a pattern in static
A story about time travel I have been meaning to finish.
The Casus Belli
Frank stretched his neck, looked toward the ceiling and swallowed hard. The alcohol shot back into his mouth from his throat and he swallowed again. Everyone else slammed their glasses to the table, they growled, spat and coughed as they pounded both fists against the tabletop while others slapped their knees in a drum roll before the next drink. This is how the crew killed time since they left Earth. It was a routine rinse and repeat cycle of drinking themselves to incapacity until someone hunched over and fell asleep. Frank’s eyes watered and he coughed. They never knew when to sleep. Maybe these hours were night, but nobody on the ship knew if there was a night out in space. The hours never mattered. They didn’t know which way was up either and so most of their assumptions were arbitrary and based on educated guesses from the captain. Frank took deep breaths to keep the liquor in the pit of his burning belly; he paused and felt the stare from across the table. Laurie’s eyes were glazed and fixed. She had watched him.
“Hold it down Frankie, we’re going to be taking a few extra shots this time around.” Laurie said to him. Frank nodded his head and wiped his mouth, he could smell the alcohol that his moustache had absorbed. “What’s the occasion?” Frank asked.
“Joseph—The guy who used to babysit my sister and I, stupid son of a bitch made the jump… another chronicide. Bill got the transmission from my mom this morning, only took three weeks to get here.” Laurie took a deep breath and poured everyone at the table a shot. “Do they know what the destination was?” Frank asked.
She closed her eyes to recall everything her mother wrote to her. Transmissions were always cold and concise, losing all sentiment to the bleak emptiness of space on their way to the ship.
“April 28, 2801”, she said.
Frank pulled a small black planner from his back pocket; the front cover read ‘1997-98’. He flipped through it. Black squares filled the pages of the calendar and he stopped at April. He took out a pen from his pocket and colored in the 28th. They all put their hands around the small glasses and waited for her to say something. Without another word she pulled the glass to her mouth and slurped, they shadowed. Frank shot up from his seat, he would not be able to hold this one in. He ran from the table to the lavatory, he reached to open the door and it was locked, he pounded as vomit began to pour from his mouth. Aaron, the youngest of the crew, kept silent inside the restroom. He sat on the toilet facing a video camera set on the sink, he was startled by the pounding but ignored it and breathed deep. He stared at the center of the camera lens and began to speak.
“I want to tell you what the world is like now.
Depending on what side of the shift you were on you may or may not know what I’m talking about. And maybe you don’t even know what the shift is. The only thing that anyone knows about time anymore is that eventually theirs is going to end. Nobody lives forever, even in the omni-present. If this doesn’t make sense, not to worry, it probably never will.”
II
Dr. Vicente Fox sat, the sole occupant, at a long white table that spanned nearly the whole width of the frosty white conference room. He rubbed his scruffy, pointed chin, his lab coat tinged brown. Behind him stood two long white boards at his left and right; haphazardly drawn on them were numerous equations and small doodles, long red and blue arrows pointed equations to others on the opposite side of his drawing board. He avoided the stare of eight sets of eyes from the opposing side of the room. His board of trustees, sitting upright and taut in lab coats ironed stiff at an identical white table, waited for a punch line.
“Dr. Fox, I assure you, you would have no trouble receiving this grant from us if-“, Dr. Smallhouse paused, cleared his throat and looked at the other seven scientists and seemingly transferred his expression to their faces, each man now had a furrowed brow of concern, “…if we knew what it was you were saying to us.” He continued.
Fox took his glasses off and rubbed the scratched lenses with his coat. He replaced them over his eyes on the bridge of his pointed narrow nose and addressed Smallhouse directly, “It’s nothing scientific sir, it’s memory. Simply the Quantum teleportation of consciousness. I think to state it in simpler terms would be insulting to brilliant men as yourselves.”
“Dr. Fox, we understand the concept, but what you’re proposing doesn’t exist, it couldn’t exist. Even if it did exist, you’re talking about playing God, don’t you think that’s a little more power than we’re entitled to?”
Dr. Vicente Fox began to perspire; the long fluorescent bulbs above his head made his brown skin look sallow. The muscles of his slender jaw bulged as he began to grind his teeth. He spoke through tight lips. “But you men are scientists! You don’t even believe in God!”
Dr. Smallhouse, a bearded pale man resembling a sad Santa Claus lifted his sweaty glass of water and took a small sip. “Unfortunately for you doctor, we don’t believe in Vicente Fox either.”
The night was foggy and Fox could feel the static of excitement on his skin, he would continue his endeavors without the support of his colleagues. He rented a dank room in the basement of Sweet Chang’s Chinese restaurant and built his machine in two months short of five years. He sat on a small wooden chair, the only piece of furniture in the small, secluded room; he slipped on a Kevlar vest that was wired to a machine that looked oddly similar to a Smith-Corona typewriter. He grabbed a notepad from his pants pocket and wrote a small note.
December 24th, 2011.
First Trial at consciousness teleportation- the shift- I guess I only get one shot at this…no pun intended.
He picked up a revolver that lay between his feet on the floor, he winced and held it to his temple. Tears slid from the corner of his eyes in a line across his cheek and off his chin. He did not see a light or his life behind his eyelids; he knew this wouldn’t be the end. He began to hum a melody to a song he didn’t know, Fox smiled and tensed every muscle in his tired, small body and squeezed the trigger. Every moment shifted to one moment, that moment expanded perpetually as the bullet cracked his skull open and buried itself deep inside of his brain.
III
Aaron sat in the cockpit of the U.S.S. Casus Belli observing the esoteric panels of knobs, dials and meters all signifying the smallest function of the regal ship. Frank Lapidus sat at the controls, it was a strange panel of lighted pegs inserted into a switchboard, inserting these pegs into different slots commanded the ship to perform a whole array of maneuvers and actions. Frank didn’t replace or remove any of the pegs; the Casus Belli had a set destination since it’s departure. The ship and its crew would ultimately arrive at Titan, the gaseous behemoth moon of Saturn.
“Hey Frank” Aaron was always anxious to ruin the perfect silence that plagued the ship. “You ever notice that the Belli is shaped like a dick?”
Frank’s irritation with Aaron was manifested in the ways he messed up his face whenever Aaron spoke at all. “There are so many things, that ruin my day all the time kid, and I don’t even know what a day looks like, so I’m pretty much pissed off all the time. To imagine I’ve been directing a giant penis through the cosmos for most of my golden years isn’t something I want to think about.”
“Oh.” Aaron paused to reflect on the morbidity of the idea of getting old. Aaron began to bite his nails and looked at Frank in his peripherals. “Hey Frank” Aaron said with vague caution, “What’s the black book for?” Frank held his position still for an extra second. He reached into his back pocket and felt around, grabbing his small planner. He tapped it against his knuckles; it seemed heavier than he remembered.
“Every time I hear about some dickhead that decides to off himself by jumping into nothingness, I’m just a little bit inclined to write down the date.”
Frank tossed the book onto Aaron’s lap and he began to turn the pages, some pages like checkerboards, others without a black square, each scribbled out perimeter equaled to a martyr of curiosity.
“Why isn’t there any future Frank, what do people see?”
“From what I hear everything just decided to undo itself, there’s nothing there. If someone knew why or when I wouldn’t need a little black book.”
“Is it Heaven?” said Aaron.
“Don’t ask stupid questions, kid. We’ve been pretty far out into this universe and it only gets darker out there. Have you seen a heaven anywhere we’ve been?”
