Story Test - Time

Here's a bit of writing I did today. Not quite a story, but it will hopefully be a decent read nonetheless.


James opened the steel door and led the group into the room beyond. Inside, on top of a table, sat a large machine with various cords and parts.

“Before we begin, an explanation is in order,” James began. “We perceive time as constant, always moving ahead. But that’s wrong.”

“So I’m not aging right now?” said Silvia, with a smirk.

“You are,” James replied, “but at the same time, you’re already dead.”

Standing next to Silvia, Gulliver chuckled. Silvia shot him a look, an eyebrow raised.

“For us, time is moving,” James continued, “but overall, time is a thing that exists, as a whole. From beginning to end, it’s all there already.”

“There was a beginning to time?” asked Marsha.

“And there’s an end?” chimed Scott.

James smiled and said, “Things beyond human understanding. I can’t explain what existed before time or what exists after, and even if I could, none of you would understand it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Gulliver said under his breath.

James just widened his smile at the comment. “The entirety of time exists, all at once. We are living in one moment, and it’s moving to use, but in actuality, it’s already happened. We’re dead and gone, as are the multitude of generations after us. Until the end of time.”

Seeing the perplexed expressions of the group, James shook his head. “All that doesn’t matter much though. What matters is that the future exists already, just like the past does. What I am saying is that if we can look at the past, and we can, then we can also look at the future.”

“Won’t what we see just be a possibility though?” asked Scott.

“No, because like I said, all of time already exists.”

“What about free will?” asked Marsha. “If the future’s already set in stone, how can we decide anything for ourselves?”

“You can still make your own decisions,” said James. “It’s just that the decisions you make will always end up being . . . the decisions you make.” He let out a small laugh.

“So we can look at the future, but we can’t change anything?” Gulliver crossed his arms as he spoke. “How does that work?”

Silvia turned to him. “Maybe the future we see will be one where we’ve already seen the future.”

  

Scott let out a loud sigh. “That’s a head-scratcher.”

“I guess that’s the point,” Marsha said.

“Well, part of the point.” James turned around to the machine on the table. “This device should allow us to see the future, or at least the most powerful parts of it. I was able to design it thanks to the machine we found a while ago.”

“The one that let us see the past,” Silvia said.

“That was a load of fun, wasn’t it?” Gulliver said with a hint of derision.

“We got to see some very interesting things,” said Marsha.

“And some very crappy things,” added Scott.

“Whatever we see is in the pursuit of knowledge,” James said, his voice a bit higher than normal to silence the group. “This will be different from looking into the past. We’ll be able to look ahead a hundred years, maybe a thousand, see what the human race is like, things we’ll never get to see during our own time.”

“Or we could see another murder,” said Gulliver.

“Or worse,” said Silvia with a shiver.

“We’ll see events in the area, whatever happened in this spot, one year from now or a hundred, that involved incredibly strong emotions by the participants,” Marsha said. “Is that right?”

“That’s the way it should go,” replied James.

“So we could see anything,” Marsha continued. “A crime, a war, a visit from aliens.”

Gulliver stifled a laugh.

Silvia eyed him again. “In a thousand years, we could have found life on other planets.”

“Or even be part of a group of alien races,” added Scott, “dedicated to keeping the peace in the universe. Some sort of federation, maybe?”

“Or it could be much, much worse.” James slowly looked at each of the four faces before him as he spoke. “With this machine, we could wind up seeing an alien invasion that destroys the human race as we know it. We could see the end of humanity.”

The group silently stood, thinking about the possibilities.

Gulliver broke the silence. “Or we could see nothing. For all we know, the world ends tonight.” He smiled.

Between Love and Hate

Most people either love their parents or hate them. If it's the former, even if their parents drive them mad or do insane things, in the end, they still love their parents and want to always keep them in their lives. If it's the latter, even if their parents try to be nice and compassionate, they know their parents won't really change and will always let them down.

I'm stuck in between.

My parents take care of me. They've always taken care of me. They try hard to make sure I get to work every night, to make sure I have something to eat every day, that I have the Internet to entertain and preoccupy myself. They want me to be happy, and they try to make me happy.

My parents also lie to me, mislead me, and make such a mess of their own lives that I get dragged down with them. They can't make themselves happy, they don't even understand what happiness is or how to get it, and they don't have any idea what to do to make me happy, or what they need to allow or force me to do in order for me to be happy.

Let's start with something very simple: If they died, I wouldn't know what to do. Sure, most people wouldn't know what to do because it'd be a quagmire, with a ton of decisions to be made. But I'm not talking about not knowing how to go about having them cremated or buried or what to do with the house. Quite simply, I wouldn't be able to survive without them, not at this moment. My brother could, because he's lived on his own before, he has friends on whom he can depend. But I'm not really close to anybody (in the state, at least - there is one person in the state, but I'm not close to her family, and I couldn't impose on them), and I have no idea where I would go. But it goes beyond where I'd live - I wouldn't even know how to live.

I don't know how to drive. I don't have the first clue about driving. Furthermore, I'm so bad with directions, and have never been forced to learn where things are, that I couldn't even get to my job without help from a GPS or someone that knows the way. Hell, I couldn't get anywhere, really, because I don't know where anything is. Then there's the fact that I simply don't know how to do simple things like paying a bill, or getting service set up in my name, or how to set up a bank account. I don't know how to do anything! I couldn't live on my own right now because I wouldn't know how to do anything! I could take care of myself, sure. I know how to do laundry, I know how to cook the stuff that I eat, I know to bathe regularly, etc. But that's simple. What I have no clue about is, how do I pay my electric bill? How do I pay my water bill? How do I set up cable? If I live in a place with a landlord, do I just complain to the landlord every time something breaks? If I don't have a landlord and am buying a house or trailer or whatever, where do I send the money every month, and what happens in my water messes up? Do I just call a plumber? To put it succinctly, I don't know how to live on my own. My parents have not prepared me for life on my own at all.

That's scary. That is scary as all hell. The world already terrifies me; the thought of having to face it alone, without knowing the simple rules to life, elicits a feeling I cannot put into words.

So, I'm mad at my parents for not preparing me for life on my own. But I'm also glad that I didn't have to move out at eighteen and figure it all out by myself. I'm glad that I was taken care of. Where do I end up? How do I balance being appreciative for all my parents have done for me, providing me with food and shelter for years without me bringing in a dime, and being mad at them for not making me learn how to live on my own? How can I acknowledge that I owe them for raising me and not treating me like shit, yet also acknowledge that they're the primary reason I haven't accomplished anything? How can I be glad that they didn't mess me up by getting into fist fights with one another or beating me but be angry that they did mess me up by owning a hundred cats, wasting all our money, having gigantic fights, doing drugs and getting arrested, and having episodes where they were so suicidal or angry that I almost couldn't stand to exist in the same world as them?

It's hard to keep loving them when they, either individually or together, do or say things that make me despise them and see how little has changed over the years. But it's hard to hate them when they bust their asses to keep us alive and fed. It's hard. It's just hard.