#5: Time in a Bottle
Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.
What time is it? Time for another writing prompt of course:
Contemplate and manipulate the passage of time.
In my very first post, I discussed the importance and impact of music in my life. I love creating playlists to match every possible mood. Chill-out mixes. Pump-up mixes. Party mixes. Pancake mixes. You name a feeling or situation and I will mix it up real nice.
My wife and I had a few friends over recently, and I pulled up my Spotify app to put some music together for the occasion. I tried to find a playlist with “chill boardgame party” vibes, but found my old standbys lacking. In fact, those standbys were feeling VERY old. As I scrolled and scrolled, a crushing reality dawned on me: I’ve become one of those old guys who only listens to the music they enjoyed in their teens and twenties. I have not built a playlist from the ground up in ages. I don’t think I could name one song in the current top forty, let alone any new music in the alt rock genre I tend to gravitate to. How did I let this happen?!
As I began to spiral into a minor midlife crisis, wonder how so much time had passed, and question my own mortality, I concocted the following short story about a time-bending gnome named Herbert. Enjoy!
It couldn’t possibly be time to wake up yet. Yesterday isn’t due for three months, and I haven’t even finished chapter 624!
Herbert checked his permanent calendar and found that it was, in fact, yesterday. He once again worked right through his self-designated rest time. No matter. A simple invigoration spell would do the trick. He flattened his mind, muttered the incantations (rote by now), and found himself quite ready to start the day before he had finished it. The paradoxical nature of his studies often led to such arrangements, at this point it was less surprising than troublesome.
Naturally, Herbert was on a mission to learn Everything, and that required certain sacrifices. Quite a few of them in fact. A simple cat nap would set his work back centuries. Exhaustion was the price of admission, but it must be balanced lest the work suffer.
Scheduling was the key to the endeavor. Herbert spent his first fifty years of study learning to maximize his efforts by expanding his allotted time while simultaneously speeding up his perception of it. A layperson might call this combination of sorceries “slowing down time,” but Herbert would laugh in such a person’s face. Of course, this presupposes that he would ever see another living soul again.
Herbert had the tome memorized by now:
“To expand one’s time band, one must first select an end point, ideally a Thursday. Now predate the starting point and align your calculations such that the time band approaches, but never touches, the end point. This asymptotic alignment naturally stretches the time band between each point, theoretically giving one as much time as one needs. To conclude the sorcery, the caster must sleep (magically induced sleep is sufficient).
Note: Adding a cup of coffee to this process will dramatically increase the caster’s perception of the spell’s effect, but make it more difficult to fall asleep.”
With this nifty combination of magic and mugs, Herbert turned the short centuries of his life into millennia of learning. He didn’t know Everything yet, but he was close.
Herbert allowed his mind to reinflate and resumed his study. He was just finishing off a fascinating volume on the texture of earthworms when his eyes snapped shut on their own accord.
Flobbernuts. Now I’ve done it.
Herbert had once again pushed himself too far. His body was rebelling against the invigoration spell and its own stubbornness, demanding sleep in no uncertain terms.
Fine. I will rest. May I at least move to the bed first?
His eyes squeezed tighter. He had played this trick on himself before.
Fine! I really will sleep. I will. I won’t even peak at the next chapter. Just please don’t make me sleep without my blanket.
His eyes cautiously peaked open, but held themselves at the ready just in case he tried any funny business.
Defeated, Herbert stood up cautiously. Every bone in his body audibly cracked and popped as he straightened, like skittering grease on a frying pan. He was barely capable of shuffling his feet the yard or so to his dusty bed due to exhaustion and atrophy, but he wasn’t going to give his eyes another excuse to blind him before lying down. It would have been clear to any observer that he collapsed into bed rather than climbed, and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep before he even touched the inch-thick hunter green blanket that rested over the top sheet.
Herbert awoke in the dark with a start and an empty stomach, tangled in the nostalgic warmth of the blanket. It had been decades since he accidentally slept in, and possibly longer since he ate anything. He activated his lanterns with a stern point of his finger, then groggily slogged over to his pantry. With a respectful nod of his head, the doors opened to reveal that he had forgot to do the shopping.
Blargs and bones! How did I fail to account for this? It appears a trip to the grocer is in order.
As Herbert collected his cap, coat, and cane, he noticed that the young rose bush in the garden had become overgrown and was now blocking his favorite view.
What do I pay that blasted gardener for?!
He began to mentally prepare for the renegotiation of his gardening contract as he collected the last of his personal effects. Ready for war, he stomped to the front door, threw it open with a slightly overpowered incantation, and froze. The village was gone.
A forest now stood where his street had been. An ash tree towered in his former walkway, its gnarled roots tilling the cobblestones. His neighbors’ homes were barely visible through the brush, and the lush green canopy turned mid-afternoon into a perpetually pale dusk.
We’ve been attacked by wood nymphs!
With a complicated pattern of finger-waving and body gyration, Herbert deployed a conscious-expanding charm in an attempt to detect what sort of magic could level an entire village with greenery right under his nose. Confoundingly, he found no evidence of any sorcery beyond his own.
How can this be? What arcane device could be so powerful yet leave no trace?
He closed his eyes and poured through innumerable scholastic memories. He stood completely still, searching memorized indices and cross references. A red-breasted robin fluttered onto the lowest branch of the ash tree and observed the gnome with curiosity for a time, but soon became bored and resumed its search for beetles. After an hour of deep thought, Herbert returned from his trance without answers. His path was clear: he must return to his library at once for further research.
Turning on his heel with renewed vigor, Herbert almost missed the multitude of notices and letters sticking out of his mailbox. An uneasy feeling began to creep into the pit of his stomach. He slowly reached up and plucked a crumbling, desiccated flier.
HEAR YE! BY PROCLAMATION BY THE VILLAGE CONSUL, CONFIRMATION BY THE VILLAGE COUNCIL, AND LITIGATION BY THE VILLAGE COUNSEL, ALL CITIZENS ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO EVACUATE THE VILLAGE OF NITHERSHILEY WITH IMMEDIATE HASTE FOR REASONS CLEARLY APPARENT TO ALL INVOLVED!
THIS ORDER EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY THIS WEDNESDAY, THE 92ND DAY OF FLORN 19023837662.
The ancient paper disintegrated in Herbert’s hands as they trembled. This notice was three hundred and fifty-two years old.
They moved on without me.
Herbert returned to his home and fell back into his bed, stunned. He instinctively pulled the verdant blanket close as his unfocused eyes stared miles beyond the ceiling. He had no solution to this problem. He was in no shape to travel, and even if he was, where would he go? He would have certainly outlived any of his neighbors (perhaps his constant exposure to time dilation had extended his lifespan somehow? This would require further research). Travel to the past was of course not possible under the current physics, and there was no telling when the next Shift would be. Nevertheless, a thought occurred to the gnome:
Perhaps if I Observed the past I could glean a course of action?
Observation through time was much more palatable than travel through time. To Observe, the caster simply required a connection to the Observable moment and the ability to completely focus on the past and present simultaneously. Herbert had learned the process early on in his career. He grabbed his blanket, hung it over the washroom door, and stared at it with dual intensity: focusing exclusively on this moment and exclusively on Wednesday, the 92nd day of Florn, 19023837662.
The blanket began to ripple as if a stone had been cast in a pond. He watched with dull regret as the ripples increased in frequency and intensity, tearing gashes in the fibers. The gashes began to glow in eerie hues of red and yellow, then expanded and twisted upon themselves until the entirety of the blanket was a glowing golden screen.
The faces of Herbert’s fellow Nithershilieans began to take shape within the gold. Herbert watched with pangs of longing as families gathered their possessions, loaded up their carts, and rolled them down the streets towards the Long Path. He saw the grocer distributing provisions for the journey. He saw his gardener debate which shears to bring.
I could have helped with that.
As the Observation came to an end, the golden screen began to peel away from the remains of the blanket. It shriveled into a thin film, distorting the faces of his friends into unsettling contortions and casting rays of fiery red and gold across the room, creating demon-like shadows. The film continued to warp and wrap around itself until its surface was perfectly smooth, and shrank to the size of a marble. Herbert picked it up. It was dense, and he found the unexpected weight of it oddly satisfying.
He placed the orb on his mantle and admired it. Though he still had no idea what to do next, he almost felt as though he had experienced the exodus himself. It was comforting in a melancholy way.
Perhaps…another Observation is in order.
He started the process again.