OAKLAND—Two strangely dressed students by the names of Jxnie and Zanthony approached the Pitiful News on our biennial birding retreat. They claimed to be time travelers from the year 2051, showing a future Wikipedia page as proof. We believed them instantly and conducted an unprecedented interview.
First, we asked them the hard-hitting questions about technology: Is AI truly the future? Has AGI been discovered? Has the economy collapsed after a collective realization that AI was inflating a massive bubble?
“The only thing that collapsed was my joy and whimsy after I saw flippin’ macaroni art in that grody capsule. We waited fifty years for macaroni art?! It wasn’t even in the shape of anything gnarly — it was like a weird hamster. Total buzzkill,” Zanthony revealed.
We were confused until Jxnie handed us a piece of paper allegedly sourced from the Pitt Program Council’s inhumed time capsule from 2001. It said: “We spent $72,000 on the Panther statue, so we only had a budget of $5 for the actual items. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Listen up, pip-squeaks,” Zanthony explained, “we invented time travel so we could tell you to put cooler stuff in the capsule. It was, like, super lame when we opened it.”
We hoped to refocus the interview by asking the most vital questions of our time: Have we hit a recession? Who is the next president? Is there a next president? Has the Pumpkin Spice Latte appeared in any season besides autumn?
“The only season was my seasonal depression after we found a football in the capsule,” Jxnie prophesized. “Like, that’s so not wizard. Did you think we wouldn’t have football in the future? I mean, we don’t, but that’s beside the point.”
Zanthony interrupted any further questions. “Listen bubs, we gotta get back to Intro to Crazy Science. You couldn’t even imagine the totally tubular stuff we’re learning right now.”
“Yeah, so you bozos better put something radical in that capsule, like Orbeez, or we’re irrevocably damaging the space-time continuum,” Jxnie threatened, as the two time travelers miraculously vanished by getting inside an Uber.
When asked for comment, Pitt refused to let us dig up the capsule and replace its contents. Therefore, as an act of sacrifice, the Pitiful News will be burying one of our own members next to the capsule, so that in the year 2051, they have someone really cool and entertaining waiting for them.