unravel the mystery

Factual Questions
1

When does the future, become the past?

2

When tomorrow is yesterday and today is tomorrow?

Are you looking for some kind of factual answer, or is this just a riddle?

Stranger

3

Now.

4

A famous science-fiction short story, The Dead Past, was based on this very question. Three people collaborate to build a device that can view the past. It turns out to be useless for periods longer than about a century ago, due to limitations of physics, but can be used to view the immediate past (one-hundredth of one second ago), making it effectively a omniscient spying machine.

5
6

No, that happened 8 minutes ago!

7

Spaceballs has covered this…

Colonel Sandurz: Now. You’re looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We’re at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz: I can’t.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon.
Dark Helmet: How soon?

8

“Dark Helmet” would be a good Band Name for a group covering The Smiths, come to think of it.

9

Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now…

10

Or, a second ago.

11

You’re older than you’ve ever been.
And now you’re even older.
And now, you’re older still.
– TMBG.

12

Never. The future is always the future, the past is always the past.

13

When we can make accurate predictions about the future. So far, the future hasn’t become the past. At best the future is a reasonable facsimile of what will eventually be the past. Usually it is just a story contained in the past.

14

3:42 pm, every alternate Thursday, except for Thanksgiving.

15

Never.

16

The future does not exist, except as a concept. The past is observable only through media, which is subjective, and therefore also does not exist. There is only the now.

17

You are always viewing the past, always. By the time the perception arrives at mid brain, it is all over but the shouting. Many, many nano-seconds will have passed.

18

Right as you realized that the exit you are passing is the one you were supposed to take.

19

Which means of course that, not only can’t we predict the future-we can’t even predict the present.

20

You can, but you have to shake the box.