Jumper

What if we were bi-temporal?

Jumping voluntarily between two life times. A sibling that may have been miscarried can be still alive in the alternate life. Traveling between these two points would be as simple as stepping through a portal as depicted in Valve's games of the similar name.

When we are purported to be created by omniscient beings this would be a minute character adjustment compared to what those overlords can do.

No two person can use the same portal. Each individual only has access to his personal portal. Cutting edge research in this world would be conducted with the purpose of merging portals of two individuals but alas the results would not be as polished, just like how we are trying to predict climate patterns in our present world.

Your conscience will be able to exist only in one temporal instance.

Or...

Are we already able to do this when we dream?

Unrecognized state

We inhabit a snapshot of history. The procession of time before we reached our snapshot is largely  demoted to the background and we take for granted the present format of geopolitics and zeitgeist. Take Zimbabwe for instance. A British empire builder, Cecil B. Rhodes bought the rights to plunder the minerals of this part of Africa from the tribe leaders. The colonial rule gradually transitioned into an unrecognized democratic state, Republic of Rhodesia. Of course the democratically elected government just happened to be conveniently lead by the white minority politicians.

In this phase of history, proto-Zimbabwe is blessed with two national anthems:

1. "God save the Queen"
   
2. "Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia"
   

The first anthem is to praise their proxy monarch in Britain and it lasted for 1965-1970. In 1974, Rhodesia came up with the second anthem for this new nation.

It was finally in 1980 that Rhodesia attained recognized sovereignty and universal suffrage, renaming itself as the Republic of Zimbabwe. We had to wait till 1994 for a new national anthem for this newly minted state in the African Union.



It's interesting to see the evolution of this primary tool for nationalism in a surgically created state out of a population with varying ethnicity.