Chapter 3.4: I’ve Been Waiting For a Guide to Come and Take Me by the Hand
97 0 3
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

"What do you mean, we're the same?" asked a befuddled Emil. 

"We both have a relationship to time that's different from everyone else in the world," replied the man. "Or at least anyone we've ever met in the world."

Confused, Emil struggled to figure out a response. 

Noticing Emil's unease, the man continued. "It's alright, I know your secret. You think you died and traveled back in time," the man smiled. "We've talked about this countless times."

Another wave of confusion further overwhelmed Emil's mind. 

“I guess we're not exactly the same," the man said in an overly familiar tone. "I spent an eternity learning how to control this ability, while you spent an eternity refusing to."

After a few moments, Emil was able to ask in a low whisper.

"Are you talking about time travel?" 

"Sort of. Your body doesn't travel, it's your mind, your consciousness," the man paused, amused. "It's interesting to explain this to you every once in a while. Sometimes when we meet, we have met before, and you’re very angry with me, and sometimes when we meet, we are still on hood terms. Explaining it to you now is also quite amusing, since I believe we figured this all out together at one time, perhaps it was a long night in London, in 2030..." The man wistfully trailed off.

"Did you say we met in 2030?" Emil interrupted. "I died in 2023."

The man held an amused stare at Emil and suddenly shifted his tone of voice. As if speaking to a child, slower and more enunciated words poured out.

"In one of your futures you died, but your consciousness didn't. Yes, back in London we thought of some interesting metaphors to try and make sense of how time works in relation to the unconscious. Time isn't linear, it's not like a railroad where we are forced to follow set tracks, and it's not like water traveling along a surface of a table, in which it can go and spread in different directions."

The man took another sip of coffee before speaking. He seemed to be enjoying this lesson.

"Time is much more dense than what scholars have thought of it as. It's made up of a multitude of points, singular moments of experiences. These points of time are innumerable but finite, unique to every unconscious. Yet how we travel from point to point, the paths that our consciousness chooses to follow, can be close to unlimited."

He then devilishly smiled, "this is all to say, that yes, if humans can unlock this ability, we can travel into different futures and can constantly make decisions that can shape our future into one we want."

"So does that mean I can go back to before my parents died," hope filled Emil's eyes. "And I can stop it from happening?"

The man shook his head with a downcast face.

"It doesn't work that way, at least as far as we've been able to experience it. For instance, my consciousness, can't go back to before I gained this ability. And we gained it at the same time, in 1999. We can only move back and forth between then and the future. Unfortunately anything that happened before we gained that ability, we cannot access," the man said scratching his chin.

"You say I gained this ability in 1999, then how come I only time traveled when I died in 2023?" asked Emil.

"In one of your futures you did die. Well I guess in all of our futures we die, but I'm certain you died in a car crash in one of your futures. But just like there are countless points of time, there are countless points of how we die. Perhaps when you gained your ability in 1999, this was the first path it took, a giant leap toward one of your possible futures, or at least the end of one of your futures," the man sat back and folded his arms in an inquisitive manner. 

"At least, this is what you've hypothesized the other times I've met you," the man continued with an amused face. "In any case, you weren't really in your 40s, or at least your current consciousness isn't."

"So I'm not forty-three?" Emil asked, even more confused.

"No, you're eighteen, or at least you have the consciousness of your eighteen year old self. You've just experienced a future--a possible future--in which you died at forty-three," the man answered. "This is also a possible future you're experiencing, but your consciousness is still of an eighteen year old."  

Although he hadn't quite comprehended all this information, Emil probed further. "Why did my mind travel to when I died then? And why did I travel here now?"

"I'm not sure. You must have had some unconscious desire to travel to this moment, just like there was some reason why your unconscious wished to travel to one of your possible deaths."

"My unconscious desire?" Emil asked in a way that revealed his unfamiliarity with the word. 

"Ah, it's a theory I haven't really worked out yet, but I think there's a reason why you're here right now asking me these questions. Maybe the questions were the reason itself," the man smiled. 

"I think it makes sense," Emil half-lied. The man noticed and then laughed.

The man sat back. "This is interesting, this might be your first path since you gained your ability; this is the first time I've met eighteen year old Emil," the man then smiled. "Well, perhaps better said, this is the first time properly meeting eighteen year old Emil."

An awkward silence lingered in the air as Emil attempted to process what the man just said. Despite the man saying they’ve met in 1999, his face was unrecognizable to Emil.

"Well, it looks like our time together is just about up. I can see from the look in your eyes, that our conversation is about to end for now." 

Emil could feel his vision clouding over, his consciousness fading. "Wait, I have so many more questions." He began to see light forming, bending, and wrapping around his body.

"Don't worry, we will certainly meet again, in some other time," the man smiled as Emil lost consciousness. "After all, we already have."

*****

Opening his eyes, Emil finds himself in his dorm room. Although a bit groggy, he looks at his alarm clock. The time is just after 1:00PM. He's not quite sure how he even got back to his bed. After all, before the "time travel" to 2007, he had been drinking wine with Roy and Natsumi. Emil rubbed his head, still unsettled about his conversation with the stranger in the cafe. 

"I forgot to even ask his name," Emil mumbled to himself. Noticing how dry his throat was, Emil headed to the bathroom to fill up a glass of water. 

In the bathroom, Emil sees another sticky note on the mirror, thanking him for cleaning the bathroom. The suitemate had gotten quite comfortable with leaving thank you notes rather than clean the bathroom. Cleaning the bathroom would be much more appreciated than another sticky note, Emil thinks to himself.

As he attempted to grapple with all that he had experienced in the last twenty-fours--the wedding, the wine at Roy's, the man in the cafe--he turned on his computer. All these thoughts about time, the unconscious, and death swirled around and occupied Emil's head. That man seemed so confident in explaining everything, but honestly Emil just felt even more confused. 

"There’s so many things I don’t understand," Emil said quietly to himself as he logged into AIM. His eyes widened as he saw a message from Natsumi sent a few hours earlier. 

Natsu4U: Emil are you alive? We dropped you off in front of the dorm but haven't heard from you. 

Emil111980: yeah, sorry!

Natsu4U: Great! Im glad ur not dead. u keptt talking about dying last nite while u were passed out, and other weird stuff lol

Emil thought that Natsumi typed fast, but at the cost of making a lot of typos. 

Suddenly an invitation to Natsumi's private chat room popped up on the screen. Emil entered Natsumi's private chat room. Roy and Natsumi were waiting inside.

Roydimentary: RIP Emil, lol.

Natsu4U: IKR :P

Emil111980: haha.

Emil was surprised by how childish Roy came across on AIM. 

Roydimentary: OK now that ur alive, get ready for tonight. Will swing by at 7. 

Emil111980: what why?

Natsu4U: we r going to a house party!

3