What’s the point?

I went to the pond. I brought a loaf of bread to feed the ducks. The ducks looked at me as I broke off pieces of the bread and threw them in the pond. The ducks didn’t eat them.

I said, “Hey, ducks. I thought you like bread?” One of the ducks said, “Well, you thought wrong.” I said, “What do you like to eat?” The same duck said, “We like cake.” I said, “Cake is like bread, but with frosting.” A different duck chimed in, “The ‘but’ means it’s not the same thing.”

I said, “What kind of cake would you like?” One duck said, “Carrot Cake.” Another said, “Pound cake.” The other ducks told me 14 other kinds of cake. I wrote it all down.

I went to Abner’s Cake Emporium and bought the 16 cakes. I drove the cakes back to the duck pond and brought them to the water’s edge. But the ducks were gone. Swans were swimming in the pond.

One of the swans said, “What have you got?” I read off the list of cakes. Another swan said, “What makes you think we like cake?”

I was flying through the sky!

I was standing and then suddenly I was flying through the sky. I thought I was dreaming. I often dream of flying. But this wasn’t a dream. I couldn’t believe it! I flew through clouds. I sailed alongside a pack of geese. I zoomed by a plane. I’ll never forget the shocked look of the pilot. This was the greatest day of my life!

Then I woke up. I was disappointed it was only a dream. I didn’t want to get out of bed. My life seemed like a turd compared to what I’d been dreaming about.

After an hour I was much too hungry and made myself get up. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of cereal. I didn’t add milk because what’s the point.

The phone rang. It was my boss Carl. He said I was late and when would I be coming in. I said I wasn’t coming in. He said I’d better come in or I would be fired. I said he couldn’t fire me because I quit. I hung up.

I was mid-chew on my cereal and didn’t have any desire to keep chewing. I let the food fall out of my mouth onto the table. I sighed one of those sighs that Molière had once written as, “The last exhale of a dying star.”

I even lost my ambition to sit and fell onto the floor. I lay there. My body hurt. I stared blankly toward the ceiling.

Strangely the ceiling descended to me. Soon the ceiling was touching my nose. I felt a slip of joy as I thought I would soon be crushed by the ceiling.

But I remained in the same position. I felt a breeze at my back. How was that possible? I reached behind me and felt air. I looked back. The floor was ten feet below me. I was floating in the air!

Life flooded back into my body. I turned mid-air and looked down at my kitchen. I swooped down, grabbed the salt and pepper shakers and began shaking salt and pepper all over my apartment. I had no idea why.

I dropped the shakers and flew to the window. I opened the window and flew outside. I shot up into the sky. I looked down and saw people pointing up at me. I waved at them. They dazedly waved back at me.

I flew up past the clouds, straight up until the blue turned to black. I was in space!

I sailed swiftly to the Moon. When I got there, I floated slowly over its surface. I didn’t want to miss any of its details, especially the craters.

I landed on the Moon and gazed back at the Earth. I started to feel sleepy. I wanted to lie down and rest, but got scared I would fall asleep and wake up back in my apartment, this amazing day having been just a dream.

I couldn’t help it and lay down and fell asleep.

Late night visitor

I got woken up in the middle of the night by a sound. I looked around in the dark but couldn’t see anything. I said, “Who’s there?” A voice said, “It’s me, Elmer Walter. I’m a ghost.”

I said, “Elmer, what do you want?” Elmer said, “I miss being alive. Would you remind me of some nice things about it?” I said, “Well, you get to eat some pretty good food, like frosting. Plus you get to walk places, like to the mail box. And you get to wear any kind of hat.” Elmer sighed.

I said, “I’d like to go back to sleep, unless there’s something else I can do for you.” Elmer said, “No, but would it be okay if I watch you fall asleep?” I said, “I’d love it!!”

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.

Rivulets of time

When I first time-traveled, I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was overwhelmed and could barely take everything in. But the more I did it, the more it become a task, and I could appreciate its subtleties.

For instance, time has a water-like quality. It flows. There are differences in the flow. Some are swift, some are sluggish, some stagnant. And when steering the time-machine, you learn to navigate with the varieties.

And the flow is water like, but is not water. It’s like if light were water. Light actually has a density. It’s not just some flashy thing that brightens a room. And in its flow, it can be a highway for going places in time.

The time-travel highway is something you zip on at the speed of light. That’s why it feels almost instantaneous. But like I said, the more you do it, the more you notice the little things.

For instance you’re ripping down the time-travel highway, and then you turn off on a rivulet of time. Just like an exit off the usual kind of freeway. You can actually hear a time-whoosh, which is the sound of starting to apply the breaks on light.

Everything up till them is light rushing by and it’s hard to see any distinctions. But on the rivulet, details begin to appear. For instance, earlier today I ventured out on a time-travel trip to Paris, France, 22 May 1885. On the highway it was the usual rapids of light flushing by the window. And then as I neared the destination date, there was the whooshing sound, along with details of the city of Paris hazily beginning to appear within the light. It was like looking at the city as if it were on fire.

As the whooshing sounds intensified, the light diminished and there I was parked on Avenue d’Eylau in 1885 Paris.

I got out and entered the address I was looking for. I walked up the stairs and then into a bedroom. There on the bed was the author Victor Hugo. He was dying of pneumonia. He was alert and noticed me. I used Google Translate and said that I had come from the future to visit and cheer him up on his difficult day.

Victor Hugo said, (via the translate), “Yes, it is a trying time, but it is also a time of celebration. I’m sloughing off this tiresome old gent to behold what’s next.”

I then took out three balls from my pocket and began to juggle. Hugo clapped his hands and cheered, “All applause to the sphere manipulator!” (I’d learned from Wikipedia that Hugo loved juggling.)

A sleep-walking time-travel trip

I went sleep walking and got into the time-machine and somehow finagled the controls and time-traveled to July 17 the year 7428. I know because I woke up when the time-machine crashed into water and I read the destination time on the lighted dashboard as we sank. I got upset with myself and bubble-worded, “Geez, Brooks!”

I tried to reset a new destination. But the water must have gotten into the electronics and the lights shorted out. I hugged the time-machine and tried swim-kicking my feet upwards back to the surface. It managed to get in the flow-stream of a school of minnows that propelled me and the time-machine up to the air and waves.

I floated in the time-machine like a boat. I lay back and tried to collect my thoughts. The sky was dark. Strange shapes flew low over me. One landed in the boat and gripped my right leg in its jaws. I reached down and grabbed my club. Clubs are essential for time-travel trips. Using a heavy club to hit something that is trying to hurt you proves to be a good defense at all times. I hit the creature and it collapsed. I pulled its jaws off my leg and dropped it over the side of the boat. I was bleeding. I talked to my leg and said, “Cut it out,” and my leg said, “I’m sorry,” and it stopped bleeding.

I didn’t want to be future creature chum so I set out to repair the time machine. I opened the hood and fiddled with the electronics. The fwoup wire was soaked through. I sucked out the water. I flipped the start switch. The dashboard lights came back on. I typed in September 12, 2020 and punched the “Go” button.

I was back in my living room of today. Water flowed out of the time-machine and soaked my rug. The water reached the outlet behind my television and sparks and smoke shot out of my TV and the screen busted.

I got out of the time-machine and went into the bathroom and dried myself off with a towel. Exhausted I sat down on the toilet and shivered.