The Last Mimzy part 7:  Intelligence

Often when we consider the impact of time travel, we think of our own moment as "the present", and concern ourselves with how a change in "the past" would impact us.  However, the fixed time theorists are right at least on this point:  if time travel is possible, then the future must exist as a real place, in some sense already in a real form.  Thus the hazards that our own present would be altered by travel to the past are equally hazards that the future would be altered by travel from the future to the present.

Replacement theory takes this as given:  time travel from any future to any past changes history.  The question is, how does it change history?  And as we reach the last Mimzy, we are forced to consider what impact that trip to the past had not on our past but on our future, the past of the scientist who sent it.  That impact may be considerable.

The bulk of the impact is felt through the changes wrought in Noah and Emma, who exhibit extraordinary abilities.  However, before considering this we have another detail, the impact of the Mimzy herself on her own development.

If you have followed the studies of Terminator, you should recall that the end of the first film set up a sawtooth snap.  Cyberdyne salvaged parts of the T-800 which was destroyed in its factory, and studied them; from those studies, they made advances.  They were not able to copy the technology, but they were able to learn from it, to try ideas they would not otherwise have considered.  In doing so, they advanced the technologies that would bring Skynet and the development of the very T-800 they were studying--which therefore would be a more advanced machine than the one they studied, and so would have left more advanced parts behind to study, which would have advanced their efforts the more leading to more advanced parts being studied.  The repetition escalates until it plateaus at a point where Cyberdyne cannot learn more from the additional improvements to the parts.

The same sequence is happening here.  The Mimzy was sent back to the future; but before it left, a lab recorded an X-ray image of its interior construction and shaved a tiny bit of its circuitry to examine under an electron microscope.  In that chip-sized dot they discovered highly advanced circuitry, and an Intel logo.  (That would encourage me to buy stock in Intel were I there.)  The government made the logical choice, calling one of Intel's people for consultation.  That means Intel knows that this information exists, and that it has the Intel name on it.  They will respectfully request that their property be delivered to them.  The government is not going to argue that the Intel product they hold comes from the future, and doesn't have a better reason to withhold it--who else would be able to study it adequately?  Intel will get the materials, and the government will get assurances that their advances will used for American military and government systems first.

As with Cyberdyne, they won't be able to copy such microcircuitry for a long time yet.  It is probably etched with microwave lasers yet to be developed.  However, there will be more than simply the atomic level etching involved here.  New ways of interconnecting circuits will have developed.  Some of the etchings will represent components as far beyond the transistor as the transistor is beyond the key and kite string.  Cybernetics gets a huge shot in the arm from this.

And as it does so, it feeds the advances that lead ultimately to the Mimzy.  The doll sent from the future is yet more advanced, and the circuitry being studied reveals that much more, and the technology level ratchets up to that plateau at which Intel can learn nothing more from studying its own future technology.

What may be more serious is that with each improvement of the Mimzy design, the improved Mimzys are sent to all the previous targeted times.  The Mandala Mimzy and the Alice Mimzy and all the unknown Mimzys are better prepared for their tasks, more intelligent and more functional machines.  One of them might succeed where its previous incarnation had failed.  Yet if it does so, it undoes the sending of this Mimzy, and undoes the improvements that led to its success.

We can hope that this does not happen, and note that it might not; the film still is not impossible.  Yet there are other dangers to time created by this Mimzy, still ahead.