I learned to time travel when I was 21. Or maybe it was 20. I'm not exactly sure when the exact turnover date was in retrospect, but at some point I just stopped and the world kept on truckin'. I know this, because I just woke up and it's 2013, and when I went to sleep it was 1997. They have a fancy name for and a hit-or-miss sitcom in homage to this phenomenon, but really, when you're the one experiencing it, the best way to describe is "time travel."
I know I'm not the only one staggering confused, into a bright, confusing dawn. And I know there are still more, safely ensconced in their pods, skin coated in a non-adaptive shell that ensures that information born by experience will never penetrate the outer layer and disrupt the sleeper within. Like me, they'll just keep replaying the same dreams in the same loop over and over until their shell cracks, until their shell has no purpose anymore, one way or the other.
I don't know how it feels for them, but for me it was and is like being stuck in a loop, an endless groundhog day, except unlike Bill Murray's character, the rest of the world kept on flowing by without me and I wasn't really learning anything. Also no Andie McDowell.
I have lived out the same crushes, over and over, with the same people, long after the window to forge a bond had passed. I would reach out to them, later in the day, to clear up a problem we'd just had yesterday, to find they'd traveled forward in time a few years and had long since moved on. They were just as confused as I was I think. You don't meet a time traveler every day. I did this over and over, and I could never remember my chance with them had passed. Why would I? We had been good friends just yesterday. And it was only the next day. It was always the same day, the next day. How could their feelings change so much in just one day?
It was always the same day, and I was always that bright college kid full of potential. Tomorrow I was going to fulfill my potential. Tomorrow I was going to change the world. Tomorrow I was going to meet the right girl. Tomorrow I was going to find some sort of compromise between objective reality and the religious worldview I'd been raised in. Tomorrow I was going to tell my parents I wasn't quite the person they thought I was. Tomorrow I was going to figure it out. As soon as it quit being today. As soon as it quits being today. Man I've had a long day.
I think there's a glitch in my software. I think there's a glitch in my software. I think it triggers when I can't reconcile my internal world with the external world and I just start looping. I think I glitch when my internal and external worlds aren't flush. I don't think I ever really wanted to be a physicist, I think it was just expected of me, and I, in my youthful idiocy, which I remember like it was yesterday (because it was), thought it would be a great way for people to think I'm smart. "Oh you're a scientist? How smart you must be." they might say. And some did say. All day, on that same day. And I would glitch. My brain would itch and I would glitch. I don't feel that smart today.
Having stepped outside of my time machine, having re-engaged my shell with the Flow of Things, having gotten on the fucking ski lift chair that I mostly just watch as it scoots on by, for a few precious moments, from time to time, in what I understand is considered Objective Reality proceeding at the Usual Pace, I think I have seen that I am not the best scientist. It was hard to tell on that endless day, but I don't have the interest in it. I'm smart enough to process the results, I'm probably smart enough to do it well, but I don't think it interests me enough. The smell of it. The everyday of it. The culture surrounding it. Although it might be too early to tell, I've only been doing it for a day.
I don't think I have the right temperament for the Grand Pursuit of Science. I think it is Not For Me. I think I would honestly be happier just reading about it. I think my passions lie in different realms that rest on a slightly different philosophical premise. I think I know this, but I've been thinking that all day. Has anyone noticed the sun has set more than a few times today? Why doesn't anyone else find that strange?
I think I solved the biggest glitch though. I think it is fixed. I think that part of my brain has been de-bugged. Patch 1.5 has been deployed. I did that yesterday I think. I think it's a hell of a thing to find men incredibly attractive. I think when I felt that way, and I saw my father making fun of Liberace, it caused a glitch. I think when my camp director disowned his son for serving the Grand Pursuit of Satan because his son was honest about what he wanted and what he wanted wasn't girls, it caused a glitch. It was going to be tomorrow, but then it was today again. Because tomorrow I was gay. Or bisexual. Or some fucking other that wasn't a straight boy sitting in church with a wife and four children. Tomorrow I was asking that boy out. Tomorrow I might get disowned or sent to reparitive therapy or get made fun of or get the shit kicked out of me or killed because I smiled at the wrong guy. So today there was a glitch. Today I can just watch the ski lift chairs go by, people chatting happily as they are dragged into tomorrow, further up and further in. They are not screaming as they are dragged into tomorrow. I really envy them for not screaming.
My therapist calls it dissociation. I think dissociation is just a fancy word for time travel. Well, relativity makes labels hard. Either I'm traveling back, further back, fast enough to stay exactly where I am, or you lot have secrets you're not telling me and you're all rocketing forward into the future. How dare you. Tell me your secrets. I must know. Seriously, I don't want to die this way.
I pulled up anchor when I came out of the closet to frolic with like-minded sailors. I left my Tardis when the constant abrasions of a bad relationship and the ceaseless flow of temporal sand became too painful to stay still. I found a golden line attached to the Usual Pace and pulled until I was floating along the same as the rest of you.
But time traveling is not a habit you give up easily. It is powerful and seductive being a weird sort of timelord. From time to time I still drop anchor when I can't make sense of the world. When the world has to stop for a while so I can make sense of what I see tomorrow. So I can figure out how to live with being a 20-year-old in a 37-year-old body. "It's okay, I'm living out some sort of Freaky Friday narrative with no good jokes," I can tell nobody. I've been trying to figure out how to process that today. It's been today for 3 months now.
As powerful as my time travel abilities are, I can't keep my shell from aging. I've become keenly aware that however long I linger on today, this shell will eventually reach it's natural expiration date without me and I sill be dragged on to whatever's next. Tomorrow will eventually win the war. Tomorrow is already winning. I am losing ground against tomorrow. Oddly, I am the least afraid of dying as I've ever been, even though I no longer believe in the traditional afterlife promised in my youth to all good stewards of the church. It is still today, but I understand I could die today if the universe seemed hellbent on the idea. It's not my idea of a good time, but ultimately one has to accept one is not an immortal god who will not be saved by science, Jesus or faeries. One has to accept that one's shell has an egg timer on it that will eventually pop your toast, as the kids say. Even in my time machine I have noticed that nobody's shell seems to get out of here alive, no matter what they believe, think or do. The nice thing about today is that it is not yesterday, that long, endless yesterday, and I have learned things today. Only a couple things, but I have learned them. And one of them is that our shells are designed to grow and to bloom but also to whither and die, but that's okay. So I don't fear dying, I just fear dying today. Dying with all the shit I've wanted to do tomorrow undone. That shit I've wanted to do since it was yesterday. That shit has not been on the docket today.
I think a warrior would not have a problem with today. Or tomorrow. He would just keep slicing at tomorrow until it looked more like today. Charging the borders between now and then until he'd annexed tomorrow and looted its precious natural resources. Tacking hard against the wind and the endless flow of time to chart his own course. Dancing nimbly as the ground shifted unceasingly under his feet. A whirling cyclone of chaos and change, carving into the future. I admire warriors. I hear they have a guild. I am thinking of applying. I want to come out and play.
Tomorrow maybe. I've been stuck in this goddamn time machine all day.
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