WITCH STAR PROJECT

TERMS & CONDITIONS

Our News Desk Editor Jan Pietro meets the man who would turn a profit on the future

THIS ALL BEGINS with a conversation.

   “What’s all that fuss about Nostradamus?” he asks from beneath his Panama hat. “Haven’t you noticed, when people start talking about Nostradamus they become really-really animated?

   “They gesticulate,” he tells me. “They lunge towards you screaming, ‘He was a prophet! He was a prophet! Nostradamus lived five hundred years ago, yet he predicted atomic bombs and JFK and 9/11.’

   “Then, of course, the others - the sceptics – they start calling these people ‘gullible fools.’ Because – or so they believe - Nostradamus wrote only about the times in which he lived, not about the future. So – those simpletons and charlatans, the sceptics say – they’re driven continually to reinterpret Nostradamus’s cryptic verses in order to support their own pathetic delusions. Then one of these sceptics will trot out a couple of examples, such as: Whenever Nostradamus mentions a tower then it has to be about 9/11; and if Nostradamus mentions a warmonger, it has to be Hitler.

“Of course,” says this salesman, flicking the rim of his hat with an index finger, “These arguments – and their counter-arguments – they’ll entertain the masses. They've been doing so for centuries; generating so much hot air. But then, you’ll notice, the only ones making a profit from this Nostradamus business are his publishers – whether they’re publishing books supporting his prophecies or dismissing them. Either way, they’re continuing to sell bloated volumes; all pretentious speculations over whether Michel de Nostradamus really was or really wasn't seeing into the future – when, actually, back in 1555, Nostradamus was doing nothing more sophisticated than watching television.”

Dear readers: Our salesman gives to one side a feinted smile; awaiting our reaction. As both you and I know: Television did not exist in 1555. Michel de Nostradamus lived in Provençal France more than 400 years before television’s invention. So how could he have been watching TV?

Our friend from beneath his Panama hat explains.

   “Back in 1977, I was a lab technician at the University of Manchester. We were carbon dating a manuscript for Andrew Rusholme at the John Rylands Library. He’d just discovered a letter written in 1564 by Michel de Nostradamus to an English astrologer called John Dee. This letter described a vision of golden nymphs tumbling symphonically from a Parisian spire. And - we had to agree with Rusholme – this was an image that bore a remarkable resemblance to that famously iconic 1970s television commercial, Fragrance No.5 from Coco Chanel.

   “Rusholme’s Theories on Temporal Signal Reflection were subsequently published but generally ignored. But maybe this was a good thing. For us, it made it easier to convince Rusholme that he really should come on board with our plan; to use his discovery to become fabulously wealthy.”

Did we want to know more? Of course we do! So he continued.

“When television signals are transmitted,” he says, “They radiate, outwards, in all directions - including up into outer space. And almost every signal will carry on forever, across the universe. Although each signal becomes forever fainter, it never entirely vanishes. So, imagine this: The first episodes of Breaking Bad might already be available to viewers around Alpha Centauri. But, of course, no-one is ever surprised when you tell them that.

   “But, now, this is where it becomes interesting. When a television signal, way up there, sinks into the gravitational field of a black hole, that’s when interesting things start to happen. According to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, a television signal entering a black hole will stretch across infinity and reflect back through time towards its point of origin on Earth.

   “Sure, we can be certain Amazon weren't selling forty-six inch plasma televisions back in Sixteenth Century France, but almost every Sixteenth Century alchemist worth his salt would have owned at least one crystal ball. And everyone knows Nostradamus owned at least three of them.

   “Now – surely - you’ll have heard of the classic crystal radio receiver? They were at their most popular back in the 1920s, probably because a crystal set doesn't need electricity to pick up a radio signal. Well, back in 1555, Nostradamus probably had one of his crystal balls perched upon an iron tripod over plates of mercury’s ether. And there’s your plasma screen, right there. On any given starry-starry night, when all the heavens were in alignment, Nostradamus was probably sitting alone in some dark, secluded attic, staring for many an hour into his crystal ball, watching anything and everything from I Love Lucy on CBS to Laurence Olivier’s World at War.”

In 2009 Andrew Rusholme & Associates launched The Witch Star Project. Once they had figured from where in space those TV transmissions must go, it would only be a matter of time before they had the rest of their plan perfected – allowing each of their encoded messages to reach Nostradamus back in that Parisian loft in August 1555.

   According to Mr Panama Hat, “Each message to Nostradamus reveals next month’s winning lotto numbers, which we instruct him to encode within one of his famous prophecies. But then, of course,” adds this salesman, “I’m not about to reveal to you or your readers our key for decoding those prophecies. However, if you were to pay us just a small fee - say £10 per month; to join our little scheme – we’d be more than happy to share with you some of our profits and answer any other questions that you might have.”

__________________________________________ 

   Our man in the Panama is answering

          FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 

Tell me again, how does this thing work?

Nostradamus incorporates each winning number from next month’s Lottery within a prophecy. We might have sent him those numbers next month but we’re reading his prophecy this month. Some weeks this works. Some weeks (for whatever reason) it doesn't. But, usually, our winnings are enough to pay a dividend to project members.

How will you broadcast your messages into space? Do you own a television transmitter?

No, we don’t own a television transmitter. Broadcasting television in the UK requires a government licence. Licences tend to be issued only to large corporations such as the BBC, ITV, and Sky. These organisations usually don’t allow people to insert secret messages into their programmes. However, there are certain times at which they do allow the broadcast of almost any kind of message. We call these messages adverts.

Aren't you being rather selfish? If time travel was really possible, surely you would want to warn people about the Nazis; or about earthquakes before they happened; or about not buying tickets to sail on the Titanic. Wouldn't you? 

Before answering this question, please let us state that we only win relatively small sums (tens of thousands rather than tens of millions). And this is for two reasons.

   Firstly: We don’t want to attract the attention of journalists, governments and gangsters. Indeed - according to recent reports - armed agents of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) have been searching online for schemes such as ours.

   Secondly: The weight of history has a mass equivalent to the weight of the universe multiplied by 13.7 billion years. Its gravitational force cannot be subverted. However, according to an accepted calculation based on general relativity, time travel into the past is theoretically possible through a number of so-called open loop solutions, which allow small elements within large scale events to be altered.

   For example, in the case of Nostradamus, altering a page of writing that no one (not even Nostradamus) understands would constitute a relatively small element.

   What cannot be changed is the massive weight of an event’s already established significance. Any significant alteration would be countered by that event’s weight pulling its narrative back into shape (a so-called reverting to the mean) around its original position. For example, one might go back in time and assassinate the young Adolf Hitler, but then someone else - another element; maybe a Himmler or a Goering – would inevitably emerge to lead Germany into war.

   So, small alterations (such as ours, wherein Nostradamus writes one number instead of another) are going to easily slip under those gravitational fields, eluding each time paradox with little or no consequence. This is why we offer modest winnings through the lottery rather than life changing amounts. History won’t care if you’re going to eventually buy a Rolex instead of a Timex, a silk dress instead of something polyester, or a bottle of Champagne instead of fizzy pink plonk. But it will react with great force against any more billionaires trying to fund research into the eradication of malaria.

What’s to stop other people sending messages back to Nostradamus? 

Without our project’s precise mathematical formulas (for informing subroutine frequencies and reflective angles) you might spend an eternity searching the skies, but you will never find both the precise moment and the precise location of that triple seven class cosmic anomaly bending our transmissions back into the 16th Century.

Why's this project called The Witch Star?

This project was called Witch Star in planning documents to disguise the location of our intended target. We continue to encrypt mapping data provided by international astronomical surveys to substitute one set of co-ordinates for another. The first time we did this, the position of our black hole appeared over a position where one normally sees Quasar TVC15 - also known as the Witch Star - in the Constellation of David. So this, we decided, would be a pretty cool name for our project.

You say your signals go back through time towards their point of origin on Earth, so why have yours started in Brighton but then end up in France? 

Have you ever listened to FIP?

   FIP is a small, French radio station. Its signal is normally received only in and around Paris. But for many years (until Britain’s telecommunications regulator, Ofcom began blocking its UK reception in 2013) the people of Brighton & Hove were finding FIP broadcasting loud and clear on 91 FM.

   We loved FIP. We loved its eclectic mix of great music; a continuously ambient stream that continued day and night, uninterrupted by adverts or chattering - apart from an hourly news bulletin in French. And we did love its ambience. In our city by the sea, one would often find a café, taxi cab or art gallery with its radio permanently tuned-in to FIP. And FIP even had its own fan club here, with regular club nights filling a town centre or seafront venue.

   According to legend, FIP broadcasts were reaching into the Brighton & Hove area through some little-understood freak of nature - maybe through an atmospheric anomaly following the course of the Seine’s hydropic drift across the English Channel; or, maybe, through some kink in the Earth’s gravitational field. It is, however - and fortunately for our project - a freak of nature that can work both ways (i.e. signals can also travel the other way, from Brighton into France).  See https://www.fip.fr/

Why should Nostradamus care about recording our lotto numbers? 

With each instruction regarding the encoding of our numbers we have also enclosed a small prophecy regarding the life and times of Michel de Nostradamus’s most notorious patron, Catherine de Medici - the Queen of France.

   Each prophecy is a triviality, such as ‘The Queen should wear furs before setting forth to Avignon where unseasonal snows shall fall’ or ‘On Wednesday afternoon, the Queen’s favourite poodle having become lost: Fear not, for he shall be found again - in good health - in woodlands to the west of Villiers’.

   Trivial or not, Queen Catherine was impressed, enough to retain Nostradamus’s services with two bags of silver coin for each and every horoscope he delivered. And Nostradamus will continue to understand that each and every trivial prediction is revealed to him only if and when he has encoded yet another set of our mysterious numbers within his body of work.

How do we know so much about the trivialities in Catherine de Medici life? 

Nostradamus encourages Catherine de Medici to write privately in a daily journal. Much of what she observed was published (as Portrait d'un Massacre) in 2002 by Éditions du Livres Louvre.

Apart from predicting our lotto numbers, what else could we ask Nostradamus to do?

Even for such small amounts, we cannot indefinitely make small alterations to a regular event such as the lottery. If we persist, then the combined weight of our alterations to the lottery and its timeline will eventually tip against us. So we are currently working on two other possibilities.

   (1)   We might instruct Nostradamus to leave instructions with the Medicians (Queen Catherine’s cousin; and Europe’s most powerful banker) to make a number of small investments in an obscure business that will – eventually - evolve into one of the richest corporations of our time. Shares in that businesses will reside with a numbered account, which the Medicians will have created for us at the Banque de Medici - which, today, still operates a branch in Paris at ^18 rue Gabrielle.

   Again, only limited sums will be earned through this scheme - to ensure that the combined weight of its alterational effect does not tip itself against us. Amongst other things - signs of improbable financial success were what those AAS agents were looking for whilst hunting time travellers.

   (2)   We might instruct Nostradamus to secretly purchase Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Mona Lisa from its then owner, Catherine de Medici. After Leonardo’s death in 1519, the King of France, Francis I (Catherine’s father-in-law) had bought this painting for 4,000 écus from da Vinci’s roguishly filthy assistant, Monsieur Salai.

   According to a most recent valuation - albeit only for the purpose of its insurance: If the Mona Lisa were to come to auction, today: It would fetch at least $1.2 billion.

   Obviously, history’s weight is not going to allow an event whereby the worlds’ most famous painting suddenly disappears from its current position in the Louvre because we had arranged for it to be kept in our bank vault for the past 450 years.

   The Mona Lisa’s visible history must remain intact. It will be seen at Fontainebleau, at Versailles and in Paris. Until next year, no one will know that Queen Catherine had signed that painting’s title deed over to a servant of Nostradamus called Jacques Le Capp. That title deed (being a set of verifiable documents proving rightful ownership) shall remain in our Parisian vault.

   Experts shall agree, Jacques Le Capp and his descendants loaned back the Mona Lisa to Queen Catherine and her descendants for the purpose of public exhibition for a period of 500 years from the date of the painting’s final touches by Leonardo da Vinci in February 1517.

   In August 1572, following the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, Jacques Le Capp and his family fled to London and settled in Southwark. Here they operated a riverside tavern called Harvard’s Rest. Richard Harvard [a current director of The Witch Star Project and a co-owner of Veritas’ Oyster Bar, which stands on the site of the old Harvard’s Rest] is Jacques Le Capp’s direct and only surviving descendant. Lawyers in January 2017, acting on Richard’s instructions, will present French government officials with irrefutable evidence that he, Richard Harvard is the true and rightful owner of da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa.

   We don’t seriously expect France to surrender its beloved Mona Lisa to a bar owner from Southwark. However (since their Treasury will be eager to avoid what would inevitably be a long and costly series of legal battles) we do expect the French government and les administrateurs du Louvre to be open to offers of an out-of-court settlement.

   This will be our position: Richard Harvard shall agree to extend his family’s loan of the Mona Lisa to the people of France for another 500 years on one condition: The Mona Lisa shall be exhibited for just six months in 2017 in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Gallery in London; and all revenues generated by this exhibition shall be paid to Richard Harvard and his fellow shareholders in the Witch Star Project.

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