Timeline:  This will change as I invent new story elements and stitch them in.  Sorry, this separate page has to be server-side only (.php file), not client-side (your Browser – .html file), to allow page-counts.

At this stage (May ’24) I am writing version #1 and have completed the first 9 chapters, so here is the time-line summary of those chapters, followed by other story elements that will have to be (or perhaps not) inserted while writing version #2:

Chap #1:  Plan Thirty:  Dennis is Research Assistant; Age 30 target, investment portfolio; Hear of new phone tower, get new phone; describe apartment • Inspect roof-top, building new tower; laundry room, meet Rosie

Chap #2:  Reception Boost:  Laundry talk, explain Age 30 plan; Rosie explains divorce; tower finished; invite Rosie coffee shop • Laundry politician catch story; tower starts, bad phone interference on roof; quick scan of apartment; Rosie explains gay husband reason for divorce

Chap #3:  Porthole:  Full scan of apartment; first porthole standing on chair, times out, burns hand; pokes broom in, sees offset; phone makes porthole vanish • laundry basket time-slip clue; need to measure; laundry explain meditation, Rosie doubtful, sees sunburned hand; Sunday date arranged, offer male friendship, can’t be more until her divorce is over

Chap #4:  Experiments:  Visible porthole, camera can record, paradox considered, 2-day test, no porthole recorded • 3-day test starts; Sunday date, Rosie grills Dennis about College sex, admits divorce is dragging out, he offers spare phone (1 wk since porthole)

Chap #5:  Measurement:  3-day test ends, dim porthole recorded; 54-hr time-slip needs checking under better lighting, can’t make porthole anywhere else, plan 54-hr confirmation test • Buy parts for blackboard, laundry gives Rosie old phone, meditation story questioned, Wednesday politician exposure progress, makes message blackboard, more paradox worries, slow system once per week • 54-hr test works, proximity helps (2 wks)

Chap #6:  Proximity:  Sunday Rosie distracted, Monday plan send-receive test, 2 portholes, chair marker, Tuesday laundry no Rosie, claim can’t call her, Friday receiver test, discovers offset, moves chair, extra chair marker, (3 wks) Sunday one-way system, sees himself, must be just an image, daylight porthole not needed with close proximity, exact time, Rosie coffee shop no show • compare morning-evening message receive, both wasteful, market trading hours, would be better once retired, afternoon send, plan first investment test

Chap #7:  Investment Test:  Monday plan Thurs-Sun $10k investment test, simple message; Tues laundry Rosie, criticize magazine article, Rosie reveals mother ill, discuss female clothing; Thurs receive for investment test, careful analysis, plain drape idea, Fri buy shares, Sat sell but with bank delays, (4 wks) Sun morning send, review methods, see that system is slow, limited • Sun discuss role models, Dennis admits testing secret investment method, slow and small-scale, Rosie suggests try big wins elsewhere; decide to check US lottery, make diffusion-panel for message receiving

Chap #8: Timezone:  Tues Rosie reveals mother terminal, she must be carer, Dennis offers cash help • market trading hours limits, test diffusion-panel, complete flop, investigate US lottery, plan test of black panel, (5 wks) Rosie absent Sunday, Wed successful black panel test, Thurs receive lottery results, buy tickets, expect win email (6 wks) • no win, Summertime error, Body Corp advises phone fault investigation, can’t speed up next lottery buy, receives message, buys tickets, does receive winner email but taxes to be calculated

Chap #9: Hindsight End:  Taxes and fees will chew up half of win, still AU$14 million, resolves never to use US lottery again, Euro lottery charges no tax, sending lottery results sees that blackboard does not need to be round, local media track him down, he gives meditation story, explains his reputation for good luck • (7 wks) TV article goes to air, makes new rectangular blackboard, next message reception fails, suspect phone tower repairs, starts getting nuisance calls at work, agrees to take leave • meets janitor who explains tower fix, more work nuisance calls, surrenders work phone, checks apartment but no porthole possible, end of hindsight, starts getting nuisance calls on personal phone, receive lottery payout, change phone number, talk to real estate agent, decides to leave apartment

Chap #10: Title:  Official notice of phone signal fix, makes plans to vacate apartment, sends text message to Rosie’s phone, third house looks good, fairly sure sale, arranges inspection, learns that owner needs a month to vacate, resigns job, assigns portfolio, buys green car, arranges house renovations • mows grass, considers phone signal booster for garage

Here are other events that will build the story from this point onwards (some now out of sequence):

• phone tower repaired notice, end of porthole effect, wins lottery but with huge tax slug, no point in staying in apartment any more, no portholes, no Rosie, resigns job, moves out.

• need another contributing tech factor here in addition to flaky transmission and personal phone, on which the GPS app doesn’t work, so the interference might be associated with that.  But turning GPS on or off on his work phone achieves nothing except a faint woo-oo noise, no porthole.  Could perhaps use a separate GPS to duplicate the fault when held close to his faulty phone, or even a normal phone?  Interference effect?  Thinks about it but doesn’t need to try it, since his personal phone works well.

• uses an old digital camera with a manual-focus lens and different filters for receiving, leaving the sender end with the flaky phone to create the porthole.  He is Stock Market-focused.  Argue that most investments very slowly rise or fall by a small amount, so ALL OK would be a common message.  Only big drops or rises need buy/sell action. 

• Always minimum 3 tickets.  This is to establish a betting pattern (later police investigation).  Need to arrive at a combination of factors that would be extremely unlikely to ever be tried by anyone else.  Missing a session becomes another possible paradox issue.

• first hints at some interference around the new repeater tower, telco tests it but can’t duplicate the fault, notify apartment residents that it is probably faulty phones, but they are investigating, invite fault reports.

• serious thoughts about implications, being able to use the time-slip for his past self to make big profits.  Thinks about possible legal challenges, so erases all phone and camera images, finds a shredder app to help.  His plan for early retirement can be advanced, though.  The hindsight option no longer works, but the fact that it was possible at all is a hint.  He wonders if this is a paradox – by bending fate.

• vacates apartment, resigns his job (keeps his faulty personal phone) and employs a firm to quickly pack up all his possessions and store them, moves to nearby hotel (he can afford that now!) and starts looking for a small house to buy.  In the rush to vacate, he does not get to tell Rosie, who is away looking after her mother, so he has to try calling her, tells her that he won a lottery prize, this is his early retirement, but can’t tell her where he will be moving to or when.  She is very quiet, hardly responds at all.  That feels like another dead end. 

• probably some incidental stuff here about looking for a house in a small town, buys a small car.  Mixture of good luck (lottery win) and bad luck (Rosie losing interest).

• describe the new house, bought for cash so no mortgage delay, at some unnamed small seaside town, chosen mostly because it has a solid-looking brick fence and seems private, with a Council park on one side (probably why the fence is so solid).  He knows that money will no longer be a problem for him, but he still wants to have some meaningful occupation.  The Stock Market is all he knows, and he does still have an investment portfolio that needs management.  He can afford to increase that to a value of about AU$ 1-million, and have his old employer firm manage it.

• receives all his possessions from storage in one delivery but has to buy a lot of furniture.  Settles in and spends some time every day managing his portfolio, which makes him wonder about the hindsight effect, since he still has his flaky phone, and a time-slip would allow him to predict share value movements.  Messages could be much simpler than lottery numbers, easier to read, and his portfolio has only ten or so different share-names to manage.  Describe normal share-value movements in different market sectors, and what he needs to keep an eye out for.  No word from Rosie.

• hindsight effect was a combo of a faulty phone and imperfect cellular signal coverage.  He researches this and orders a cellular signal booster, designed for use in large or tall buildings with isolated signal black holes.  Concentrates on garage, a tin box with poor phone reception inside, almost a dead-spot.  He wires the signal booster with a deliberate earthing fault to broadcast in that space, hoping to duplicate the conditions in the apartment building.

• this takes weeks (think of several possible techie issues, like testing different wiring faults, always having to reverse his car out of the garage to make room for the time-slip, and build a black ‘exposure panel’ for photo purposes) before he gets a similar woo-oo effect on his phone.  He is able to make a porthole, but it is only saucer-sized, so about half the diameter of the apartment porthole, perhaps because the garage is a restricted space.  Worried that the time-slip and space-slip might also be smaller, he runs the same measurement tests to find that they are the same – 2 days, 6 hours, with a space offset of about two meters.  Sets up the garage resonance spot with bright lights so it would always be well-lit.

• he can use hindsight sessions again, but with a much smaller blackboard, harder to read in porthole photos.  His focus now is his investment portfolio, not lotteries, so long strings of numbers (all look similar) should not be needed.  Photos of the “ghost” blackboard on the end of a broom handle are the only hindsight communication.  Simple buy/sell messages about one particular shareholding, sometimes two, like BSM ↓ (sell), makes sense to past guy.  Always a week between two sessions to decide, based on memory of last attempt, what to try next.  Here:  make much of the fact that present guy remembers seeing a porthole appear and taking photos through it two days ago, but also remembers that reading the message was very hard.  His past self had to guess at the faint, mostly-transparent message, and can’t tell if he did that correctly until two days later.

• experiment with a tall, skinny blackboard that can be poked into the porthole sideways, then straightened, for a bigger message area.

• surprise call from Rosie, asking how he is getting on, and explaining that her mother recently died, and that she had been caring for her, then arranging her estate issues.  That explains why he hadn’t heard from her since before his lottery win, tragic for her, so he offers to use his new car to drive her to his new house and then back to the city, knowing that Rosie doesn’t have a car.  But she does, now – her mother’s old car – so a visit is arranged.

• Rosie’s visit and talks – like Dennis, she is at a crossroad, a failed marriage, mother’s death, depleted savings (although expects to inherit something), means she is reassessing her life and social attitudes, will probably sell her apartment like Dennis did, resign from legal practice, look for a different office job.  Dennis describes how he is using his Stock Market knowledge to manage his share portfolio, now larger with lottery winnings.  That keeps him mildly busy.  Tries his meditation cover-story but Rosie doesn’t believe it.  Circumstances have changed for both of them.  He offers use of his house if she sells her apartment and has to look for a new place, also recommends removal firm, she jumps at that offer, he sees that she is still keen.

• Start a second hindsight session every Thursday (Mon morning past) to complement the Sunday (Thurs morning past) session for better market analysis.  Paradox issues.  Messages cover only one event, two sessions might miss an event between, and messages might be wrongly interpreted, but he can catch most portfolio events.  Tries another lottery entry, 3 tickets again, makes several errors because of the smaller blackboard but still makes a minor win.  A fluke!

• Penny-drop moment:  He could still make lottery bets on his small blackboard by using successive portholes (each one lasts about 2 minutes) with different short strings of numbers, as long as both he and his past self knew to expect that.  Idea to use a bold green stripe on the blackboard to signal start of successive messages (don’t need to photograph), and a red one to signal end.  That would be easy to read and understand, so it would work.

• tests this successive message method and it works perfectly – he makes another fairly big win of just under US$ 2-million.  This time media and police take a close interest.  Computer seized, examined, no evidence found, he repeats his meditation story and insists he hasn’t committed a crime.  Sees that lottery wins can’t be made regularly without triggering legal suspicion, but share management can be.  Just knowing when to sell/buy shares, and market research used to be his job, so he is a known expert.  That’s legally safe.  Successive messages could be useful for portfolio, too.

• worries about his flaky phone, the core of the hindsight system.  Tests turning apps and contact systems on and off to try and isolate the cause, but can’t change it.  Thinks about his separate GPS idea but defers that as too risky legally.

• Rosie calls and then visits, he tells her about the police raid, he is now a “betting system” suspect, and admits that his meditation story is just a front for the media, because he is worried that his real method might be considered unethical or even illegal under murky betting laws.  His stockbroker work made him cautious about that.  He refuses to tell her what he actually does – to protect her, he claims – and because she works as a legal aide.  But her job is now in doubt after taking so much time off, so she has decided to sell her apartment and wants to know about sharing his house for a short time.  They both see the opportunity for a deeper relationship.  He offers to pay for the (expensive) removalists and shows her a room she could use.  She accepts generous offer.

• Rosie moves in.  Mutual attraction plus Rosie trying to appeal quickly causes erotic events, often ending in the laundry, a luxury for them both.  She demands to know why he spends time in the garage at odd times and the empty garage can’t be used for her car.  He explains that he would have to buy a separate tin shed suitable for his secret work, to return the garage to use for cars.  That’s a hint, and she sees enough to guess roughly what he’s doing when she sees his blackboard on a handle with BSM SWAP written on it.  He is sending simple messages back in time, not forward.  Discuss the admiration for people good at doing something other people can not do so well, but fierce opposition to anyone doing something that nobody else can do.  This has to be kept secret, she agrees.

• where the story goes from here will emerge during the writing phase, hopefully with a philosophical twist to it, with two people living quietly, depending entirely on secrecy.  Dennis’s flaky phone, though, is a probable hindsight-ender when it stops working entirely and he has to buy a new one, probably after one more big lottery win, more police investigation.  End the story with two very rich people investigating possible new interests, have both decided that using the hindsight effect is too risky, even if they could make it work again with Dennis’s GPS idea.  He has a “record” as a possible betting scammer.