Loophole

There's an unsatisfying lack of rhythm to the clatter of my fingers on the keys, it sounds like the tap-dancing equivalent of an orchestra tuning up. I look towards the blinds and try to angle my view in order to eek out a slither of obscured sunlight. I contemplate another amble over to the coffee pot, but I can see Gerry lurking nearby, he works in processing, he always talks down my top.
    Still, my knees ache, I want to give them some respite from the swivel chair they've been hunched under for the last four hours, the occasional starfish-shaped stretch notwithstanding.
    Making a deliberate zigzag past other cubicles, in order to avoid the break room, I decide to stroll, listlessly down an unfamiliar corridor; though all corridors look the same here, it's like a haunted house in a Scooby Doo cartoon.
    As I track dully along the thinning beige carpet I hear a mechanical and repeating clunk, followed by a whirr, followed by a slithering, slide of automation. It's pleasingly rhythmic, and it's coming from behind a door marked 'Copying'.
    Tentatively I press my fingers to the wood and the door, with eager ease, gives.
    Inside is a dark little room, metal shelving on two walls burdened with boxes of A4 paper and card of various colours and gsms, whilst against the other wall stand two busy photocopiers, each one regurgitating anonymous pages of data. Curious I have a peek at one of the still warm pages; nothing but gibberish, actual nonsense, in fact it's the boilerplate placeholder text - Lorem Ipsum - that we use to fill areas of documents that we're still awaiting copy for.
    Checking the second printer I can see it's the same.
    For some reason I feel compelled to take a sheet of this filler text and place it under the third dormant printer, I key in '100' and hit the big green button to start copying.
    Suddenly a peculiar rush hits me, like the crash of a wave over ones head, followed by the hollow sound and tinnitus whine of percussive ear damage. My vision feels tremulous, as if looking through a magic pool in a fairytale story. Nervously, remembering the paracetemol in my desk drawer, I hurry out of the copying room.
    As I approach my desk an uncomfortable confusion overcomes me, somebody has planted themself in my seat, hunched their legs up under my swivel chair, and started fiddling with my PowerPoint presentation for the I.R. meeting tomorrow. I can feel my expression souring, that officious little voice that I despise myself for having starts climbing up from my chest towards my mouth as I prepare to give them a curt dressing down. Then, it gets worse, Gerry comes gallumphing over for a chat, but he drifts right past me and heads to this seat-thief. She turns to look at him and, of all the possibilities, she looks exactly like me!
    He hands her a coffee, she accepts, thanks him, and they briefly talk about some report that just got emailed around the office, then Gerry waddles off.
    For a minute I'm still, speechless, barely blinking, oblivious to everything but this doppelganger sat in my place. I approach her but she does not notice me, I wave my hands around her face, try yawping in her ear, but even the slightest reaction. So, I watch her work, and she makes every choice that I would have made, replies to a few emails in a fashion exactly alike to my own, even answers the phone with the same chirpy "Hi hi!" that I employ.
    Then, all of a sudden, I'm standing back in the copying room.
    I rush back into the office, keen to catch this imposter now that my senses have returned to complete normality, but all I find is an empty desk. However the work, the work I watched myself perform, remains done.
    Keenly, curiously, I walk - as nonchalantly as I can - back to the copying room, the third printer is sat dormant once more, I key in '100' and push the button once more.
    Sure enough, the same sounds, the same sights, and, when I get back to my desk, there is my double doing my work.
    Wishing to test the boundaries of this peculiar occurence I head towards the elevator, out-stretch my hand - concerned that I may be a ghost - and press the button for the ground floor; it illuminates, the doors close, the lift descends.
    I step outside, it's a crisp, cool day with bright, flat sunshine glinting off the towering office windows that surround me. I dash over the road to the Coffee Stop, grab a latte and a blueberry muffin, sit on a nearby bench beside a scrub of greenery, sigh deepy and contentedly and -
    - find myself back in the copying room, empty-handed.
    But, more work has been done, in fact, there's an email from my supervisor praising the changes to the PowerPoint that I'd just emailed over. Good work me!
    I hurry back to the copying room, not wishing to disturb my twin's run of good work, this time though I key in '10,000' and hit the green button.

Dabbing my lips with the napkin and resting a hand on my stuffed belly, I surveyed the near-licked-clean plates scattered across the restaurant table before me. I guzzled the last glug of wine in the glass and let out a long, pleasurable sigh.
    Over the four years I'd worked in that office I'd always thought about coming to this restaurant on my lunch break, but there was never enough time. Afterwards I decided I would go to the park, another local attraction that I'd not yet taken a moment to appreciate, and then I'd amble around a few of the independent shops that I usually dash past on my way to and from the underground station.
    I asked the waiter for the bill and -
    - collapse onto the floor of the copying room, the chair suddenly having vanished from beneath me.
    My first thought is concern that the furious restaurant manager will find where I work and come storming in, but I reason that I'll stop in and pay the bill on my way home, make some flimsy excuse about a family emergency.
    My second thought is confusion, surely 10,000 pages would have given me more time than that, but the problem is obvious when I pick myself up and see the printer flashing a little red LED and a message indicating that I need to load more paper into the tray.
    I open up a box of paper and fill the two empty trays inside the hulking machine, as soon as the drawers are closed it hungrily stops to gobble up and spit out the clean white sheets, and I plunge back into my diaphanous worldview.

Figuring I can return to the restaurant and settle the bill at any time I decide to stroll around the park, it's wonderfully peaceful during the early afternoon, lacking the clamour of the weekend it boasts a serenity that I experience all too fleetingly in this city. I take my time, appreciating nature in a way I don't think I have for many years, stopping to watch a squirrel frolic about for about twenty minutes.
    Afterwards I go shopping, make a few purchases, and concerned that I might - at any moment - be transported back to the copying room decide the safest thing to do would be to head home.
    My commute is pleasingly free of jostle and frotteurism, no papers unfurled across my back, armpits thrust into my face, heavy bags deposited onto my feet, no coughs, yawns, sneezes left uncovered by hands to particulate into my sinuses.
    I get in, enjoying the feel of playing truant, my flat seems to have a certain luminous quality that is perhaps diluted by my own malaise when I trudge in after a long day at the office. I revel in today's discovery, this incredible freedom stretching before me, a chance to shrink from toil and pain and enjoy the charms of a pleasure of the moment, rather than the usual desperate rush for "fun" that I try to cram in of an evening or weekend. This, I think to myself, is how life should be.
    I reach to set the bags down on the floor. I reach to set the bags down on the floor. I reach to set the bags down on the floor... I... reach to... set the...? My arm won't move... My limbs, my entire being seems caught, frozen in place, and I begin to feel seperate and suspended from my body, though I am undoubtedly housed within it. I struggle and shake, I kick and flail, but it's like being encased within a sculpture of oneself, I cannot move.
    I remain here gradually watching the sun sink, seeing my flat return to the state I am used to experiencing it in and then - with a sombre clunk - hear the key in the lock, sense the door open behind me and watch as I - the other I - comes in, weary and downtrodden, from a long day at the office.
    She walks past me, ignorant as ever of my presence, automatically - almost hypnotically - heading into the kitchen and switching on the kettle for a post-work cup of tea, kicking off her shoes, slumping her coat over a chair, snatching up the remote control and switching the television on.
    I hang there, watching her entire evening pass by, she cooks a quick meal, switches from tea to wine, nods off in front of a dull movie, and slumps into the bedroom to sleep. I try to sleep, but I can't, there's a discomfort to my disanimation, and all I can do is be still as the night passes me by, gradually gradiating into morning and the irritatingly vibrant ditty of an alarm clock sounds from the bedroom.
    I hear myself snooze the alarm a further three times before a hurried, dishevelled me comes racing out of the bedroom, dives into the bathroom, hops out half brushing her teeth and half getting changed from pajamas to work-wear, before finally cramming a slice of toast between her teeth and speeding out the door.
    And there I am, still locked in motion, the shopping bags out-stretched toward the floor, waiting to be returned to life.

In the copy room are three printers, upon the third a little red LED light blinks and a message, as yet unanswered, hopes that somebody will come and fix the paper jam.

Under Contract

Summer never seems to last as long as it did when you were a kid. I remember those endless sunny months, so full of formative experiences, miniature adventures, wonderment, sometimes heartbreak, but always a golden, glorious highlight of the year.
    Now I'm older there's no Summer break. I guess I'm envious of my friend, Helen, she's a school teacher and she still has mid-July to early September off, along with all those other term breaks. Sure, she complains about not being able to "choose" her holidays, but, I'd gladly swap my paltry 25 days a year for that.
    Still, she also seems to share my halcyon memory of those long - almost to the point of dragging - Summer months. I think it's because I didn't use to carry around all the concerns that now plague me, even if I have time off in Summer, my mind still harrangues me with thoughts of rent, bills, outstanding projects, the things I keep putting off, chores and admin, friends I haven't seen or spoken to, the constant gnawing worry that I'm going to die alone. That consumes a lot of time, and these were neurotic issues I did not have as a child.
    Why can't I switch off? I drink, I smoke the occasional joint, I spend long lazy days just lying in bed, procrastinating, yet time - zoom - just - zip - passes - whoosh - me by.
    On one such tangential day I was exploring some old boxes I found in the attic, there were some old camcorder tapes and I figured I'd give them a watch, see what was on them.
    Wobbly, time-ravaged images of Welsh holidays; my sister's 8th birthday party; and one video where someone - probably my Dad, he had a habit for it - had left the camera running in the bag, in fact, the entire tape, all 45 minutes, was just this constant shot of the bag. I know, because I watched it all from beginning to end, straining to hear what was going on around it, curious as to what I might discover, but, I heard nothing of note.
    What was strange though was when I finished watching the tape it was dark outside.
    Time has a habit of doing this to me, those evenings after work where I plan to get things done, I'll open my laptop and then look at the time, it'll be 10pm. It's why I end up just cramming microwave meals into my maw, I don't have the time I used to have to cook.
    But this, this was particularly odd, the longest the tape could be was 45 minutes, and I'd started watching it at ten past seven, it didn't begin to get dark until around half eight or nine. Miffed, I rewound the tape and hit play again, this time holding my watch up alongside the date-stamp that my Dad - as he was prone to do - had left imprinted in the corner.
    The video read: 05-04-88 - 15:42.
    My watch read: 21-08-18 - 21:11.
    By the time the video's time changed to 15:43 my watch was reading 21:13, and once the forty five minutes had unspooled, just over ninety minutes had passed.
    Concerned that my watch was broken I took down a wall clock from the kitchen, set an alarm on my mobile and called the talking clock from the landline. Starting the video over, watching it through, with volume at the maximum in case I could hear it being played back at half speed or something, and then checking the time once it was done; it was the same story.
    Forty five 1988 minutes were now the equivalent of ninety 2018 minutes.
    "Surely," Helen said when I called her up immediately after this revelation, "there's something wrong with the video player, I mean, how old is that thing anyway?"
    "Ten years or so, but I checked and double-checked, it doesn't seem like a coincidence. I mean, once the universe has finished expanding it must start contracting again, and what if time - the speed of time - changes as a result of that?"
    "Meaning?"
    "That time is going to get faster and faster, if it's halved in thirty years, then, another thirty and it'll be half again, until..."
    "What?"
    "Until time ends."
    Helen spluttered a laugh, "Oh, Rory, you're being a tad melodramatic. If you turn up at my front door with a Police telephone box parked on my lawn, hmm, maybe I'll believe you."
    My silence prompted the sound of the phone being shifted from one ear to another before she sighed a warm, reassuring sigh.
    "If," she reasoned, "if time is contracting then what can you do about it? What difference does it make? A day to us is still a day, the sunrises and sets when it always has, just the space between those gestures, compared to how it was in our childhood, is smaller, but the rate at which we move through space, that's the same, it's not like time is getting faster and we're getting slower."
    "Not for another forty years I'd say, although mobility scooters can do some pretty brutal speeds these days. Once almost mowed me down in the park last weekend."
    "See," Helen chuckled, "everything's getter faster."
    I could see Helen's point, there is no need in getting in a bother because time is running out, then you'd only fixate on that and ignore the fact there is still time left for you to enjoy. If you think constantly about tomorrow you'll forget about today. But, by the same stroke, why should I not ponder these gigantic concerns? When I was a kid I was terrified of asteroids colliding with the Earth, as I became a teenager I began to stress over exams, then getting a job, now my monthly outgoings, and as I grow older still my worries will further narrow until it's simple things like getting out of my chair that cause me apprehension.   
    Still, if you're thinking all the time about being struck by lightning and pay no heed to other problems then you're probably more likely the type to step in front of a bus by mistake.
    I bought myself a dictaphone with a 72 hour recording lifespan and I recorded myself for one whole day, and every hour I would shout the time: "One o'clock!", etc. The following day, at the stroke of midnight, I pushed play on the recording, and as the day wore on I noticed the shouts getting ever so gradually out of sync, until the cry of "Eleven o'clock!" landed at 22:59.
    Carefully I put the dictaphone away, buried deep in the random bits and bobs of my bedside drawer, and I made a little promise to myself not to think about it again, and tomorrow I'd try and find some room for all those things I'd been putting off. I'd try and make time.

Time & Tide

Margaret stood in the bathroom, staring out the window, looking at a bird that was suspended in mid-air. She could see the sunlight shining off its eye, determined in its flight path, but utterly static, wings spread wide, twiggy legs hunched up, a perfect snapshot of speed.

Out of the tap there was a solid gush of water and a splash, like an ice sculpture, hitting the enamel of the bath tub.

But above all else, there was silence.

Margaret had been expecting this day, she'd fantasized about it in school when she was younger, so its eventual arrival was greeted with a quiet nod of the head and very little fanfare. Besides, who would she tell?

Her partner, Lucy, was halfway down the stairs, right leg out-stretched to make the next step, one hand gingerly clawed around the bannister and the other holding an empty, stained mug, her left arm drawn in close to keep purchase on a copy of the local paper.

Margaret walked past her, kissed her on the cheek as she went by, Lucy didn't even blink.

It wasn't warm or cold, the temperature in this moment had become absolutely placid, there was no wind to bring a chill, it was a peculiar constant, like the first moment when you wake up in bed and haven't yet grown accustomed to the day, that comfy fresh feeling. Margaret, like she did when she woke, wanted to snuggle up and savour it, but she didn't know how long it would last. They say time is fleeting.

When she was sat at the front of her Maths class, daydreaming about being able to stop time, Margaret would think about little petty revenges she could enact upon her classmates, upon teachers. She would put them at the front of assembly and pull down their pants. She would humiliate and shame them, revisiting all the humiliation and shame they had forced upon her. In her heart she always thought she was a good person, but she had this wealth of vengeance brewing inside, this imagined hatred for everyone she knew, that would sometimes fizz through her veins, coil her fingers, almost feel like she couldn't contain it and then she'd burst, a terrible scream, an incomprehensible wail, and everyone would look at her and everyone would know.

It was quiet now, and she could do what she wanted. But time had passed, she didn't want to waste her time on people she didn't care about. She had spent a careful life making decisions that mattered to her, ensuring that she left any job that tried to, no matter how subtly, break her spirit, wear her down, distort her thinking. It was difficult, but she had done it. She was happy now, she was doing a job she enjoyed, she lived in a nice little house with a woman she loved, they had a cat - it too frozen in time, though impossible to tell, curled on the sofa - called Genie, and all was well.

She didn't want to scream, she didn't want to hunt down the people who had made her cry, who had made her hate herself, who had written her off because of the private and personal choices that she had made that they couldn't tolerate.

All she wanted was for time to start moving again, for life to carry on, and even though that meant this perfect moment, this freeze frame of her happiness, would instantly be gone forever, reduced to a memory, she could look forward to all those future moments, the memories yet to be made and savour them as she was savouring this.

She went back to the bathroom window, she looked at the bird in flight, she smiled and closed her eyes.

From the stairs she heard a tumble, the sound of broken china, she opened her eyes and the bird had flown.

The Day I Invented Time Travel

People always ask me about time travel, and about how, if I go back in time, reality doesn't collapse in on itself. You know, if you do something in the past, that changes the future, surely you should unmake yourself or something.

Well, it turns out that all of reality is actually entirely subjective, all the people who think they're the centre of the universe are right, every living being on the planet is its own universe and the reality which we perceive is the only one that - technically - exists.

Therefore, if you travel back in time you are only changing your perception of reality, and you can't go back and change something in the past in order to directly effect the future and unmake yourself, because the past is only a memory, and the past or future you may travel to is merely an alternate present.

In fact, the thing about time travel is that you aren't travelling into the past or the future, you are always in the present, it is just your perception of the present that has changed.

So, I invented time travel on a Wednesday, at about three in the afternoon, but by the time I realised what I had done it was five years earlier, same day of the week though, but now it was four in the morning. I was sat in the same place, except now I was staring at myself instead of the boggle-eyed cat clock hanging just behind my head.

I was scared, naive at this point, that seeing myself would cause some sort of paradox, but that's impossible, because that me is composed of different matter, pieces of the past if you will. But, it was at this point that I realised the true nature of time travel, because, if going back would alter the future then I would have always had this memory of having met myself in the past, but I didn't, this was unexpected. Now, if I were to travel to tomorrow, the me I would meet then would of course remember meeting me, but only because yesterday has always happened, and if I travelled further forwards to meet the me sat at that kitchen table on the day I invented time travel then he probably wouldn't be there doing what I did when I did it, he's a product of a now alternate future, something that never existed in any form prior to my journey into the past, yet my past, the past where I invented time travel has and always will exist.

Now, I'm not saying there are a series of parallel yet alternate universes and realities happening simultaneously, and even if there are I do doubt that we could travel between them, I think that's where your paradoxes and science fiction starts to occur. But, this singular perceived reality, the reality of my head, can be transformed as much as I care, heck, I could go all the way back and kill every organism on the planet at the dawn of creation and yet I would still exist, I'd just be real lonely for the rest of my natural life.

You see, once you do something in the past the only way to undo it is to then go back before it happened and change it that way, kind of like going back and stopping the guy from walking under the roof slate about to fall on his head, then, when you go forwards again you can see the reality that follows.

Once this clicked in my own brain I tried to think about what I would most want and how best to achieve that in a way that would benefit me, the time traveller.

You see, the problem is now that I have shifted my present off of its linear course I don't particularly exist, the only space where I think I can continue to exist is in the time after I first vanished. I haven't been back there yet, but, like I said earlier I may have altered things in my perception of reality to mean that I don't time travel on that day. Therefore I will be ambling about, doing my thing, and I don't want to have share a continued linear existence with a duplicate of myself.

As I age I keep track of where, in the present I was born and grew into, I would be. It's not Wednesday anymore, it's four months later, a Friday evening, though I currently exist one hundred years ago in a French cafe.

One day I plan to go back and pick up my life where I left off, but I need to do it silently. If anything I hope that some sort of quiet accident happens to me in the future and I get there to find my dead body, which I can secretly get rid of and just carry on as if nothing changed. But I don't know if I can leave this to chance anymore, and the more I wait the more I worry I'll go back and find out I died in some terrible, public way that means I can no longer be myself in the time I am accustomed to.

Or what if I get married, have kids, a career, but they are all different to that which I had planned for myself, and I have to sit there, once I resume my life, like a prisoner, married to a woman I don't love, with children that aren't mine and a job I despise.

But then I realise that I am not a time traveller, and that this is my life, and I look away from the computer screen and drink my coffee, time travels forwards at a rate we are all accustomed to, I am not the centre of the universe, and I can't go back and change a thing.