You're a coward, first of all.
[[Hey]]A coward and an opportunist and an asshole and a freak and a creep--
[[Hey.]]It's not like you're actually fucking with your past. You wouldn't want to do that.
It's more like... an immersive dream. You sit in the past, following the script, and eventually, it rectifies itself and bounces you back out. When you return to the present, nothing has changed.
[[So in some sense of the word, the exploitable, paradox-causing, gambling-engaging, fuckery-filled sense, time travel is worthless.]][[This is the story I tell myself when I time travel:]]
Sometimes, I mean.There is a man
(live: 1s)[who lept through time. Every single time I tell this story, I change his name. Why don't we call him Jacob? Jacob was a man who could leap through time. He was from a small family of gods.]
(live: 2s)[And all those gods had their own powers. One could control people with her voice. Another could transform into anything he wanted. Another could shift space. Another could not feel fear. They went on and on like that for a while.]
(live: 3s) [So Jacob, Jacob, right?]
(live: 4s)[Has never told them what he could do. They don't know. They know that despite being impossibly angry and impossibly powerful, none of them have died.]
(live: 5s)[What do you think Jacob thinks about that?]
(live: 6s)[There's one of them who knows. She knows because every time Jacob leaps backwards in time to save someone, to change time, to keep them together-- alive, well, happy-- she goes back too. She's stuck to him. He doesn't know that. She doesn't know why things are like that.]
(live: 7s)[And eventually, when it gets bad enough, she tells him.]
(live: 8s)[Mainly, she tells him that he should leave.]
(live: 9s)[And he says: There is no world for me that isn't the world made of us. I can't let anything end. I know it's bad. Please let me stay.]
(live: 10s)[I spent a lot of time writing stories like this. I think what I wanted to say to you was: "I don't think you can consent to magic."]
(live: 12s)[I think what I wanted to say was: "Power is ugly."]
(live: 14s)[I think what I wanted to say was: "I will tell you how it hurts in every gloriously self-interested way I can."]
(live: 16s) [I think what I wanted to say was: "I am the monster I am destined to kill."]
(live: 19s) [I think what I wanted to say was: "How do people in fantasies ever fall in love, with the world broken around them?"]
(live: 22s) [I think what I wanted to say was: "I do not know how to write worlds that aren't broken."]
(live: 24s)[[[I've come up with lots of endings. But it's more that there's no real end to the story. It hinges on that minute, which is always happening, which is the moment you can't pretend things will ever be what they were again, and what they were was everything, everything.|2]]]//June 9, 2020//
(text-colour:purple)[[[Hey?|3]]](text-colour: purple) [You look like some sort of road revenant. A 2010s mythical creature defined by its haunted expression and terrible perversion of proper 10-2 driving form. What are your hands doing, 5-7? 6:30, 5:30?]
(live: 2s)[ "Gay Thoughts" by Growlers winds down in the distance. They had it on a playlist called "subtext". Their definition of subtext was "text". When you told them this, their eyebrows raised and lowered, awkwardly, deliberately, stupidly. As if daring you to tell them their songs were //gay//.]
(live: 5s) [(text-colour: blue) [Okay. That's enough.]]
(live: 6s)[ (text-colour: purple) [Who else is going to tell you that you suck at driving?]]
(live: 8s) [[[You're the only one who tells me that.|2.0]]
[[I don't think I can focus on the road right now. We should pull over. |Try again1.]]
[[Please drive us home with your non-existent license, then? |Try again1.]]
[[I wish everyone knew how much affection you keep in your little jabs. Makes getting hit by them the highlight of my day. Everyday. |Try again1.]]]
Part of time travel is remembering a scene correctly enough to grab it.
This one's so easy for me now, it's almost laughable. I could travel there every night if I wanted.
But I don't.
Really.
[[We're in my car.|X]][[Hey.|1]]But that's not what I said the first time.
[[Fine.|1]](text-colour: purple) [I'm glad I can keep you in check.]
(live: 1s) [And now it was "Since When Are You Gay" by Childbirth.]
(live: 2s) [(text-colour: purple) [You know the twist to this one right?]]
(live: 3s) [(text-colour: blue) [She's asking why the other person is gay because... //she's... gay....? For her?//]]
(live: 4s)[ (text-colour: purple) [You catch on quick. ;)]]
(live: 5s) [(text-colour: blue) [We have listened to this playlist??? Twelve times???]]
(live: 6s)[ The exit signs start moving past faster. There are eighty miles between your town and their summer beachhouse, overlooking the grim Northeastern Atlantic. Sometimes you drive all the way out there. Tonight is one of those nights. You might be home by two thirty. You might not, and sleep at the beach house, on opposing couches.]
(live: 10s) [Except that you know you'll make it home. You already know exactly when you turn around and go home.]
(live: 11s)[ (text-colour: purple) [I'm not tired. Let's see if we can make it all the way through?]]
(live: 12s) [[[Yeah. All the way through.|3.0]]
[[We're not going to make it all the way through. |Try again2.]]
[[We thought we were so cool. Holy shit. Was there nothing else for us to do besides drive? |Try again2.]]
[[Do you still think about this, too? |Try again2.]]]
Please remember the script.
[[I'm trying to, but this was years ago.|2.0]]The signs blur together, music moving into an aggressive electronic song that's substituted "subtext" for "no text". It's one of yours.
(live: 1s) [(text-colour: purple) [Pratchett.]]
(live: 2s) [(text-colour: blue) [Yeah?]]
(live: 3s) [(text-colour: purple) [The car. It's like the clacks from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels-- you know, his semaphore lines? Right now, we're just... an electric pulse moving through the darkness.]]
(live: 5s) [(text-colour: blue) [Hm. "The beating heart of the country", from "I Am Disappeared"?]]
(live: 7s) [(text-colour: purple) [Yeah like that. Exactly like that.]]
(live: 8s)[(text-colour: blue) [You want to see something electrically impulsive?]]
(live: 10s) [(text-colour: purple) [????]]
(live: 11s) [(text-colour: blue) [See the train?]]
(live: 12s) [(text-colour: purple) [Oh no. No. No no no--]]
(live: 14s)[
[[Floor it.|4.0]]
[[If you stop, and explain, maybe they'll understand.|Try again3.]]
[[You always scared them. That's why they joked about it so much. It's because you scared them. It's because you're scary. It's because you don't know when to quit.|Try again3.]]
[[You only started reading Terry Pratchett after they stopped talking to you.|Try again3.]]]
The car shoots through the night, past the freight train on the tracks parallel to the highway. Its whistle might be to ward you off. Maybe it's egging you on. Maybe it has no idea you're there?
(live: 2s) [From your room in your hometown, when you lived there, you could always hear the trains howling in the night, like strange dogs.]
(live: 4s) [(text-colour: purple) [What if we pulled over?]]
(live: 5s)[[[Where are we supposed to pull over? |5.0]]
[[What if we kept going? |Try again4.]]
[[What if we went home? |Try again4.]]
[[What do you want to happen when we pull over, exactly? |Try again4.]]]
(text-colour: purple) [Turn off the road. Right now.]
(live: 2s)[(text-colour: blue) [... no??]]
(live: 3s)[(text-colour: purple) [No no it's okay I was joking!! (please do not swerve off the road haha) There's a little outlet in three miles. It's the first place you can see the water from, if you follow the trail out a few hundred feet.]]
(live: 6s)[(text-colour: blue) [What the heck. Why not?]]
(live: 7s) [They put their head on your shoulder. It's the only way you know they actually trust your driving. You pretend you aren't blushing, or smirking, or whatever, and in the darkness, no one can really say how you felt. But you've leaned on them enough times to know that they can probably feel your heart hammering through their ear.]
(live: 8s) [
[[And you kept on in silence.|6.0]]
[[I love you. |Try again5.]]
[[I have always loved you. |Try again5.]]
[[Not in the way we were told we should, or could, or whatever. I don't know how I loved you. I think the way I expressed it was the best way I could, and I hope you know that. I think you do. |Try again5.]]]
It doesn't take long to get to the exit-- right where they said it would be. The sign on Queen Anne's Park, which is really just a few picnic tables, is dilapidated. The sign is, you mean. And the picnic tables? And the suspicious bathroom? It's all perceptibly filthy, even in the dark.
And they get on top of one and stand, shake their head, then go back to the car. They hurtle over the hood of your hand-me-down car, and onto the roof. Everything makes threatening crumpling noises as they do this.
(live: 5s) [(text-colour: blue) [Hey!]]
(live: 6s) [They pat the roof. (text-colour: purple) [Get up here!]]
(live: 8s) [(text-colour: blue) [The bad decisions are supposed to be my contribution to this friendship.]]
(live: 10s) [(text-colour: purple) [So? What are you going to contribute now?]]
(live: 12s) [You get on the roof of the car. They lie back down. The car is long enough for you to lie side by side, but it's cramped. ]
(live: 13s)[They knew it was cramped.]
(live: 14s) [And they take your hand, and the world slows down. ]
(live: 16s) [(text-colour: purple) [I thought there would be stars up here, and this would be some stupidly dramatic moment we could remember forever.]]
(live: 18s)[(text-colour: blue) [Oh yeah it's super overcast.]]
(live: 19s) [(text-colour: purple) [Yep.]]
(live: 20s)[(text-colour: blue) [Guess I'll forget about this???]]
(live: 21s) [(text-colour: purple) [well now I feel stupid...]]
(live: 22s) [(text-colour: blue) [It's still nice.]]
(live: 23s) [(text-colour: purple) [Yeah?]]
(live: 24s)[(text-colour: blue) [No. I'm covered in gnats right now.]]
(live: 25s)[The gnats swimming in your eyes. Your face is a gnat resort. Back then, that was why you were crying].
(live: 27s) [And then, your hero-- they're trying to bat them away. It's not working, but even then, you can't keep yourself from giggling as they attempt to clap gnats out of the air.]
(live: 28s) [(text-colour: purple) [If you're not going to take care of yourself, someone has to??? Stop laughing? at me?]]
(live: 29s) [(text-colour: blue) [No.]]
(live: 30s) [(text-colour: purple) [Whatever. I'm going to get back in the car.]]
(live: 32s)[
[[Stay. |Try again6.]]
[[How could you possibly get off the car when there are so many gnats to slap off my face? |Try again6.]]
[[It's a beautiful sky, actually. If you look a little over to the left, you can see the moon, only half-hidden. And while we're driving home, all the stars are going to come out. There'll only be twenty or so, at most. But you'll point to them, tell me which ones you learned when you were fifteen. Orion's Belt is your favorite constellation, not because it's the prettiest, but because it's always out when you need it. And mine is the Big Dipper, because if you don't see it, you can point to other stars in a similar pattern and pretend you do. |Try again6.]]]
Don't ruin this for me.
[[Okay.|3.0]]You're going to ruin it.
[[Like you already did?|4.0]]If you ruin it now, you won't get to the ending. And you want to get to the ending, right?
[[What's the point?|5.0]]That's not what you said.
(live: 1s) [[[Stay.|Stay.]]]//That's not what you said.//
(live: 1s) [[[Stay.|Stay2]]](text-colour: purple) [That's not what you said.]
(live: 1s) [[[YOU'RE TIME TRAVELLING TOO?|FCK]]](live:1s)[(text-colour: purple)[...]]
(live: 2s)[(text-colour: purple)[Fuck.]]
(live: 3s) [Just like that, they're gone. You see them blink, hear the normal script return. You're no longer listening. Your heart is full of ice. You can see light on the edge of your vision. Most people never encounter other time travellers while time travelling, localized as it is. Apparently they leave a path behind. An obvious. Very followable. Hole in the air.
You decide to be normal about this. ]
(live: 5s) [[[HECK|HECKK]]][[Good.|2]]//March 18, 2020//
You follow them into a memory of the tunnels under the town. Or, you're supposed to be. They were scared at the time. Now they're bolting away in the shoes they shouldn't have been wearing, the white Docs that took on water faster than the Titanic.
[[WAIT UP]](text-colour: purple) [NO!]
(live: 1s) [(text-colour: blue) [I PROMISE I WASN'T THERE FOR WEIRD REASONS.]]
(live: 2s)[ (text-colour: purple) [THEN WHY WERE YOU THERE?]]
(live: 3s) [(text-colour: blue) [WHAT WAS **I** DOING THERE? WHAT WERE YOU DOING AT THE DEVIL'S SACRAMENT, BESTIE?]]
(live: 4s) [(text-colour: purple) [...]
They fall directly into a slick concrete wall, disappearing through time.
[[Go back to the present.]]
[[We're following them to the heat death of the fucking universe.]]]Nah
[[Worth a try|We're following them to the heat death of the fucking universe.]]//December 26, 2019//
(text-colour: blue) [Why did you never talk to me about this?]
(live: 1s) [(text-colour: purple) [It's private. Why did you always insist on asking after things you knew weren't any of your business?]
Everyone is staring at you. This is the middle of a party your mutual friends had thrown, and you were playing Apples to Apples. You were playing Apples to Apples. Now you're standing in the middle of the room, time-traveller shouting at each other. ]
(live: 3s)[[[We already talked about this. Like five times.|We already talked about this. Like five times.]]]
//October 5, 2019//
(text-colour: blue) [Maybe that's why I gave up when you left.]
(live: 1s) [(text-colour: purple) [I saw you with your huge posse of new friends yesterday?]]
(live: 2s) [(text-colour: blue) [No I mean like on people who have already hurt me-- god, whatever. Yes, I do know I'm full of shit.]]
(live: 3s) [(text-colour: red) [What are you two talking about?]]
(live: 5s) [They throw their boba on the ground. ]
(live: 6s) [(text-colour: purple) [Causality is fake. This timeline is crap. In the future everything will burn to the ground and you'll choose her side. Peace.]]
(live: 7s) [[[And I wonder why they did that?|WHATEVER]]]//November 20, 2019//
(text-colour: purple) [And it never helped?? It just? Kept? Getting worse??]
(live: 1s) [(text-colour: blue) [You were already done the first time I fucked up.]]
(live: 3s) [(text-colour: purple) [Maybe I kinda was? Maybe I'm not ready to resolve things over and over again, like you are-- when you know nothing is actually going to get better, and you just want something to not die? Maybe that's stupid. Maybe I always wanted to tell you that??? Stop-- stop hanging on. To people who hurt you. Let go. Give up.]]
(live: 6s) [(text-colour: blue) [You said that the thing you liked most about me was that you knew I'd never let go of something I believed in.]]
(live: 8s) [(text-colour: purple) [[[Maybe I was wrong.|Hell]]]]//September 9, 2019//
(text-colour: purple) [I don't! Leave me alone!]
(live: 2s) [[[I just|I just]]]//August 30, 2019//
[[I just wanted to say]]//August 27, 2019//
[[And this doesn't change anything--]]
//August 26, 2019//
[[I still--]]//August 25, 2019//
Lights bloom in the distance, from over the hill. Noise and sound waft over in droves-- cotton candy, people talking, the mechanical snarl of machines, mud from three days' traffic, ash, ash, ash, this town has always smelled like ash.
Maybe you lost them. But the memory goes like this:
(live: 5s) [(text-colour: purple) [[I miss you.]]](text-colour: blue) [I miss you too.]
(live: 1s) [(text-colour: purple) [So you're not mad anymore?]]
(live: 2s) [(text-colour: blue) [I'm still really mad.]]
(live: 3s) [(text-colour: purple) [I'm still mad, too. But isn't that stupid?? It's been six months--]]
(live: 5s) [(text-colour: blue) [My therapist told me that grief is what love does when it doesn't know where to go. So... in my mind, that's part of why I'm happy I'm still grieving. Because I don't want to know what I'll be like when I don't love you anymore.]]
(live: 8s) [(text-colour: purple) [you.]]
(live: 10s)[(text-colour: blue) [???]]
(live: 11s)[(text-colour: purple) [You'll be... you.]]
(live: 12s) [(text-colour: blue) [But not that version of me. I liked that person. I liked who I was with you.]]
(live: 13s) [(text-colour: purple) [...]]
(live: 14s)[(text-colour: blue) [...]]
(live: 16s)[(text-colour: purple) [How often do you actually do this?]]
(live: 17s)[(text-colour: blue) [Not often.]]
(live: 18s)[(text-colour: purple) [...]]
(live: 19s)[(text-colour: blue) [...]]
(live: 20s)[(text-colour: purple) [Me neither.]]
(live: 22s)[(text-colour: blue) [Good.]]
(live: 24s)[(text-colour: purple) [We don't have long? We could, move again, talk there?]]
(live: 26s)[(text-colour: blue) [If you wanted to talk, you could talk to me in the present.]]
(live: 28s)[(text-colour: purple) [...]]
(live: 29s)[(text-colour: blue) [Why doesn't it make more sense? You miss me, I miss you, we could just--]]
(live: 30s)[(text-colour: purple) [Not yet.]]
(live: 31s)[(text-colour: blue) [No?]]
(live: 32s)[(text-colour: purple) [Let's not say, "never". Absolutes are stupid. We have so long. Let's just say, let's say... "not now".]]
(live: 34s)[(text-colour: blue) [Okay.]]
(live: 36s)[(text-colour: purple) [And for the next two minutes, we're just... people who this hasn't happened to. Because it was hard. And we miss each other. And even if it's stupid, and a bad use of time travel, we owe each other two minutes. Okay?]]
(live: 38s)[(text-colour: blue) [Okay.]]
(live: 40s)[
And then, you said...
[[Tired of the lights?]]
[[Stay, please.]]]
They smile.
(live: 2s) [(text-colour: purple) [I'm all out of tickets. You want to walk home together?]]
(live: 3s)[There are twelve stars overhead, and three of them are airplanes. Like most nights you spent together, you talked for hours about good poetry, bad novels, things you loved, people you missed. It was one of the nights that formed the person you are now. You want to tell them that living this new life, the one without them, has been dedicated to them. That you do the things they asked you to do better. That you think of them whenever you see skies that looked like the ones that cast over your nights. That you pause when finding a poem or song you would've sent and can't now.
[[But you don't have the time to say that.|14]]]They smile. Then they sit next to you on the hill, sprawling themselves out on the grass.
(live: 2s)[(text-colour: purple) [For now.]]
(live: 3s) [Love has never stopped you from losing people.
But you think you have to do the rest of this, however long it is, with love.
You hope it's really, really really long.
[[Really.|14]]]For a moment, the world is soft again, like it was.
fin.