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.”
