My mail order time machine
Sixth
As we know, our brain structure is influenced by childhood experiences. Experiencing huge headaches as apparently my brain in the present is adjusting to what for me are new memories of my future selves paying visits to me far in the past. I think it’s going to take a while for all of it to fall into place, but it seems I’ve now had visits from the future for as long as I can remember. They haven’t done anything nice like preventing me from falling on the balance beam when I was nine, so still have the dent in my ribcage. If anything, I think I may have a couple of new scars I can’t quite remember acquiring. Mostly so far I just remember creepy figures staring at me from a distance.
I woke up with a banging headache. I wasn't even going to try to guess why, but this was the worst headache I’ve had recently. My head felt heavy, and ready to explode with every beat of my heart. I was nodding in sync with the pounding, feeling the pulsating pain everywhere in my head, radiating down my neck.
I lied still with my eyes closed and tried to breath calmly. Fully relaxing my neck and shoulders and letting my head sink into the pillow helped and after a while the pain was slightly more tolerable. Provided that I did not even think about moving any part of my body.
My mind began to cautiously wander.
A very early memory from when I was maybe two years old had for some reason made it to the forefront of my thoughts. It was a memory of me and my older brother crossing the field next to our house. The field provided a shortcut to our grandparents’ house, but it was also where our grandparents sometimes kept their horse. I was afraid of the horse so wouldn’t choose to take the shortcut if I knew the horse was there, but I couldn’t see it anywhere and was convinced that it was at a different pasture. So, I agreed to take the shortcut.
We were walking happily across the field when suddenly, when we were about halfway to the gate on the other side of the field, my brother started running towards the gate. As he sped off, he was shouting that the horse was coming after us. I panicked and started running after him. If I would just get to the gate, I would be safe, I thought. I ran and ran as fast as I could, my eyes on my brother who had already reached the gate and was looking back towards me, screaming that the horse was right behind me, and that I had to run faster. I did not dare to look behind me. I could swear I was able to hear the horse coming behind me, the pounding of the hooves, the heavy breathing, I could almost feel the breath on my neck. I was screaming with fear my myself. I remember my heart pounding in my throat and even now the memory gave me a panicked feeling. Finally, I reached the gate and as I rushed through slamming it shut behind me, I realised by brother was laughing. He had fooled me. I looked back to the field and did not see the horse.
I do remember seeing something else though, namely a figure of a person standing at the far end of the field by the other gate. It was too far away to really see who it was, but it had to be one of my parents. Probably had come to see what all the screaming was about. I waved, but the figure just stood there. I glanced at my brother, but he was looking to another direction. I looked back, and the figure was gone.
Then there were other seemingly long-lost memories of the figure that were similarly suddenly very much not lost. Like a memory where I was walking across a parking lot and glanced over my shoulder and saw the figure at the other end. I tripped over a bike rack and when I got up and looked back again, the figure was gone.
Another memory was when I was maybe 10 years old, and I was de-weeding the potato field with my brothers. Most of the time I would be hunched over, slowly making my way along the rows of potatoes and pulling the weeds out. Occasionally I would straighten up to stretch my back. One time I did so and was looking around I noticed the figure just at the edge of the field some twenty meters away, almost hidden by the trees. I looked at my brothers to check if they’d also seen it, but both were busy pulling weeds and throwing them over their backs spraying me with the occasional lump of soil in the progress. When I looked back towards the forest, the figure was gone.
And many other similar memories, everywhere, through my whole childhood and even to my young adulthood. I even had a memory of the figure appearing when I was in the army, and we had gone for a week-long field training exercise in the woods. It was the kind of an exercise where you setup tents for occasional sleeping and have daily, and nightly, exercises ranging from digging foxholes to target shooting and setting up minefields.
The figure appeared once on the side of the shooting range. I glanced at the sergeant in charge of the exercise, calling out to alert him to the presence of a person down the range, but when I looked again the figure was gone. The exercise was stopped, and the entire company, enlisted personnel included, spend the next hour checking the area for trespassers. We didn’t find anyone, but we were told it wouldn’t have been the first time that people were wandering around, despite there being signs and fences to keep people away. The other time I saw the figure go around the corner of the command tent, but when I followed it there was nobody there.
I found myself calling the figure ‘my stalker’. I didn’t know where that came from, but I accepted it.
But something bothered me. I also remembered a different version of the memory with running across the field. One without the figure of the stalker. Same with many of the other memories in which the figure appeared. It seems there were other versions of those memories without the figure. How can I have two different memories of the same incident? It was as if I had lived through two slightly different lives, one with a stalking figure hanging around, and one without. How can that be? It cannot, so which memories are the real ones?
Who was the stalker? What was it doing? Were there any other differences between the memories? Was something else lost, while my stalker was added? Is there more that I have forgotten?
I felt sadness, and fear. I felt as if my identity, my ‘self’, was being changed, and I did not want it. I am a product of, among other things, my experiences, and suddenly it seemed that I couldn’t be sure what part of the experiences I remember were real. What is more important, the experience or the memory of the experience? Is there essentially any difference between the two?
To some extent my memories are what I have made them to be. They have been refined and adjusted through countless times of remembering them, perhaps ignoring a detail here and filling in a gap there, coming up with motivation or reason where maybe there was none or , until I’ve reached the consensus of acceptably rememberable memory that serves a purpose of providing a seed for an anecdote, remind me of something I feel I need to remember and keep in mind, make me feel good about myself or give myself an example to follow or to avoid. Maybe these adjustments happen all the time, and I have just not noticed the change before. Maybe I haven’t held the two versions of the memories in my head at the same time before. But wouldn’t these types of changes normally be limited to a single memory at a time?
So why is it happening now to such a number of memories? And why would I invent a stalker to add to my memories?
Or am I removing the stalker? Which memories are the real ones? Are any of them real? Or are they all real? I paused. Am I actually remembering two different lives?
I call the figure stalker because he seems to be following me but never comes close enough to interact. I remember I came up with that name some years ago when I was trying to write about these memories. That was another memory I only just now remembered.
The bald version of future me did talk about changes from the past gradually catching up with the present. Is that what was going on with my memories? Are my memories changing because my past has changed? Is it possible that as the ripples of the changes in the past catch up with me, I can remember two different timelines?
But if it is the changes in the past catching up with me, then my reality has changed. Who I am is changing. I am not who I was, and I had a feeling that shortly I wouldn’t even know that anything had changed. I would just remember a life slightly different from the one I remember last night. And I would be a slightly different person as well.
I stayed in bed for a while, until the headache had slightly subsided. Trying to sit up still made me feel like the insides of my head were about to become the outside of my head. I decided to stay put for a while longer.
This will have to be a quiet day, I thought to myself. Then I heard a faint swooshing sound, and my bedroom door was pushed slightly more open. I propped myself up leaning back on my elbows.
“Who is it,” I called out.
“Just me,” I heard my voice answer. I wasn’t sure if it was the hairy or the bald version of future me, and I didn’t really care.
“I’m in the bedroom and don’t feel like moving,” I said.
“Yes, I remember. I’ll just make some tea, ok? Just take it easy.”
I lied back down and closed my eyes.
A moment later I woke up to someone walking into the bedroom and putting a small table next to the bed, placing a mug of tea on top of the desk.
“I remember that the memories were flooding in on this day and it felt like hell,” future me said. I opened my eyes. It was the one with the hair.
I looked to the side of bed at the table he had brought. I don’t have a table like that, I thought.
“You can keep the table, by the way.”
I reached for the mug and brought it to my lips, carefully taking a sip. It was hot. “Thanks, I guess.”
The future version of me nodded. He was quiet for a moment. I appreciated it. “I do wonder where it came from though,” he then said.
I squeezed my eyes shut again, trying to will the pain away.
“The table, that is. I’ve had it ever since this day.”
I opened my eyes. “Are you saying that you had this table in the future, because the future you brought it to you on this day?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly the story of this table. Doesn’t really make sense, does it.” He was saying that as a statement, rather than a question.
“No, it doesn’t. And my head hurts enough already so I cannot try to think about it.” I closed my eyes again.
I thought about it anyway. It reminded me of a film I once saw. I forget if the protagonist started as a girl or a guy, but let’s say they were first a girl, then they changed to a guy (but fully functional one, I think they basically originally had all the necessary equipment from both sexes). The guy then went back in time and ended having sex with himself when he was still a girl. She got pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl, which was then taken further back in time to an orphanage, and the girl grew up to be the protagonist.
Except my version has just a table, that remains a table. And doesn’t do anything except being a table. It’s just tabling it out.
It took me a long time to go through these thoughts and when I opened my eyes again, I was alone in my bedroom. The table was still there, so now I had a small bed-side table. A table that I would take back in time to this day roughly ten years from now.
The tea was cold now. I suspected I had fallen asleep in the middle of my thoughts. Also, I noticed that my head was not hurting so badly anymore. And some of the new memories were slightly less vague now.
I remember seeing figures always hanging around at the edge of my vision, never quite getting close enough to be recognized. I remember not thinking too much about them earlier. It’s weird knowing that you have a new memory that you don’t remember having before, while at the same time you have memories of knowing about that memory. I even remember discussing these memories. Yet I know that just yesterday I did not have these memories at all.
I should start writing these things down, to make sure I don’t forget what has happened, and to create a kind of a manual for myself. I could call it my guide to living with temporal transformations. Or how to adapt to ripples of altered past.
I decided to think about the title a bit more. And maybe I should check my future selves if I managed to finish the guide, and if they could lend it to me. That would save me quite a bit of time.
I looked to the side and saw my phone. I checked the time and realised I had stayed in bed the whole day.
OK, time to get up, I thought. I swung the covers aside and stopped. I looked at my legs. There were a couple of scars that I didn’t remember having. Same on my arms and the chest. Why don’t I have a memory of these scars?
Or do I?
An image of a robot swinging its arm at me flashes in front of my eyes.
Yes, I do. It will just take some time to work these memories out.
The image of the robot comes back. I shake my head as if to jolt it off. But it stays at the back of my head, flashing to the front every few minutes. Each time I feel like I remember a little more. I feel like I can almost remember some of the cuts that resulted in the scars I had just discovered.
But there are more similar memories. I suddenly see a different robot. It swings its arm at me, like the other one, but this one has blood splutters on its chest and face. I see the tips of its fingers are also dripping red.
I squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as I can, but I cannot escape the images that are inside my head now. New robots, blood, screaming, pain. It is overwhelming. The images turn into a cacophony of nightmarish scenes where I do not know anymore where one memory ends and another begins. I scream as loud as I can and that brings a moment of respite.
My downstairs neighbour responds almost immediately by knocking their ceiling.
I scream again and drive the images to the back of my mind. I wish I could expel them completely, but for now that is the best I can do. The neighbour knocks again. “Yea yea, I’ll try to keep it down,” I mutter and draw in a deep breath.
At least the worst of the avalanche of the violent memories seemed to be over now.
A bit later I managed to get out of my bed and have something to eat. While eating, I sent another update on social media. There were a couple of questions on what had happened and why I hadn’t posted for a day, but I ignored those.
“As we know, our brain structure is influenced by childhood experiences. Experiencing huge headaches as apparently my brain in the present is adjusting to what for me are new memories of my future selves paying visits to me far in the past. I think it’s going to take a while for all of it to fall into place, but it seems I’ve now had visits from the future for as long as I can remember. They haven’t done anything nice like preventing me from falling on the balance beam when I was nine, so still have the dent in my ribcage. If anything, I think I may have a couple of new scars I can’t quite remember acquiring. Mostly so far I just remember creepy figures staring at me from a distance. “
I had decided to leave out any mention of the more nightmarish memories for now. No need to have anyone getting even more worried than they might already be. After submitting the post, I used the computer to write some notes about the memories and get my guide started. I felt that the ones without the figure were becoming more difficult to fully recall. I suspected my tomorrow I wouldn’t remember a life where the figure was not present or at least it would be a fleetingly vague memory, so I had to document it all as well as I could.
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