Chapter 29 — A Witness to Your Own Death?
Rufus spends a few words on saying goodbye.
Followed by Chapter 29 —— A Witness to Your Own Death? in which Saskia’s double, Sienna, wrestles with some of the implications of time travel while heading back to LA to find her phone.
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Hello Friends,
One of the tantalizing elements in tales of time travel is the prospect of choosing which moments in life to live over. Which moments to savor. The possibility, for instance, to go back and spend a few precious extra minutes with a loved one before they pass.
Sometimes, even outside of literature, life gives us that chance anyway, before the inevitable final curtain falls. It is one of the very few silver linings to a terminal disease; one of the few ways in which the antithesis of ripping the metaphorical band aid off holds some allure.
And yet, saying goodbye is complex. And not everyone is very good at it. I, for one, find myself too in my own head during such moments of heightened emotion. Forming and reforming words that somehow never escape my lips.
One upside to my own shortcomings in this department is that I feel empathy for other people when I see them navigating fraught situations. Intellectually, we all realize that there is no one right way to express grief, but it’s worth reminding ourselves of such when we see others grappling with it. Tears or a stoic grimace are both valid expressions of love. And a focus on everything but the immensity of what is happening … well, just being present is a manifestation of meaning.
Selfishly, I hope to fall asleep one night and wake up dead. But if I am `lucky enough’ to have time to say my goodbyes to those who will outlive me, I hope I can do so with the grace of my mother-in-law. Despite obvious pain, Yvonne has spent most of her final days with those who will outlive her, not always for her own benefit, but because she knew that they needed it.
When a loved one is terminally ill we feel the need to spend time with them. And we should. Don’t get me wrong about that. However, reflecting on this reminded me to also to think about those who you care about who are not ill. I wanted to take this moment to encourage you to consider spending time with them too. Make sure to spend time with everyone you care about, because death is capricious and it can strike any of us unexpectedly. To be clear, this is not a counsel against spending time with those whose time with us is limited, but rather counsel to conscientiously spend time with those who are important to you, even if they appear to be invincible.
Spend time with your parents, and friends who are moving away. Mix it up. Weave a complex and rich life. Time travelers might not need to fear unexpectedly losing a friend. They could even choose to relive the same sublime moment again and again. Although, in the same way that the second hour, or day, or week spent with a dear friend is different to the first, reliving the same moment again and again seems likely to deaden the experience——of course, I can’t actually time travel, so I can’t be sure.
Our lives are a tangled tapestry of emotions, even for those of us who in our heart of hearts have a tendency to a nihilistic worldview. Still, in the same way that we are said to be an average of the people around us, the people we leave behind are a reflection of us. By that measure——and it could be argued that I’m a little biased by the love of my life that my mother-in-law gave me——Yvonne, you did very well. Thank you.
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 twenty nine, in which Saskia’s double, Sienna, wrestles with some of the implications of time travel while heading back to LA to find her phone.
— 29 —
A Witness to Your Own Death?
Wending her way back south, Sienna had more time to think. It was all she could do with her phone yet to be recovered.
One question had locked, front and center, in her mind: was it possible to witness your own death? And, if so, could you prevent it? Could she scan forward, and see the culmination of her life’s journey?
The problem was: there was no way of telling how far forward you’d have to scan. And, it would take time and effort to get there. There was also the problem of how she’d even follow herself without splitting in two.
To pressure-test the idea, she supposed that it was even possible, that she could follow herself thirty years into the future. That alone would take ten years to do, assuming she could slip through time at three times the conventional speed. Add another ten years to return, and the self she’d be following would be twenty years older than she was now. In which case, she could also just ask her now-older self what had happened and save herself the time and effort ...but if she could tell the her who had waded off into the future what would happen then she wouldn’t have needed to bother going in the first place. It all had a very Catch-22 feel about it.
Time travel really messed with causality.
Again, supposing she did decide to do it, that would mean spending two fifths of her life living passively, watching herself do things that the later version of herself already knew she’d be doing. And what if she was fated to die while racing forward to find herself? What a meaningless way to go. The whole thing made no sense: if you were going to check on yourself, why would you bother slipping back in time to start it all over again? It all felt like a naval gazing art project.
Perhaps it would be easier——and make more sense——to check on someone else’s death. But who would want to put that much time aside to check on someone else’s death? You’d only do so if you had reason to believe their death might be imminent.
Her train thundered into a tunnel and Sienna’s thoughts of death were left out in the light.
∞
Once the train pulled back in to Union Station, Sienna disembarked and exited the building. She went looking for somewhere to hide. Now that she was back in LA she needed somewhere to inconspicuously wind the clock backwards. Rolling time back with all these people about felt like it was asking for trouble, and she didn’t want to go back to her house; that felt like inviting trouble in through another door altogether. Indeed, she’d convinced herself that the act of interacting with her other self was what triggered self-duplication, á la what had happened in the restroom at Cleo’s.
The search for a place to quietly wind the clock back left her feeling homeless, which she realized was precisely what she was. Her circumstances were extreme, but perhaps the emotion was not so different to that which the recently unhoused experienced. Mulling this, she headed for the LA River. She recalled seeing encampments down there in the past and she figured that even if she were seen slipping back through time, it would, in the worst case, be by a witness of dubious societal reputation.
Along a lifeless industrial road, she found an open gate that she snuck through, into a train storage yard under the 101 freeway. There, she began the trek back through the day.
Earlier in the day, when the sun had finally returned to sunrise, she slid back into the standard flow of time and headed back to Union Station. There, she situated herself among the mass of commuters by the entrance to the building. When her younger double passed, she gave her a few seconds head start before flowing into the crowd behind her.
Watching her younger self, she was amazed by how much happened around a person when they were not looking. It made her smile to see half a dozen men and three women turn their heads in her wake. But Sienna was yet to spot the punk. How premeditated was such a con? How much a crime of opportunity? Sienna vigilantly scanned the crowd as her double waited in line to buy a ticket. And then, as her twin closed in on the counter and pocketed her phone, she saw him. His eyes were like lasers, boring into the loose pocket that was the phone’s resting place.
For a split second, Sienna was annoyed at herself for the way she’d so carelessly stowed her device. But there was no time for self-reproach.
The punk was wearing a dark hoodie, which, while keeping his face obscured from those around him, also blinkered his view back to her, the huntress now on his tail.
The trio headed for the turnstiles, with hoodie gaining on his quarry, and Sienna locked on him. She was rapidly closing on him and she wanted to catch him before he got too close. A hundred feet to the turnstiles——where Sienna knew the theft had taken place——was now forty, but Sienna was almost upon him.
She shoved her way forward, through the remaining throng.
As she caught up with him, she reached out and clasped his sweater, her hand closing tight on the cloth. The fleshy fabric gave way, until it didn’t, finally pulling taut against the thug’s arm. Sienna yanked him about.
Startled, he turned sharply. Then, his face fell. It was his victim who’d jerked him backwards.
“Let her go,” Sienna hissed.
Confused, the thug twisted back and saw Sienna disappear through the turnstiles. He spun about back to discover the same woman arresting his motion. His eyes bugged wide.
“That’s my phone you had your eyes on.”
Their roles, suddenly reversed, put a fear in the youth’s eyes. She had his attention, but as adrenaline kicked in, fear turned to fury. He glared at Sienna. It was unclear if he was about to tear himself free, or reverse the roles yet again, and turn the attack on his attacker.
