WHO IS THE REAL TIMEMASTER?

He is every billionaire you love to hate.  He is a genius, cracking the time barrier with his earth-shaking invention — digitime.  He’s the nerd you mocked in high school — short, rumpled, pathetically awkward.  And now, getting his revenge, he is vastly rich and always in the news with his string of orgies, supermodel dates, drug busts, and debauchery.  Who is he?

Only towards the end of TimeLiners do you learn the Timemaster’s real name.  By then, the entire industry that his genius jumpstarted is in chaos, leading to a subpoena to testify before Congress.  His name?  (See page 318).  But the actual name of this “stain on humanity” matters less than the question several readers have asked me.  Who is the real TimeMaster?  What Silicon Valley Bad Boy did I have in mind?

Elon Musk is the most common guess.  Yet the TimeMaster, unlike Musk, is absolutely apolitical.  He would never dream of taking over the social media platforms Blather and Spewbox and re-shaping them into his neo-fascist image.  So Musk?  Ick.  Guess again.

Jeff Bezos, maybe?  Fits the mold, sort of.  Short, nerdy, dates models.  So let’s dig deeper.  Which of these adjectives used to describe the Timemaster applies to Bezos?  Twerp?  Jerkface?  And from comedienne (and protagonist) CC Clement —  sexist, macho, slimeball, egomaniacal scumbag, not to mention weenie, dickhead, and predator?  Bezos may be rich and greedy, but none of the above fit.  Next?

Steve Jobs, maybe?  The ego is there, and the intellect.  But Jobs, for all his faults, never approached the depravity of the Timemaster.  Jobs fans will have to settle for his cameo appearance in the fabled Apple garage in 1975.

Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps?  One parallel surfaces early on when the Timemaster decrees Timerule #2.  You are a guest in the past.  Behave yourself.  As with Zuckerberg’s boyish naiveté, the rule begs the question we all ask.  “How could anyone so smart be so stupid?  Behave yourself?  Was the Timemaster teaching second grade?  Did he think he could just tell us to behave and the entire populace he had unleashed on an unsuspecting past would become angelic?“  So sure, Mark, we’ll behave ourselves on Facebook.  What could possibly go wrong?

But the Timemaster isn’t Zuckerberg either.  My own personal loathing of Zuckerberg prevented me from writing about him, even in mockery.  I still shudder at the thought.  Okay, who then?

If one photo of the TimeMaster could have graced TimeLiners, here’s the one I would have chosen.  Recognize him?  He’s in jail now, as is the Timemaster, so we don’t talk much these days about Sam Bankman-Fried.  Like the Timemaster, he is a short, rumpled, and sinister blend of genius, amorality, and staggering naiveté.  Bankman-Fried’s fall from celebrity crypto-king to a criminal convicted on several charges was front page news as I was writing TimeLiners.  So with apologies to Elon and Jeff and Steve and Mark, here is the Bad Boy who became, to both the amazement and disgust of the entire world — the Timemaster.