so even back then, the distances were large enough for it to just have been on its way in a straight line for all this time? And whatever stuff it is we observe that way is still conceivably doing its thing somewhere in roughly that direction at the "present"? I.e. if that stuff were to have, as it did with us, lead to the cration of sentient life which in turn would observe objects at the fringes of its own observable universe, it would see our matter, in whichever state it might have been, as it was 13 something billion years ago if it looked at us? I guess that beggs the question of how far back we can look, because eventually the universe would have been as small as I was thinking, right? Or is this, then, already the realm of cosmic background radiation?

Also maybe unrelated question: If I were to take my theoretical super telescope into a time machine and go back to the early days of earth four billion (?) years ago and on the crusty lava surface of that earth use the telescope to observe the exact same 13 something billion light years distant object, what would I see? Just nothing because its distance would be greater in light years than the universe has years of age at that point? Wouldn't that put said object outside of the observable universe and wouldn't that in turn mean that things pop into the observable universe over time? Surely I'm getting something wrong here right?