The Doors of Stone
When I finally couldn’t stand the wait any longer, I made my goodbyes, tearful wretched goodbyes, each secretly tainted with the jitters of anticipation, and headed to Time Square.
If you’re originally from the twentieth or even twenty-first century, let me disabuse you of any idiotic notions you might have of me as a starry eyed tourist. I had no interest in wading through the giant neon mosh pit in Manhattan. I was going to the future, and there was only one company I trusted to get me there safely.
Time Square was founded by Elon Musk as a giant “fuck you” of a moonshot when he inadvertently became the king of space and couldn’t figure out how to spend all his money. He tried paying himself a billion dollars a Tweet, but it turned out he could afford it.
See, when you live on a piece of Swiss cheese and your resource demands grow faster than first world closet space, you run out quick. And when a benevolent god drops an asteroid belt in the immediate vicinity, in case you ever need a refill, whoever own the gas station owns everything else. And it isn’t called Elon’s Belt for nothing (though to be fair, it’s called Elon’s Ass just as often. Also Elon’s Gas. The United Nations’ sass is turned up to eleven these days).
Time travel has sent the eyes of nerds aglitter for centuries. The entertainment industry sold it on every corner and made a bundle, which is impressive considering how little attention they paid to the details. But at some point, the sound of inevitability got so loud that some mad scientist — sorry Bjorn, but even you have to admit you lack the social graces — heard the angels singing and drew the square. Time Square. Then he, oops, forgot to patent it, forgot to register the trademark, and all he got was a lousy Nobel Prize. Time Square, the company, meanwhile, became a leviathan. They’re what come after unicorns, for you savvy investors and twenty-first century historians.
Naturally, time travel didn’t work the way people wanted it to. First of all, it was a one-way ticket. Second, you could only go to the future. And man, you should have seen how fast people got used to the idea of the possibility enough to start bitching about its limitations. It would have been instantly, if only Austin Powers had loosened his restrictions on simultaneity. No, not that Austin Powers. Austin Powers Heisenberg. I know, what are the chances?
So all of a sudden, the road to the future was wide open. Or so the ads would have it. Reality was a bit more limited. For instance, you couldn’t just work for a year, save fifty grand, put it in the bank and zip to the future into the loving arms of compound interest. Within a few years, the Securities and Exchange Commission had that shit sewn up, globally. The American dollar had to pound some countries quite flat in the process, but they got it done. Whether you traveled to the future or stayed to stare wistfully towards it, the house always won.
Industries sprang up overnight dedicated to the task of identifying time travelers, doing taxes for time travelers, getting time travelers educated and employed, subsidizing their self-cleaning butthole implants and so on. Time Square became operational in 2034, and by 2035, time travelers began to pour in from the previous year, unthwarted by the fiscal issues, and certainly unthwarted by common sense.
Could you blame them? When you hear “universal basic income” on the news ten times a day, it starts to seem like it’s only an election away. When you get diagnosed with cancer, what’s your best bet? The ever-accelerating pace of technological advancement. The cancer cure actually took until 2040 to get right, and of course there were the minor tolls taken in 2042 and 2047 by successful twists on the classic, which evolution weakly offered up in its death throes. The timing made it seem like it was revenge for the penguins, but I assure you, there was no causal link. I wasn’t there to witness any of this, but I read some brochures (the books of the future).
They were also wary though. You had to be careful rolling those kinds of dice. The wave of optimism that followed the discovery of time travel and the subsequent invention of practical time machines had a dark side. People were afraid. The world was still ending. What caused climate change, nobody agreed in the end, but everybody knew that something did, and it was here to bury us. Elon Musk had reportedly moved to space because it was safer up there. Maybe it was bullshit, but it was the catching kind. Bullshit in sing song. Elon Musk is safe in space. Elon Musk is safe in space. Say it a few more times and it’ll be true.
I held strong until 2036. I didn’t get caught up in the hype. I held my ground and scoffed, sometimes loudly. Then I found my reason. My excuse. Something flippant enough to say out loud, and true enough to hold onto. You see, in 2007, a book came out. I didn’t read it until 2014, but when I did, it blew me away. You probably know the book I’m talking about. The Name of the Wind. Get it? Blew me away? I actually didn’t mean to make that joke. It just happened, and I regret it. It’s a “dad” joke, as a friend of mine used to say. I don’t know when the word “dad” became pejorative, but the twenty-first century had a way of mistreating words.
Upon returning to solid ground, I was pleasantly surprised that a sequel existed. The Wise Man’s Fear. And there wasn’t yet, but there was the promise of, a third book. I felt a niggling doubt, a frisson of fear, a prescient loosening of the bowels, then sat down to feast on what was available.
The Wise Man’s Fear was a masterpiece. Imperfect, but just…perfect.
Then I waited.
I went on with my life, of course. I read other books, and some of them were fantastic. Most of them got digitally defenestrated, but some were great. Just great. I think. It was hard to focus. Somewhere in the back of my mind, 80% of my CPU was spinning in a loop, waiting for the third book. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? It’s no way to live.
It wasn’t just me. The whole world was waiting. And it wasn’t a very patient world. It was about as patient as today’s, but there wasn’t any time travel available for when you got really impatient. Today you can trade your impatience for disappointment on demand.
The world ranted and raved and made itself inhospitable, in hopes that it could get the third book by whining long enough and loudly enough. The author — one of those artists you can’t rush, who needs to take a five year break every now and then to learn to ride horses upside down or save the last living gecko from being misappropriated by the car insurance industry or whatnot, while the third book simmers or ferments or crystallizes in the recesses of his unconscious mind — made no visible progress. And I don’t think the high-pitched wailing and dirty looks from shoppers at the grocery store helped much.
The years went by and the progress bar on the book stalled. It was a classic DDoS scenario.
By 2035, everyone had forgotten about the book. I know, because I brought it up every now and then to test the waters. The waters were no longer angry. The waters had receded and moved on to ruin someone else’s day. The waters were cruel but fickle. This made me unreasonably optimistic. Every time I saw that someone no longer cared, I put it in my optimism jar. In my mind, the progress bar had come out of its coma and any second now, aaaaaany second, would ride a hockey stick to the finish line. Then would come the inevitable and boring-from-the-outside process of early book reviews, and final edits, and cover art contests and pre-release publicity tours, and then of course the mad rush to the brochure store. I mean the book store. Yes, there are still books in the future, but only time travelers read them. It’s a niche market.
I wanted to be conservative and jump one year at a time. If the world looked like it was ending before the book would come out, I wanted to have time to get safely into space with Elon. I would wrap my arms and legs around him like a baby sloth and he would carry me to safety. Through space. I didn’t want to mess with time any more than I had to.
Unfortunately, I also had to ration my funds. Time travel wasn’t exactly a public service covered by your taxes. I also kept in mind the admittedly small possibility that time travel would get more, not less, expensive with the years, perhaps de-incentivized by the government. If everyone ran to the future and no one stayed around to build it, we’d all end up back where we started. Just a few degrees warmer.
I decided to jump three years ahead.
I’ll skip all the whining I was the recipient of when I declared my intentions. Okay, I’ll summarize: my parents whined, my grandparents whined, then forgot, then whined again when I repeated myself, my friends whined, and I whined loudest of all, but only out of empathy, I swear.
And that brings us to today, here at Time Square, waiting in line at the booth. It’s a nice straightforward procedure these days. What’s your name? What’s your arrival date? Yes, I see your paperwork’s in order. How was all the whining? Okay? Yeah, it’s not so bad in hindsight, right? Haha! Okay, have a nice trip!
I’m next in line. The nervous kid in front of me has finally given up on trying to engage me in small talk, and disappeared through the curtain.
So here’s where I’m not sure what’s going to happen, because although time travel is now practical, it’s still not completely understood. Scientists voted to disagree on whether there’s one universe or an infinite number of them. Or maybe they all voted on the infinite number version, but there weren’t enough of them to make a difference. Either way, there’s a small chance that this story might end here, when I jump, and pick up with a completely different audience when I land. You know what? That would be ironic, huh? It’d be kind of like the trick Patrick Rothfuss pulled with us. Well, with you. I’m off to see the show.
See you on other side, maybe! Oh, and I hope all that shit I told you about the future’s true, but don’t bet money on it.
