Time out of mind.

Lewis was about to collapse under the weight of the information and the speed of the data that had churned into his mind since Spring. He was a foremost academic. An expert in Global Economics,. Climate Sciences , Engineering, knew everything about Global history, knew all the facts, possessed all the arguments by memory. His mind was the Collective. The implant he got at a young age connected him instantly to everyone and everything curated by an artificial intelligence created with the sole purpose of making sure he wanted not for knowledge of anything. He was about to unalive himself. He took the winter off of his research and had an automated vehicle drive him to Alabama. From Maassachusets to Alabama. Hours down numbered highways. Lewis was never lost. He knew the entire route and where the traffic stops were. He knew where the wrecks were. He knew that the National Weather Service Radar had đetected inclement weather. His mind was a constant electronic buzz. He never wondered anything. The whole ride, sitting alone in the vehicle while it navagated itself, in a bubble of complete comfort Lewis streamed podcasts into his mind constantly, though if the information mentioned was published in the academic presses he knew it instantly. It was all uploaded to the Collective. Eventually he was in a fetal position, like a zygote in the womb of a publicly owned electric vehicle with ‘Copilot’ application that connected directly to Lewis's mind. His body sobbed, The car streamed into his mind, "YOU HAVE REACHED THE HANK WILLIAMS HIGHWAY, ALSO KNOWN AS THE ‘HANK WILLIAMS MEMORIAL HIGHWAY.’ I-65 IN ALABAMA. IT BEGINS IN GEORGIANA, ALABAMA WHICH WAS HANK WILLIAMS BOYHOOD…” Lewis, whose biological body was still sobbing and whose emotional self felt unaliving dread, could only hear in his mind, "HIRAM KING WILLIAMS, BORN 1929 IN MOUNT OLIVE ALABAMA…” The vehicle pulled out infront of the shotgun shack that had belonged to his family for generations. The vehicle aimed itself directly at the old wooden steps. Lewis walked in the old cabin. On the old fold out table was a strange machine he paid no mind to. In one corner was the rifle, made for a child, that he remembered. As his eyes rested on it and his emotional self' felt perverse relief, the Collective, via his mind announced, “THE RUGER 10722 WAS FIRST INTRODUCED IN 1964. IT IS A SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLE THAT HAS BEEN IN PRODUCTION SINCE THEN, MAKING IT ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL RIMFIRE RIFLE DESIGNS IN HISTORY. " Lewis was sitting on the top step now. "THE RUGER 10/22 RIMFIRE…”

It was the most bizarre thing Lewis had ever experienced.

He looked up at the ceiling lit by fluorescent light and heard nothing. After a while He heard someone say, “How long has it been? Where am I?” He looked around the room. The last thing he could remember was lights, orange fleeting lights on the highway, and a feeling he could not

put words to. He sat there, either in silence, or hearing that strange voice that didn't know anything but knew about him. Hours passed, though he didn't know that for sure.

A nurse came in and noted instantly in his case report that he “had regained consciousness, despite being inactive from the Collective.” Lewis felt like he was falling into the bed as she stared at him for seven minutes without blinking. Then It decided that she needed to express herself verbally. "You are at Andalusia Regional Hospital. Andalusia, Alabama. You sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound after an attempt to unalive yourself. Luckily your action took place in view of your car's safety camera and an autonomous 1ife flight was dispatched." This was delivered to Lewis with no meter nor tone inflection and for some reason, must be some medication he figured, Lewis felt sick looking at the glaring nurse.

He was released and the same vehicle which had saved his life had followed Lewis to the hospital. At the cabin he noticed that the sun had stained the top step red with his blood, inside the door was the Rugar leaning against a wall. He looked at it. Mind said nothing. He felt regret, and pain, and shame, and gratitude, though he could not say why. There were no words except "Thank you" repeating in his mind. Tears came to him. He picked up the rifle, walked it to a back room, and put it up in a closet. He sat at the table and looked up at the dusty portrait of the last supper. He could not remember who had painted it, maybe Michelangelo. He looked up at it and remembered those dinners shared at the table before he was an academic, when uncles would talk of hogs and aunts would whisper. He hardly knew anything and was happy. He sat in that feeling of the past, and his mind said nothing to him. Or rather, he thought about nothing. After he ate a meal of surplus food from plastic bags in silence, he found on the shelf, tucked between photographs of his grandparents, a small hardcover book. Physical books were very expensive. There had not been a need to print one for many years. Any book one had the desire to read was instantly known down to the last word simply by becoming cognizant of it. First, he smelled the object, and his mind lit up. He loved the smell. He wrestled with himself on what to call it. Sweet, woody, pulp? cardboard? No, fresh and ancient. He could smell times gone by. He could smell the sweat of the 20th century. He read the three-word title. Which surprisingly, for a scholar took a lot more effort than he thought. It's not that he couldn't read, He knew more words than the author did. He knew better grammar than the author did. There was something else, a discipline of manual-reading that he had to develop, as well as an ability to let his own thoughts speak as he read. The most amazing thing happened as he read the first page slowly. Visions came to him, and he heard voices. He was at the edge of a harbor. It was night but he could hear the waves in front of him. From the darkness a spotlight would scan across the water and onto the sand. 

He walked back to the closet and got the rifle out, then out the door sat on the top step and loaded it. He noticed there was dried blood still on it and he felt that grateful sorrow. He walked around the back of the old house. He followed a path that existed much less in the sand he was walking in than in the sacred pre-Collective part of him. He passed the fallen down house with the iron toilet sunk halfway into the ground and the lid long had been taken off. He walked along with the gun resting in the crook of his arm and it looked like a pipe hanging lazily on the lip. He would have called it hunting but really, he is just walking at such a slow pace the business of the woods can go on without noticing the intruder. Lewis strolled along all the way until he reached the bank of the river. He leaned the rifle on a tree and sat in the sand on the bank and watched the black water flow by. In the shallow part where the water was amber, he watched a bass struggle against the flow of the stream. He watched until the fish peeled off and swam downstream. He took the book out of his pocket and began reading. —Nothing but burned over country… Looked down into the clear brown river… Trout keeping themselves steady in the current… He watched them a long time… “What was he thinking as he watched them?” Lewis asked himself. A strong breeze came down the river corridor and shook the trees and out in front of Lewis there was a rattling coming from the overhanging tree. He peered into the tree for a long time while trying to see what caused the noise. There were several lures, rusty hooks lodged into the tree that had grown around them. The tops of the lures were bleached white and treads of old line drifted in the breeze like Spanish moss. Lewis reckoned they had been there a long time. He wondered what had been in the minds of those that left them.

After eating back at the cabin that evening Lewis took the book and sat down at the table under the Michelangelo painting. Lewis read those first three words, the title, “In Our Time.” By the time he got through to the end of the book it was dark but Lewis didn't notice. He was living in the thousand other lives that the Collective had kept from him.