More than anything, we are creatures of habit. Most of us tend to do the same thing day in, day out, usually at roughly the same time every day. It’s why we, time travelers all (one-way, at least), look back on our lives and think “where the hell did the time go?”
Time, for the most part, gets invested in habit and routine. I believe that if you spend a great portion of your days doing the same things over and over again without much variation, when you stand at the end of a year, a decade or a lifetime, all of those routine days flatten out and seem to be few in number. When you find yourself asking “where did the time go?” look for an overabundance of routine. It’s a huge time sink. This thought came to me earlier today when I made a quick trip to the future.
This morning, I was going about my daily routine, getting ready to head into the office. Molly was getting ready too, and Sam was downstairs eating breakfast. Both Molly and I had to leave in the next 20 minutes, and Sam’s bus was maybe 10 minutes in the future for her. It was a bright, sunny spring morning, and the light was pouring in from all the east-facing windows in the house.
I had just been in the dressing area of our bathroom talking with my wife about a couple things on our family schedule that day, and as I walked down the hallway between the master bedroom suite and my home office, the now familiar vertigo came on in a rush, faster than it ever had in the past. I stopped walking, and as I’d planned to do when it happened again, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and willed myself to stay put. I didn’t have any evidence that this behavior would in any way head off a shift, but I figured it was as good a place to start as any.
The vertigo continued steadily for a few seconds, until I felt another quick rush and then it all just dissipated and normal returned. I opened my eyes, and looked around. It worked! I’d done it! My first try, warding off the time shift and it worked. I was elated, and turned around to go back to our bathroom to tell Molly what had happened.
“Hey Mol, I can’t believe it. I was just…” I stopped, mid-sentence. She wasn’t there. I blinked, not understanding. I walked further into the dressing area to see if she’d gone in the bathroom, but the door was open, the light off and no Molly.
I turned again, went back out into the hallway and over to the stairway. Stopping at the top by the rail, I called down to Sam.
“Sammy, you down there?” I said loudly enough for her to hear me in the kitchen where just minutes ago I saw her eating breakfast and working on her MacBook. No answer.
“Samantha!” I called again, louder this time. Again, nothing. So, I went down the stairs and around through the entryway into the kitchen. There was no one there. No dishes on the table either, they were in the sink, rinsed.
I sighed, because I realized I’d jumped into the past or future, at nearly the same time of day, but except for the vertigo that announced the coming transition, it was so smooth I hadn’t even noticed it. That thought caused me to look up at the clock in the kitchen and I saw that it was 25 minutes past 10am. But had I jumped back or ahead into the same day or several days or months?
Well, easy enough to figure out. My cell phone was gone from where I kept it on the counter, so I was presumably here in this time, just not at home. Probably at work. A little disappointed that I hadn’t warded off the shift after all, I walked up the stairs to check the date on my computer. As I entered the office, something on the floor caught my eye, and I looked, seeing a light brown vintage briefcase sitting there. Recognizing it as one I’d just placed an eBay bid on a couple nights ago, I chuckled to myself as I picked it up. “I guess I got it,” I said out loud.
I thumbed the latch and opened the top of the case. It was an old 1940s-50s vintage semi-rigid case that opened at the top under the handle. I’d obviously cleaned it up, and as I looked around the office, I saw the white container of Leather CPR that I must have used. I mentally calculated that since the auction still had another day to go, and it would take at least a week to ship the bag to me, it must be sometime after May 12th. Sitting down at the Mac in my office, I nodded. The clock/calendar in the upper right had corner of the screen said May 14.
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. So, I wondered, did my relaxing and centering do anything at all? Could it have been responsible for me staying put in terms of geography, just moving me temporally? I had a strong feeling that there was some effect, I just didn’t know what. I hadn’t had breakfast back on May 2nd, so I got up from my office chair and went down to get something to eat.
I made myself some Egg Beaters in the microwave and then laid them on a small torilla with some cheese. Standing by the microwave, I felt the vertigo come on and wondered whether I’d return to May 2nd. I hoped so.
“Daddy.” I heard a voice say, but it was as if the speaker wasn’t really talking to me, but part of my mind wanted to pay attention.
“Daddy! What are you doing?” It was Samantha. My eyes flew open and I looked around, confused. I was upstairs in the hallway.
“What?” I asked quickly. “What?”
“You were just standing there with your eyes closed,” Sam said, concern in her voice. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, honey,” I said, in my best reassuring voice.
“You were traveling again, weren’t you?” She asked, twisting the word traveling as she might have if she were saying robbing banks or peeking into peoples windows at night. If my wife Molly was somewhat understanding of this whole thing, Samantha blamed me for it and wished I would just…stop doing it. Can’t blame her for that.
Convinced that I was indeed just fine, Sam stalked off to her room to get her backpack and then leave for school.
Once again, I walked back to our bathroom/dressing area and was relieved to see Molly finishing putting on her makeup this time.
“Guess what?” I asked, my voice happy and playful.
“What?” Molly replied, her attention on applying her eye makeup.
“Well, two things. First, I found out that I win that eBay auction for the bag.”
“Uh huh.” Molly was clearly unimpressed, and she kept working on the eye makeup. I’d decided to get a vintage bag/briefcase and pack it, hopefully having it within reach when I jump to 1933. Just a few essentials, change of underwear, notebooks, pencils, etc. My Grandfather’s letter suggests I’ll be there a while, so I want to be at least a little prepared. I’d been looking on eBay lately, and found a beautiful 1940s era briefcase, a bit bigger than we carry today, but small enough to be convenient. I had made a bid on the bag, but the auction had another day or so to go. I’m still in the process of looking for a similar vintage rucksack to go along with it. Upon hearing the idea, Molly promptly found about a dozen holes in the plan, the biggest of which was that I couldn’t carry two bags with me everywhere I go. She could be right.
“And I think I may have figured out how to start to control the traveling,” I said.
Molly’s hand holding her eye makeup…thingie…froze, and her eyes met mine in the mirror. “What do you mean?”
“I just traveled, but when I felt it coming on, I stopped, took a deep breath, centered and traveled about two weeks into the future, but didn’t move an inch from where I was to begin with. I didn’t even know I’d traveled. When I opened my eyes I was exactly where I’d started. It was just May 14th. I came in here, but you’d already gone to work.” The words rushed out.
Molly was still looking at me in the mirror, but I saw the understanding sinking in.
“On May 14th,” I said, as she slowly nodded.
“And when I came back,” I continued, “I was right there, on that same spot in the hallway and I don’t think much time had passed here, if any. You know what this means?”
Molly nodded, her eye makeup forgotten. “You might be able to…”
“But it was only the first time I tried it,” I interjected. “May just be luck, but still.”
“That’s great, sweetie,” Molly nodded. She put the eye makeup applicator down, stood up, came over and hugged me. “When you go back to 1933, you have to come back. You have to.”
For the first time since I resigned myself to the fact that I would somehow be traveling some 75 years into the past, I felt like I might be able to control it a little.
“Oh, and by the way,” I added as Molly went back to her makeup, “when you come home on the 14th, there’ll be a quesadilla in the microwave.”
She again looked up at me in the mirror. I smiled at her, shrugging.
That is a fascinating scenario. Like deja vu. Is this for real? I am curious.
I get that question a lot
Not to be difficult, but it’s a tricky question:
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Thanks for reading!