nixsight

(This story was my first pass at this week’s Elephant Words assignment. My final entry is up here.)

“Oh, for the love of…” exclaimed Jim.

Seeing an imminent crisis of near infinite proportions, Artie put a hand to Jim’s side and steered him away from the centre of the precinct.

Their progress was slightly hampered by the endless human river of teenagers, push-chairs and city centre touts, but Artie, well versed in the traversing of thoroughfares and the general dodging of mindless obstacles, ably got them through the throng. She guided her boyfriend into the shelter of a service doorway between the thumping dullness of one of the local HMV stores and the perpetual thriftiness and ubiquity of Woolworths. He slumped down onto his haunches, back against the filthy door.

On this day in history, she thought, and in any city in England, there is a Woolworths all but identical to this one.

Artie looked down at her companion, and noted the flush of colour just as it began to fade from his cheeks. She decided that his frustration was adorable, and she half-smiled as she passed him the almost empty paper bucket of Coke that she had been given with her burger. As he took it, muttering thanks, she noticed that a spray of blonde hair had escaped from the flurry that topped his head and flopped across his face, and she brushed it softly out of the way, propping it behind his ear.

“Sorry,” he said again, more clearly this time, and then he raised the drink slightly towards her, “and thanks.”
“Ah, it’s mostly saliva and melted ice by now.” She responded, her half-smile breaking out into a fully-fledged grin. She rested back against their shelter, her shoulders bumping up against the capitalist might of music retail, and let her hands slip down behind her bum, palms flat against the coolness of the shiny black tiles.
He slurped noisily, a look of mock gluttony on his face, letting his eyes roll back, and she let the laugh bubble up out of her, and felt her ankles crossing over one another almost by themselves. She loved how much his presence made her body want to flirt.

“Heh… really, I’m sorry about that,” he said, rattling the tiny bubbles of ice still remaining as he spoke, “you meet me specially, and I practically have a panic attack. I must be the best lunch date ever!”
She flicked at a few curly strands of her own hair that were dislodged by the bow of her head, and curled her lip.
“Yeah, I suspect that you are, in fact, the best catch in history.” She turned her head to take in the crowds as they followed their apparently meaningless paths. The motion was constant and seemed to flow naturally, but every now and then an individual or a group would suddenly stop or change direction… it was difficult to say why, whether something had attracted their attention, or whether something less obvious altered their plans; a sudden memory, or an existential crisis of some description?

Whatever the cause, their uncertainty would disrupt the people moving around them dramatically, for a few seconds, but after a couple of quick mis-steps, and perhaps an under the breath grumble, the torrent would resume, eddy forgotten.

She nodded in that direction, and said, “It really bothers you, then?”
He used his hands to push himself off from the door. Midway through this process, he registered the grubbiness of the surface that he was using as leverage, and too late he made an erratic attempt to avoid further filthiness. Like this, he clumsily got to his feet, to Artie’s great amusement.
“Smooth.” She muttered into the hand hiding her face.
“Hell yes.” He retorted. He brushed his hands against each other, and then brushed off the seat of his jeans. Then he brushed off his hands again. He sighed, giving up clean hands as a bad job, and pushed them deep into his pockets. “But yeah… well, no. It doesn’t bother me, as such.”

Jim signalled that all was well and they could move on. Moments later, they instinctively caught a wave of tourists heading in their direction, and they left their mean little sanctuary. Their path set and pace established, conversation continued.

“I mean, it isn’t that I can’t handle groups of people. I’m not agoraphobic… If anything, I’m used to aggro.” He grinned to himself, aware that sometimes puns seemed to lose her a little, and pressed on, narrowly dodging a colourfully dressed small child that was heading towards his knees as it chattered incoherently to an equally loudly clad adult. The adult seemed absorbed in anything but the foot traffic and the impact its offspring was having on it. Jim could not tell what language father and son were speaking to each other, but he couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t English. “After all, we met in a nightclub, didn’t we? I clearly don’t mind crowds.”

He stopped for a second, and she turned to look at him. The mass parted slightly, pushing on past them. He looked around him slowly… it was a game that they played, in which he was deliberately over-dramatic, and she over-played the wide-eyed, attentive girlfriend.

”It’s the chaos I cannot stand. All these people, rushing fast in no particular direction; thousands of them, coming from who-knows-where, destinations unknown.” He grinned, and then sniffed, and pulled her on into a nearby Starbucks. He waved out through the large window. “I mean, seriously… Wednesday lunchtime, on a school day… where the fuck do they all come from?”

Later, seated, coffee half drunk, and much calmer, he said, “Course, I get that most of these people are visitors from somewhere else, but I guess what I don’t understand is… well, why here? What is so damn special about a shopping centre in Southampton? There are another ten just like it within fifty miles.”
“Well, I suppose… Why not?”
“Well, okay, why not…? But then, still, why?” He paused to take another sip of latte. “Just, there must be better things to do then shop.”
“Or hang out and drink coffee?”
He grinned at her sheepishly. Now he felt a little silly.
“Okay, maybe what I’m trying to get at… Every summer when I was a kid, my dad would pack me, my mum, and my sisters into a car, and take us to this place in North Wales. It was green, and pretty, and there were hills, and walks, and… I hated it.”
He watched a small family jostle and argue upstream, voices lost through the glass. “But, see, I was a kid. Parents are supposed to want to take you to places like that, and kids are supposed to be bored by it. I grew out of it, you know?”
He looked up to see her listening intently, that half-smile that she favoured washing over him.
“I mean, god, a day trip to fucking Marks And Spencers? My dad… the place he took us… Well, when I got a bit older, I’d tend to argue with them a lot, and I would always go off on my own to calm down. A little way from the place we stayed, there was this whayoucallit, a jetty? There were always a couple of fishing boats tied up there, but I never saw anyone around… it was so serene and calming. And the biggest sky you ever saw.”
“And fishy.”
“Well, yeah, herring stink. But, what I want to know is… all these people crammed into places like this, and there are still such vast spots, only hours away, that are empty… that are totally overlooked.” A shudder passed through him. “Don’t get me wrong, I am totally glad that this lot haven’t swarmed everywhere yet. But…”
“Yeah, it is beautiful up there.”
“Oh, you’ve been?”
“Course, remember, we went…” Artie trailed off, and was suddenly and conspicuously not making eye contact with him. “Never mind” she muttered into her mug.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Or something?” He laughed. “Is this something daft? Like, you went up to Wales with an ex, but got confused, and now you’re all shy about your mistake and worried about hurting my feelings?”
“Not an ex, no.” Her eyes flicked back and forth, until finally she made a decision. She put the mug down hard on the table. “The thing is… Jim. The thing is, Jim, my boyfriend, took me up there to try and find the place that he remembered from his childhood, about three weeks ago.”
“Hang on.” He suddenly felt quite deflated. “But, you were with me three weeks ago.”
“That is absolutely correct.”
“But… what? You’ve got another boyfriend?”
“No, listen. I understand that this might sound a bit odd, but you aren’t listening. My boyfriend Jim, you, took me on a romantic trip to find this mysterious jetty. We found it, and it was beautiful, and serene, with cloudbanks as big as mountains sitting on the horizon. And it stank of fish.”
“But, we didn’t do any such thing…”
”No. Okay, I’m not explaining this right. Hang on.” She looked out of the window for a second, feeling agitated because of the distress she suddenly seemed to be causing him. Something caught her eye for a second, and then a second wave of resolution set in. “Fine, okay. I’m going to tell you something, but I’m going to need you to not freak out about it until I have shown you something.”
“Sure thing.” He said, but the forecast on him not freaking out still looked pretty vague.
“Right. Jim. I’m from the future.”
“Riiiight.”
“Look. Look out of the window. See that Japanese girl over there, in the bright yellow dress?” He nodded. “Watch her.”
Jim looked back at Artie uncertainly, and then set his sights on the pretty girl with the lavish make-up, finding it easy to track her in that outfit. Then suddenly he couldn’t see her any more.
“Where did she…? Oh, hang on… there she is.” He spotted her as she zipped into a store. “So what about her.”
“Keep watching.”
A couple of minutes later, the girl emerged from the store, shaking her head, looking irritated. Then, with his eyes still on her, she vanished. It was as if she had just… slipped sideways behind something that wasn’t actually there. He tried to find her among the crowds, but really, he knew exactly what he had seen.
“What…?” He blurted.
“Hang on…” A few more seconds, and then they both saw the girl reappear, a few yards along the row of shops. “There!” It took Jim a few seconds to notice the two carrier bags that the girl now held.
“But…”
“She was comparing prices. This decade is pretty cheap, but there are still some things that you can get cheaper further down the line.”
“But… what?”
“She’s shopping, Jim. Some years, 21st century fashion is incredibly popular.” She pointed out a flurry of movement further down the precinct. “Now watch that guy.”

After a few more examples, Jim held up his hand.
“Stop. I get it. Something peculiar is going on.”
“It wasn’t considered that strange by the time I was born. The technology was already pretty widespread by then.”
“So, what? You are telling me that the whole city has been infiltrated by time travellers?”
“Steady on… “Infiltrated” is a bit strong. This is still their home… just, uh, not yet.”
“That is totally not right. It’s impossible. You’ll be telling me that you can teleport out to Alpha Centauri next.”
“Well, no. I’m only about two hundred years ahead, and we haven’t got that far out by then. And nobody in history has managed to come up with any sort of teleportation tech… most advanced modes of localtime transport are just variations on the theme of getting there a bit faster then before.”
“But… time travel?”
“I don’t really know how to explain it. I mean, I don’t know exactly how it works. Most people don’t, we just buy the implants, pay the subscription, and go.” She lifted her mug to her lips, and then scrunched her nose. Empty. “But the way it works, you can’t move through time AND space. You have to make a choice. Most people spend more time visiting other times then other places. It’s more immediate.”
“This is…” Jim faltered. “I need more coffee.”

When he returned with their drinks, Jim seemed much calmer then before. He started asking questions almost before he had settled back into his chair.
“So why are you here?”
“I came to see you!”
“No, I mean… how come you were out clubbing that night… specifically that night, when I met you?”
“I told you. We were out on a crawl, for my friend’s ‘stagger’… sorry… my friend’s ‘hen’ night. I didn’t lie to you. When I met you and they went on, they ended up somewhere in the seventeenth century, and pretty hammered.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove… what? That they were drunk?”
“No, I mean… Prove… it. Tell me something that is about to happen.”
“What? How the hell…? Jim, can you tell me what you had for dinner yesterday?”
“Well, no.”
“Then how am I supposed to pull something out of the air that happened centuries ago?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he responded, sheepish; “maybe, something… historical?”
“Oh, honey, honestly. Don’t take this the wrong way, but in two hundred years time, nothing that happens now, no matter how major it seems to you… none of it really makes an impact. I couldn’t even tell you when the technology that got me here was invented.” She stirred her coffee. “Put it another way: When was the last time you went to a museum?”
“Good point.” He watched her play with her drink for a moment. “So why here? Why all these people, right here, right now?”
“Well, they aren’t all here, obviously. I guess they come here because it is jam-packed somewhen else… or because we need a pair of shoes that no other year has in the right size and colour, or something. I mean, the concurrent population of this planet never really tips over twenty billion, as far as anyone has travelled, and we never live longer than about a hundred odd years each. The sad fact is that as a species, we’re more interested in researching ways to travel to somewhere else then we are ways to keep ourselves alive longer.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So I guess people just kind of… distribute themselves. Supply and demand, all that.”
“So the reason these people aren’t everywhere? The reason I never saw them down at the water?”
“I hate to say it, but shops are more of a draw.”
“But why haven’t I ever heard about this before?”
“I don’t know. I think the knowledge just takes care of itself. What happens when people start talking about being from the future at this point in time?”
“No-one listens to them. Or they get put on pretty heavy medication, and hidden away pretty definitively.”
“There you go, then. And I guess if they manage to share evidence of their story, say if they have one of those old vintage handsets everyone used to use… well, there’s probably more than one person from the past sliding around the timeline like a pro.”
“Hm.” He contemplated his coffee for a minute, turning the stick that the establishment provided in lieu of a spoon clockwise and then counter-clockwise, watching the drink spiral and reverse. “You know, this is all pretty fucking nuts.”
“Well, explaining it, it does sound that way. But it really does just kind of seem normal when you grew up with it. Rumours persist that people must have gone a little nuts when the technology started up, but there isn’t much evidence to support it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the thing is, when someone fucks things up in the timestream, changing the course of history and whatnot, it isn’t like Wikipedia… there isn’t any record of the changes, no previous draft. It just… becomes the way things happened all along. You know that bit in Bill and Ted, where they get themselves out of a scrape by reminding themselves to go back and do things that will get them out of the scrape, once they are actually out of the scrape?”
“God yes. That movie is awesome.”
“Well, all research seems to point to that actually being the way it all works.”
“Whoa.”

“You seem to be taking this pretty well, actually.”
“Well, to be honest, I’ve been out with liars, and I’ve been out with lunatics, and I don’t get the same feeling from you that I get from them. Plus, you know, you’d be willing to take a lot on board if you had ever had sex with you.” He paused, and a peculiar smile played across his lips. “Which, you know, you probably could do.”
“I probably could. But I haven’t. So don’t be so filthy.”
“Heh. So, meeting yourself?”
“Is possible. But if I went and found myself as a teenager, and tried to give her advice, to her I’d just be another dumb adult trying to give her advice. I doubt I’d even remember the encounter, now.”
“Changing history?”
“Who knows? It could be happening constantly.”
“Lottery/stock market/sports betting fraud?”
“Well, I’m sure it does happen, but I imagine there are natural economic checks and balances that stop it getting out of control. I’m no economist, but if suddenly whole countries become bankrupt because of a few too many cross-time gamblers, the cross-time gamblers would no longer be able to make their money that way: time flips forward, time flips back, things achieve a kind of status quo. At least, they seem to. But how would we ever know?”
“And people going back in time and killing their grandparents?”
“Well, if it happens, and I’m sure it does, I guess those people just never existed. Same goes for any dinosaur based shenanigans, and any far future mishaps. You just lose track of people, the same way that people have always lost track of people.” Jim was biting his lip absently, and Artie felt that the conversation had gone on long enough. “Hon, the easiest way to think about it? The way we’re taught about it at school? It’s this: Every moment is happening simultaneously, and everything is changing constantly. Travelling through time is a lifestyle thing… it hasn’t changed anything fundamental about who we are, or how we live.”
“It hasn’t? If everyone can travel to any point in history that they like, why would they ever stay in their own time?”
“For the same reasons that anyone stays anywhere, silly! Why haven’t you moved to Australia, or even visited most of Britain? I can visit you here as often as I want, but I’ve got a job and a flat and a cat in my own time, and my parents still live relatively nearby. And even if I wanted to, I couldn’t afford buying a place to live here, or put the time in to finding a job. To be honest, I think that it’s those practical, human things that keep the majority of people in the right place and time, and stop the human race from dissipating themselves out of existence.”

“So if you really can travel through time, why does it matter whether you go home now or later? Can’t you just… turn up when you need to back there?”
It was getting late. Jim and Artie had talked for hours. And then there had been a little less talking for a while, and more touching. As with most real issues faced by lovers, this process helped them get a better handle on her revelations; with a clearer grip, the situation could better be manipulated and folded into a less conspicuous package, and allow the greater priorities of their feelings for each other take the fore.
Artie smiled softly.
“Because I need to sleep. And I need to go to work tomorrow, because if I stayed here, now, with you, it would be too easy to stay much longer, and forget completely what it is like living with my cat, in my flat. I would forget why I like my job, and I would lose track of my friends, even if they never knew it. Cheating like that is a bit too addictive… you tend to learn quite early to try and keep some sort of routine.”
“Okay. I don’t like it. But I get it.”
“Good boy.” She stretched herself up against him, mentally preparing herself for getting out of bed.
“I just remembered something.” He said. “You told me that we went to the jetty; that I took you to Wales. How do you know that already?”
“Well… this might sound a bit strange, but…” She blushed, and curled herself back slightly into the bed sheets. “Sometimes I come and see you a little further down the timeline.”
“What? Why?” He found it difficult to get annoyed with her naked body next to him, but as much as he had started to accept the truth of the story that she had told him, he was still struggling to truly understand the details of it.
“Most of the times that it has happened, it’s been an accident. I’ve just got the days muddled up.” A little of her confidence seemed to return to her. “But a few times, I’ve done it out of curiosity. I have to make a note of it, so I don’t end up doubling up my visits. I walked in on us in a hotel once, and it was a bit weird, to tell you the truth.”
“So tell me… what happens to us?”
“I can’t tell you that. For a start, it’d spoil the surprise. And besides, I don’t know that much more than you do.”
He made a face, and she laughed.
“So you won’t even tell me when it is that we visit the jetty?”
“That would be cheating. I can tell you that it isn’t today. And it probably isn’t tomorrow. But it is soon.”
They both laughed at that.

Later, she let him watch her go, sliding out of sight and into the future. By then, he already believed her story completely, but she wanted to be sure. They didn’t know exactly what the future held for them, but they were in love; it was a two hundred year love, and there was something reassuring in that.