Out of time

The operation was complete at 11.07, on Monday 7th April, however that was not when the clock stopped. No regrets they say, and I understand that sentiment as it is indeed pointless. We do not know the future, we only know the past, and the present, and the reasons we did or did not do these actions. All we can do is do different, and for that requires learning, and choice. I will get two weeks. It is a holiday in time, or out of time I should say, and one that is seen to me as the solution to all my current problems. Time will tell if it is, or not. I have an ache in my chest that I concealed from the assessment. My pain is mine alone and I want no prodding. It will mend I tell myself.

After this time out, I would rejoin time as we know it here on earth. It is experimental even though the pamphlet makes out like it is something that is known. It is not known, I am not going to argue though or show doubt as I will probably be disqualified. What is needed is willing participants. A guinea pig that trusts. I am not trusting, and I am not doing this for the greater good. I do this for me. That much I am clear about, and I am trusting myself to do it with the knowledge I have about the procedure. It is a risk, yet it is one I want to take. I feel like I have tried everything else, maybe I haven’t really, and the truth is I have a tendency to give up easily. Whatever happens I am told, there is no escaping this break and you have to stay the time. I am time bound therefore, and cannot give up this time. The word is repeated so much, I just want it to stop. What I do not take on board is everyone else will be two weeks ahead and I am behind, or maybe I do and I do not listen. I can chastise myself later in time, and it is nothing I will worry about now.

I try and picture in my head what it will be like for time to stop. I am forever in the same moment, and I get to pick it. That is the hard part deciding the time frame to be, and it cannot be connected to someone else, unless you choose this together. At the moment the research does not include this. It could be random yet I do not anticipate to spend what may seem like an eternity standing in a queue or listening to a politician on the news. I need to activate the device and that is where I will be, forever locked in that space doing it again and again. It sounds madness when I dwell on it too long, so I do not.

What about eating and sleeping etc, I ask, already decided that these activities I will exclude. We do not know and it should not matter. It has been explored up to 10 days and no one has been harmed, except, and I remember now reading about a case, it was hushed up but he, and I will call him P started asking for help from all the wrong people , and screaming and no one could help him, they did not see him, and when he rejoined time he did not know who he was and never said another word. He was lost and broken like a clock that has stopped, that no one can repair. Most clocks Lilly says can be stopped and restarted it is no problem at all, and most clocks can be repaired. We do not know enough about time and your own inner clock to know how it will truly affect you. We do checks and we know certain aspects so we hope to ensure success but ultimately you need to know it could go terribly wrong.

“Remember, out of time, no other human can help you, no matter how hard it gets”, Lilly says. That is why the psychological profiling is crucial. I am given this pamphlet, which feels reassuring, like everything is so simple: what to expect, risks, benefits. Bold words and glossy print, underneath it hides much uncertainty. I also will get a Mentor-In-Time (MIT) to help navigate this new landscape. “These are people we have found in this process who live like this”, Lilly tells me. “MIT´s are not human, or at least we do not think they are”, she adds. I am told they have learnt to manipulate and navigate time, and when time stops they can do more than just repeat the same. They live and they can move forwards and backwards and stay in that time, or disappear.

“We do not know much about them and are learning, and they can help. They may try and persuade you to stay, and join them and it can be tempting however you need to come back”, she says. “Do you understand ? You need to come back”. She is still talking. I am in a dream like state when I hear all this and I think she senses that I am attracted to something different, a different kind of being that is out of this time. She says it again. “you need to rejoin this time Jennifer, however tempted you are, resist, just take their help to manage the two weeks and report back”.

I come round and I nod as I want to relieve her uncertainty about me. The truth is I have not made up my mind, and I do not trust this world enough to believe what she says. I have a need to know another world and yet I hear her, and I like that she wants me to come back. There is a pull and I know what it’s like to be pulled in two directions and this time I will not be the one that gets ripped apart. Not me, not this time, not ever again. I say this to myself silently.

I had a psychological assessment exploring my reasons as it is not without some risks alongside perceived benefits. It is a time to assess where I am at and to let my past catch up with me. Looking back I wonder why I wanted to relive it. It can be overwhelming that is why they think P went mad and he had not found his MIT. He was reaching out to everyday people, humans, who just walked on by. They did not see him and that was unbearable. I wonder why the MIT did not find him , or why one was not assigned. It’s like she hears my thoughts, or maybe I am speaking. I feel a little lost at this point in time. He was scared of them, she tells me. We had not prepared him enough for how they looked, which was not human, and some people just cannot take it. He thought they were monsters, and that is why he started screaming. You need to be prepared. And she starts showing me pictures, that other people have drawn, or artist impressions of their descriptions. They are fascinating and definitely not human. It comforts me that the people came back, and were not harmed, and I want to know more about these so called monsters. Lilly does not know much. I feel an impatience rising in me that wants this process to begin, to stop all these questions, and to get on with it. I have excitement and also I have fear, which I don’t like to admit. Fear I push down, it is not my friend. Imagine a horror, a monster and times it by a 100. That is what they will be like. These are her words, and she seems to delight in them.

“What you need to do is take the good they can offer and not the bad”, Lilly says. “They will try to make you stay”, she repeats this again. I have heard enough. As much as they fascinate me, I think I can do it alone, and I do not want a Mentor In Time. They sound horrible. I want to see though and observe but I am not sure I want to know them and learn from them. The truth is I know my weaknesses, and if they get under my skin I know I will never come back. There will be no choice, and at this point I have not given up on my life, I just need a pause, and a reset. I will do it my way though, not Lilly’s, not the research company, not the state, not any of the well intentioned or well meaning. It will be my way. Yeah, I think to myself I am stubborn like that, while I tick boxes that say I am flexible and adaptable. I know what they want, so I will give it this time, to get what I want. That’s how it works in this time, or am I wrong. “Now listen carefully” , Lilly leans forward.

“They may seem like the last creatures on earth that you would want to confide to, or to accept help from and it is true it is not without its risks. We have found though without them we learn nothing and we came to a conclusion that a partnership of a kind is needed, and to survive”, she says.

What do they get from this I wonder, and I find my mouth opening and asking her.

“The hope that you will stay, that you will join them. We are not entirely sure why they want us, what they get from us. All we know is they have a great need that we stay, and they have an attraction to us”, she says. She asks me if I am certain after hearing all that I have that I want to continue. I notice she is making notes and not looking at me. I say a firm yes, which I can tell pleases here as she says good. She hasn’t looked up and is still writing. Now she speaks.

“Now we have made a note of coordinates, and names, so we have a selection of creatures that have been profiled.”, she says. She holds up a drawing, and I see a tall slender figure with hands like tulips and a head like a cloud, and a mouth like a swirling black hole. “We call this one Emmett, and we think this will be a good fit for you”

She tells me Emmitt is usually seen on a Tuesday, and suggests this date to start. Today I remember is Tuesday, although I could be wrong. I feel ready, I do not want to wait another week. Back to the assessment and I remember I told her truthfully that I feel time is moving too fast for me, and I need to catch up. The, “tell me more”, I am expecting to follow does not happen, she just jots it down with the electronic pen in a formulaic way, a bored expression now on her face, and goes on to the next question. There are several questions designed to determine whether I am ready for a time break. What if I lie, I think this to myself, and this thought is so loud in my head I worry that Lilly heard it. No, no interest piqued. I am connected still at this point to all the electronic sensors and luckily I remain calm, cool and my own senses do not outwardly betray me. I am changing I think to myself. Then I think I may have done this before. She just wants answers to her questions, that’s all that is required. I calm myself.

The truth is is I am a cheat. I procured the test, and the score sheet ahead of this meeting. It was not that hard to get, nothing is these days. I practised to determine the right score, the ideal score, not to high and not to low. Just the ideal that is considered perfect for this excursion into the momentary secession in time. A break. I wanted it so badly, and I did not want to be judged. I would judge myself, and I had determined that this was the solution. Am I repeating myself, maybe it has happened already. I try to pinpoint when it started and I do not know why I find that so difficult to know. It is just like it has always been so, not a before, just a nothingness. Here comes the fear again, I swallow it, when I really want to scream for this to stop. I did not want Lilly and what she represented to see me, so I hid myself within the formula and just gave what was needed. A lifetime habit that came easily. Sometime I will stop this, not now. I knew the answers I needed would come from time stopping, and no one was going to stand in my way, not even for my own good, as what do they know about that when they know nothing about me.

Time repeats if time stops, Lilly says and she repeats it, which makes me wonder if it has already started. At this point it is not clear to me. You need to find a way out, not just back to us to report, it’s about learning how to navigate this like they do. I must look confused, so she clarifies. “I am talking about the Mentors in Time”, she says.

“You do know that for everyone else time will continue except for the ones in this phase of the trial”, Lilly says. Have I heard this before I wonder. I wonder how I will notice them, the others and how many there are. She explains that I will not encounter any other research participants during the time out as we are not connected in space. We are connected in time so we will get interference, and will hear and see images , and that can be something hard to get used too.

“Try to separate out yourself from them, their problems are not yours and you cannot help them. It is just noise. When you are back we can arrange a meeting where you can meet. Some people find that helpful so that they can realise that these images and voices were real, not imagined”, Lilly says.

I think about Gerard, who came through loud and clear, I pictured him in my imagination and I am not sure the real one will satisfy as the idea of him grew legs. I hate to be disappointed, and to disappoint as I am aware that Gerard may have something different also in mind. Why they think meeting in real time is a good idea is beyond me. I am glad we do not meet out of time with the others in the trial as I only want to catch up with myself.

I wonder how it will all feel. Then it hits, and a rush of adrenaline and it peaks with a spike on the ECG. I am told to breath and calm down. She monitors me to see if I can control my emotional state and I can. It seems I am good to go. I have passed. She is injecting me now, and inserts a device into my ear. There is a small pack that is strapped to my waist with some other monitoring, and I wear special contacts. I have no idea what they are collecting from me, they can have it all, as I do not care. I just want to go, and I just want time to stop.

The door opens and in walks a MIT, my one just as Lilly showed me. I try hard to make it disappear or to change to something of my own invention but it doesn’t budge or shape shift. It is how it is and it is coming for me. It does not seem to see Lilly, only me and she is still talking. Gerard says the motor is burning up and for a moment I think he is is on to something and passing on information to me before I realise it is just noise and interference. I try hard to hear myself and I find I am screaming. This time I am struggling to stop. I realise that I am screaming as the monitor peaks, and I tell myself this is not why I am here. This is not want I want. Yet I cannot move from this chair and Emmitt is coming towards me. I stop my scream as I don’t want to fail this test. I have not worked out yet that I have already passed, and time has stopped. Later I will realise this, and I am grateful that I did not know. I do not hear myself and yet I glance at the monitor and it is spiking. I know Lilly cannot help me, I know she isn’t listening as she cannot hear me. The questions she goes through, she has done many times before, and we are both bored. This is my time I realise, and I am powerless as I cannot change a thing. I look to Emmitt circling me and I hate that this thing has the power to both release me, and to keep me here. I realise now what a big mistake I made, giving up my time like this when I had a choice, and all I can do now is to stop myself from going mad. Two weeks suddenly feels like a very long time, and the possibilities for once seem endless.