Category: Short Story

I built a time machine.

Don’t ask about the technical specificities, or the fact that the science I am using is not factual or able to be validated. Please don’t whine about the betterment of mankind, or the fact that I am not trying to save us all from ourselves.

We are already lost. That is the point to our species’ existence. It is the great punchline that no one is willing to accept. I accepted it, and so… I built a time machine.

Hypothesis: I am entangled upon myself. My past self, my future self, my current self are all three states of the same set of functions. I am more than just an observation machine built to suffer through the horrors of being. I am a fully realized uniqueness, imprinted upon the skein of reality, a frayed edge of a thread, which in turn is a part of a frayed cord, in turn, a part of a frayed coil of a universe that struggles to exist onwards towards the death of everything.

That is the science of it, the principle of how it works. I inject a massive amount of energy into my fingerprint of existence, and connect back to myself at every moment of when I am me. The furthest back I have traveled is about nine years old. Prior to that, it seems I was someone else. Kind of like me, but not. My grip on my nine year old self is barely attainable, and the amount of effort it takes me to stay in control is ludicrous. Around fourteen, I have far more control, nearly perfect, and by my mid twenties, it is no different than it is today in my sixty-four year old shell that sits before you.

Conclusion: My time machine is perfect. It works every time and I am able to change my own past however I wished. When I first started, it was small things, like how I treated someone that one time that left me with tortured late night remembrances for years afterwards. Then after that, it was my first kiss, it was a mistake, so I avoided it by politely excusing myself before it happened. I went on and on like that, reliving small parts of my life, looking at the results, and then backing up to the next moment, making small improvements, over and over, iterating through the decades of my life.

Correction: I built a time machine, and I thought it was perfect. I thought I could go back and change whatever I wanted, however I wanted. But I am human, so even now I make mistakes. I could fix those mistakes, but that leads to other mistakes. Instead of having sex for the first time with one girl, I saved it for another. But then that lead to other girls and other problems that I didn’t want to have in the first place. Entire lives popping into and out of existence, like my life is nothing more than a magic trick that no one is watching.

So I went back, and fixed it again, and again, and again. And I eventually put it right back to how it was before I started. Because I realized that I had already lost. I lost the chance when I had it, when I made the choice, the chance was discarded again and again, thrown to the wind like an errant leaf no longer caught by a wet windshield. The energy that poured into my time machine was poured into my own life, and every moment that I cherished was just as affected as every moment I loathed.

And the secret is that the vast majority of moments were not worth changing. Living is life, and life is living. Eating, drinking, sleeping, taking a shit, a shower, a walk… all those things are just moments that make up any version of myself. It is still me, it is still what I am inside. Those small moments, the critical pivot points that define who I am, those are only an abstracted insignificant fraction of the total sum of me.

Funny that so much that I thought was important, turned out not to be. The things that I held immutable and full of truth in my youth, don’t seem to matter now, as I sit here with the owl of wisdom on my shoulder. It turns out my time machine was not a machine to travel through time, it was a machine to travel through self.

Outcome: I learned a few simple things that I need you to remember forever.

1. Tell your loved ones that you love them
2. Don’t waste time on people that don’t value you as a person
3. Make time for what matters, and what matters is family and experience
4. Be a friend to all, those that return the favor, are friends worth having

Being alive is not the same thing as living. And now that I am here, on this side of the equation, I realize that it is too late for me.

But, for you, at fourteen, it isn’t. Make your own mistakes, find our own path. This is my last use of the time machine, and I am leaving the results to you, my young friend. You can be anything, go anywhere, and find happiness along the way. Because the end… it comes no matter what kind of life you live.

“One.”

“Excuse me?”

“Two.”

“If you think you can just-“

“Three. When I get to five, love, your time is up.” Her eyes widened as he said, “four,” and she ran.

“Five,” he whispered, grinning. He watched her run into the trees, her multiphasic wings touching the branches, their dark bark flashing to green blooms of summers long forgotten, only to fade in moments to their stark white of winter.

He pounded his fists into the ground in anticipation, raising his face to the glowing moon in the night sky and howled like one of his own hell hounds. He pushed his legs backwards, powerfully rocking the earth, shifting the dirt, and sending a small wave of cold earth into the air, as he roared forward as if propelled by the energy of the sun itself.

He caught her scent, the glow of her passing, like the soft touch of a lover long remembered, and he howled again, caught in the moment. A faint giggle floated back over the air in response, and he realized he had already passed her by. She had spun in place somewhere along the way, hiding amongst her kindred spirits so he would not notice.

He stopped running, feeling the night air pull his sweat from his naked back, steaming in the winter air. “The Dryads. Clever, my love. Clever.”

Another giggle floated from the other direction in response, and just the hint of her voice teasing him from afar. “If ever I wasn’t clever, silly boy.”

He stretched his arms over his head, wiggling his fingers among the bare branches, as if tickling the tree’s skin. “It is not time for spring-“

“It is always time for spring,” her voice floated from his right, and then to the left, “if I am allowed to dance among the trees.”

Hades smiled widely at his wife’s teasing. “Instead come and dance with me, love.”

“Time enough to dance with my husband in winter’s embrace, dearest, now my sister’s yearn for us to frolic a while longer so they may dream of spring.”

A flash of green in front, and a tree blossomed in moments, the pink flowers of an apple tree burst into being, as if lit by a sun from another world. In the gloom of the winter’s hold dreaming in between the spaces of the wood, it was a strange, even to his ancient eyes.

He had personally witnessed the birth of stars, the demise of entire populations, and the shift of a thousand light years as the Titans had assailed Olympus with their fury. But here, under the canopy of bare trees, under the terrestrial sky of Terra Mater, his heart was filled with joy at seeing his wife’s power manifest. Everyone knew that Persephone could bring life to anything, but only Hades realized her brilliant touch included his own heart.

“You love me,” she called.

“And you love me?” He replied.

“More than all the springs that shall ever be, and the summers that shall follow,” Persephone’s voice narrowed to a faint whisper again. “What do you wish of me, my Lord?”

Her voice was like a soft tickle across his neck, and absentmindedly, he ran a hand across his scalp to push the black hair from his eyes. “I wish to see that which makes me whole.”

“Your wish is granted,” she coalesced nearly in front of him, framed by a circle of trees, and they burst to greenwood and leaves in ethereal song. “I am here to tell my husband, I am his and he is mine.”

Hades strode powerfully forward, his fingers vibrating the shadows as he passed. “And what do you wish of me, my wife?”

“A dance.”

Hades stopped in his tracks, watching his wife smirk as she floated softly to the ground, her bare toes causing green grass to leap from the sleeping earth. Her Aspect was as brilliant as the sun, as if Helios had dropped a tear of his golden light within the folds of the forest.

“A…a dance?” He stammered incredulously.

“Now,” she smiled seductively, “such a Lord as yourself surely knows how to dance? You do such other things related to dancing so well, I would think the light step of your feet would match the care of your lips and fingertips.”

Hades grumbled lightly, and the shadows near his feet groaned and retreated from the ground, briefly revealing the white glow of the Underlands. They slunk back slowly, uncertain of the place they held before.

“Come now, my love. I promise a kiss.”

“A kiss?” Hades rose an eyebrow and grinned again.

“You know of my kisses, then?”

“I care for them greatly, my Lady,” Hades admitted openly.

“Then you shall remember your dancing feet, and join your wife,” Persephone raised her hand in invitation. “Come.”

Hades laid his hand over her palm, and they entered into a dance only the Dryads would witness among the embrace of the soft winter’s night.

There is a ghost in the house. They do not have a name, they do not have a gender.

Your first response is to call it a him, but then over time it changes to her. You don’t know why. A female presence seems more calming perhaps. A balm to the constant sun burn of the world that exists outside the walls of your home. You call her Friday, after the Robinson Crusoe character. Remember, Friday started out as a him, which makes sense… but now as a her, and Friday still sticks regardless. You tried out other names, but they felt strange in your mouth, like tasting the edge of the house key as you hold your keys in your mouth to shuffle in the door of the house with the groceries. A house is not a home, but a home can be anywhere, and this home has a ghost.

Friday is quiet. Trying to define who she is is like trying to define what a blue sky in ski country is. Well, yes, it’s blue, and yes, it’s pretty, but beyond that, it is just a sky that attempts to defy description without one experiencing it themselves. Likewise, Friday is a ghost, and quiet, but in the end, still just an indescribable ghost. She is not like the Ghostbusters’ version, all glowing and ethereal, but instead, an unseen force, like a stray burst of wind which was caught inside the the walls of the house and hasn’t figured it’s way back out the door yet.

She caught the fly in your house. That is how you met her. The fly was buzzing through the rooms, loud and insistent, screaming for attention like a miniature chainsaw with wings. Three hours of it, and it had invaded your consciousness like Genghis Khan, running roughshod over any scrap of ability to actually work remotely. The fly stopped, in the middle of the room, held in place without the wings buzzing incessantly. As you marveled at the oddness of it, the small voice asked what they should do with it.

{should I hurt it}, it asked.

The sound of the voice, so much like a child, but carrying the deep weight of the bottom of the ocean, the weight of only itself, like Atlas shrugging the earth onto the other shoulder, does not surprise you and only invites response.

“No, it should go outside where it belongs,” you respond quietly, narrowly registering a response to question barely understood.

Without another whisper, the fly meanders towards the door, quite confused as to how it is traveling without meaning to. It tries to buzz it’s wings intermittently, but whatever force is holding the fly, holds them still after a few confused flicks. A few minutes later, after you send a lengthy email that no one is going to read, you hear the voice again.

{why did you choose to let it go?}

Again, the voice should scare you, disembodied and aimless, seemingly arriving from the walls and the carpet simultaneously, but it doesn’t. It is soft and gently caressing your ears, apologizing for the act of being heard as it happens.

“Live and let live,” you reply. “Already too much death in the world, killing a fly wouldn’t make anything better, at least that is what my mom would say.”

{perhaps}

You sit, leaning back in your chair, not looking at the computer screen, starting to suspect that this is what a mental breakdown is like for the person having it. You wonder if working from home for so long is causing damage that you were not aware of. Maybe it was carbon monoxide poisoning or something similar. You should tell your mom about your ghost, but for some reason, you don’t.

“Why won’t you say something?” You ask the air.

{it looked like you were thinking}

As ghosts go, Friday is a good ghost. There when you need to talk, but not always on top of you like a bad roommate or an incessant relative. You pause in the hallway after you mother’s funeral, buckling to your knees in grief. The floor catches you roughly, as the tears stream down your face. You know that Friday is with you. You don’t know how you know, but you can sense it.

{death is not so bad. i think i was alive once, it is hard to tell. but i don’t think the death part was hard}

“Is my mom out there?” I manage between the sobs.

{somewhere. nothing ends}

“Everything ends.”

{you will think differently someday}

“When is that?”

{when you are dead}

The next week, the tears don’t come as often. You still cry whenever you think of your mom, but you are able to keep your mental fingers out of the wound. It is scabbing up in an ugly way, as loss usually does. It will hurt for years to come. Losing your father was different. He had been so ill for so long, and the end was merciful. Not like your mom. She was vibrant, active, and wonderfully alive. Until she wasn’t.

“Friday?” You call out in the night, the dark at the edges of the room stretches out like a cinema shot, a scene lengthening from within a horror movie. The walls are far away, but pressing inwards like a vise. You need someone, even if it is a ghost.

{i am here}

“Why does it hurt so much?”

{you have to feel. it is your purpose}

“Do you feel anything?”

{i feel your presence}

You fall asleep knowing that at least someone is watching, even if you don’t know who it is. It is better than no one at all.

A month later, you are trying to get dressed like a normal human being and clean the disaster of your home. It is less a home and more of a dump at this point. Mess spread like an infection, it’s fungal arms reaching like tree roots incessantly chasing after sprinkler lines, taking over spaces slowly by duplicating detritus and creating extra layers that only an archaeologist would understand. As you are midway through the living room, the gut punch of loss hits again, and you double over in wracking sobs remembering a story you would have laughed about with your mom. The soiled mass of paper plates and to-go containers clutched in your hand floats away, finding its way into the trash can. The dishes find their way to the sink, and the dirty clothes wrangle themselves into the hamper.

Something like a hand brushes your forehead and cradles you gently.

{small steps are still steps}

“I talked to her everyday.”

{you can talk to me everyday}

“Until I can’t.”

{until you can’t}

“How can I get over something like this? How do people carry on after those they love in their lives are taken away?”

{nothing ends}

“You said that already.”

{i am answering your question. it might lessen in strength, but it is a part of you now. forever. you will carry it like a scar on your knee or a memory in your mind}

“How? How do people survive?”

{a choice}

You wipe at your nose with the back of your hand, and suddenly tissues appear over your shoulder. You take them gingerly, unsure how it would feel when they brush against Friday, instead your fingers find nothing but kleenex.

“A choice of what?”

{a choice to believe that nothing ends, including the love you carry. a choice that you don’t end because of it}

“People kept telling me at the funeral that she was with me. It is such bullshit.”

Silence, but another gentle caress on my forehead.

“She is not with me. She is not here to tell me everything is going to be ok. She is not here to see anything of me in the future.”

{you are right}

“So how can I do this?”

{make the choice to take another small step}

“On what?”

{anything. but for now, you can lie here, and remember. it’s ok}

So you do. And a few days later, you finally are able to leave the house for the first time. It releases you gently to the evening air, and the dark is comforting in its own way. You manage to go grocery shopping and make it home without shedding a single tear.

{the apples look good}

“They do, don’t they,” you respond. You smile at the Honeycrisps, and set them gently on the table in your mom’s wooden bowl. It’s where they belong, after all.

And for some reason it makes the house a home again.

Excerpts from:

The Society of Ambulists, A History
By The Ambulist Preservation Group, Dr. Julicaria Ambrosi Presiding
London, Great Angeln, United European States (Universal Marker Position -UMP:40d1EARTH20311c)
Published: December, 2008 RLT (Universal Marker Time -UMT:336d12c411y)

---

(From the Introduction)

The fact that the Society of Ambulists was founded at all could be identified as a lark of random interactions resulting in a positive outcome, colloquially known as a happy accident. It was by sheer overwhelming chance that Dr. Ansel Pollock, Individual Hero-Complex, and the Lady Primrose all managed to cross paths on the same morning of the same world stream in the only open breakfast location of all South London during the great Pandemic of 1978 RLT. It was on that morning that three intrepid travelers realized that they were in the presence of other travelers at a shared nexus. Not the last such nexus, but notably the first documented case where it was known!

---

(Transcription of Individual Hero-Complex’s recounting of the Founding Nexus)

I had been in London of this timestream for about three weeks, checking out how the pandemic of my own Earth had shifted from 1918 to 1978. How does the a major crises shift by sixty years, if not by someone like myself? Someone had to be carrying the disease from another time period. Isn’t that a tipsy-topsy thought? Viral contamination between realities… what if this viral spread could transition beyond parallel time streams and cross over to divergent or perpendicular realities?

I am muddling all this through over my coffee, when in walks a chap that nearly matched my preconception of a traveler. He needed an expedition hat to complete the look, but he had a tweed and linen expedition outfit on, as if he was traveling the Serengeti, or hunting a strange creature across the forests of the Amazon. But then came the kick to my plate… I realized that as he had ordered a coffee and croissant, his sleeve had fallen backwards to reveal a Vortex around his wrist. It looked far different than my own, but it was no shakes ten-cents the same device meant to keep oneself tethered to their own origination point. I pulled my own sleeve back, looking at my own vortex singularity contained on the whole of my forearm in a leather harness and ugly wiring, and I realized that not only was this Tory cat wearing a Vortex, but it had been miniaturized beyond my own understanding. I had left my Earth thinking that my technology was the pinnacle of human development, and here was an old dude, all prims and propers, waistcoat and all, with a smaller version of a Vortex under his hunting shirt. I put my coffee down in shock and was staring like a G.D. fool. Capitalized and underlined.

Then out of nowhere, this lady in a vaguely Victorian-style red dress addresses the Tory at the counter. I realized that my heavily patched punker jacket made me the most normal looking one out of the three of us. She says, “Excuse me, kind sir?”

He goes, “Madam?”

Like I was watching an old telly play out and everything.

She leans forward, all concerned like, and asks under her breath if HE HAS A GODDAMN VORTEX TRANSLOCATOR ON HIS WRIST. I lost my shit and slapped the table. Coffee went everywhere, my donut bits hit the floor rolling into the corners, and I started laughing. The two of them probably thought I was mad, but I pulled back my sleeve without a word, and they finally caught up to the joke.

I still can’t believe it. I mean, what are chances? I calculated them later, so I will tell you.

1 in 10 to the 35th power. You might have better odds in catching a falling deep space meteorite in a bathtub launched randomly at any point from the Earth’s surface.

Turns out I was very wrong on the virus. It was unique… only the circumstances matched. Confirmation bias on my own part. Shame.

Still an interesting thought experiment that I pose to my students time to time. I may have lost the hair, and the attitude, but the big mind-melting thinkings, those all stuck behind.

---

(Transcription of the Lady Primrose’s recounting of the Founding Nexus)

I arrived on this new terra in an alley of sorts, which was not what I had fully expected. I had previewed the cusp from my translocation system so delicately sewn into my traveling dress as I had crossed over. The transition of walking between the planes of realities was a simple task really, once you understood the math of it, and not one that I had expected any great discomfort in taking. The translocation system of which I had designed was running perfectly and I could feel the tug of where my home remained, laying behind me, if you will. My translocation design had worked flawlessly, and through my adulation, I realized I was quite hungry. Silly Helena, I thought to myself. I should have eaten before I left. I was very young then, all of twenty-four, and quite prone to the flightly nature of youth.

My first journey had led me here, to this new terra, and as I knew the pound sterling reigned supreme, and I could leverage my own coin in a passable fashion. Coffee and perhaps a pasty, I thought. To my surprise, when I entered the shop, it was nearly empty. There was a strange looking young man at a table, wearing some unfathomable clothing, with hair the color of putrid cheese. I could not tell what to make of it, but as a traveller myself, I knew that my red overcoat over my traveling dress may appear strange to others as well. The man behind the counter looked like any other store keeper, a simple white shirt and apron, serving his limited clientele. It was the man standing on my side of the counter that caught my attention. It was the bulb located at his wrist.

I knew it immediately, as I had the same bulb located on my petticoat, wired directly below my sternum clasp. It was a grafted singularity, a slice of my own universe contained in a perpetual storm of creation and destruction, telling me which way I had to go in order to reach my own home. Having an origination point is paramount in the art of Ambulism, so I knew then that this silly little man, and he was silly looking, let me tell you. He was dressed for an archaeology dig, leather boots up to his knees, and three piece suit, respectable tailoring and high quality of cloth. I thought of his gentry immediately. Rich enough to for any pursuit, but not too rich that he would forget what was at stake.

My family is of a much worse kind. Idle rich. At least he had his wits about him.

I felt compelled to lean over and inquire of his Vortex Translocator, and as the words left my mouth, the young man at the table with the fan of green hair screamed unintelligibly, spilling his coffee all over the table and the floor around it.

I was about to the give the young cad a lecture that would make his mother blush, but as I turned to make eye contact with him, he pulled his sleeve back to reveal not only another Translocator, but one of a design entirely different than my own and the older gentleman’s next to me.

This was a monumental occasion. I nearly fainted. But I wouldn’t, because I am not Dr. Pollock, god rest him.

He did.

---

(Transcription of Dr. Ansel Pollock’s recounting of the Founding Nexus)

I had arrived in London of Great Angeln three days prior. I had come from an expedition to a strange planet of which I named Excelsior Prime. It was alien, for certain. We now know it was a version of Venus that had replaced Earth in it’s deep history, and had developed life in strangely parallel way. The intelligent life there we now call the Amblin, and they are clever and a half for their diminutive size. I thought since they were only the size of a river otter, their brain would not match my own. I was proven wrong on that front on many occasions. Rumor is that English is now their primary language. Clever people, the Amblin.

Anyway, I had arrived in this tertiary version of my own country to detox and quarantine myself. It is a handy location to have for my many involved expeditions. It is close enough to my own home that I am very comfortable, and it is already under heavy quarantine, so my chances of bringing anything untoward is nearly zero. Since I can shift on the timestream in any direction, I can make my comings and goings divergent, and never cross my own path. I stay two weeks, clean and sterilize my equipment, then head home. To my wife, my trips are only days, not weeks. Very handy indeed.

If I had known that I was to encounter two others from not only other timestreams, but divergent realities, on my trip to gather my morning breakfast and some proper tea, I would have attempted to present a better version of myself. I was in my only clean suit, as all the others were at the laundry. But I was in desperate need of a proper cup of tea. The hotel only had codswollop for some reason, and it was barely passable as a tea, but less any type of tea I had ever come across. Shame, really. The only terrible thing about this place was the fact I had to go out to get my tea.

I went to the same place I always had, and as I ordering my tea and biscuits, a young lady entered the shop and was staring at my wrist. I realized that I had lifted my Origin Bracelet arm to point at the biscuits I had wanted from the good shopkeeper, and my bracelet had caught her eye. She was dressed quite strangely, as if she had wandered from my own Victorian age, a red coat over a lighter dress, very full at the waist and hips, gathered in the back and near the lower hem. The dress was covered in unique patterns and ribbing that almost looked reinforced and armored, if you will. It was very well fitted, and she appeared to be carry herself with an age far beyond her actual years.

She made eye contact with me, nodded her head at my wrist and asked if I had a Translocation device on my person. I was beside myself. Not only did this comely young lady know what it was, but she carried herself as if she exactly how it functioned. I had never encountered such a person before, and the shock nearly shut down all rational thought.

Suddenly, another voice arose from behind, a very strange looking creature of a man behind me, wearing a leather jacket covered in designs and words, with denim pants, ripped at the knees. I was so taken aback by his appearance, that I was entirely certain that I was losing my mind. I had not seen him when I had come in, and I should have, because his hair was an appaling green color and stood up on his head like a set of porcupine quills. He lowered his own jacket sleeve, and to my astonishment, he had a rudimentary form of an Origin Bracelet as well, except it covered his entire forearm in some form of an ancient vambrace or fingerless guantlet.

Upon seeing the other, and my connecting the circumstances, am I afraid that I, stalwart in the face of insurmountable odds, momentarily lost my ability to stand straight. Lightheaded, I sat down roughly on the floor, and tried to keep my wits about me.

It was a strange encounter, and one that I have reflected on much since.

What led me to that point, at the place, at precisely that event?

I wonder about such things. Often.