Dunked in the time pool

I was zipping through space-time in my time-travel machine when it suddenly stopped and I went flying. I’d forgotten to wear my seat belt. A side-effect of time travel is the deterioration of useful common sense. I flew through the light bands and waves of time and landed in a time pool. A time pool is time that’s not being used. It’s like the unused fabric that is cut from the outskirts of a dress pattern and lands on the floor.

A time pool is thick. It’s pure inertia. It’s not past, present, or future. It’s unqualified time. As I sunk in it, I lost my desires, hopes, ambitions, my sense of caring about what’s next. I remember it being sweetly warm. I sensed this is what it must have been like in my mother’s womb.

My skin dissolved, my bones melted, my organs mixed in with the stopped time. The great thing is I didn’t care. It’s hard to care when you’re not there.

What brought me back to here and now was my time-machine. It’s a Casio 28972-A Deluxe-Timer that operates as a dutiful servant, attending to whatever my needs. It hovered over the time pool, sent in a siphoning hose which extracted the collection of my chemicals and minerals, shook them up in an molecule jigger until I was back to my usual Brooks.

Back in the time machine, it proceeded down the time-travel highway, exiting on the time-rivulet to May 18th, 1890, New York City. I parked on 12th Street, got out, and knocked on a door. It was answered by a servant who took me into a waiting room. Soon after the philosopher William James came in to greet me. He was other things to, but that’s what he did that rose him above the level of just getting by.

James assessed I was from the future. He was smart enough to sense that from my awful odor which came from time-gasses. That’s a stink that time emits on you when you travel faster than moment-to-moment. It’s basically time saying it didn’t like what you did.

James asked what he could do for me. I said that I just wanted to sit quietly with him. He said he would be overjoyed and took a seat on the chaise lounge across from me. We sat in silence, looking at one another with unmindful curiosity. He farted. I farted.