Fiction: My mail order time machine, eighth part

    My mail order time machine

Eighth 

Another visit from the baldie. I am really not sure if that look works. He complained that he couldn’t access my safe house. I told him I don’t have one. He muttered something unintelligible and left. Just as I had settled in to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother he was back again and apparently the safe house is something I was supposed to organise a while back but the past me had actually forgot to do it. I smacked my head and went ‘oh yeah’. But it’s all taken care of now. The future baldie is so efficient I’m thinking of hiring him to sort out my things in the present. Anyway, I now see monthly withdrawals from my account for a place in Zuidoost. 

The next morning, I woke up with a headache. I was still on the sofa and wearing the clothes from yesterday. I got up, steadied myself with a jolt of pain shooting through my brain, cracked open the balcony door and went to the kitchen. I took a couple of paracetamol tablets with a big swig of water. Then I headed back to the sofa, lied back and closed my eyes. Suddenly there was a loud swooshing sound, and I felt the wind on my face. Must be another time visitor, I thought. “Who is it?” I asked without opening my eyes. When there was no answer, I opened one eye. There was not a person to be seen. Interesting, I thought to myself. Can an emptiness travel in time? I opened my other eye and looked around. Still nothing. Or maybe it was something else, maybe it was just a gust of wind through the partially open balcony door. “Is somebody here?” I called out, with a raised voice. I listened. There was no response. “I guess not,” I said to myself and closed my eyes. Whatever just happened, whether it was another visitor or not, maybe I’d figure it out later. Right now, I couldn’t be bothered. I took a deep breath and tried to clear my mind. I felt myself slipping into into sleep. “Yes, I’m here,” said a voice literally over me. My eyes shot open and saw the face of my dear friend baldie. He was leaning over the side of the sofa. “What the f -” I started but he immediately tutted me. “No need to resort to expletives, young man. I was just testing my perception filter,” he said. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to ask. “Just kidding,” he continued before I managed to make a sound. I closed my mouth. “I was just hiding here next to the sofa, being as quiet as a little mouse playing dead,” he added. I rolled my eyes. “You do that a lot, I’ve noticed,” he said pointing to my face, while he relocated himself to sit on one of the dining table chairs. “The rolling of the eyes?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. I nodded. “That is an accurate observation,” I said, then changed the subject. “What brings you here?” “A clever device that lets me temporally displace myself,” the baldie said and I rolled my eyes. He smiled and winked. Then he bowed his head slightly and raised one hand palm forward while placing the other on his chest. “I know, I’m sorry.” He pushed the chair back a bit, turning it so that he was a bit more directly facing me and then leaned forward. He looked at me pointedly. “I was trying to access the safehouse,” he said in a slightly hushed voice. My what? “But I couldn’t get in.” The ‘safehouse’? “It’s like the system did not recognize me.” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Did you set it up for biometric access?” I took a deep breath. “By the way, you do that a lot too.” “What, breathing?” I asked. This time it was his turn to roll his eyes. “Anyway. About the safehouse,” he continued. “Yeah. About that safehouse. I have no clue what you are talking about,” I said. He seemed genuinely surprised. He looked around as if not sure if he was in the right place, muttered something I couldn’t quite hear or understand, and vanished. Well, that was fun, I thought to myself, and reached for the tv remote. I didn’t feel like really getting up yet, so decided to watch an episode of a popular sitcom from a popular streaming service. Just as the studio audience was stretching their laugh muscles with the first jokes, the baldie returned. I felt the displacement of air was, if possible, slightly more aggressive than usual. “You are back,” I said, switching the tv off. “I am.” He sat down in the same chair as before. “You’re sure you don’t have a safehouse?” “Positive,” I said. “But we talked about it the other time I was here. We agreed on everything, where, what, how. I had even checked it out already, all you had to do was to go there, sign the forms and pay the rent.” “You’re sure about that? Maybe you caught one of the others.” “I’m pretty sure it was you.” He looked at me with an expression of pure confusion. “I wonder... Could it have been...,” he muttered to himself, his eyes darting around. He looked down, and around again, before turning his gaze back on me. “You really don’t remember us talking about it?” I shook my head slowly. “I really, really, don’t remember talking about it -” Except I suddenly remembered him talking to me about the safehouse, and I fell silent. He visited me before I had the time machine. I remember it was a bit freaky to receive a visit from myself, but I had already ordered the time machine, so I took the visit from my future self as proof that the time machine will arrive at some point and that it would work. For a moment it felt odd that I remembered having my doubts about the machine. Or did I? I knew it would work, didn’t I? I also remembered just now that I did not take the talk about the safehouse all that seriously though. I stopped my head from shaking from side to side and looked my future self in the eye. He looked back me, perhaps more puzzled than before. I started to slowly nod my head, and I saw one of his eyebrows start an upward journey. “I do remember you talked about it,” I said. His jaw dropped and his other eyebrow shot up to meet its pair. “You mean -” “I mean the safehouse. It was me. You talked about it with me.” “Are you saying that you just now remembered it?” “Well, as a matter of fact, yes. It only just came to me now, while we’ve been talking about it. I think you changed my past, and it’s only just caught up with me.” He closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath, then let out prolonged “Riiiiiight.” He shook his head. “I just realised I had no memory of being the receiver of that visit either. But I remember it now. Wow. I guess I went too far into the past, but I really wanted to get it sorted out before the robots started to pay attention to us.” “I understand. I suppose I could take a visit to the past and arrange it.” “Or I could just do it myself. Not sure why I thought it’d have to be an earlier version of us.” “Or you could just do it yourself. Always a solid plan.” “Agreed.” And with that, he vanished again. Half a second later, he was back. “Can I borrow your passport?” “Why?” I asked. “I think the issue date on mine being in the future might raise some questions about the legitimacy of the document. That, and it being issued by the United Robot States.” United Robot States. How unimaginative, I thought. “I know, right?” he said. I blinked. Is he reading my mind now? But then he explained. “You know, it’s funny, I’m somehow so tuned into this moment now that I can remember the thoughts I was having when I was you, exactly when you are having them now. I can in a way hear those thoughts in my head. And yes, our robot friends don’t generally exhibit a lot of creativity.” He paused. “Except when coming up with new ways to crush humans. Literally.” For a moment he seemed lost in a memory, then he shuddered. I didn’t ask. Instead, I got up and went to get my passport. “Here you go,” I said when I got back, handing him my passport. “Just bring it back when you’re done, preferably in a moment in time after now.” He opened it and examined the details. An expression of disappointment flashed across his face. “This is also too new.” It was a passport that I had had for 7 years now. “If you want something older, and valid, you need to go to talk to a version of us from before we bought this apartment.” He looked at me, and I saw the gears turning behind his eyes. “So how far back are you going to go to setup this safe house?” I asked. “I was thinking around the time we got our current bank account.” “Which would be about ten years before that passport was issued. I guess you could go and borrow the stuff from our much earlier self.” “No, no, I think that’d be getting complicated.” He looked at the passport again. “I guess I can make this work. 7 years in the past is still sufficiently far to not pop out as something the robots would immediately tie into the start of our time traveling activities.” “Ok,” I said. “We have a lot of hair in the picture though.” He showed me the picture. “Should be ok, though?” He looked at the picture. “I guess. If anyone asks, I just say I shaved my head. People do that, right?” I looked at him. “Yes, people shave their heads. I’ve done it in the past.” “I know, and you’ll do it in the future too.” “Seems that way, but I wonder.” I had indeed shaved my head in the past, but now having seen myself run around with a bald head, I wasn’t entirely convinced it was a good look for me. “Did you know that the robots cannot tell when the past changes? For them, there is no changing memories.” “Ok. I did not know that.” “Yeah. Now you do.” “How did you know that though?” I had a suspicion. “The future me told me today, when I was you.” “And you have since corroborated this knowledge? I mean, you have first-hand experience to prove it is true.” “You could say that.” “I could say that? Or it’s true?” “Well, let me put it like this: I have no reason to doubt this information.” I stared at him. “Because it came from you.” “Precisely.” “And you know this information, because -” “Because I told myself. Yes, I see what you are going for.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But that’s just how it is. Anyway, see you later.” Then he was gone. So much fun to get to know my future self. I cannot objectively observe my current self, and I may not be able to be 100 percent objective about how I perceive my future self either but seeing how I apparently will be in the future does make me think about how I am in the present. Just thinking about the physical appearance for example, I have shaved my head a few times and thought I looked ok. But seeing my older self with a shaved head makes me think it’s not really a good look for me. Maybe it’s just because I’m not used to being able to look at the back of my own head, but somehow it doesn’t look right. Then there is the behaviour. If I’m half as annoying as my future self, I cannot help but wonder how anyone can put up with me longer than few minutes at a time. Could explain why I am living alone, and my only social interactions recently come from talking to my future or past selves. Or could it be that I am judging my future self too harshly? I suppose it’s possible. Perhaps I should spend more time with a version of myself closer to my current self. If I jump to visit myself in five minutes in the future, will I know I’m coming? Will I be there? I suppose I would not get away just to avoid meeting myself? So, let’s assume I meet my future self, and we have a nice little conversation. And then if I return to the moment when I jumped ahead, five minutes later I will see my past self and I’ll get to repeat that conversation I’d just had with myself. But I think the discussion I’d have in the future with myself from now would be different from the discussion future me would have with me in the first instance. Unless he already does know what happened, which would mean it’d have to be his established timeline rather than a change initiated in his past. If on the other hand I visit myself five minutes in the past, I will interfere with the thought process that leads to making the jump back in time. And I would very quickly catch up to the moment when I’m supposed to make the jump backwards in time, but if I’m there having a discussion with my past self he might miss the moment he’s supposed to make the jump and then I wouldn’t have made the jump. Which would mean I would not have made the jump back, but I would be there because I did make the jump. I shook my head. A version of me appeared. “Hi, just had to try.” “Ok.” Then he vanished. I guess that was me from some moment in time. Did he look like I look like? Was he wearing what I am wearing now? I wasn’t paying attention. Should I jump backwards in time now? What time was it? Half a minute ago? No, I should wait till I can jump 5 minutes. Why 5 minutes? I don’t know. And what am I trying? I mean, why did I say I just had to try? Try what? Will I come back to explain? I sat, waiting for a few minutes, but I made no further appearances. I decided to post an update on my social media account but left out the more recent confusion. “Another visit from the baldie. I am really not sure if that look works. He complained that he couldn’t access my safe house. I told him I don’t have one. He muttered something unintelligible and left. Just as I had settled in to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother he was back again and apparently the safe house is something I was supposed to organise a while back but the past me had actually forgot to do it. I smacked my head and went ‘oh yeah’. But it’s all taken care of now. The future baldie is so efficient I’m thinking of hiring him to sort out my things in the present. Anyway, I now see monthly withdrawals from my account for a place in Zuidoost.” I suppose saying I had forgot about the safehouse was not entirely true, and more accurate would have been to say I had not remembered it yet. But I felt that would have been too complicated. And I made that last bit up, I hadn’t checked my back account but just assumed that’d be the case. And it felt like a good closing sentence to the post.