It occurs to me sometime in the middle of the night, around three or four in the morning, that I have been intently staring at the ceiling fan for hours. It is not that is is particularly interesting, or fascinating, or entrertaining. In fact, it is absolutelt the most mindless thing in the world to watch.
There it is, spinning in circles, around and around and never really changing at all. There may be some small imperceptible changes in the rotations of the blades, tbut they are far from being perceived by my eyes, particularly in a dark room at three otr four in the morning.
Sometime in the next hour I find myself wondering why I am lying here so intent on this spinning. I think about my entire life, spinning in circles, wondering what is real and true and right… wondering what is good, but mostly what is factual. It occurs to mre that I do not know anymore what is my life and what is a dream and what is a hallucination or if I have died somewhere along the line and none of this is actually happening.
I am thinking largely of Jack, of course. He is quite the perplexing character of a man, certainly. And is he a madman or not? Certainly he has provided no evidence to the truth and factuality of the claims he has made, and certainly he has made some quite outlandish claims. Time travel? Check. Alien planets? Check. Different dimensions? Check. The man has made every sort of claim as to get him locked up in a clean, padded room for a decent amount of years. Yet for whatever reason, I find myself believing him.
As is common, I find myself walking downstairs to the kitchen and grabbing a can of beer out of the fridge. I down it quickly – a little bit too quickly, maybe. Then another. I sink down onto the floor, hugging my knees to my chest, and wonder abput everything else going on right now. Like the fact that I am not allowed to drink anymore. I scowl at the empty cans on the counter, but find very little regret about it.
I think about Jaynie, and the land with grass. When I am there, it all seems very real and true and believable. Yet now, it seems far away and ridiculous. There is absolutely no possibility that it could be true. I simply… must be having some very strange withdrawl symptoms. Some weird dreams. Or whatever.
I lean my forehead on my knees and suddenly agknowledge the headache threatening to split my head in half. I am tired, for sure, but sleep sounds anything but appealing. I am far too awake for sleep. Yet then, I am far too tired to stay awake.
I feel my eyelids begin to fall shut of their own will, and I fight it as well as I can, but they have entirely taken on a mind of their own. My head feels as though it has become far too heavy to support any longer and I curl up in a fetal position on the kitchen floor. I feel like this is becoming a habit, and I am slightly disturbed by that. There has to be something seriously deranged about sleeping on the kitchen floor on a more regular basis than one sleeps in their own bed.
Right now, though, I am ignoring that fact in favor of concentrating all of my efforts on not falling asleep. I fight to keep my eyes open, though simoutaniously unsure of why I even care whether or not I fall asleep.
But then, maybe I do know. I know I will wake up no longer in my kitchen, but with a girl named Jaynie in a land with grass. I think back suddenly to the first night that I met Jack, remembering chasing the note down the alleyway, remembering how it got so hot and stuffy, as though I were in a tunnel, remembering… nothing… and her words, talking about the map, suggesting that I know more than I do. Or suggesting that I know more than I think that I know.
I remember her words very clearly, along with the expression on her face and the tone of her voice. She was not accusing, nor was she angry. She was not asking questions, really, and she was not confused. She was simply… stating facts, I suppose. I remember it word for word, “The map. It was not a map at all, as I’m certain you already knew. You at least knew it on some level, because if it were just a normal map, you would not have loved it like you did, nor would you have kept it so close to you. But it has been growing on your mind for years, has it not? You think of it more and more, and you feel more attached to it, and you can’t think of anything else, can you?”
She was right. She knew something that I did not, and for whatever reason, she was convinced that I did know exactly what it was that she was talking about, when in reality I knew very little. I generally know very little. I am lucky most of the time if I wake up in the morning and remember my own name.
My muscles relax themselves slowly, preparing for rest, but I jerk myself back to consciousness. I am unsure of why I am so opposed to falling asleep, I mean, certainly that I will be in that other dimsension, but why is it that I do not want to go back there? It was disconcerting, sure, but not bad by any means. There was, in fact, something comforting about the whole situation. The very fact thatr there were grass and plants was a complete novelty to me, and it was a very pleasant place, overall. There seemed to be nothing wrong with Jaynie. She was pleasant and very nice to me, an adventurous sort of girl who seemed to know too much, but not in a bad way.
I push myself back to my feet and pace back and forth for a few minutes, mostly just as an exercise to keep myself from falling asleep than from any unsoundness of mind or of thought. Yet pacing does seem an appropriate activity at the moment, and I continue to do so, contemplating all these things in my life, until my legs refuse to carry me any longer, and I find myself curled up on the floor once again.
I somehow find the willpower to pull myself back to my feet and up the stairs to my room, where I fall into my bed and can no longer resist sleep. My eyelids fall shut for just long enough to jerk back open.
“Oh good, you are awake,” are the first words I hear when I open my eyes.
“What,” I pull myself to sitting up, “Where am I?”
“Kelderon. It’s nice this time of year, but the nuclear warfare dampens things a bit, you know. We are just here to clean everything up after the fight, get society back in order and all, you know how it goes.”
I blink at the man a few times before asking, “and who are you?”
“Matt,” he sticks out his hand and I shake it. He has a nice handshake, strong and solid, and his hands are not sweaty or cold, they’re soft, dry, and warm. It is an incredibly comforting handshake, “I am sorry,” he says, a sweet smile spreading quickly across his face, “I had forgotten we have not met. It’s just, you know, I have heard so much about you for so long, and we have been watvching you, and it just feels as though I have known you forever, though I guess really I don’t. Anyways, I am sorry about that. Jaynie said you might be hungry when you wake up? Do you want something to eat? You certainly are a hard sleeper, I could not wake you up for anything. I mean, there is a war going on outside, and you slept thtrough one of the largest battles in theh history of the world! That is quite the accomplishment.”
“Thank you?”
He chuckles, “Anyways, were you hungry, then? Can I get you anything?”
“I’m okay, I don’t need anything. What year are we in?”
“In the intergalactic timing system, we are in year 12003, in the Earth time system, I believe this would be 1998? I am not totally sure, I never learned Earth time that well. I’m an alien, from Kelderdash, Kelderon’s twin planet. It exploded during the first war, about twelve years ago, but most of the inhabitants survived and came here, so it was nbot all that tragic, except for the death of a planet. I suppose it really is always sad when a planet is lost, a little bit of history and culture that will never be regained, but these things happen.”
“Your whole planet was destroyed and it doesn’t even bother you?”
He shrugs, “I guess that it does a little bit, but, you know, what is the point in being upset about it? The Intergalactic Council for Time Exploration will not allow us to change anything about it. In fact, there have been multiple times that I have been assigned to assist in the destruction of my own home planet,” a shadow passes across his face as he says this, “all in the name of keeping history straight.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, “no, do not worry. I am just being ridiculous. The council knows best, of course.”
“Who is this council, anyways?”
“Well, Jaynie, for one.”
“Jaynie is on the council? But isn’t she like my age? I thought the council was supposed to be old and wise?”
“See,” he says, brushing a lock of blond hair out of his face, “you humans assume that everything that looks like you must also be a human, and that is simply not true. I am a human, and have the same skills and capabilities as you do, and age at the same rate. However, Jaynie is far from being human. She is much older than she looks. In fact, her race is somewhat immortal.”
“How is a race somewhat immortal?”
He shrugs, “oh, you know, they just don’t die from old age. They are capable of dying. They can become ill, or they can be killed in battle, or something of the like. But they are immortal in the sense that they do not just die of natural causes.”
“So how old is Jaynie, then?”
“No one really knows,” he pauses, debating on what to say next, “personally, I think she is much older than anyone expects. Most think that she is a few hundred years old, but I think it is possible, even, that should could be a few thousand. Occasionally she will make a comment about an event… and I know that we are time travelers, and she could have seen many things that she did not live through, but she talks about some things in a different way than those who have simply travelled to them. She seems very much as though she has lived them. Plus, she sometimes has a slip of the tongue, referring to things that are no longer relevant or things that… well, it is difficult to explain.”
“Try.”
He frowns, “For example, The Intergalactic Council for Time Exploration has implemented different rules at different times. It makes sense, because new things are required as new problems arise. For example, there was a time when travelers were permitted to alter the course of history. This rule has been implemented for some time, since the year 2000, but there was a time when it did not exist.”
“2000 was not that long ago.”
“In the intergalactic timing system, not in the Earth time system. It’s been more than 10,000 years ago, really.”
“Oh. Right, that will take some getting used to.”
“It’s alright. We all have things we have a hard time getting adjusted to when we first get started in all of this. I mean, there were definitely things that I had a hard time with when I became a traveler. You will get used to it soon enough, though, we all do.”
“I can’t imagine ever getting totally used to this,” I rub my eyes, remembering that this is probably a very strange, very realistic dream. Very realistic.
He laughs and starts wrapping his left hand in a long strip of cloth, carefully winding it over his wrist and up his arm, “it does seem pretty surreal sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“No,” I laugh, “it seems pretty surreal all the time. I am still convinced this is a dream… I don’t understand what is happening, at all,” I watch him wind the cloth tightly around his right hand, “what are you doing that for?”
He shrugs, “a little protection. I guess it would be easier to buy gloves, but I like things old school, plus,” he pauses, “things get thrown about all the time, you know, and if I had anything of value I would likely destroy or lose it. This just works the best. You are going to want something, too,” with that, he tosses me a wad of cloth.
I raise my eyebrows at the boy, “thanks.”
“Do you want some help? We do not have much time left before we need to get going, and sometimes it can get a bit tricky when you are doing it on your own.”
“Uh, okay.” He quickly takes the fabric from me and begins wrapping it around my hands and wrists, then about midway to my elbow, and securing it.
“So,” I begin, deciding to make an attempt at conversation, “you said your name was Matt?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“That sounds like an Earth name.”
He shrugs, “It’s short for Matteau. Still not the craziest thing out there, but, you know, it works.”
“I guess. How long have you been a time traveler?”
“Pretty much ever since the destruction of my home planet. I was about nine years old when Kelderdash fell. Right before the fall, some of the Intergalactic Council came to my villiage, looking for promising time explorers. I was chosen from among many. They said that our planet was soon to perish, but they could take me away and give me a better life. My parents knew that we could not stand against the war much longer with our planet’s resources, so they allowed the Council to take me away. I was put directly into training school with several other children my age – two others from my planet, even. It was far from an ideal childhood, to be sure, but I suppose it could be worse. I could have died, anyways.”
“What about your family? Did you see your parents again?”
He shakes his head slowly, squeezing his eyes closed for a few seconds, “They were unable to leave the planet in time. They went down with it, along with my sister and three brothers.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, it is in the past, and will not be changed,” he sighs, “and after all, we all have things that we wish would not have happened, do we not? There is no need for me to be selfish.”
I stare at him, wondering if his words sprung from callousness or training. He did not seem the sort of boy who cared nothing for his former life, “how old are you now, Matt?”
“I am twenty two,” he replies, “Though in Earth system I would be twenty one.”
“So thirteen years. Have you ever known anything else?”
He shrugs, “It does not matter. This was my destiny – to be a timekeeper. I am happy with my life.”
“Yeah, but you never even got a choice.”
“I think,” he pauses, “you Earth people are all about free will and choices. Maybe, just maybe, every so often, there are some things in life that should be determined for you.”
“Like what?”
“Like a great many things that you would disagree with. For one, what one should do with one’s life.”
“What else?”
“Whom one should marry, what age one should live to, how many children one should have, all those important sorts of things.”
“Why would you possibly think that yu should not get to make the most important decisions in your life?”
“Because,” he pauses, and places his fingers thoughtfully to his chin, as though stroking an imaginary goatee, “because often we get so caught up in the thick of things that we fail to see logic. We see fear, adventure, fortune, lust, danger, health… any number of things that could compel us into a decision that lacks the very most important thing.”
“And what, would you say, is the very most important thing?”
“Wisdom, Anna, always wisdom. And we seldom have wisdom about our own lives and business. If nothing else, then there is always that fallback of when you are on your deathbed, you can look back at your life, and if it was not what you imagine it might have been, you can take comfort in the idea that it was not your fault – it was someone else’s mistake – and your life was exactly as it was meant to be from the start.”
“That sounds terrible! That sounds like a lame excuse to do nothing with your life for fear of messing up.”
“Quite the opposite, really, but I will not argue you on this. It is but a difference in culture and mind, and I shall not change yours, nor shall you change mine. May we agree to be friends in spite of our differences?”
“Of course… it is just, you know, you are wrong.”
He laughs heartily, “Well then, are you ready to go?”
“Go where?”
“Go prepare this world for destruction.”
“Why are we preparing a world for destruction?”
“Because that is how the story goes, sweetheart. We don’t save, we don’t redeem, we simply warn, and give them the chance to flee, if they are able to.”
“And how many have the means to leave the planet?”
He frowns, “very few.”
“Doesn’t that bother you? I mean, you said your whole planet was destroyed. Your whole family, your friends, all of them, just gone like that. Don’t you even care? Aren’t you even going to try to keep that from happening to someone else?”
“You are young, and you have not learned the Intergalactic laws yet. Not all things can have a happy ending. That just is not the way that it is meant to be.”
“Do you honestly believe that,” I jump to my feet, my face turning red with passion, “when you have the means to help them, you would just tell them and leave them to die, just because of some stupid rules?”
“That is just the way the universe is,” he says, his tone of voice equally as upset as mine is, “what do you expect me to do, Anna?”
“I expect you to try. I expect you to save as many as you can and not give up until that whole planet blows. I expect you to care and to want to help them and not be more worried about rules than you are about people. Those are real, living, breathing human beings… or something… down there, and they are going to die, and you know this, and you are just going to stand here and let it happen?”
“I’m warning them.”
“You are condemning them to death.”
“I told you, I cannot do anything. This is beyond my control.”
“No, it is not. You know that is a lie.”
“I will be punished if I do anything.”
“And your punishment is worse than the death of… however many things live on that planet?”
“I could be killed.”
“Oh, so now you are only concerned with self preservation?”
“I would like to stay alive, yeah. I am not saying that I do not want to help them, for I very much do, but you do not understand how many laws and codes I would be violating. There are reasons for the laws, Anna, they are not entirely arbitrary, as you seem to think that they are.”
“What could possibly be a good reason for allowing what is probably millions of creatures to die?”
“I do not have every answer. I don’t know, maybe immigration. Maybe there have been problems when other races have been forced to move planets in mass quanities. I really have no idea. All I know is my job. And I am planning to do my job, leave, get a nice cup of coffee, and come back for the cleanup so that no one is harmed by the debris.”
“So now you are all concerned about someone being harmed? Doesn’t that seem a little bit hypocritical, even to you?”
“Look, do I want this planet to perish? No, of course not. Much of my extended family – cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and many of my friends migrated here before the destruction of my own planet. When this one blows, there will be very few of my kind left. Though my planet was destroyed, I never thought that there would be an end to my race, leastways not during my lifetime. The destruction of Kelderon means that I will be one of the last of my kind, so of course I care. This explosion means everything changes for me. I will be catalogued in the Book of Endangered Races, which will change everything about my life.”
“What is the Book of Endangered Races, and why will that change everything about your life?”
“Well, think in Earth terms. You Earthlings love your organizations and things of that sort. A good example would be, and I am not sure what you call it these days, you know, though, the organization for animals, that protects animals that are becoming rare. It would be much like that. When there are less than 1,000 of any given race remaining, we are studied, catalogued, and put into a book.”
“They put you into a book,” I echo dumbly.
“Just like history,” he confirms, “It basically announces the death of a race. Just like humans do with their endangered species’, the population of the universe takes very different stances on how to deal with endangered races. Some become our defenders and protectors, great advocates for us. However, to some we will become a challenge. Cannibalistic societies will treat us as a rare delicacy and hunt us for food, bounty hunters will chase us as trophies, and some will just seek to eliminate us for sport. The world is often a terrible place to be, and within the next few years… no, it may not even be years, with the strength and wisdom of my people, we will be lucky to withstand a few months. I will without a doubt be among the very last of my kind. This will not be because I am particularly strong or special or great, but simply because the Intergalactic Council for Time Exploration will provide me with decent protection, so I will be able to hold out longer than most of my kind.”
“I am sorry,” I mumble, uncertain of what to say to the man.
“You should be. Do not accuse me of apathy when you do not know what I have at stake.” He frowns, his forehead furrowing up in something of a cross between anger and sadness, “if there were anything that I could do, I would do it. But there is nothing I can do except hope for the best. Would I risk my own life for this planet? Certainly, I would save as many as I can. But it is not always about me.”
“Who is this about?”
“Well, there is you.”
“I would rather save them than myself. Last time I checked, I was not all that great, anyways. Who else, though? Who is this about?”
“My people,” he sighs and sinks back into his seat, “the Council have very strict punishments for those who would disobey the law.”
“What do you mean?”
“Genocide.”
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