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20 years ago, the most famous “time traveler” of this generation lit up the Internet. He had come from the year 2036 to help save the world. And he was heading to Rochester for the IBM 5100.

By Steve Lange October 30, 2020 at 5:30 AM Listen Share Share this article On Nov. 2 of 2000, a man calling himself John Titor—actually “Time_Traveler_0”—posted a message on a little-known Internet discussion board, something called the Time Travel Institute Forum. “Greetings,” he wrote. “I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975.” ADVERTISEMENT He had, he said, made a side trip to 2000 to pick up some family photos and check in on family in Tampa and Rochester. That introduction—posted to the kind of paranormal/extraterrestrial/conspiracy theory message boards that were just finding a foothold on the Internet—would set off a four-month flurry of “what-” and “when-ifs,” as Titor answered numerous questions, told readers about his life in 2036, and gave us glimpses into our own future. Over the next four months, Titor’s 570 or so Internet posts would describe an upcoming “civil conflict over a U.S. presidential election.” Warn us about a Mad Cow Disease outbreak. Tell us about the impending nuclear war with Russia. On March 24 of 2001, John Titor signed off. He was heading back to 2036. “Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road,” he wrote. “Farewell. John.” But the John Titor phenomenon was not over. It was, in fact, just beginning. Because those four months, those 570 or so posts, would lead to a website (JohnTitor.com), numerous books (like “John Titor: A Time Traveler’s Tale”), a movie (“Time Traveler Zero”), a stage play (“Time Traveler Zero Zero”), a video game (“Steins Gate”). ADVERTISEMENT Those posts would eventually lead to private investigations. And lawsuits. And plenty of people who didn’t want to talk to us for this story. The backstory: The future “In 2036, I live in central Florida with my family and I’m currently stationed at an Army base in Tampa,” explained Titor in one of his earliest posts. “The people that survived [the civil war and then the limited nuclear conflict with Russia] grew closer together. Life is centered on the family and then the community. I cannot imagine living even a few hundred miles away from my parents.” He was, he said, a member of a military unit—the 177th Temporal Recon Unit—whose missions centered around returning to the past to retrieve specific items necessary for survival in 2036. Titor’s current mission? To travel to Rochester, Minnesota in the year 1975. And to retrieve the then-new IBM 5100, arguably the first “portable” computer. He was chosen for the mission, he said, because his grandfather had been on that IBM 5100 team. ADVERTISEMENT The IBM 5100. The 5100, Titor said, was needed to “debug various legacy code computer programs” in 2036. He described “a very simple and unique feature that IBM ... removed from any future desktop computers. In order to take advantage of this feature, the 5100 required a couple of special ‘tweaks’ that had to be done by one of the software engineers in 1975. Anyone who is familiar with this feature ... will be able to tell you what it is.” B.D., a Rochester guy, was able to tell us what it is. And, yes, we can only use his initials. Back in 2003, when we first wrote about John Titor, we reached out to B.D., who had been the second engineer on IBM’s 5100 team in Rochester. Here’s what B.D. told us: That unique feature—that secret function—existed. And B.D. helped create it. The specifics, here, are probably irrelevant to all but the biggest computer geeks. But the 5100 featured an “interface between the assembly code surrounding the computer’s ROM exterior, and the 360 emulator hidden beneath it.” It was called a “dramatic step forward.” And IBM kept it quiet. ADVERTISEMENT Back then, B.D. believed that John Titor could be a creation, a prank, of one of his IBM team members from the 1970s. But, when we showed him Titor’s posts, he said the info was “derived from information available on the Internet.” No members of that 5100 team, he said, would use the phrase “legacy code.” “I’m not a ‘Star Trek’ watcher,” he told us then. “Somebody is just trying to tickle somebody else.” Today, B.D. is no longer at IBM. He’s a well-respected area businessperson. A well-respected Rochester resident. A guy who didn’t want his name used. “I’ve said all I can say,” he has told us when we’ve reached out to him over the years (including recently). “The response of being part of this has been too much.” We don’t blame him. His name still shows up in Titor stories. On Titor YouTube videos. On nationwide talk shows about the paranormal. When we first ran our John Titor story in 2003, the web traffic shut down Rochester Magazine’s server. And the entire server for the Post Bulletin. ADVERTISEMENT We got calls from Coast to Coast AM (the late-night radio show dedicated to the paranormal) and Weekly World News (maybe best known for discovering “Bat Boy!”). We’ve heard B.D.’s gotten his share of calls from time traveler trackers and conspiracy t...

John Titor: Who was the time traveler that visited Rochester?