My mail order time machine
Seventh
I have been having recurring nightmares of robots that look like Maximilian chasing me for as long as I can remember. It always ends with a man in a long black leather coat and New Rock boots hitting the robot over the head with a really large frying pan. Now I understand what it’s about, and thanks to the notes I’m sending to myself from the past I can keep track of the changes in the timeline. And I’m happy I’ll apparently eventually get that leather coat fixed. I really liked it. Not sure about going back to wearing New Rocks but I guess the escalation of the midlife crisis is inevitable.
The next morning, I woke up with a headache. More memories flushing through? Yes, there were a few. The images of the robots from yesterday’s flashbacks had gained in clarity and I could now see they all resembled Max. The robot that visited me the other day and looked like Maximilian from The Black Hole.
I also now have new memories of always having nightmares of the memories involving the robots. Had a bad one just a couple of nights ago, before I met Max. Beating Max over the head with the frying pan seemed to have been a cathartic experience. It also seemed familiar, because in my nightmares – memories – memorymares – there would almost always be a man wearing a long black leather coat and brandishing a massive frying pan. I hadn’t obviously realised it when I bought my frying pan – especially since just a few days ago I had not always had these memories and nightmares – but the pan in my kitchen, which I recently used to knock out Max, looked very much like the one the man in my memories wields.
In fact, the man looked a bit like me. And the leather coat looked like one hanging in my closet. Except mine had a couple of ripped seams and buttons literally hanging by a thread while the one worn by the man in my memories looked to be in great shape. I always thought I should get that coat fixed, and it seems at some point I will.
Another thing about the man in these nightmare memories was the boots he was wearing. They were from a brand called New Rock, and I used to wear similar boots when I was young. Or younger, I should still say. I still had a pair, but they were worn out to the point of being basically unwearable. I had toyed with the idea of getting a new pair for a while but hadn’t gotten around to it. Judging by these memories, I might. Maybe they are good for kicking some robot ass.
I heard sounds coming from the living room. “Who is there?” I called out.
“It's just me,” came the reply in my own voice.
“And me.” So not ‘just me’ as in ‘nobody else but me’ then.
“And me.”
Three versions of me? This should be fun. I slipped on pair of trousers and a t-shirt and made my way to the living room. The water in the kettle was already boiling.
“I took the liberty of boiling some water,” one of the visitors said. “We all wanted some tea.”
“Ok,” I said. “And who are you all?” I asked. “I mean, from when, I guess.”
The hairy one stepped forward. “Well, you know me and the original baldie here,” he said, gesturing to himself and the one who had been standing next to him. “And that guy there is the black sheep of our temporal variations,” he then said pointing to the one who was making the tea.
The new me was on the tip of his toes looking into the cupboards. “Do you have any tea?" he asked turning his head to look over to me while still holding the cupboard doors open. I took a step closer, and he turned to look back at the cupboards.
“Yes -” I started but he interrupted me.
“Oh yes, there they are,” he said and reached to the back of the top shelf. “You don’t drink a lot of tea, do you?” he said as he pulled out a box of earl grey.
“I do,” I said, and pointed to the open box on the counter next to the fridge. “I didn’t know there was more up there.”
The new guy looked at me, the box in his hand and then the box on the counter. “Didn’t see that, are you sure it was there five minutes ago?”
I shrugged.
“Oh, but these are very old, I see the date is from -” the new guy started, but then he chuckled. “Oh yeah, what year are we in again, this is 2010 right? So, the date on these is still actually fairly far out.”
“Let me see,” I said and took the box. The date said 2025. I looked at the new guy. “You thought these are old? How old are you?” I looked at the new guy and he stared back at me with a blank expression on his face.
I looked at the box in my hand again. 2025. I checked the other box, which I remembered buying a few weeks ago. “This one I bought just a few weeks ago and has a date of 2014,” I said. The hairy and the baldie who had been discussing something, both turned towards me.
“That’s interesting.”
“Yes, I think one of these boxes comes from the future,” the baldie said and held out his hand. I gave him the box with the date in 2025.
“Oh yes, you see the design is a little different.”
“Is it?” I asked and looked at the box in his hand and then at the box in my hand.
“Yes, they adjusted the tone of the colour and width of the lines.”
“Oh right...” I said and nodded my head. I didn’t see it, but I didn’t think it was worth arguing. I looked at the new guy, who shrugged his shoulders.
“So, from when are you again?” I asked the new guy, but the baldie interrupted us before the new guy could answer. Not that he looked like he was really in a hurry to answer either.
“I think you guys don’t understand what’s happening here,” the baldie said. He held up the box we had found on the top shelf. “This - box - is - from - the - future,” he said, emphasizing each word separately. He looked around at all three of us one by one. “So how did it get here?”
“Did you bring it from the future?” he asked me. I shook my head.
“Did you bring it?” he asked, turning towards the hairy one.
“I did not,” the hairy one answered.
“Did you bring it,” he then asked to the new guy.
“No, I didn’t bring it,” the new guy answered. “Not yet at least.”
“So, you are thinking of bringing it?”
“Maybe I am.”
The baldie looked at the box in his hand. “Ok, maybe you will. For all we know anyone of us could bring it from the future to a moment in current past later in our respective timelines.” I concentrated so hard to follow the logic of that sentence I almost turned my eyes inside out. “But just in case, I think I’d like to test the contents. It could have been the robots.”
“You think they might be trying to poison me?” I asked.
“Anything is possible,” the baldie said.
“It could also be an explosive. There are substances that explode when they come in contact with water,” the hairy one said.
“Nice,” the new guy said. “Can we try that?” he asked and reached for the water kettle, then pulled his hand back. “Let me just first make the teas though,” he said and extended his hand towards me.
I held up the box of teabags in my hand. “What if the robots exchanged the contents of my box of tea bags with theirs though?”
“Oh, well that is an interesting thought,” the baldie said.
“So, the ones baldie here has in his box might be fine,” the hairy one started.
“While the ones in yours are exploding poison that will kill all humans in the city,” the baldie concluded.
“Yeah, maybe these are the murder tea bags,” I said brandishing the box in my hand and then I realised what he was saying. “I mean, what?”
I had thought maybe there’d be a small explosion, if any. The thought of an explosion large enough to destroy the whole city seemed somewhat scarier. Though whether it would destroy my kitchen, my apartment, the building or the whole city wouldn’t make much difference to me. I would be dead anyway.
“I think I I should test them all,” the baldie said and held out his hand. I gave him my box of tea bags.
“Ok, I’ll just pop to the shop to get new tea bags,” the new guy said and started towards the entrance. He stopped with his hand on the door handle. “They accept new guldens, right?”
Hairy and baldie groaned. I looked at them and then at the new guy who was making an annoyed face.
“I guess not then,” he said. “Can someone lend me a card or cash to pay for the tea bags?”
I reached out to my wallet and pulled out my debit card. “Here, use this. If it asks for the pin code, it’s the same as the middle four digits of the card number.”
“Thanks,” the new guy said. He took my card, looked at the numbers – I saw his mouth move as he read the four digits in the middle and then repeated them twice with his eyes closed. Then he looked back to me, flashed a grin and left.
“I hope you don’t have all your money on that account,” the baldie said.
“What do you mean?”
“There is a reason we call him the black sheep.”
“Uh-huh. Well, that’s just for the day-to-day spending for groceries etc. Not more than a few hundred on that account this time of the month.”
“Not enough for him to make a run for it I suspect,” the hairy said.
“Anyway, I’ll be right back,” the baldie said and vanished.
“I guess he went to test the tea bags?” I wondered out loud.
“I guess so,” the hairy said.
“So, we wait?”
He shrugged. “Play a bit?” he gestured to my game console setup.
“Sure,” I pulled the driving seat and switched things on. “Some racing?”
“Sounds good.”
I started the game. After a few seconds, the system informed us that the console needs to be updated before we can play the game.
“Always the same,” I said and the hairy future version of me nodded.
After a couple of minutes, the console restarted, and I tried to start the game again. This time the game informed us that it needs to be updated. At that moment, the new guy returned from the shop.
“Ok, I got the tea,” he said, waving the box in his hand. “And here’s your card,” he said, handing my debit card to me. I took it and looked at it. I wondered how much this box of tea had costed me.
The new guy looked at me. “You are wondering if I took your money.”
I shrugged.
“I thought of it, but then I remembered how I thought about it when I was in your shoes.” I looked at him. “Or in your socks,” he said. Then he looked at my feet. “Or you know, whatever, when I was you. So no, I didn’t take more than what the tea cost,” he added.
“Thanks,” I said. “For the tea, and for not stealing.”
“No worries.” He turned back to the kitchen. “And now I will make that tea. Is the other one coming back?”
The hairy one was looking at the update bar for the game slowly progress. “I guess so. He went to test the other teas.”
“I hope he didn’t test them on himself,” the new guy said. “He is younger than me.”
I looked at the hairy one. He looked at me. I could see he had the same thought as I did.
He turned to the new guy. “Don’t you remember doing this then?”
The new guy turned around, having just turned on the kettle. “I don’t,” he said carefully. “At least not yet. I think testing the tea is a new thing that hadn’t happened before.”
“Right. I still find all this difficult to follow. I mean, from my point of view none of this has happened before and you all are already experiencing different versions of the events that for me are current.” I saw that the game had finished updating and was starting. I turned the volume down to zero but left the system on. Maybe we’d get a chance to race a bit later.
“Yeah, I know. But for us it’s been longer than for you and some events already took place for us and are established now. But I didn’t remember my visits here today at all, until I came over today and saw my earlier selves already assembled,” the new guy said.
“Oh, so why did you come over today?”
The kettle was starting to sound like the water was about to boil and the new guy turned it off. “Ok, just going to give the water a moment,” he said, putting the tea bags into the four mugs he had placed on the counter.
“Yeah, why did you come over today?” the hairy one repeated my question.
The new guy was silent for a moment. “I am not sure,” he then said. “I guess I just decided to do it.” He was silent for a moment. “For no apparent reason,” he then added.
The hairy one looked to the side, tilting his head slowly from side to side. “I’m trying to think if I am starting to remember anything that could give us a reason,” he said. “But nothing is coming to mind so far.”
At that moment the baldie returned. “Good news everyone,” he called out as soon as he could. “None of the teas were anything more or less than normally tea-y.”
All three of us rolled our eyes.
“Oh yeah, the tea. The water should have settled by now.” The new guy turned back to the counter again and poured steaming water into all four mugs.
The baldie looked at the mugs. “Where did that tea come from?” he asked.
“From the shop.”
The baldie stepped closer and sniffed at the mugs. “Can I see the box?”
The new guy looked around. “Sure... Where did I put it?” He opened the cupboard. “Here.” He pulled the box out and handed it over to the baldie who took it and inspected it very carefully.
“And you just bought this in the grocery store?”
“Yes, across the street there. You think there is something wrong with it?”
The baldie continued to inspect the box and sniffed the mugs once more. “Not sure, did you try it yet?”
“I didn’t.”
The baldie looked at the new guy. There was a moment of silence, then the baldie looked down at the mugs again. “Probably better that way. I wouldn’t try this tea either.”
“Are you saying we cannot have tea anymore?” the hairy one said.
“Well, depends on how much you want to die,” the baldie replied. “In any case, the tea in these boxes has been tested and been found to be just tea. For now.” He then gestured towards the mugs. “What is in these mugs, I don’t know. They seem suspiciously ok.”
“Really?” The hairy one rolled his eyes and stepped over to the kitchen counter. “’They seem suspiciously ok.’ What’s that even supposed to be mean?” He took one of the mugs and took a sip.
“Hey, stop -” the baldie protested. The new guy also reached out but then let his arm drop. It was too late. I looked at them all. The hairy one took another sip. “Mmm-mmm.”
“Good?” I asked.
“Not good. Super-duper extra good,” he said with a silly smile.
“It’s just that if that tea is poisoned or otherwise harmful, you’ve potentially killed off the two us,” the baldie said gesturing to himself and the new guy. “And yourself, of course.”
“Yeah, and what a loss that would be,” the hairy one quipped. “Well, I guess I would consider killing myself a bit of a loss to be honest. I just thought you are probably just being paranoid,” he then continued, and then suddenly fell oddly silent. He looked around and brought his hand to his mouth. He then started convulsing.
The baldie and the new guy went completely pale. They looked at each other, and then at themselves, as if expecting to start fading away.
The hairy one stopped convulsing and started laughing.
Both the other two immediately expressed relief but also anger. “Very funny,” the baldie said.
“I thought so,” the hairy one said, smirking.
I thought of heading out again. This was like the first time I had the baldie and the hairy one visiting me. I was starting to feel more annoyed at the future versions of me than anything else.
“Oh no, we are losing him,” the hairy one said, turning to look at me. “I can remember exactly what you are thinking now.”
Can he really? I was thinking of going for a beer in the nearby pub.
“You never go to that pub by yourself,” the hairy one said.
I had to admit that was true. And I noted that that was so far perhaps the quickest temporal propagation of a new memory.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I go there almost all the time. I’m just blocking that memory from you.” I wasn’t sure if that was possible.
The hairy one looked at me. “Sure, go on then,” he said and turned back to the others. “Our past self seems to not appreciate our company.”
Baldie and the new guy looked at me. “Yeah, I remember that,” the baldie said.
“Me too. And I remember you remembering it, too.”
“Well, it’s a bit much, don’t you think? All of you just dropping by and taking over my home.” I tried to explain myself.
All three shrugged their shoulders. “We just want to make sure we’ll all be all right,” the baldie said.
“You know, if you drop dead, we are all gone,” the hairy one added.
“And we’d rather not be gone,” the new guy said. “But we remember how we felt when our future versions were doing this.”
“And it’s like in the school, or in the army,” the hairy one said.
I knew where this was going and slowly shook my head. I saw a small smile creep up on their faces. “It’s time to pay it forth,” they said in almost perfect unison. “We went through it, and now it’s your turn.” I rolled my eyes.
“Seriously though, was there any real reason why you all came by today?” I asked, looking at all three of them one by one. “Anyone of you?”
The three looked at each other.
“I’m not sure, like I said before,” the new guy said. “I think I just came because I remembered those two visiting me – you,” he pointed at me, “- and I haven’t seen any other versions of me in a while.”
“So, you are saying you were just lonely?” I asked. I ignored the fact that he had only a few minutes ago said that he had not remembered the visits from the others until he arrived himself. We were already dealing with adjusted sequence of events effected by the visits from the three of them and by now his original reason for coming over was lost.
“You could perhaps say that,” the new guy said.
“And the two of you then?” I asked, turning my attention to the baldie and the hairy one.
They shrugged their shoulders again. The baldie protruded his lower lip.
“I think I came because I remembered being visited on this day,” the hairy one said.
“Right. That makes so much sense,” I said. The hairy one was nodding. “I mean that sarcastically,” I added. Although if I thought about it, it did make sense. I just couldn’t admit it.
“Are you sure?” the baldie asked. “Or did you mean ironically?”
“I’m pretty sure I said what I meant and meant what I said,” I replied.
“Ooh, now you sound like Bilbo,” the new guy said. He was referring to the scene in the first book of the Lord of the Rings where Bilbo is giving a speech on his eleventy-first birthday and talking about how well he knows and how much he likes his guests.
“I think actually that is a quote from a Dr Seuss book. Not that any of us ever read any of those, but I saw it somewhere recently. I think the elephant says it, if I remember correctly. Though I suppose the slightly convoluted structure of the sentence may remind one of what Bilbo said about knowing half of his guests half as well as he’d like,” the hairy one said, drawing an eye roll from the new guy. “Anyway, should we watch the Lord of the Rings?” he then asked. “If I remember correctly, you should still have the box set of the extended versions.” He looked at me.
The new guy was mockingly miming the way the hairy one had said the words ‘if I remember correctly’ twice in his micro-monologue.
“Yeah, ok,” I said and went to get the blue ray box from the bookshelf. “But only the first one, we can watch the rest later. I still want to do something useful today.”
A moment later we were spread over the sofa and the floor in front of my TV, watching the opening credits of the first of the trilogy.
Later that night, after we had finished all three films and all three future versions of me had left, I posted another social media update. I left out all the excitement about the visits from my future selves and the dilemma of the potentially tampered tea.
“I have been having recurring nightmares of robots that look like Maximilian chasing me for as long as I can remember. It always ends with a man in a long black leather coat and New Rock boots hitting the robot over the head with a really large frying pan. Now I understand what it’s about, and thanks to the notes I’m sending to myself from the past I can keep track of the changes in the timeline. And I’m happy I’ll apparently eventually get that leather coat fixed. I really liked it. Not sure about going back to wearing New Rocks but I guess the escalation of the midlife crisis is inevitable.”
After clicking on the send button, I leaned back on the sofa and closed my eyes. I was asleep before the first ‘like’ showed up on my computer screen.
