By Jim Alexander | Taken from the short story collection Rerun to Eden | 2169 words
Listen to the Audio of The Insignificance of Time Travel:
I scoop up another one with impossible care, as if the spoon is holding something incredibly hollow and fragile, like a world or a universe. But it’s neither of these. I take the flake and pop it in my mouth. I swish it from one side of my mouth to the other. Even though my saliva does its job, reducing it quickly to a form of mush, I’m in no hurry to swallow. A residue of corn circulates my mouth. The taste is so powerful it engages my senses. I swear I can smell the cut grain, see the field the corn grew in, feel the sun beating down, the key to it all.
When I first lived this moment, I probably wolfed down the cereal. In all probability, I did so while standing, the idea of breakfast an entirely functional one. A thin layer of soya milk. Get the food down with a minimum of fuss, a minimum of everything. But now, this latest precise time, everything is different. Is so much more heightened. I’m almost giddy with excitement as I sit at the table savouring every last morsel. My face taut with anticipation. Literal crumbs of comfort. Because I know right now, we share the same world. They are still with me.
There is only one direction of time travel that I’m invested in. You go back in time. You do so not as a separate entity, but as an adjunct. On arrival, you form an additional layer which you wrap around all the layers that preceded it. You are a ghost, haunting your former self.
I’m brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush. I catch my reflection in the mirror on the side cabinet and I find myself shaping my mouth into a little forced smile. I notice the folds of skin which catapult from my cheekbones. I can’t see my lips for the foam of the toothpaste. I’ll take this as my cue to stop soon.
I’ve been back here, oh, what seems like a thousand times. I have a name for each tooth. The furthest out, the bottom left molar, to give one example, is called Albert. My right incisor is Victoria. Maybe one day I’ll group them closer together, but I’ve never claimed to be a Royalist so the present arrangement suits me fine. In the past, at the time, like most things I considered it a perfunctory act; one you wanted done quickly. But now I’m back, this one more time, I slow it down. I savour the sheer ordinariness and sterile mundanity of it. Every Albert. Every Victoria.
I can’t control my past, I’m a ghost after all, but my future voice adds to the other voices which compete like hungry chicks inside my head. My mother, my best friend, my anxiety, my awkwardness, my natural optimism, my present and future self. And sometimes it’s the latter that breaks through to exert a little influence and slow things down, and extend the time I take to brush my teeth.
Frank-Susie-Matilda-Boris-Marmaduke…
I feel guilty I haven’t hoovered in a week. The oven still needs to be cleaned and the blinds straightened. I apply a form of domestic triage, which results in first emptying the dishwasher.
Behind me… I have tried so many times to blot it out, reluctantly, painfully, realising the futility of it, but ignoring this all the same. There is a phone on a kitchen surface. Its presence is suffocating. It is everywhere. It could just as well be a brick on my chest, crushing the life out of me.
But for now, the dishwasher is the thing. What else to do but start with the mugs and cutlery before moving on to the bigger stuff: plates, pots, a casserole dish with a dogged stain that should necessitate another cycle. I think the machine needs some TLC; more detergent. A little cleansing.
Something is wrong, something begins to stir inside, the gestation of an alarm bell, and I know it won’t be long before it’s so oppressive I can’t stand it. Even the contents of a dishwasher can’t go on forever.
It’s not as if I can change anything—achieve anything of any importance. I can’t pick up the phone any earlier than I did a thousand times before. Only in my mind. I can’t pay it no heed. These devices are designed not to be ignored.
Wasps are making their way into the house. Attracted by the ripened apples on the tree in the back garden. The wasps seem sluggish themselves. Short and erratic, intrinsically pointless flight paths. As much of a nuisance to themselves as any other. I think they must be dying too.
The weather report reverberates from the radio. A warning of flash floods is the crux of it.
Even though I go back in time again and again, I can’t change anything. Can’t pick up the phone, or text. I can’t get them to take the left-hand lane. Cut their speed to below seventy, under sixty, to stop driving. To just stop. I can’t change this. These are fixed points. Unalterable and undeniable. Bolstered by the bulwark of time. Nudging over the speed limit.
The Tesco delivery man arrives later than expected. Although this would imply he’d ever arrived on time previously. I know in my heart that the big bag of pasta, soap powder, box of eggs, a packet of fruit winders, assorted frozen meals—the memories contained in his plastic delivery cart—will prove overwhelming, but I have no choice but to get through this.
I’d always considered people with a pasta-making kit to be deeply eccentric. I mean, come on, why go through the hassle when so readily available at a supermarket near you? But now, with the various food shortages and cost of living crises, one after another, I’m starting to see them as visionary.
I’m just processing. I go back in time and move from one self-contained period to another. I’m constrained and I can’t go back too far. These are the moments offered up to me, and I relive them again and again.
In the kitchen, I didn’t properly turn off the tap. Sometimes I don’t notice the tap leaking. Other times, it feels like each drop falls with shuddering momentum, crashing against the surface of the sink, causing the fixture and fittings to shake. I rationalise it. It’s like time knows I’m here and I’ve outstayed my welcome.
Drip, drip, drip…
Everything is churning up inside me. I don’t want to think of how things are, even though I know I can’t escape it forever. The reality of the situation. The finality of things.
I move to the living room, surrounded by family photos. I need to cling on to the reality of the current situation. That’s why I’m here after all. I can feel the heat, I can still feel the warmth. A discarded jacket. As best I can, while still maintaining a normal distance, I breathe it in, I taste it. I want to take off my shoes and feel the carpet under my feet and imagine the footsteps, all the impressions made by their feet. My future voice urges my past self to eat the contents of the house. For something like posterity. And of course, such a thought, such a deranged impulse, is roundly ignored.
It is oppressive. The moment of truth is far too close now. Choked with pregnant pauses, words lost and swallowed. The phone will light up and vibrate with an intensity that will cause it to jump up from the kitchen surface and move in a circular motion. Petulant child. Crying baby. It will not be ignored. A noise which has its origins from the very base of me, rising through my body, carried in my bloodstream. The end result, a shriek that is barely human. Everything will be stripped from me. My identity, my mind.
I fold a sheet. Iron out a crease. I go upstairs and straighten the shoes below their beds so they sit perfectly aligned side by side. To go back to the start. To begin the cycle again, before it becomes too much to bear and everything breaks down again. Down, tumbling back down, I reach for the phone and steal myself.
I…
Oh god, I…
Please, I…
…scoop up another flake and pop it in my mouth. As I swish, propelling food morsels from one side of my mouth to the other, the taste of corn infiltrates my senses. I breathe in the pollen, feel the corn stretch in the cob, caught in a light rainfall, the key to it all.
Another flake, but something is different and I find I’m crouched down at the knees, my hands covering my ears. The crunch of the cornflake is too loud this time, deafening, and my teeth feel like they’re conspiring against me, that they are no longer mine. Time is moving fast now, too fast. And I begin to run from my own memory. Reality around me begins to crunch.
Against my better judgement, I close my eyes. And when I open them…
Still crouching, but now I’m in a dimly lit tunnel. I can hear the soft thrum of machinery, originating from inside the walls, which gives the impression the tunnel is breathing.
There is another light. A stronger one at the end of the tunnel and it lends the corridor a focal point. Grants it some meaning. It is the shape of reality, the natural way of things regardless. It is everything my senses require. So I stand straight and walk towards the light. The light is a metallic teal when I really look at it. There is an air of defiance on my face, or that is the intention.
“Send me back,” I say.
A voice comes from the teal. An even voice, devoid of inflection. ‘Carol Estrada,’ it says, ‘one has used up their allotted time displacement
‘One has reached a limit the algorithm would never have predicted one to reach’
“Send me back.”
‘Time travel was intended to help one unravel issues and problems
‘The intention is to help one move forward not continually bounce around in the past
‘Not to be imprisoned in one’s memories’
“Send me back, send me back, send me back.”
‘Carol Estrada, we cannot help you’
The crunch of the flakes, the spikiness of toothpaste, the leaking of a tap, the vibration of a wasp’s wings. This was home to me. The only things that made sense. This, I had to make the teal understand.
But when I try to speak, to find the right words to express how I truly feel, I discover they do not exist. I cannot talk.
‘We cannot help you’
“It’s not enough,” I eventually stumble out.
‘Please explain’
“It’s not enough to get lost in the moment. Sometimes I can persuade myself that even the impossible is real. Is that so wrong? I repeat—I go back—one ordinary thing after another. I breathe it in—that’s all I want—anything but the reality…
“The truth.”
‘Travelling back in time is not the answer’
“The truth takes my family away.”
‘Carol Estrada’ There is a pause even from the teal.
“I know that’s not the answer. I don’t want time travel,” I say.
“I want it to stop.”
*
It is not as if living software ever chooses to stop when faced with a problem. It simply engineers the next stage. The next level.
Now, for me, all the realities and pockets of time coexist. Time hasn’t stopped, it has become fluid to the point of self-referential, self-fulfilling, self-aware, and I have effectively merged with time. The many, many moments, the drab and the commonplace, I am part of them, all of them. They are with me constantly.
Emerging from a single point, like a prism. Gateways to the past.
I eat cornflakes and empty the dishwasher and straighten shoes. I fold clothes and put away bags of pasta and brush my teeth. I watch wasps while listening to the weather report. I listen to the weather report while watching wasps.
In random fashion, I transition from one to the other at my leisure. Order is not important here. I can stretch time and do not exist outside of this.
And my mind accepts this; in my heart, I know it to be true. They are on the road. They are coming home. These are the moments I keep my family alive. There is a happiness to be found, distilled and trapped in time.
Insignificant to some.
My name is Carol Estrada. Mother, wife, ghost. I am the first of my kind, and I could be the last as well, for all I know. You can choose to remember me if this is acceptable to you. Or forget about me, that is no matter. But there are moments, and there is contentment.
And this is a life worth living.