Chapter 10 — Seeing is Not Believing
Rufus confesses to being nervous.
Followed by Chapter 10 —— Seeing is Not Believing, in which Mica is surprised to find Saskia at their table.
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Hello Friends,
I have a confession to make: I’m feeling a wee bit nervous.
Today, we’re ten chapters into this project, which is a minor milestone of sorts, and for that I feel celebratory, but the thing is I’ve only finished writing a few new chapters of The Curve of Time since I sent out chapter 1. You may recall that when we started I had about thirty chapters up my sleeve. Well, that buffer is now down to twenty-five, and it doesn’t take a gifted mathematician to see that with roughly one hundred chapters in the book, I’m going to run into problems shortly after halfway.
The optimist in me says that I’ve been preoccupied with the podcast learning curve. And there is definitely some truth to that. So, with a little luck perhaps I’ll soon start bolstering my buffer again, now that I’ve got a smoother ship sailing along. What’s more, a few of the upcoming chapters that I have to write are already in pretty reasonable shape and really just need some tidying up.
Against that, though, the second half of the book looks a bit more wild and wooly. Don’t get me wrong, the whole story is well mapped out, and I’ve even made some headway with the last third while ticking off the chapters that I have ticked off since I started sharing chapters with you … but nerves are still creeping in.
On a more microcosmicly related note, I had a sort of time travel unravelling of my writing process a couple of weeks ago; a problem I never expected, though perhaps I should have seen coming. I was jotting down notes in my bed, in the dark——solves of some story problems that I was wrestling with——and I was really on a roll, not just a page or two, but maybe a dozen or more pages of inspiration. It was fantastic! Unfortunately, when I awoke in the morning and started skimming through my chicken scratch I had an experience I haven’t, in all my years of writing, had before: the ink in the pen had petered out. The first couple of pages were clear as day, but by about the sixth page there were but a word or two, here and there.
I had some general sense of the ideas I’d had, but all that I really recalled was being particularly pleased with the details of the previous night’s epiphanies. It felt very much like that photo blurring in Back to the Future. Happily, the sun was shining brightly and, sitting outside, there were hints in the shadowy ruts of my penmanship. Enough that——holding the paper just so to the light——I was able to salvage every word, at least I think I did … the last six pages were entirely blank after all!
Anyway, enough on the travails of writing. Just one last thing before we turn to chapter 10: I want to reiterate my promise that the expositions on the underpinnings of AI are still forthcoming. Remember, the chapters are short, so we’re really only about 30 pages into the story, and I wanted to hook you and the rest of my audience on that first, before diving into any technical how-and-why’s. For those of you who are eager for our first real encounter with AI, know that we’re more than halfway to our first lesson. For now, though, let’s get back to the story.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
And now, without further ado, here’s chapter ten, in which Mica is surprised to find Saskia at their table.
— 10 —
Seeing is Not Believing
Mica slowed as she approached their table. Saskia was sitting there, right where she’d left her. “You...”
“Are you alright? I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“How are you here?”
The question was enough for Saskia to realize: “You saw me outside the bathroom just now?”
“Obviously, not you.” Mica shook her head with disappointment. “But you told me you didn’t have a sibling. Let alone an identical twin!”
“I don’t,” Saskia reaffirmed.
Mica looked away from Saskia. There were hundreds of reasonable lives merrily bubbling along around the restaurant. Why was hers such a mess? She looked back at the woman sitting at the table. She wanted to sit back down and talk to her. But she’d been made a fool too recently. She approached the table. Her own chair. She didn’t meet Saskia’s gaze. Instead, she picked up the cardigan she’d left on her seat.
“Mica,” Saskia tried, “I——”
“You what?”
Saskia looked up at Mica, her eyes glassy. Was she upset with Mica?
“Who was that?” Mica demanded.
“I don’t know. She told me she was me.”
“Then how are you here?” Mica hissed back.
“Because she isn’t.”
Mica glanced back across the restaurant. Back towards the restrooms. Then she scanned the other diners. She was scared and vulnerable, but no one was paying her any attention. “I . . . ”
“I told you, I’m still trying to make sense of everything myself. Honestly, I don’t understand how it all works. I’m just a week ahead of you.”
“Here? Now?” Mica blazed, eyes wide. “How are you counting time?”
“Fair questions.” Saskia shrugged. “And I don’t have the answers.” Something big was amiss. Either, Saskia was lying to her, or ...could Saskia really travel through time? At will. The woman she’d seen less than a minute ago, was either Saskia’s twin, or, much less reasonably, Saskia herself, out of step with her own timeline. And Mica wasn’t sure which case scared her more. What she was sure of, was that she was way too far over her skis.
Mica was out of reach, but Saskia reached out and caught the sleeve of the black cardigan.
“Please.” Mica’s voice was weak now. Her whole body was weak. “I can’t do this right now. I need to go.”
Saskia let the cashmere slip through her hand. She had tried to hold on too tight in past relationships. She could hear her friends’ counsel: “Give her space.” Why was letting go so hard?
That’s it for chapter 10, hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing you all next week.
Until then, cheerio.
