Slave To The Past

It was a quiet night, but little did I know it wouldn’t remain that way for too long.

I woke up with a throbbing headache and sore eyes at half past ten to a translucent teenager singing his head off.

“You’re back,” I said, rubbing my eyes in exhaustion.

“And rolling,” replied the kid, sitting down on my bed.

“You know I need to work tomorrow. You can’t keep me up with your constant ranting and singing. You’ve been doing this for a month!”

For the past month this dude kept materialising in my bedroom at night. The first time I saw him I almost screamed my head off in fear. He looked exactly like I looked as a 13 year old and I panicked. The truth turned out to be way more concerning. He kept complaining about his life and the details matched with my childhood. Also the fact that 13-year-old me was the worst over sharer I have ever known led me to asking more questions.

I was being haunted by my past. Quite literally.

“Don’t care. You kept playing that Nintendo and kept me awake all night and I could never concentrate in school. So I’m going to keep you up too.” The kid shifted to face me and raised an eyebrow.

“That was you! That was during your time and not mine! Those days are gone and I have a steady job and I –”

“Uh huh. Wrong. It ‘is’ my time and those days are still happening. I ‘am’ you and you did it, so I do it too. So, I can blame you for ruining my life. How on earth did I grow up to be this annoying?”

I squinted my eyes at the kid in disapproval. He was definitely me, but now I understood what my mother went through every single day. I was a walking, talking nightmare.

“Fine. Just, go eat something and entertain yourself. I’m going to sleep.”

“I tried eating here before. I can’t really eat anything.”

That caught me by surprise. “What do you mean? You can sit on my bed without going through it like a ghost. I thought you could eat too?”

“I don’t know. I tried to sneak one of your headphones back home, but I couldn’t. I can’t eat here, I can’t basically take anything that is from here with me,” he said, looking disappointed.

“Wait, if you are my past self and you time travelled to be here, shouldn’t you be able to do or take whatever you want from here? You’re not a ghost are you? Did you manage to die? Are you ghost? Do I not have a childhood anymore because you died?”

“No! I’m not a ghost and no I did not time travel, and stop panicking!”

Okay this was ridiculous. He had to get here somehow right?

“Jason, tell me how do you get here every day.”

“Okay. I don’t really know how I get here, which is strange. But when I fall asleep at night, I wake up here. And when mom wakes me up in the morning, I’m back at home,” he said while staring at the floor uncertainly.

“Huh! Interesting. So if you let me sleep, then I can wake up in the future and annoy my future self!”

“Look, I have no idea what this is. Can you tell me why that’s happening? Do you know?”

The kid looked very confused and I felt bad for asking him about it.

“I wish I did know, or could find out,” I looked down at the floor as I evaluated my life choices, “but I’m not intellectually equipped or educated enough to possibly know.”

“Once you go back, maybe you can try to find out.” I hadn’t thought that out. He was my past after all. Could he act independently without being slave to my past?

“Or not.” I added hastily. “Up to you. All I know is that I don’t know how my suggestions would impact our lifetime. I don’t want to risk it. I have enough money to live comfortably and I have a relatively stable job, which is a little boring but I’m not complaining. I don’t want this to change. I don’t know if it will, I don’t know anything.”

I shook my head to think in normal, comprehensive sentences again.

“Just, don’t listen to me. Forget.”

He looked at me momentarily and sighed.

“Fine. I will.”

A long silence followed. I wondered why I chose this life. Why I was happy with it. Why I couldn’t dream bigger and better. I wondered what the kid’s mind was reeling about; I didn’t know. We might be two versions of the same person separated by time but in many ways, we were different individuals.

He broke the silence with a quiet announcement.

“It is almost sunrise, I might leave anytime now.”

I nodded and smiled at him.

“Have a great day.”

And he was gone for the day.

I had a job to worry about. I got up reluctantly and made my way to the shower.

                                               * * *

It was a gloomy morning and I dragged myself into the office.

“Hey Jason!” I was greeted by the usual, reedy voice.

“Hey Gary, how’s it going?”

“Good. You’re late again, rough night?”

Gary was a good soul: extremely helpful, understanding, a ray of sunshine, but I was sure he’d call the office psychologist if I told him that my teenage self somehow time travelled and materialised in my house and kept me awake last night. It wasn’t a mundane occurrence, I guess.

“Sort of. Couldn’t sleep at all.”

“Maybe you should take a break from work,” he said. He looked genuinely concerned.

“I don’t think it’ll help, I have a lot to work on and I can’t ask for a leave.”

He shrugged, “I understand. Weekend self-care is always a good option.”

                                                   * * *

It was midnight already. I’d gotten home late and was very sleepy but part of me was on a lookout for the regular visitor. He should have been here by now. Did he turn up when I wasn’t home? He probably got bored and left. Well, at least I could sleep.

An entire week went by and my life did not resemble a science fiction story. It went back to being mundane and boring, much to my despair. Lack of sleep wasn’t new to me. I went to college. Obviously wasn’t a new concept but young Jason’s appearance added a little uniqueness to my life that was usually very cliché. I was ready to fall back onto my bed and fall asleep but I wanted to see if Jason decided to materialise that day.

“Jason? Are you here?”

No reply.

                                                      * * *

I woke up with a throbbing headache and sore eyes. It was half past ten in the night, and things seemed off.

My room was bigger, I didn’t have my company’s laptop.

The first thing that came to my mind was general panic that I would be fired because of the missing laptop, but I wasn’t able to think straight. My entire life was on replay but my memories overlapped each other. I was a bad student at school: that was a unifying point, but my interests were conflicting.

I remembered not having any particular interests in school, but I remembered taking an interest in science too. I remembered completing my bachelor’s degree in commerce, but I also remembered doing a bachelor’s degree in physics. I remembered working in research, when part of me remembered working a desk job for an e-commerce company.

I looked around my room to find books over books on physics, mathematics, quantum mechanics and research papers that I seemingly worked on. I rummaged through the research papers and I understood them with no difficulty.

The research dealt with quantum mechanics and time travel. It was an ongoing research and the theory stated that the universe and time exist as a wheel that branches out at infinite points to give infinite realities, which form helices around the wheel itself.

According to this theory, time travel is possible once you reach the point of a helix with the highest velocity, you could transport yourself to another point in the same helix. A working theory also stated that if you reach a point in the helix that is closer in position to a neighbouring helix you could transport yourself to another reality – similar to how atomic orbitals and electron transitions work.

I flipped through the pages and I stumbled across an ID.

I was a quantum physicist.

I was educated enough to finally try to know.