Elder Witch

At first I thought I was witnessing myself going crazy.  I knew it was going to happen sometime.  It is probably my greatest fear.  I'm seventy-four in a nursing home.  Chances are dementia or Alzheimer's or senility are going to set in soon.  So when I wished the curtains would open when I was still laying in bed, and they did, I understandably freaked out.  It's not something that can happen by chance or be explained by science.  One minute they were closed, the next, they slid open right before my eyes.  The problem with these occurrences, these "ghastly" experiences, is they all sound so insane, until it happens to you.  Suddenly you go from a sound skeptic to a fearful dissenter in the space of a heartbeat.  As I laid there, silently astounded, I truly didn't know what to think, for maybe the first time in my life.  Every strange probability, every wild speculation, became potential. It's a small wonder I didn't have a heart attack after that shock.

Still, I couldn't let my worldview be shaken.  I was old and set, and I was resigned to my position, weird happenings or not.  I still had my faculties, I said to myself, feigning a semblance of dignity, but really shouting into the wind.  I wouldn't realize how jolted I was until that night.

I had a dream.  Have you ever had one that seemed so real that when you woke up, you confused it with real life?  Well this was beyond that.  So far beyond that I would go as far as to say it *was* real.  I was sitting in a chair, in an entirely black chamber.  There were no walls, no endings, no perimeter, but it felt like a small box of darkness.  Then out of it came a middle-aged woman.  She couldn't have been older than 40, dark-haired and hazel-eyed.  She was shocked to see me.  I found out later it was because I was so old. She briefly talked to me, but I remember every word, and I know I will until the day I'm gone.  Her brevity was astounding, considering the situation.  She told me that she has powers, but she was passing on.  Those powers would come to me now.  There are forces beyond our control and comprehension, a sovereign momentum, that puts forth a wave of action that we can fight against and be dashed against the shores of cause, or succumb to it and flow into destiny.  I thought the whole thing was very obtuse.

After my incident with the curtains I began to have more things happening to me daily.  Some familiar, and some against the curve.  A black cat wandered in from my window one day.  I was sure I had closed it the night before, but as soon as I swung my feet off the bed, it hopped up onto the sill and sat there, staring at me.  It was still there when I came back from lunch, and it spoke to me.  It told me it was here to guide me.  That's when I knew I was going crazy, and I went to sleep in the common room, because I knew they would put me to bed and I wouldn't have to face the talking cat in my bedroom.

The cat began to follow me, and I continued to exhibit behaviors not unlike the minor miracle of me opening my curtains. 

I'm an old woman but I like to keep my room tidy. Sweeping is a comfort for me, and I was casually collecting the dust from around my room. One of my sweeps missed and I was astounded. You old fool, I thought to myself, you actually missed the ground. But then I missed again and I looked around and realized why. I was gripping the broom tight, and it was suspending me a few inches in the air. When I noticed, it was as if I reminded my mind that I can't do that, and I slowly drifted back down to earth.

This isn't one of those storybook nursing homes where I hate it and everybody sucks. I like it here and there are a lot of good, nice, and earnest people. When word got out I had been talking to my cat, thankfully they just thought what I initially thought. That I had gone crazy. It was extremely nice to know that they thought I was a literal crazy cat lady and nobody treated me any differently. Sure, I had a very weird reputation afterwards, but Greg still played ping pong with me after lunch and didn't say a word about it. Tina still knocked on my open door every other day to get me for coffee (although she did start drinking it black because "all the milk here goes sour fast.") Marie would actually ask how my cat was, and I think she believed me when I said that it talked to me. Didn't bat an eye. I don't know if it's a testament to old people in general, or if they were just good friends. Maybe a little bit of both, but I was happy for it. Things were getting weird, but still looking up.

I'm a quick study.  I'm old, but I'm still right of mind and quick-witted enough to pay attention to what is happening around me.  I've read stories about this growing up. I watch it in popular media. I wasn't as dumbfounded as most would have been. The curtains, the cat, the broom, the bad milk, the dream. I knew what it all meant. I had become a witch. At seventy-four.

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Call me cliché, but I came to calling the cat Renaldo. It's the name of my favorite cat from the Miyazaki film The Cat Returns. I never had one before, but I remember thinking how much I liked this cat when I saw it, so it felt natural. He told me he already had a name, but that he didn't mind. He smiled at me. Cats don't smile with teeth, and they always do so with their eyes closed. It's really comforting.  Until now I didn't know much about witches, and I still don't.  They use a very strange vernacular for everything and it feels quite obtuse.  I find myself hesitating to use the terms.  Renaldo is supposed to be teaching me, but I just call him my cat, or my cat buddy, or Renny or Renaldo.  He says he is my familiar, and that's one of the terms I won't latch on to.  When you hear "witch" and "familiar" and "spells" you think only of malevolence.  I'm the same person I have always been, I've just gone through something.  Furthermore, something entirely out of my control.  I am the same.  Only now I can do different things.  Magical and perhaps mystical things, but it doesn't change the personality I have come to know as myself for the entirety of my life. 

I would have been lost without Renaldo.  It turns out most of what we know about witches has been carefully cultivated and delivered by witches themselves so as not to reveal secrets or something all cloak-and-dagger like that.  I don't subscribe to the idea myself, but they apparently give witches a lot of autonomy so I'm allowed to just be.  Magic is far more powerful and esoteric than you can ever guess.  It is more a feeling than a power.  You alter the world around you with mental prowess.  It is completely beyond comprehension to a non-witch.

The most favorite trick that Renaldo showed me I can do is read tea leaves.  It's quite wonderful.  I can tell a person's fortune.  The mediums you see doing this in stores or for friends are all crazy people or party tricks.  That stuff is most assuredly made up.  But I can tell.  The same way I can levitate on a broom or bend the wind to my will or make a drink that will change how you act.  I get this feeling when I read the leaves that is what I think is really and truly magic.  To be able to divine.

I was and still am unsure about this whole thing, but it has brought me connectivity, at the very least. I can hear the wind, and blades of grass whisper to me. Ebb and flows of waterways bring news to my window. Animals look at me and they know I can control things. They look at me as if a stranger would when you both see someone slip on ice and look around for acknowledgement.

What I didn't realize until it was beyond morbid, was that with each passing moment I became more forlorn. Suddenly I had all I ever dreamed of, and nothing to do with it. Renaldo told me that witches live longer. I have at least 100 more years in me, most likely much more. For what? What have I got? I'm in a home. I have friends here but nothing solid. Nobody to truly depend on or form a connection with, or even someone that I like more than an acquaintance. Even the things I at first thought were fun and neat have fallen to the wayside very quickly. I don't even use my magic anymore. There is no point. I'm wasting away.

It went on like this for a long time. At least I think it was a long time. I don't keep track of the days, I just sort of try to change my routine so it doesn't feel like I'm a caged animal. I suppose most caged animals don't mind it. The dumb ones. When you cage a smart animal they go crazy. Birds and dolphins and rats. They only have four walls and their thoughts, which eventually leads to the same thing. The bad thoughts. Focusing on your mortality. Your essence. Your being trapped.

I suddenly had all the freedom in the world and I have never felt more confined. I was alone in the world and in a place I didn't know I hated until I was given another option. All the stories I knew about witches say they found out when they were a teenager. They usually did two things: they used their powers to impress a boy, and they ran away. I haven't tried to impress a boy in 50 years, so I did the only other option.

I forced out a cryptic goodbye to the people I thought might miss me. I didn't want them to worry, but I think they thought I was talking about dying. About my own death. Oh well. I can't control how they think. And so there I was, an old witch on a broom, flying in front of the moon with her talking black cat. About as typical as it gets.

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My search for wisdom, answers, and the witch who could give them to me was brief, by all standards. I didn't get any sort of witch intuition or radar, but I think I did inherit some luck, so there is that. I would fly at night, along the countryside, until I got hungry, and then I'd find a farm or a cabin or a house with no lights on and I'd take some of their food. Not the most noble of deeds, but I couldn't even think properly at this point. I didn't know how to be a witch and I didn't have the tenacity to be creative. I would stockpile food when I could and I'd fly into open third story barn windows and sleep there. It would have been enjoyable if I didn't feel like a homeless wreck. After what I would guess was a month and a half of this I landed at a cabin with a light on. I had never done this before but there was an actual lantern sitting on the window sill and there was a white cat sitting next to it. I could feel it following me with its eyes and I couldn't tell what it meant but I could feel that it meant something. I circled around a few times and then decided to land directly at the window. The cat immediately spoke to me and I fist pumped on the inside for being totally right. I must have not entirely hidden my excitement because this cat raised it's eyebrow at me. What it said was:

"You know you're not very inconspicuous."

I retorted "Who cares? Is there a witch in there?"

"You're not very well mannered either. I'm Marlo."

"Hi Marlo. I'm going in."

I didn't have time for pleasantries. Cats are mostly aristocratic it turns out. All pomp and etiquette and grace and no flavor or zest. I think it makes the witches more uptight but they can't train me. I already know who I am.

There was a witch inside with a cauldron brewing. I immediately started laughing. The whole thing is so fantastically monotonous. Witches act like they've all been taught to act, it seems. She had some mild potion in there to help mushrooms grow or something silly like that. I spoke at her as soon as she noticed me.

"Hey can you tell me what this is all about?"

She was taken aback at my candor and age, but to her credit she forged ahead very gracefully.

"What *what* is all about, deary?"

I didn't like being patronized so I called her out.

"Deary? I could be your mother."

"Oh. You really are new to this. The agelessness hasn't set in yet. Do you have a name?"

"Meredith. You?"

"Charla."

"Did you rename yourself?"

"Born with it. If I had to guess, Meredith, I'd say I was at least 85 years older than you. No matter. Ask away, we'll get this over with quickly if you please."

She looked young and exuberant. She explained a lot of the basics. The magic will smooth me out and make me feel youthful. There is no real code to follow, but if you step out of line you will be reprimanded. They can't take your powers, and you don't lose them until you pass. You choose a successor before then. People will show me the way.

With all the boring stuff out of hand we got into my important questions. The stuff that was really bugging me. The stuff all the stories gloss over. The meat of it.

"I don't want it." I said, matter-of-factly.

"Too bad. It happened. Why not try making the most of it?"

"I'm an old woman. My family is gone. I'm all alone. I was ready for the final steps of life.
Now I'm all twisted. I'm going to live for a very long time with very annoying rules and I'm still alone. I was done. That was it. I don't want to do this. I want to feel more connected with the world, not apart from it. I don't want this."

"But you are more connected. Literally. The wind is at your beck and call. You are not bound by gravity. You can see things others cannot dream of."

"But how? Why?"

"That is not for us to say. Who knows why or how anything happens, truly? This is your chance to be part of something bigger than yourself. To connect to the world around you in a way most people will never have a chance of achieving. And I don't mean the planet. I mean your whole world. Your body and your entire sense of being. You don't have to make sense of it, you just have to live it. Do your best."

"I don't know how. What am I going to do? Conjure spells and make potions and fly and talk to a cat? It's a young person's game, I'm not equipped."

"You are younger than me."

"Maybe in numbers but not in mind. I lived my whole life like a regular person, not a witch. You don't think about things the same. I had a husband, I had a kid. I worked my whole life. I was wasting away in a home. I don't want a second lease, there is nothing left for me. I'm beyond all that."

"You are beyond nothing. To squander something like this would be to spite the less fortunate. You cannot live your life dwelling on your past. They are just things, like anything else, and they fade in time, as all things do. If you allow yourself to be controlled by your past then you are a fool, and if you are willfully a fool, then you have already given up, and death will most assuredly come for you without you supplying effort."

"Jesus you're forward. And morbid."

"Oh? More morbid than you? Please leave."

"Hey wait a minute. Just tell me how to stop being a witch."

"Listen closely, I already told you. You can be aware of the past and not be a slave to it. You have been chosen. It happens at random. The same way a spore does not choose its host. The same way a snake does not choose its next meal. The same way a leaf ages and is sent on the wind. The same way a cloud fills the space in the sky. Opportunity has arrived, and you must embrace it."

"I was ready for the end. I can't do this. I'm all alone. I'm old. I'm.... scared."

"If you could only choose between being entirely lonesome on the frontier of creation, or being dead, it becomes an easy choice. Some choices are harder, but there is always a choice. Submit to the choices and you can guide yourself. Fight them and be crushed under the weight. A choice within a choice. Either way, life goes on, days continue marching, and you along with it. Will you be a friend to time or be made a simpleton in it's wake? You have always had fear, girl, and look where you stand: triumphant on a pile of dirt and ash and bone. You don't have to learn our ways, you don't have to be a part of anything you don't want, but to be given a wondrous gift and return it for fear of what might be is a crime against nature. Now leave, I wish to conjure spells and make potions and fly and talk to my cat."

After I left her place I looked for emotion, spirits. Awakening. Whatever I could happen upon. I spent months in a forest watching a single flower every day. Keeping an eye on it as it grew, and eventually it's blooming. I watched it the whole process. I drank from rivers and ate berries and plants I happened upon. I started meditating. I would do it for a few minutes, then a few hours. I meditated until time became comfortable. Time altered itself after a while. Not really and truly, but I felt time differently than I ever had before. If I was indoors, it happened after midnight. It no longer felt like a day or a time or a moment, but it was a dimension. A place apart from time that existed with different feelings and emotions. Indoors after midnight was trapped in a library: dimly lit and alone with all the knowledge you could imagine. Overwhelmed with knowledge. More books than there are stars in the sky or drops of water in the ocean. It was a maze of corridors in an empty but lived-in castle. Tapestries and banners only party visible by the light of the candles and lanterns. Shadows bouncing around large brown stones as you can only walk, stunned, through the massive hallways. It was a one room cabin on the edge of a precipice, sat in front of a roaring fire in a cozy fireplace. Wrapped in blankets and the steam of a hot drink straightening your back. If you were outside, this happened at twilight. When the lights in the sky changed from light to dark or when they changed from dark to light, nothing existed except colors and clouds and the imagination of the endless sky and every bit of starlight that touched me. The shimmering dark stretches on forever and you are a smudge of paint on a deep black canvas. You are a drop of ink on a blanket of stars. You are a blinking red light on the top of a mountain in someone's dream. You are the image of some coveted animal, brought to life by the squints and dreams of the hopeful. You are a cascade of swirled colors above and below. You are the moment in between asleep and awake, when your mind isn't sure if it's still dreaming or thrust back to reality.

That was enough for then. It was a brilliant time but there is more to what I want than a dreamscape or a fairy tale or some sort of forced enlightenment. That statement itself made me think. Is there more to what I want? I had a lot already. I had everything I thought I wanted. Then I had nothing.

But....

I have something again. Something really special. I took it for granted because I had given up. My past ruled me for so long. I wasn't living then, I had lived and I was remembering my own story, somberly, bitterly, and without vigor. The past is fickle. The past can be wrong. It's only as strong as we allow it to be. I don't want my past to be a giant glaring reminder of things I wished I had done differently or traumas that altered me forever. They are just things. That's right. I have new things now. Things that, when I think about, make me laugh like an idiot, but also have given me a purpose even before I knew I had one. I was out and moving and doing before I knew why or where or even what.

-------------

"Ms. Alfaro! What does this word mean?"

I couldn't help but laugh at the irony. He was pointing at a word in a book called 'Moon Magic.'

"Bruja means witch, Manuel," I said and patted him on the head. I spun him around gently by his shoulders and urged him back to his desk.

They were sullen and angry today, annoyed by the weather. None of them had opened their textbooks yet, quite unlike themselves.

"I thought you said we could go outside to study today," they piped up in one form or another.

"The weather isn't too great," I retorted.

They all moaned and let out audible disdain and some even slumped down and the worst of it were the ones who put on the grumpiest face they could muster. I looked over at Renaldo, also angry that he didn't have a warm spot to lay in this afternoon, and he smiled at me. I couldn't help it. I'm a sucker.

I reached into my pocket and gripped my wand, as discreetly as I could, and flicked it to and fro. The dark clouds started pushing out of view and before long, big, bright rays of light shone in through the windows. Their heads started to turn and almost in unison they looked at me, full of breath and youth and eyes bright with excitement.

"Well what are you waiting for? Grab your things. It looks like there is Sun beyond the clouds after all."

Turn the page

When I read these fantasy novels, it puts me into another state of being. Blissful and pure and kind, and like I'm in the world I was reading. And not pretend "in" it. I feel like I should speak in medieval intricacies. My heart beats as if it was a peasant boy's on hard times, but everyone knew mine was a gentle soul. I feel in a world bigger than myself, in a place with meaning, in the grasp of magic.

A trance, almost. A walking trance. After I put the book down, and my feet take me further and further from where it rests, I lose fragments of those feelings. I don't want to walk, I don't want to think. I try my hardest to, somehow unknown to me, intangibly, vigorously, keep that trance. It fades in time, as all things do. I cannot prolong it much at all. As it fades, so does the memory of it. Preserved not even in my mind, and I only get that hypnotized when I read for a long span again.

It's almost as if being high. Euphoric, tempting, enigmatic. I desperately want to live in a world of knights and magic. I feel out of sorts in a normal place. Doing laundry, cleaning, cooking; it seems so trivial, so mundane, so bereft of life. I was meant to be a character in a book, not a speck of dust in a box. Heroic tales of my deeds would sweep through the town. Nights spent illuminated only by stars, standing atop a great stone bridge, watching a black river pass underneath. Garbed in a cloak and boots, simple, yet elegant. My essence is adventure and I'm jailed in life. Nothing so ornate, so organic and beautiful will befall me as does a hapless rogue in a storybook. For brief moments few I experience it vicariously. There aren't enough books in the world to satiate me. There aren't enough stories told to keep me there long enough. It's the most honest happiness. I have to keep trying.

Forcing myself into this feeling isn't detrimental, so I lunge for it vehemently. Continually I read, finishing one book and starting another so that I never drop it except to sleep, often forgetting to eat or move. Drunk on inertia, I barrel down a bottomless pit of written ecstacy. These stories become my dreamland, and I want to dream forever.

Forget About It

Do you know how many things we have forgotten? You can't possibly. You don't know until you're shown to have not known anymore, and by then the memories don't matter. There are bits and pieces of things now that can bring a memory back. A note, a picture, a message, a text. Something you'd completely let slip out of your mind.

It's interesting what it feels like to remember a forgotten promise. A promise you used to care about so much. I promised her I'd love her forever. And her and her and her. A line of broken promises, with good intent, yes, but still shattered the same. You begin to question your own integrity. Your constitution. Your resolve. Your reality. Then time takes these promises and melts them from a promise to a phrase to simply nothing. You forget about it and it ceases to exist. Those are the big ones, but honestly, the little memories hurt more.

Maybe they aren't so little. It is a different line, powerful in a different way. I hope you have a great day. See you soon. It'll be okay. Let's both stay strong. You felt that way once, so much so that you were inclined to tell them. You don't remember anymore though. Seemingly innocuous, but somehow after the fact, beyond poignant. They seemed little at the time. In this moment they feel much more devastating, even though you don't want them to. You drag your eyes across the lines again and again and you pretend it means nothing and you tell yourself to forget about it, but it takes a lot of effort. Effort you may not always have. Your entire essence has chosen to forget, and you agree with it. A particle of you is dormant in your mind. On the tip of your thoughts, but never being actualized by words or recognition. Never given life. But it takes a life of its own, and you leave the memory for another moment, to ferment and stew and to be forgotten again and found again, later, when time has made a fool of you, as it makes fools of us all.

Sometimes you share a memory. They have a secret of yours. You gave it to them to keep, but now you hope they forget it, too. Vulnerability changes your mind swiftly. To go from lusting after those lost memories, to know every fragment of your psyche across time, to wishing that forgetfulness upon her. Your mind is spinning you in circles. Don't do that. Don't be so... evil. You think you're better than that, huh? You thought so. But you're not in control of your thoughts. And look where they took you. You heinous beast.

It goes this way, back and forth, for a long time. So long that you forget what the feelings behind these thoughts even mean. When loathing and loving interchange with haste, they start to feel the same. Back at square one. So you roll over and at some point in the tumultuous little maelstrom rattling around in your skull you loll off to sleep, mid-thought, mid-idea, middling.

Goodnight.

It's funny to me, you think, completely internally, how a night of rest changes your outlook. Last night you were eager to reconnect, and now, in the morning, you're complacent. What changed in the night? Which you is the one you want to be? The guttural, feverish oaf of yesterday or the careless, logical automaton of a new day? So what DID change? You shake it out of your head, literally and figuratively. You don't like questions without any answers, so you're lucky you're not that keen on closure really. Some things are better left up in the air.

Later, as the veil of night takes you into it's thrall, you hearken back to these old memories, the ones you can't remember.

They aren't memories anymore, so what are they? A fragment of your past, lost to even you. Your memory has holes and gaps and jumps. A natural bridge being made a set of islands by the tide. Nothing lasts forever against that tide, and apparently many things don't last beyond immediacy. Recency and forefront reign supreme, but here I come, combative to a fault, tirelessly hopeful, the unfettered beast of optimism, regained sovereignty.

I won't let my stupid brain win. A wisp of uncertainty encompasses my thoughts, but I will not allow it to eclipse my being. A sliver of doubt could turn to waves of anguish, but I know that. What is guilt, anguish, pain if not self-inflicted cognitively. After a brief flailing I reassume control.

This is the way it must be. For who is really master of their own domain? If not the man who can realize a truth or mistruth and disobey it? If not for the man who realizes he is a slave to his perception and alters it? If not the man who is powerfully ignorant of his own neuroses? If not the man who replaces his bleakness with hubris of his own volition? If not the man who is reminded of lost love and chooses to love again. If not the man who continues, smiling, bright eyed, in the face of everlasting disconsolation.

I think that went well.

"Notice anything different about me?" I asked her. I was already smiling. She knew me so well, she'd undoubtedly see it right away.

"I don't know. Did you dye your hair a little bit lighter or get a tattoo or something?" She answered my question with a question, which is in my top five biggest pet peeves, but I let it slide because she's kinda close.

"You're so close," I lie.

"Just tell me," she spits out, without looking me over again. I shrugged it off because it didn't even bother me, okay? Maybe you but not me.

"Guess please," I quipped as cheerily as I could muster, contorting my face to look as elfish and whimsical as I wasn't feeling. She audibly sighed and stopped her knitting to look me up and down.

"You got a new shirt," she said not quite angrily, but I knew she was teetering on seething complacency and pre-domestic-violence temper tantrum.

"Yea! Do you like it?"

"I do. I love it." This was the oldest shirt I've ever had. It was my dad's and he gave it to me because the paint stain on it looked like the Lady Madonna, whom I was given my haircuts to look like until I was sixteen. The new thing was my pants were on backwards and inside out.

Clock head

Time travel isn't all it's cracked up to be.  We all thought we knew so much about it.  Our fake research and futuristic guesses were just that, and when we made the first jump, it hit us hard.  Derek Carpenter, aged 37, was the first to use the machine.  He picked a random date in the future, March 15, 2330.  He disappeared in a flash of black and a scream of anguish and that was that.  He never showed up again.  There were tens of further unsuccessful attempts like this until finally, Stephanie Kenner, aged 26, went away from us and came back. She punched the date February 16, 2071.  This trip wasn't exactly successful, but she was the first person that came back, and she came back with information. 

Stephanie became violently ill upon her return.  The rate that diseases had been evolving had meant that she got sent to a time where our antibiotics could not keep up.  She would have to travel forward to seek medical care there.  James Reed was a volunteer medical doctor who assisted her on her trip. When she returned alone we began to form our theories with a little more data but it took years before we felt sure about seriously traveling again, and even then it was usually deemed not worth it.

When James didn't return we started to wonder why.  Stephanie told us he never showed up.  She ended up alone when she arrived and only barely managed to seek treatment and get away.  We did not necessarily have rules yet for time travel, but we generally tried not to interfere too much.  It turns out there is no real way we could have interfered, and our caution was actually detrimental.  James was an older doctor at 52, and the most popular theory that arose from this shared travel was this: you could not travel past the date of your death, or you would die.  This was proved when Stephanie located James' obituary. January 6, 2058.  Everyone who had been traveling so far had simply went past their death date.

The fear of sickness, the fear of death, and all the extensive and costly research made time travel forwards unfeasible and unfavorable.  Reverse travel was generally unthought of.  There was no fear of disease generation because you also could not travel to before your birth.  There was a limited window of travel and it didn't grant as many advantages as the energy it consumed.  So it sat unused, unwanted.  A science fiction champion of limitless potential altered to a window into one's life.  An interesting article for some, but non-financeable.  Time travel was relegated to a parlor trick, more or less, for a long time.  Until it wasn't.

Trevor Barrow, a visual effects artist and generally nice guy who was sometimes a piece of crap, became an unknown and undeserving pioneer.  At 32, he was part of a team that made the first hard-light hologram prototype. This was due solely to the fact that he had used the life insurance from his father's death to take a trip into the future and steal the technology.  Everyone credited Trevor with the discovery of the information, no one ever suspecting time travel.  The furthest known date traveled into the future was 2115, and this technology did not exist then.  That's because Trevor got this technology from a date much further than that into the future. 

As usual, a scientific discovery was made by purely accidental means.  When Trevor was making his maiden voyage he estimated his death year at 2078.  When he arrived he decided to check up on himself, to see how much further he might have to go.  Only he could not seem to locate himself whatsoever.  There was no mention of him in the continental United States.    He didn't know how to go about checking Europe or Asia and he also thought that would be a pipe dream anyway.  So he took a chance.  He traveled further.  First to 2090.  Still good.  Then further still, 2115.  He could not believe he still lived this long.  The furthest any human had tried.  Then, he went again.  2120.  2121.  2122.  2140.  2170.  This can't be possible.  How was he able to go this far?  No obituary, no mention, no nothing.  Trevor went on again.  2200.  2300.  2400.  3000.  The year 3000 he stopped.  He was having heart palpitations.  He was dry heaving and spitting and shaking.  Not from any effect, but from fear, or shock, or excitement, or some unearthly combination of all three.  And in the year 3000, woefully unprepared and out of place, he took the knowledge for the hard-light systems, and brought it back.

Trevor thought this new found fame and glory and money would satisfy him.  He thought it was what he wanted.  But now there was a void in him.  A question that could not be answered.  How could he live? He went public in 2020 proper. Proof of the year 3000 was brought back, and the world was sent into a flurry.  None of that mattered, really, because Trevor felt the strain and squeeze of society and he left again, for good.  He was determined to get answers, to all of the hundreds of questions about what was happening.

Could he alter time lines? Were there even time lines?  Time and space felt so foreign to everyone.  Before, we had thoughts and ideas.  Theorems and plans and situations and proofs.  We were certain, without a doubt, that we knew what was happening.  It turns out that Time is more complicated than the human essence can comprehend. Time is an element beyond wind or  thought or touch or reason.  But you didn't have to understand something to explore it.  You just had to try.  So Trevor left, and with him, took knowledge, and hope, and strife, and pain. 

He knew he wouldn't get answers, at least comprehensible ones, from any earthly being who had not had the same experience as him, so he went far.  Very far.  Scarily far.  The first place he jumped on his departure was the year 25157.  Earth was still here, but unpopulated.  Already he knew the questions would keep piling up.  It was livable, but barren.  Desolate and small.  Crumpled.  Shrunken.  He decided to keep going.  No use exploring this plane when he could get answers further.  Bigger answers.  More encompassing.  Or so he hoped.  So he went again.  Doubled, tripled his jumps.  158767.  31456382.  1482679440.  And beyond.  Further and further. 

At this point he was only surrounded in ink.  A thick black encapsulated his time chamber, and in the distance, an unhindered view.  Millions of twinkling bright lights.  He kept going and going.  Sure if his fear overwhelmed him he could go back, but unsure he would be able to go on peaceably after this without finding something.  Anything.  It was in a frenzy of button presses he stumbled into his first road block ever.  The machine whirred and beeped and nothing happened when he pressed the activator.  So he dialed it back a little and tried again.  Nothing still.  Is it out of power?  Is it out of order?  He sat still in the chair for a while and decided to rest.  He took a short nap.  Or a long one.  Time was confusing to him now.  No longer fleeting.  No longer anything.

He awoke with a start to find himself in a glowing chamber.  Soft blue light pressed against his eyes.  It was a dull blue, and it made him feel at home.  It shone pleasantly and not too bright.  There were no visible walls or doors, simply a blue cube.  He could not tell if he were an inch away from the wall or a mile.  The light played tricks on his vision, for how pleasant it was.  He stood up and looked around and took a step.  The first step sent him into a corridor of metal and stone.  That was a guess.  The texture and shape and color of these things were so different to him he was having trouble believing he was awake. The end of the corridor came to a bridge over a white lake, though he was still inside and under roof.  At the end of the bridge was what seemed to be a brick door.  He pushed it open and walked into an octagonal chamber.  There were 3 men and 4 women seated at chairs in a staggered position, looking at him expectantly.  He took the seat facing them and just looked.  None of them spoke, so he did.

He told them who he was and what he was experiencing.  He told them how far he'd gone and what he was feeling.  He talked for a day and a night and drank some water when they gave it to him.  They all listened intently, some even sitting reverse on their chairs after a while, heads propped up on hands and staring into his eyes longingly, as if the words drooling from his tongue were gospel.  He finally stopped his rambling rant and sat still.  They spoke back to him after this.  In turn and sounding very familiar and cordial, and not at all alien or perfunctory.

These people told him they had been here a while and they had constructed two solutions. You go with them, and go on, and continue to proceed, or you go back, for good.  He answered before he had a chance to think.  Being out of time will do that to you.  He wanted to go back.

They nodded and smiled.  The woman in front of him handed him a small wooden ring.  It was impossibly smooth and fit his finger. Maybe you'll find the others, they said.  We'll see you again, traveler.  Then he got up and walked to the door on the left.  He looked back at them as he left, and they were waving as if saying goodbye to a married couple.  He walked through backwards.

Trevor woke up on his bed, exactly the day before he first traveled.  He retained everything he had seen and heard up to this point.  There was no time travel.  There was no machine. He reached into his pocket absent-mindedly and felt something.  He pulled out the wooden ring.  It slid onto his finger and he closed his hand around it.  He was as scared as ever.  The clock read 7:38 and he realized he'd probably be late for work unless he left right now.  Numbers slowly danced in his head as he counted the seconds it took to tie his shoes, put on his jacket, and latch his helmet.  362. 363. 364. Not that many.  He kept counting as he climbed onto his bike and started to ride.  1210.  1211.  1212.  1213.  There was so much of it. 2120. 2121. 2122. He had it all. 2200. 2300. 2400. 3000. Time was fleeting still, but that's fine. Trevor was loving every second. And he cherished each one. And he smiled as he worked diligently at his desk, and smiled as he ate his dinner alone, and he smiled day in and day out. He got his pilot's license on his 40th birthday.  On his 50th he flew to Thailand on his very own plane.

He spent a few weeks there, exploring caves and camping by rivers. He wanted to do some extended exploration, so he hired a tour guide. She was a short, fit, girl in her 40s. They discussed some background and ideas and agreed on a plan. He felt a strange klink when he shook her hand. They both looked down and saw their identical rings touching. Wow, she said, simply, yet definitively. She looked up astonished. He looked up and smiled, saying through his teeth, shall we get started then? No time like the present.

Ray

A set of stone stairs descends from something into nothing. At the edge of creation a man stands at the base of these stones staring into a deep black. Behind him the world exists, or rather the edge of the world.

The edge of the world is hard to picture and the something that it sits on even harder. Imagine a piece of the earth, a vision in time, captured. An essence stored in space, or rather floating in space. Picture a stone platform only a few feet wide on each side, framed by a brown wooden fence, floating in an endless starless sky. In the center of the platform stands a single black lamp post. It illuminates its surroundings however brief they may be. The light of the lamp does not travel past the fence, to the contrary.  It seems as if the flat black on the other end of the platform is pushing the light back.  It feels dark. On one end of the platform is a set of stone stairs that only last a few steps, then suddenly as if from nowhere at all, comes nothing. The steps don't dissappear but rather cease to be after that point.  They drizzle away at the edge, sometimes many stairs and sometimes few, dancing in and out at the corners of your view, even when you're staring right at them. And then from no discernible point to no discernible point stands nothing.  This is the hardest part to imagine, if you haven't seen it before.  When you hear "nothingness," you conjure an image of total darkness.  It's far scarier than that.  When your eyes are open in a pitch dark room and you can't tell if it extends one foot or one million.  When you reach out and step cautiously because you can't tell where you are in relation to anything else.  A shroud of pure emptiness.  It simply is not there.

A man stands on the lowermost step. He is clad in a full suit of armor. He holds his helmet limp in his hand and gazes into nothing. Gazes into what he cannot hope to see. There is no one there to see him but the man in armor sweats from anxiety. His heart is beating on his rib cage like a drum, and his ribs are playing a roll on his suit of armor. The suit of armor rustles nervously.  If this weren't such a desolate and lonely place, it would be rather cozy.  For how distant it is, it feels rather warm.  A summer night with a breeze under a street lamp.  Where you are encompassed in light and eclipsed by it, and then you step out beyond the umbrella of the lamp's reach and you can see the painting from which you just stepped.  The perspective in your head, of both situations at once, twisting back and forth to create a wonderful little storybook setting just for you.  It's a little different here, at the end, but not much.  The man turns back and faces the platform from the bottom step.  The urge to fall backward grips him tightly and holds him in place.  He can only watch for now.

The fringes of the lamp light illuminates the tips of leaves on trees reaching from outside the platform.  Reds and greens and soft yellows of the fall, even though it feels warmer.  A stone street runs past the platform to the right.  Whether an imaginary place, an imprinted memory, or something else entirely, he does not know.  He simply enjoys the view.  Beyond that, the street ventures off into the woods and turns sharp to the right.  To the immediate right, through a horde of trees he can see a hilltop, but everything beyond is obscured by trees and darkness.  He sees himself under the light.  Wearing plain clothes, brown pants and a black shirt.  No shoes and no armor. As if in a movie, dancing styles he does not know, spinning and leaping, staying lit and smiling.  Standing still.  Looking up.  And finally, sat underneath it, off to the side, one leg extended, the other bent at the knee, resting on the bent leg.  He likes that one most, and he watches it for a while.  Watches himself look around, take in the sights.  Takes in the smells himself.  The warm breeze, the foliage, the stone.  They smell incredible.  This piece of a picture, suspended in time and space. It's what he has always dreamed. The ideas in his head, forming right in front of him.  To be within and without, only needing the joy and majesty of the Earth, his view, his surroundings.  To be simple and clean and light and dark.  To be a wanderer and at home.  Vagabond and King. 

A man in a suit of armor stands on the lowermost step on a staircase at the edge of the world.  Nothing behind him, quite literally, and something in front. He takes the next few steps up, onto the platform, with great difficulty. The armor falls away as he takes each step,  shedding itself of him.  As he makes his way under the lamp light he is clad only in soft, straight brown pants, and a large cotton black shirt.  He is lighter now, more at ease.  His hand rests gently on the lamp post as he approaches it, he does not stop to feel it longer.  The first step out of the light towards the back of the platform is all black, but in each subsequent step, his eyes adjust.  Now there is a leaf on the ground, and another.  A trail of breadcrumbs. Feet follow them, him pushing them along, but not knowing, only wanting.  The barefoot man keeps plodding along until the stone is grass and then brush and then root.  He stops and gazes up.  A forest surrounds him.  In front.  To the sides.  And behind.  His cheeks reach his ears and he spins.  He does movements unknown to him, but from his mind.  Where he was once on the edge, he is now in the very center.  The exact middle.  The heart.

Stand and disconnect, Or: to touch the fire

i am beCOMING something. ELSE entirely.

Dripping wet I hung and felt my bones ache. An unnatural slime oozed off of the wall to my right,  on blue stones that shone like a rock jutting out of a lake surface, lit only by moonlight. In front of me was an empty black that seemed as if it was tangible, and beside me lay a man whose body was shifting between a few inches like electricity was being pushed through him. He was chained to the ground.

We talked occasionally. It was all there was to do. I was chained upright, wrists twisted behind my back and my arms extended, but I could at least stand and turn and hang. He was spread prostrate and so I didn't ask him to talk much. I don't think he likes it. So I waited for him to bring something up. How strange that I was too embarrassed to burden him, even being his cellmate, his co-prisoner. The only person he had. Maybe that's why. We were trapped here together, and I didn't want to enhance his hardship any further.

"My meditative exploits will come to fruition eventually. When you think about it..." he began. It was very difficult to understand him with his chin on the ground like that, and he talked with an unfamiliar cadence. He let his words hang in the air for longer than any comfortable period. "it's the only thing that makes sense. The power of our minds. Our thoughts," he continued, after an extended pause.

"I was never good at meditation," I replied. "I suppose I never really tried. It was always one of those things that you don't believe in. It's phony. It's just breathing and thinking. It's not as transcendental as people want you to believe."  My cynicism wasn't meant to be harsh, I was simply always grounded in reality. I had no reason not to be.

"The mind is far more powerful than the body," he huffed and spat. "You...            CAN do things with your mind. If you are good enough with mental trickery. Cog-ni-tive manipulation. You've heard of placebos, I'm sure."

I nodded absent mindedly. We had begun to learn each other. He forged ahead, after a time.

"I now know that I can induce that effect. I think it has something to do with this place. My senses are dulled and weakened, but my mind is fresh and agile. I.... don't feel the..... Same. I  c a n m a k e m Y s e l F change. Do you believe it?"

I nodded again.

"And I feel really strange," he breathed. "It's like I'm not even here. It's nice." Then he lulled off to sleep. I could always tell when he dozed off because his hands balled into fists. It was completely unintuitive. You'd think he was relaxed when he slept, but his body language suggested he hated it. Sleep was one of my only respites. And off I went.

-------------------

When you're in that stupor of waking up, your brain doesn't know what to do, it's imbalanced. It's been on its side all night. Not fully aware of yourself, still thinking like you're in a dream. Normally I could shake myself out of it when I stood up. But I never get that relief. I open my eyes and I'm leaning out, as if food held by a child over a burning heap. Afraid to burn themselves, but willing to lean me into it, to touch the fire.

And sometimes, I think HE, My roommate, Is influencing me. I think things that aren't my thoughts. I remember things that only I could know, but are only my fantasy. Unreality seems forefront, inching closer to my psyche at a steady pace. A daily trek.

Us, in here. Bonding. Brewing.

I have tasted open flame. I am the wax and the wick. As. It. Burns. Me. Down. And. Dissolves. Me. I. Am. Released.
Kiss of fire. The life of the sun.
Melting death. Smokebirth.

I opened my eyes and spat. I've never confused a dream for reality once I've awoken. I can tell. I'm no fool. But lately it's been harder. My roommate is doing his mental exercises. He, against all odds, looks immaculately comfortable. Pristine, even. His tongue is out, pushed again the grainy rock, idly lapping up this place. He won't speak to me for a while.

I have a ritual to keep my senses sharp. To stay grounded when I have this little mobility. I have to do something to stay aware, to stay normal, to just stay. A routine. Dripping wet I hung and felt my bones ache. An unnatural slime oozed off the wall to my right. In front of me was an empty black. Beside me lay a man. There. It was done. It was all there. That was step one. I'm still here and I've assessed something. I'm in control. Next I flex. Start at the toes and work my way up. I move and stretch each portion as much as I can. I twitch my ears and my jaw. I move my head. There. It was done.

-------------------

I don't remember falling asleep.  That never happens.  I'm alone today.  What is going on? I don't have time to wonder.  About his release.  His life.  I only have myself now.  I'm all alone. Again. 

Turning inward I start to wander.  Down the pathways of my mind.  It's something.  It's important.  Maybe.  MAY BE. M A Y B E HE W A S RIIIIiiiiiigggghhhht.

I'm unlatched.  That's a start.  My surroundings are the same.  I don't want to walk into the black.  I don't want to touch the slime.  I can stay still.  In my stillness I focus on something small.  My hair is sensitive to the calm of the air.  Each morsel of skin is feeling a different temperature.  The nails on my fingers and toes are steadfast in their defense.  A vibration passes through me.  Once, head to toe.  Twice, toe to head.  Thrice, inward to outward.  tHe RoOm InVeRtS.  A warm breeze passes through me.  A strong heat beats me over the head as I stare into the oblivion in the horizon.  I could run for a hundred days and never reach it.  I don't run.  I don't do anything.  My eyes never open.  I imagine I'm in the maw of some great beast.  The heat is not the sun but the hot breath of a lummox.  The breeze is not from the ancient elemental but from the exhalation of a cavernous mouth space.  I could jump down the gullet and bethroat myself through it.  I don't move.  I don't do anything. 

-------------------

Finally my eyes open.  I'm awake again.

"Was that you or me?" The lowered man intoned at me.  That feeling grips me where you haven't talked in many hours and you are unsure if you can any longer.  Do I yet have a voice?  What will it sound like when it comes out? I wanted to cough to check but I dripped out a few words in my recognizable drawl.

"It was me.  But you helped."

He laughed.  I only could see the back of his head but I could tell he was smiling.  I smiled back.  Then we were both out.  He held my hand. Back in the meadow.  He looked at me.  He was beautiful.  Nothing at all like I had imagined. 

"Do you want to run? I like the idea of GOing FOrward."

"Me too," I said sheepishly.  He made me feel great.  We were happy here.  We took off at a full sprint at the same time.  Freedom.

Dripping wet I hung and felt my bones ache. An unnatural slime oozed off the wall to my right. In front of me was an empty black. Beside me lay a man.  There.  It was done.

We were no longer.

THERE