the most valuable technology of the 22nd century
the most valuable technology of the 22nd century
once upon a time there was a man with an exceptionally quick mind. as a child he accrued a certain level of local fame through his ability to solve absurd exercises in mental math. what was amazing was not only that he was capable of these calculations, but also that he could also calculate the exact number of minutes and seconds it would take for his classmates to arrive themselves at the answers. as he watched their faces and fingers move, barely perceptibly, towards the solution, he would feel like he was living in the future. naturally, when he grew up he had one goal: to solve time travel.
by middle age, this goal had not been achieved. but he did have a home, a wife, and a son. he was not a mean or cruel man by constitution and there was no meanness or cruelty in their home. in fact the only hints of bitterness, if they could be called bitterness, came from his wife and son. a pair of pursed lips when he forgot their anniversary. an accusatory shriek, a cry of protest when he misstated his son’s age: i’m NOT twelve. i’m THIRTEEN. but weren’t they being a little dramatic, these people? and wasn’t he busy, so busy working on his big scientific project?
eventually he did manage to pull it off. improbable combination of sweat and software and hardware and quantum theory. and hours … and hours. but staring at his newly-built time machine, he realized that the future didn’t interest him at all. the future is forever. what vanishes is the past.
so he used the time machine to travel back in time. restore unto me the years that all the work has taken. my son on a tricycle. my son on the soccer team. my son stealing the car and crashing it. the brief glint of sunlight on steel in his miraculous round eye. oh!
and where had he been, where had he been in all this, these gold moments between too much and not enough? hunched over a desk in a small office in a smaller body. alone.
but now i know better, he thought. and maybe it was all for the better. after all, if i hadn’t spent all that time building the time machine, i wouldn’t have known what i know now. i will go back, he told himself. i will go back to the future (or is it the present moment?) and explain everything to my son. and tell him i love him. and it will be good.
when he went back, however, his son, by then an old man, had died of old age.
the man swore he would never time travel again. but at the funeral, gazing down at his son, for a second the face in the casket funneled out and away, and he saw himself at the end of it, looking back.
Fifteen years ago there was a netflix show called "The Universe", about cool stars and exotic physics and stuff. One of the episodes was about a researcher who was studying hypothetical faster-than-light particles in order to create time travel. When the interviewer asked why he started this project the guy answers, dead serious: when I was 19 my dad (46) died of a heart attack. I didn't get enough time with him.
as a kid I was like yeah that makes complete sense, but now that I think about it... anyway, nice post, as always.