The Misfortune of Time Traveling

By Daniel Cho

When you think of time machines and time travel, you’d think of Stephen Hawking and his party for time travelers, killing baby Hitler, or visiting an ancient civilization. Time traveling. It fills the imagination. It also tortures it. Let’s be honest. Put aside the quantum jargon and black hole theories, time traveling won’t happen. But, it’s just believable to some people that there’s a slight (false) hope that they can travel through time. But, it’s only for those that want to time travel. The ones that don’t want to be in the present. The ones that want to be out.

A sad idea, right? To believe in such a foolish idea that they become stuck in it. That they faze out of reality but are forced still to participate in it.

Anyways, here’s a story of a man, who for a while wanted to time travel.

It was a Sunday so beautiful that nobody was thinking about how the next day was going to be Monday. It was also day one-thousand-ninety-four of this man wishing he had a time machine.

As usual, he slumped on the only desk he had in his apartment. It was early afternoon, so he hadn’t had the need to turn on the ceiling lights; instead, the dazzling sunlight hazed through the windows, so overwhelming the dull interior of the apartment that you may have thought you were entering heaven. His eyes work hard to refocus their concentration amidst the contrast between the interior and exterior. But that didn’t matter, he was already fading back into the past. To the very same day, he was thinking about it for the previous one-thousand-ninety-four days. So he didn’t notice the four knocks on his door.

The man had been standing in line for only eight minutes, but he wanted to leave already. Was the rollercoaster ride worth it, considering he’d have to stand for an hour just for a less than two-and-a-half-minute ride? To be honest, he wasn’t much of a rollercoaster type of person, but he stayed put because he didn’t care for much. The sun was so scorching that he wanted to go on the waterslide, but that also had a line.

The line for the rollercoaster was moving like an inchworm, slow and awkward. As the man turn around the stanchion, he saw a popsicle miserably melting on concrete. It was probably a toddler who dropped it and a parent who ignored the toddler dropping it. The uncomfortably sticky and softened treat was left unattended, but for the occasional wasps. Such visits forced the people behind the man to walk around the popsicle like a tightrope, and it would be the same for every other person in line. It only takes one individual to pick it up and put it in the trash can, yet everybody walked around leaving it for the person behind.

There was a malfunction with the rollercoaster, so the line came to halt. But the crowd didn’t mind that. What does an hour or two make a difference? As long as the ride is still two and a half minutes, there’s nothing to complain about. The man, though, sighed and turned to the side, and that’s when he saw her: the woman. He couldn’t tell if he’d had stared at her first or if it was the other way around; nevertheless, they were now looking at each other. She smiled so sweetly that he was afraid he didn’t smile back the right way. As if there was a right way to smile.

She spoke. “Can I hear you laugh?”

The man was caught off guard by both her speaking to him and the question. He fumbled his words like a little school boy does with a football in front of school girls. “Uhm…”

The line started moving, and in a panic, the man quickly filled the gap in front of him with the woman out of sight.

Would you want a time machine too?