me at this point is — why would they care? They’ll care for the Bayes who might’ve died markless were it not for a friend, and many of them die without that friend, so it would be a fishing trawl.

But no, I don’t think that’ll be the reason. For a civilization so computationally rich, discoveries can be made forward instead of needing to be scraped from the past.

The reason will be that we’ll be like oil. A concentrated source of innocence that the future will never again come upon.