Data Blip
This bit of flash fiction came to me while I was brushing my teeth this morning. I could hardly wait to get to work to write it down, yet I made myself get the day started...double checked to make sure nothing was pressing...before I let it go. Inspired partly by Dr. Who, this is certainly not a Who-fic, but the result of a my mind playing with the consequences of one episode. It was exhilarating to write because it just spilled out. Whether it's worthy of sharing or not, I leave up to thee, gentle readers.
“One of these times,” she says, “You won’t be able to come back.”
A shrug of the shoulders as you lay down in the long white glass coffin, frosted and cold like a freezer at an ice cream shop. “I always come back.”
The edges of her wide, moveable mouth seem to shrink, and you can see that she wants to say something hard and cruel, but she’s afraid to. There’s still respect somewhere in those dark eyes, still hope that you’ll go back to being the man she respected and followed to the ends of the universe.
You close your eyes. “Transfer.”
For the record, it’s not called time travel. It’s called transference, data streamed along the paths of space and time, until you wake up and it’s a sunny day in some long lost human city, and you see a woman sitting at a café table, her head tipped to the sun, smiling softly. You swagger over, hands in your pockets, and you say what you always say.
Meanwhile, a man, arms full of books, passes the table and stops abruptly, looking confused as if he’d been about to say something and forgotten completely what it was. He walks past the table, and as he does you push one of the bottom books of the pile back in, stabilizing it.
“Is that the most original line you have?” she asks, and you break into your cheekiest grin, take a seat opposite her, and the timer starts on the next six years of your life.
You would think that a lot would happen in six years. Of course, you do the task you came for, and of course she helps you, and after that, life is one big adventure.
“There are places that are softer, in time and space. Not so hard to slip into,” you explain to her over coke floats and hamburgers. “We call them nexus points. And since it’s where everyone enters, it’s where you get the most trouble.”
So that’s why you end up battling a group of photosensitive aliens, made completely of plant material, who were operating out of a goth club, calling themselves vampires, murdering people to turn them into plant food. That’s why the gorillas in the zoo are always changing, and their keepers can’t figure out why, never realizing it is simply because they aren’t the same gorillas, week to week.
“If you know where to look,” you tell her, “There are a million miracles.” And then you proceed to show them to her.
You know the deal. You don’t tell her that you love her until you’re standing in the middle of a crater where a Wal-Mart once stood, the moon high and silver above your heads. Sometimes you ache to tell her before, but it’s too soon…you can’t risk ruining one moment of time, causing a rift that would take her away forever. You don’t skip ahead, you don’t let on what happens next.
The same six year set of events, and it never gets boring. True, you could almost mimic her words as she speaks them, true, you know exactly how every week is going to go, but this is the happiest time of your life.
Until the end, that is. You know you could save her, you’ve lived it enough times that you know exactly at what point she could be saved…turn your body so, leave the stairwell first, get to the roof and be the one on the monster’s outside edge. Or, if she does make it to the edge of the roof, where she will bravely throw a homemade bomb of black berry tea, oil and vinegar onto the creature’s back, put your foot there, and turn her weight back into you, and away from the edge…
You can see it. A million ways to save her. Make love to her an hour later that morning. Take her for breakfast somewhere the next state over. Lock her in a closet, and face the monster alone. Face it all alone.
But there is one rule even you won’t break. So she falls, and you catch her hands in yours, and you look into her eyes as her weight and the slipperiness of the oil make your grip unsure.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” you try to look into her eyes through the tears in your own, and she smiles like she did the first day and you think you would have sacrificed the light of a million suns just for her…and she slides from your hands and even though you knew this was coming for the last six years you scream, not because you did the first time, but because it all hurts so damn much and it gets worse every time.
Six years pass so quickly, stuffed with everything you can think of to do, but still oddly empty, and you open your eyes, and you’re in the freezer-coffin again, and your assistant is looking at you, half bitter, half hopeful.
“Prepare the machine. I’m going again.”
She turns quickly, snapping levers angrily. “We’re supposed to stop data blips, you know.”
A Data Blip, for the record, is a point in time where things happen over. And over. And over. The same sad dance of events, a closed circuit of eternity.
“I know,” you say, and you cross over to drink some more “transfer juice”, a chemical that helps the body melt into the streams of time. You’re so infused with it by now that even though six days have passed since the last time you drank it, you almost feel like you could close your eyes and go anywhere by strength of will.
“Next time,” she says, “Next time you wake up, the police will be waiting for you.”
Your eyes slide shut. “Transfer,” you say, and go back to where she is again, happy and young and everything.
There is one little place where you can change time. Where you can choose, or not choose, to weave someone into your life. If you let them in, then they must remain in, and their fate becomes the fate that knowing you lead them to…and it was the solution all along.
You don’t swagger over. You lean against a light post, and you stare at the girl in the sunlight. “I gave you so much,” you tell her, and it’s true. The next six years of her life…a lot of people would have signed up voluntarily, even knowing what would happen. Unconditional love. Joy. Adventure. Beauty. Your body aches to walk over, to say the words that have almost become mythical, an incantation. Instead, you mutter, “Where the hell is he?”
And then, there he is. The man with too many books in his arms. He drops them, and they scatter around her feet, and there’s laughter, as she helps him pick them up, talking about them in excited tones while he blinks in the warmth of the miracle of her.
“What can you give her,” you say bitterly, “That half matches what I could?” You hate the man kneeling on the ground next to her for a moment, but that’s only because the pain shouldn’t be now, usually the pain was washed away by this moment in time, dissolved by the hope of the years to come.
You turn and walk away, and do what you came for…
Every time you open your eyes in a freezer box, you hurt worse than the last time. That’s a given. But this burning…it is beyond everything.
You rise and look for the police. She lied…and the fact that you’re alone in that cold, silent room is worse than anything else she could have done.
“One of these times,” she says, “You won’t be able to come back.”
A shrug of the shoulders as you lay down in the long white glass coffin, frosted and cold like a freezer at an ice cream shop. “I always come back.”
The edges of her wide, moveable mouth seem to shrink, and you can see that she wants to say something hard and cruel, but she’s afraid to. There’s still respect somewhere in those dark eyes, still hope that you’ll go back to being the man she respected and followed to the ends of the universe.
You close your eyes. “Transfer.”
For the record, it’s not called time travel. It’s called transference, data streamed along the paths of space and time, until you wake up and it’s a sunny day in some long lost human city, and you see a woman sitting at a café table, her head tipped to the sun, smiling softly. You swagger over, hands in your pockets, and you say what you always say.
Meanwhile, a man, arms full of books, passes the table and stops abruptly, looking confused as if he’d been about to say something and forgotten completely what it was. He walks past the table, and as he does you push one of the bottom books of the pile back in, stabilizing it.
“Is that the most original line you have?” she asks, and you break into your cheekiest grin, take a seat opposite her, and the timer starts on the next six years of your life.
You would think that a lot would happen in six years. Of course, you do the task you came for, and of course she helps you, and after that, life is one big adventure.
“There are places that are softer, in time and space. Not so hard to slip into,” you explain to her over coke floats and hamburgers. “We call them nexus points. And since it’s where everyone enters, it’s where you get the most trouble.”
So that’s why you end up battling a group of photosensitive aliens, made completely of plant material, who were operating out of a goth club, calling themselves vampires, murdering people to turn them into plant food. That’s why the gorillas in the zoo are always changing, and their keepers can’t figure out why, never realizing it is simply because they aren’t the same gorillas, week to week.
“If you know where to look,” you tell her, “There are a million miracles.” And then you proceed to show them to her.
You know the deal. You don’t tell her that you love her until you’re standing in the middle of a crater where a Wal-Mart once stood, the moon high and silver above your heads. Sometimes you ache to tell her before, but it’s too soon…you can’t risk ruining one moment of time, causing a rift that would take her away forever. You don’t skip ahead, you don’t let on what happens next.
The same six year set of events, and it never gets boring. True, you could almost mimic her words as she speaks them, true, you know exactly how every week is going to go, but this is the happiest time of your life.
Until the end, that is. You know you could save her, you’ve lived it enough times that you know exactly at what point she could be saved…turn your body so, leave the stairwell first, get to the roof and be the one on the monster’s outside edge. Or, if she does make it to the edge of the roof, where she will bravely throw a homemade bomb of black berry tea, oil and vinegar onto the creature’s back, put your foot there, and turn her weight back into you, and away from the edge…
You can see it. A million ways to save her. Make love to her an hour later that morning. Take her for breakfast somewhere the next state over. Lock her in a closet, and face the monster alone. Face it all alone.
But there is one rule even you won’t break. So she falls, and you catch her hands in yours, and you look into her eyes as her weight and the slipperiness of the oil make your grip unsure.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” you try to look into her eyes through the tears in your own, and she smiles like she did the first day and you think you would have sacrificed the light of a million suns just for her…and she slides from your hands and even though you knew this was coming for the last six years you scream, not because you did the first time, but because it all hurts so damn much and it gets worse every time.
Six years pass so quickly, stuffed with everything you can think of to do, but still oddly empty, and you open your eyes, and you’re in the freezer-coffin again, and your assistant is looking at you, half bitter, half hopeful.
“Prepare the machine. I’m going again.”
She turns quickly, snapping levers angrily. “We’re supposed to stop data blips, you know.”
A Data Blip, for the record, is a point in time where things happen over. And over. And over. The same sad dance of events, a closed circuit of eternity.
“I know,” you say, and you cross over to drink some more “transfer juice”, a chemical that helps the body melt into the streams of time. You’re so infused with it by now that even though six days have passed since the last time you drank it, you almost feel like you could close your eyes and go anywhere by strength of will.
“Next time,” she says, “Next time you wake up, the police will be waiting for you.”
Your eyes slide shut. “Transfer,” you say, and go back to where she is again, happy and young and everything.
There is one little place where you can change time. Where you can choose, or not choose, to weave someone into your life. If you let them in, then they must remain in, and their fate becomes the fate that knowing you lead them to…and it was the solution all along.
You don’t swagger over. You lean against a light post, and you stare at the girl in the sunlight. “I gave you so much,” you tell her, and it’s true. The next six years of her life…a lot of people would have signed up voluntarily, even knowing what would happen. Unconditional love. Joy. Adventure. Beauty. Your body aches to walk over, to say the words that have almost become mythical, an incantation. Instead, you mutter, “Where the hell is he?”
And then, there he is. The man with too many books in his arms. He drops them, and they scatter around her feet, and there’s laughter, as she helps him pick them up, talking about them in excited tones while he blinks in the warmth of the miracle of her.
“What can you give her,” you say bitterly, “That half matches what I could?” You hate the man kneeling on the ground next to her for a moment, but that’s only because the pain shouldn’t be now, usually the pain was washed away by this moment in time, dissolved by the hope of the years to come.
You turn and walk away, and do what you came for…
Every time you open your eyes in a freezer box, you hurt worse than the last time. That’s a given. But this burning…it is beyond everything.
You rise and look for the police. She lied…and the fact that you’re alone in that cold, silent room is worse than anything else she could have done.