The surprise guest

I got in my spaceship and took off into space. I didn’t have a destination in mind this time. I just went.

The thing about shooting through space is you don’t feel like you’re going anywhere. You don’t pass things that let you know you’re moving. So there I was, traveling at 5,000 miles per hour, feeling like I was still in the middle of nowhere, and liking it. Perhaps my destination was not to have one.

That’s when I noticed a tapping at the spaceship’s door. I got up from my driver’s seat, went to the door, and looked through the peep hole. I didn’t see anyone or thing. I figured it was pebble meteor and went back to my seat. The tapping returned. I got up and looked through the peep hole. Again, nothing.

I turned to head back when the tapping repeated. I looked through the peep hole, saw nothing again, and this time shouted through the door, “Who is it?”

A weak sounding voice from outside my spaceship said, “Can I come in, please?”

To be on the safe side, I said, “Who are you?”

The voice said, “What? I can’t hear you.”

I said, “Who are you?”

The voice said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell what you are saying.”

I went back to the driver’s seat and put on the breaks. I got dressed in my spacesuit and helmet. I cautiously opened the door. Gripping onto the outside door handle was a mouse.

The mouse said, “I’m sorry to interrupt your travels. I’ve actually been tapping for a while. I happened upon your vehicle before you left and decided to see if you had any cheese. I tried the door handle, but it was locked, and then you took off. A few times I almost fell off, but managed to hold on.”

I said, “But I don’t have any cheese.”

The mouse looked at me.

I said, “Okay, I have some. You can have a little, but no more.”

I invited the mouse in and closed the door. I took off my spacesuit and helmet, and got the cheese from the refrigerator. I cut off a tiny piece for the mouse and a much larger one for myself. We sat down at the dining table and began to eat.

The mouse said, “This is delicious.”

I said, “Thanks, but that’s all you’re getting.”

The mouse said, “That’s okay. Your cheese, your rules.”

I said, “That’s right.”

The mouse finished its cheese and watched me eat. I was self-conscious because my jaw moves from side-to-side when I chew. I’ve been to chewologists in order to learn to chew up and down, but couldn’t make it stick.

 

Everesting

I took a helicopter ride to the top of Mt. Everest. I got out and looked around. I took a photo with my phone.

My fingers got cold and I quickly got back in the helicopter and was flown down to the Holiday Inn in Lukla, a town a mile away. I got a room and spent a good deal of time in front of the fireplace. My fingers soon warmed up.

I guess I’ll visit Benjamin Franklin

I finally got around to a time travel visit with Benjamin Franklin. I went to June 15th, 1752, and a field in Philadelphia. There was a thunderstorm. Franklin was standing underneath a small portable roof on stilts. He was holding onto a string that was attached to a kite in the sky. Franklin spotted me and motioned me to come over and stand safely under the roof. I did. The first thing I noticed was the tremendous warmth coming off of him. I’ve discovered in my travels that people of great creativity and invention are warmer than others. I’ve deduced that it takes a lot of juice to run these kind of people.

Franklin didn’t mind that I was standing so close. Back then physical closeness wasn’t a problem. Actually if you stood more than six inches from somebody, they would take it as a great offense. I stood closely to him because I wanted to avoid being struck by lightening, otherwise I would have stood a comfortable twenty-foot shouting distance away.

The famous Benjamin asked me a non-stop barrage of questions. It wasn’t assaulting. He was curious. Everything seemed new and interesting to him, like a infant awe struck by anything. He wanted to know about my clothing, my strange way of talking, and why I didn’t reek. I was honest and told him I came from 2018. He accepted it as truth and wanted to know about all the great technological discoveries. I showed him my cell phone. Franklin rumpled his face, saying, “Ah, to be at the tethered end of any jowl bog with an ardor my attention.”

Lounging in the blur of in-between time

Sometimes when I’m feeling overwhelmed by people and events in general, I’ll get in my time travel machine, and rather than go to another time and place, I’ll jigger the machine’s joy stick so that I’ll go to the in-between place. It’s not not in time. It’s on the outskirts of being somewhere. There’s nothing to see, or any of those other senses. Well, actually there’s a slight tactical feeling because I have to keep that minimal hand shake going with the joy stick.

There’s just less than the bare minimum sense of time, kind of like a whiff. Seconds get elongated like long shadows in the late afternoon. I think less. Much less. The thoughts aren’t sentences like in the time zone. They are much reduced. Like earlier today when I was doing this, my thought was, “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

Now and then (it’s impossible to describe this without using a time reference) there’s a subtle movement back in the direction of time, and I’ll see some hazy watercolor blips appear, like a diminished thought of colors. Or I’ll hear the reduced murmur of words, like “wweeaallhh bblllouuhh.” Then I rejigger and back to the tonality of mostly nothing.

When I came back from this mostly timeless occurrence today, everything was enhanced. I was aware of milliseconds going by. It turns out time is noisy. We don’t notice it when we’re always in it, but it’s a loudy. On top of this juicy bit I was dramatically well rested. That’s because time is also exhausting. Time uses our personal currents as its gasoline. Who knew we were fuel!

We work so we can play

My dog Rexy and I got in the rocket ship and took off on our vacation. It had been a busy four months of work and we really needed the time away.

Rexy and I are gold harvesters. Rexy sniffs it out and we both dig. She’s got an amazing nose. We uprooted over 500 pounds. It’s what allowed us to purchase the rocket ship, a lake’s amount of gas, and the snacks.

We shot our way across the solar system until we came to Neptune. We picked the planet because it’s blue. We landed and ventured out for a walk in our space suits. After that long of a trip, you really need to hike it up.

We trekked for a couple of hours, then sat on the edge a crater to take a rest. I pet Rexy’s head. She licked my hand, well tried to. Her tongue brushed the glass of her space helmet.