Fiction: My mail order time machine, tenth part

     My mail order time machine

Tenth

Today three baldies visited. More or less at the same time because apparently the time machine, unlike most delivery services, have an inbuilt default to aim for a time of day that people are most likely to be home – just between coming back from work and before possibly going out for various activities. Anyway, they had all been ‘reliving the good old times’ by going through old facebook activity and seen yesterday’s update. I have to say, if now is the good times in my life, I don’t think I look forward to anything future holds anymore. We had a cup of tea each, and discussed what to do. We know I’m bald when the attack occurs, and it’s sometime in all of our future. So I decided to never shave again and watched how they all immediately sprouted hair out of their finely shaped heads. They went back to where they came from and also said they’d be super careful. My memory of yesterday has not changed though so is this going to make any difference? Time will tell.

I woke up. At least I think I did. I’m sure I did sleep, at least a little bit, I think, and sleeping is a prerequisite for waking up. I’m certain I did not stay awake the whole night. Most of it, perhaps, but not all of it. I woke up and yesterday’s events were still on my mind. How could they not be? I kept going through it in my head. The death of my future self. And eventually my thoughts moved on to circle around the idea of my own possible demise, at the hands of the robots. Yes, I would die eventually but maybe they didn't want to wait. Surely, now that they had managed to kill me once, they would revisit the efforts to kill me in the past. Or in my present. If they do it in the past, at least I won’t know it happened. I will just not be anymore. Or would I somehow notice something? I don’t know. The way things seem to work with changes in the timeline is that things just change. Memories may persist for a while, but if I was killed in the past, I won’t be present in the present to have memories of not having been killed in the past. I went through the day in a haze. I went to work, and got back home, on full autopilot. I did everything I needed to do and probably made a good impression of being my usual quiet self, but nothing could really distract me from my thoughts. It was only when I got home that things got a little bit interesting. I went straight into the bedroom to change into my home attire. I was just putting on my shirt when I heard a swooshing sound from the living room. My stomach fell and I froze, with my head in my shirt and arms up. Had my time come? Then I heard another swooshing sound, followed by someone speaking in my voice. “Hey, what’s up?” “Hey yourself,” came the reply, also with my voice. Then a third swooshing sound. I wiggled my arms through the sleeves and pulled the shirt down. “Hey, you two. Didn’t realize it would be so busy here,” spoke the third visitor. He sounded different. Too much drinking and smoking the night before? “Me neither.” “I’d say I did, but I’d be lying.” There were three of them. Did I want to face this today? Not really. Could I go somewhere else? “Come on out, we know you don’t want to, but we’ll just follow you wherever you go.” Can they do that? “Yeah, we might sometimes need a moment for the memories to catch up, but we’ll get there.” They are probably right. “We are always right.” Then, slightly more quietly. “Sounds cool, in this context, doesn’t it?” “Yeah, a good line for a movie.” “Very cool.” I took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway and walked into the living room. Two baldies were sitting on the sofa, and a third one was standing on the carpet. Pretty much where one baldie had just died yesterday. The one standing looked at me, had a sudden realisation, look down, and quickly stepped away almost bumping into my dinner table. “What’s wrong?” asked one of the two on the sofa, and then he realised it as well. “Oh shit,” he said and looked down at the carpet. The other one on the sofa was the last to catch on and when he did he just quietly stared at the carpet for a moment. Then he spoke. “I’m the oldest of us four here. Closest to when it happened. Happens.” “Happens works.” “Thanks.” “Any time.” I looked at the three. They were all maybe within three or four years of each other. Looked pretty much the same as I, apart from the shaved heads. What were they doing here though? “What are you all doing here?” I asked. The three looked at each other. “I cannot speak for the others, but I just came because I saw the update on facebook. I was going through old updates, sort of reliving the good old times, when I stumbled upon the one from last night.” “Same, saw the update before I even remembered what happened.” “Me too. Saw the facebook post and thought to myself that I don’t remember that happening. But then that’s been the case with most of the posts I’ve read, the memories always come with a bit of a delay.” “Yes, a bit annoying at times.” “Sometimes it seems like seeing the facebook post about something or hearing about it from someone sort of triggers the memories to be updated.” “Yeah, that’s true. Like the new memory is lingering there already and just needs to be jolted to life.” “It’s almost like we can choose the memories we remember.” “But aren’t all memories partially chosen?” I decided I wanted some tea and filled a kettle with cold water. “That’s a good point. There’s this other future version of us that had the theory that all the memories we can have are there already, and we could access them to unlock knowledge of things still to happen in both past and future.” I turned the kettle on, and it quickly started to make its usual noise, forcing my visitors to raise their voices slightly. “How?” “That he didn’t get around to explaining. And I think he might not exist anymore.” “But we have memories of him, because he’s visited our timelines, and we have visited his.” “Yeah, that’s doing my head in with all this traveling through time and timeline changing. How can we remember a timeline that doesn’t exist anymore?” “Maybe we won’t.” “You think the memories will vanish?” “I think they will.” “I think so too.” “I guess you two are right.” “Who knows what memories have already been forgotten.” “But then we’ll also forget discussing them?” “Maybe we can keep the memories alive by actively reminding ourselves of them?” “Interesting thought.” “Could be worth a try.” “Sure. But could we do something to prevent the reason the memories are changing?” “Stop him from being killed?” “Yes.” The three looked at each other again. “Sure.” “But how?” “We all know it will happen, but that’s apparently not enough.” “Maybe I can go back and stop myself from posting the facebook update. It’s what he said allowed the robots to find him.” “The robots know where we are.” “Yes, they don’t need to try to find us. All they need to do is to come to this address. Preferably at the beginning and just kill the earliest version of us they can find.” “They are not doing that though. “ “No, they are not. Which is interesting.” “They were trying to get to us when we were a kid, weren’t they?” “Yes, they were.” “But why don’t they come after us here then?” “Well, they did, once. As far as I know, only once. I had a visit from Max earlier.” “That’s true, I had forgot about Max.” “Didn’t kill you though.” “Didn’t even try, did he”? “No, he didn’t. And no, he didn’t. But he came here.” “So why do they try to kill us elsewhere, but not here?” We all looked at each other. None of us had an answer worth sharing. The kettle turned off, and the room felt quiet. "Tea?" I asked and put four tea bags in four mugs and filled them with hot water. I put the mugs on the table. "It's hot," I said. “So, it mattered that they knew where he was.” “I guess you can argue that.” “I still don’t get it, though. Why do they try to come after us elsewhere, but not here?” “I don’t know, but I have to say for now I don’t mind at all that they mostly leave us in peace when we are at home.” “Me too.” “Me three.” “And four.” “We have consensus then.” I looked around at all three. “But I was just thinking... I’m going to try something.” “Please don’t.” “You don’t even know what I’m going to say. Do you?” “Give me a moment...” I waited. “Oh, ok. Yeah, I guess that could be worth trying.” The other two nodded. I took a sip from my tea, and the three followed my example. “Ok,” I said. I paused for a moment and drew in a deep breath. “I will never shave my head again,” I then said. The three looked at each other. I repeated my words. “I will never shave my head again.” I put real emphasis on this in my mind, deciding that I will never shave my head again. I closed my eyes and said it once more. “I will never shave my head again.” I opened my eyes and all three visitors had a full head of hair. “Wow,” said one of them. “That was freaky.” “What happened?” I asked. They looked at me. “What do you mean what happened?” They gestured at each other and at their own heads. “This happened.” “Or are you trying to say this is how we looked like before?” “Did you already forget?” “No, no, I mean, did it grow out or just appear? I had my eyes closed.” “It was just there, suddenly.” “Like it had always been there. I remember that I was bald today, I remember when I shaved the last time, and I remember that we were all bald when we arrived here today.” “Same. But I also remember that we all had hair when we arrived here.” “Yeah, me too. And it really was rather unspectacular. It didn’t grow out at an unnatural speed or anything like that, there were no dramatic light effects or anything fading in or out, or anything signifying a transition of any kind. It just suddenly was the way it is.” “Yeah. So weird.” “I guess baldie is no more,” I said. “Oh yeah. That’s what you called us.” “But is baldie still dead?” “How can we know?” I searched my memories. “I still remember seeing him die here in this room. And he was bald when he did.” “Perhaps we need to reinforce the decision of not shaving our head.” “Good idea.” “Cannot hurt.” “I will never shave my head again,” said one. “I will never shave my head again,” said the other. “I will never shave my head again,” said the third. “I will never shave my head again,” they then said all together, more or less at the same time. “I will never shave my head again,” they repeated once more, this time a bit more in unison. “I will never shave my head again.” They all looked at me. “And?” “Any change?” “In the memories from yesterday?” I concentrated on yesterday. “No.” I shook my head. “No change. So far.” “Disappointing.” “But maybe the timeline needs more time.” “He is still bald in my memory from yesterday,” I said. “Either he decided to shave against our decision to never do so again, for whatever reason -” “- or the timeline indeed needs more time to realign.” We all fell silent. “Well, it’s been,” I said. “A pleasure?” “Fun?” “Interesting?” “I really don’t know. Interesting gets closest.” I looked at my three visitors. “But I think now it is time to go home.” “Ok,” said the oldest of the three. “See you next time.” He reached for the tv remote and leaned back on the sofa. The other two looked at him. I looked at him. He looked back at us. “Oh yeah,” he then said. “This is your home,” he said to one of the other two. “Or yours?” he asked then, turning his face towards me. “It’s his,” the third one confirmed, gesturing towards me with his head. “Right. I guess we should all clear off then,” the oldest said. “Yeah, let’s go our own merry ways.” “And let’s all be careful.” “Yes, let’s.” “Extra super careful.” “Deal.” Then they all left. Later that night I wrote another update to social media. I had been going through the events in my head, hardly getting any distraction from tv or gaming. My memories of the baldie’s death still had not changed in any way. “Today three baldies visited. More or less at the same time because apparently the time machine, unlike most delivery services, have an inbuilt default to aim for a time of day that people are most likely to be home – just between coming back from work and before possibly going out for various activities. Anyway, they had all been ‘reliving the good old times’ by going through old facebook activity and seen yesterday’s update. I have to say, if now is the good times in my life, I don’t think I look forward to anything future holds anymore. We had a cup of tea each, and discussed what to do. We know I’m bald when the attack occurs, and it’s sometime in all of our future. So I decided to never shave again and watched how they all immediately sprouted hair out of their finely shaped heads. They went back to where they came from and also said they’d be super careful. My memory of yesterday has not changed though so is this going to make any difference? Time will tell.”

    

Fiction: My mail order time machine, ninth part

    My mail order time machine

Ninth 

Baldie dropped in. He fell on my carpet, bleeding from multiple wounds. Before he died, he managed to hit me over the head screaming that the robot overlord was able to track him down just because I had mentioned the general location of the safe house. I watched him die with mixed feelings. I did find him rather annoying in general and did not really care for his visits, but did I want him dead? I activated the return marker and his body went back to the future. I think things are going to escalate pretty fast now, but I can’t help wondering why the attack is going to be successful when I already know it’s going to happen. This time travel stuff is doing my head in. Tomorrow I’ll have to go shopping for something to clean the bloodstains in my carpet. Or maybe I’ll just pretend they are part of the design. 

I woke up feeling reasonably good. I felt rested, energized, and notably free from headache. It had been a while since I did not wake up with a headache. I should go out for a run, I thought. When was the last time I did that? I couldn’t remember. I went to look for my shoes. I found them in the wardrobe in bedroom. I tried them on, and they still fit. My feet hadn’t changed their size. Not sure if that is even a common problem, but I was happy it wasn’t my problem. I thought the chip in the shoe probably wouldn’t work anymore. But to find out I would have to find my iPod. Which would probably need to be charged. And that of course means that I would need to find the charger too. I may need to explain to younger readers that the chip I mentioned was a tracking device of sort that would connect with the iPod to track distance of the run. And iPod was a device for listening to music. I used to do that while running. Listening to music, that is. And I would take note of the distances I would run. The device could not track the route, or calories, or anything like that, I think. Just the distance, and pace. Anyway, I wanted to see if it would still work. So much to do before I could head out to take my run. Luckily, my apartment is small and there are not too many places in which small electronic devices could be hiding. There’s a couple of boxes for assorted small devices, there’s a random plastic bag at the back of the wardrobe for temporary storage, and, if my memory is correct, another random bag in one of the kitchen cabinets. Some items may also be stored in the bookshelf, either at either end of any of the shelves or anywhere in between, on top or behind books or other items on the shelves. I started to look through every possible place where the iPod, and its charger, could be, starting with the boxes. Emptied both on the floor and started going through the resulting pile of assorted items. Found many interesting things, but not the iPod, nor the charger. I did find an old HTC phone on which I’d been meaning to install Linux for some time already, and I set it aside next to my computer keyboard for later. Would just need to find the memory card, which should be somewhere in these boxes too. Or maybe in one of the bags, I thought and moved on get the bag from the wardrobe and dumped the contents on the floor. Couldn’t find the memory card, so went to look for the other bag. Opened all the kitchen cabinets and looked everywhere, even pulling things off the shelves to make sure nothing was hiding behind. I did find some spices which were out of date and which I set down next to the stove. I’d have to check if they could potentially still be used. I also made a mental note about coming up with a joke about old spice for when I potentially talk about this with someone at some point. Probably a future me, who will then reply with something like ‘oh yeah, that’s a good one, I remember when I came up with it – but this one’s better’ and then of course proceed to tell a vastly superior joke that is a result of several years of honing and polishing. I then returned to my search for the memory card, and that bag that was supposed to be in one of the kitchen cabinets. In that moment, however, I remembered that I had moved the bag, probably into the little closet that houses the boiler. I went there and found the bag. And another two I didn’t know about. All full of wires, old chargers, cables, all kinds of hardware. I found four different memory cards, but not the micro-SD-card I was looking for. Which, I suddenly remembered, was of course already in the old HTC phone. I had put it there so I wouldn't have to look for it. I reached out to pick up the phone, and after a couple of minutes of turning it around in my hands I managed to figure where the slot for the memory card was and how to open it, I managed to confirm that a memory card was indeed in the slot. It might even already have the files needed to run Linux, I couldn’t remember. I would investigate it later. For now, I placed the phone on my computer desk in front of the monitor. It was in that moment that I was reminded of the original search for the iPod. I looked at messy pile of a collection of various electronic devices and accessories on the carpet. What does my iPod look like? It is blue. What was it? Nano? No, mini? No, nano. Or something. I couldn’t really remember. Blue, with whitish round controller thingy, that also probably had a proper name. And the screen. I think it had some kind of grey-black LCD screen. Or was it green? Black on white? No, grey. I think. I looked at the pile. I didn’t see anything resembling what I thought I was looking for. I moved a couple of things in the pile. No, still nothing. I started picking up things one by one and moving them to a new pile. If the iPod was here, I’d certainly spot it at some point, latest when I’d pick it up to move it to the next pile. I went through the whole pile, moved everything to a new pile. I saw many interesting things I forced myself to ignore, and concentrated on finding the iPod. But I did not find it. It must be somewhere else. I looked around, trying to think. Where else could something like that be? I turned my attention to the bookshelf, and went through every shelf, systematically emptying each shelf and putting all the items on the table, and then putting them back on the shelf. No sign of the iPod. Where else could it be? Where else? I had a sudden realisation. Where else indeed. I looked at my computer desk. Exactly where I left it after the last time that I used it. Where I always had it when I was charging it up. In the far corner of my computer desk, to the side of the monitor stand. There it was, with the headphone cable wrapped around it and the charger right next to it with the charger cable wrapped around the charger. When was the last time I used it? Must have been couple of years ago. I picked it up and tried to turn it on. Nothing happened. I unwrapped the charger cable and plugged in the charger then connecting the iPod to it with the cable. I could see the charging indicator coming on the screen, so I placed the device back on the desk. Now it was time to clean up the mess on the carpet. But this time, I’d be smarter about what is stored where. I always think that, and next time I need something it is even harder than before to find what I’m looking for. But this time I will do better. I divided the items on the carpet to three roughly similar sized heaps, based on whether they were cables, chargers, screws, backplates, front plates, phones, etc. Unrecognized items got their own little pile, which I in the end combined with heap number 3. Then I put all the items in the separate heaps into three separate bags and placed all three bags into a bigger bag. Then I took the bag and looked around for where to put it. Next to the computer desk? It was my first choice for almost everything. But no, I decided against it. In the bookshelf? I supposed if the items were in boxes, that could work, but a bag on a shelf would just seem unsightly. So that was a no. I decided the wardrobe was the best choice, and so I headed into the bedroom, opened the wardrobe doors and made some space on the bottom shelf to shove the bag into. Tried to close the door, opened it again to push the back in a bit further and tried to close the door again. It still didn’t fully close, so I opened it again and pushed the bag in further. The shelf above lifted slightly, so I pushed it down while adjusting the items on the bottom shelf to occupy the space more evenly. When I was satisfied that nothing was sticking out from the front and the shelf above seemed to be positioned as it should be, I closed the door again. This time it closed properly. I came back to the living room and just as I was entering there was the now familiar rush of air being displaced with a swooshing sound. I felt at once annoyed. Then I saw baldie materialize midair and I watched him fall on my carpet. I saw he was wounded, bleeding. Badly. I went down on my knees next to him, trying to see if I could do something. He was screaming. You idiot!! You f*cking idiot!! You f*cking had to tell the whole f*cking world where the f*cking safehouse was, you absolute f*cking total f*ckface of a f*cking idiot!!! Shit!!! ~F*CK!!! As he was screaming, his arms were flailing, hitting me on the head with his clenched fists. He hit me once, twice. Then once more, slowly – more of a glance than a hit really, as his voice trailed off repeating his last word. And then his arms fell, and his head slumped to the side. I looked at the dead body lying on the floor in front of me. My dead body. That was me, from the future. How far in the future was it again? Does it matter? It’s me. From the future. Dead. This is how I will die. This. Is. How. I. Will. Die. Or ... Or is it? Can I change it? I pulled myself away from my future version’s lifeless body and perched myself on the edge of my sofa. What am I going to do now? Are the robots going to come after me now? They know where I live. One of them already paid a visit even. And I killed it. Why didn’t they come after me to begin with? I am the one that started everything by getting the time machine. Get rid of me and they get rid of all the future versions of me as well. What are my future versions doing that calls for killing them, but not me? Was it the world domination plans? But I was supposed to create those, and I think I had completely forgot about it since that day I went and stole the time machine from my future self. What am I going to do now? What am I going to do with this body? I looked at the dead body. What am I going to do with it? Do I need to chop it up and try to distribute to neighbourhood garbage containers? What if someone finds the remains? Things could get interesting if the remains were identified as being me. How else could I get rid of the body? Should I try to dissolve it in the bathtub? Maybe I can take the body back to his own timeline. When did he come from? If only there was a button to press just to send it back. Is there? When I travel, I don’t press anything to return, I just think about it. Obviously, a dead body cannot think but maybe there is some kind of backup. The machine didn’t come with any device or anything that I should take with me when I travel. The machine itself has only one button and everything works pretty much by thought. I pressed the button on my time machine. I concentrated on a single thought, how does one return a traveller to the traveller’s own timeline? I need to activate the return marker, I thought. Obviously, the return marker. What and where is it though? I immediately thought of the wrist. I investigated the body and found a little circle on the underside of the left wrist. I looked at my own wrist and didn’t see one. I decided to run a quick test and jumped to yesterday. I materialized in front of myself. I looked at my wrist and saw the little circle. “Hi, just had to try,” I said. “Ok,” said the me from yesterday. I pressed on the circle and was at once sent back to my present time. Well, that was one mystery solved. Perhaps I should have explained to myself from yesterday what I was trying, but he’ll find out soon enough. I pressed on the circle on the wrist of the baldie’s dead body, and it dematerialized. The air rushing to fill the space his body had occupied ruffled my hair. I felt sudden sadness. His dead body, my dead body, was now back in his own timeline. That was it. The End. His life had ended. And his body was now lying somewhere. Someone or something would find it and then what? Would the body be treated with respect? Were there friends and family that would take care of him, who would mourn, who would miss him? Would there be a funeral? Or would it just be dumped into trash, maybe burned for energy? The finality of the moment was almost too much to bear. He was dead, and now he was gone. I regretted sending the body back. I had no way of knowing what was happening there. I didn’t want to try to go check it out either. Not now. I sat on the floor of my apartment, with blood on my carpet, on my hands, on my face. I had blood on my clothes and in my hair. I sat there and I felt helpless and scared. I sat there for a long time. I didn’t want to end the moment. When I move again, I go back to my life and I start forgetting about what had just happened, about the future version of me who had just died. I did not want that. But I knew that eventually I would have to move. And eventually I did. I got up and went over to my computer. I thought about whether I wanted to post an update online. I thought about long and hard, and in the end, I decided to do it. As I was writing my update, I noticed I had already managed to distance myself from what happened. I didn’t particularly like being able to do that so quickly. “Baldie dropped in. He fell on my carpet, bleeding from multiple wounds. Before he died, he managed to hit me over the head screaming that the robot overlord was able to track him down just because I had mentioned the general location of the safe house. I watched him die with mixed feelings. I did find him rather annoying in general and did not really care for his visits, but did I want him dead? I activated the return marker and his body went back to the future. I think things are going to escalate pretty fast now, but I can’t help wondering why the attack is going to be successful when I already know it’s going to happen. This time travel stuff is doing my head in. Tomorrow I’ll have to go shopping for something to clean the bloodstains in my carpet. Or maybe I’ll just pretend they are part of the design.” I checked my iPod. It was fully charged. I turned it on and tried to detect the chip in the shoe. It didn’t seem to work. I was probably doing something wrong. The last time I used it was such a long time ago that I didn’t even fully remember how it works. I decided to try to find a manual and try it again later. For now, maybe I could run without, Suddenly I heard the patter of heavy rain through the gap of the partially open balcony door. Maybe I can run tomorrow.