An idea for a science fiction story that I don’t want to write because I can’t imagine any magazine would want to buy it, but it leads to a question for the audience.
If a time traveler came to me (assume I’ve already vetted him, so I know he’s legitimate. As an example, see my story “1-9-4-blue-3-7-2-6-gamma-tetrahedron”) and gave me a cure for Covid-19, how could I get it to the people who need to have it? Obviously, he’s not handing me seven billion doses of a medicine or vaccine, but the knowledge for how to make it (perhaps its chemical structure). I’m not a doctor, not even a working scientist. How could I get someone in a position to listen to me, believe me, and test this cure in order to get it into production?
If my time traveler handed me a personal spaceship, or a ray gun, something physical and obvious, all I would need to do would be to demonstrate it to a reporter, or even just post a video of it online somewhere and share it with all of you. But if that breakthrough through time was a bit of vitally important knowledge that had to be put into production, what could I do with it to actualize it?
A friend over on Facebook suggested that I could just post it to my Facebook community, and indeed, I realized I have a very wide circle of friends there. I probably could find a doctor or scientist there with almost no effort. On the other hand, my circle of connections there is, I think, abnormally large. Which still leaves me wondering how a regular person, who might not have 1,800 people at his finger tips, would get the information to someone who could do something with it.
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