Time to Reflect

It always seemed to rain on his days off.

Nonetheless, Brian Schmidt walked through the city streets, down to the Greek quarter. He rarely came into the city these days, having fled to the outer suburbs in this most recent decade of his life. With few friends and a job he could work from home, there was little reason to travel into the ever-noisy, ever-busy city, particularly on his day off.

Except for today. Today, he was going somewhere special. He made his way through slippery cobblestone lane-ways, trying to avoid the puddles of grey water pooling on the uneven ground. As a young man, these backstreets had been his natural habitat, and he spent most of the walk distracting himself from the rain by instead thinking about fond memories of days long past.

Back then, he hadn’t been a good man. He was always getting into trouble, mostly through petty crimes like shoplifting and spray painting, as well as fighting with the other city kids. His mother lived in constant disappointment of him, the boy who could have been something, while his father had never really cared for the brat anyway.

It wasn’t long before Brian arrived at the place he’d been looking for; an old red-brick office building recently converted into that modern office style, refurbished and gentrified, with white scaffolding and pointless glass structures added to its exterior. An old iron door marked its entrance, above which a neon sign flashed, broadcasting the business’ name: Time to Reflect.

It was only ten in the morning but there was already a long line of people waiting to enter. Joining the procession, Brian had plenty of time to think as he waited to be let in. The excitement and anticipation that had been building all week, was now masked by anxiety. What was he thinking? This place was no solution! No, his problems would not go away that easily.

The line shuffled forward one-by-one, with a new person allowed inside every five minutes or so. Brian guessed it would be at least half an hour before he entered the building. Distracting himself from his thoughts, he looked at the people lining up either side of him. A middle-aged woman stood ahead of him, scrolling through her phone absentmindedly, while behind him a snub-nosed young man, no older than thirty, smoked a cigarette.

The kid was one of the ugliest people Brian had ever seen, with red, pockmarked cheeks and an oily complexion. His fringe, dyed jet-black, was long and swept to one side and his eyes were constantly darting around in their sockets, as if always checking up on what was going on around him.

Brian had once been a heavy smoker, but he could no longer stand the smell. He asked the kid to butt out his cigarette.

The kid looked up at him, not saying anything but taking a few exaggerated drags. Then he dropped the cigarette on the floor beside Brian’s foot and neglected to stamp it out, leaving it to burn smoke into Brian’s face.

Brian huffed, called the kid a shit, before returning to his thoughts. Some people just have a stick up their arse, he figured. Hell, wasn’t that the reason they were all at this place?

Time to Reflect was a business that promised reconciliation. It used the latest findings in commercial neurology to map memories, which were then presented to customers in a virtual reality simulation. This allowed people to relive their memories, to go back through the times in which they’d laughed, cried and fallen in love. At first, it was simply a great nostalgia trip, but re-watching memories eventually grew boring. True, they were more realistic than one’s own recollection of events but they lacked the subjective flair that people were really after.

The company’s latest model had proven far more popular. Announced at the start of the year and released only a few months later, customers could now interact with their memories. People would be able to tell their family that story the way they’d meant to say it. They could use that one-liner they’d thought of in the shower in the next day. They could say “I love you” to the people they should have.

This technology had brought a craze of new customers to Time to Reflect, all of them looking to do things differently. It was the new thing to do in the city. Forget the gallery, forget the botanical gardens. Who cares about those, when you can live your life the way you should have? It proved what many already knew: guilt was the most powerful motivator of human activity.

The line from the street extended inside the building, into a vast warehouse space. Polite young receptionists helped customers through the mass of paperwork required for admittance and directed them to a waiting area. The Time to Reflect machinery was so expensive that only one operating room was available at a time, but the receptionists promised this would soon be fixed with the purchase of twenty new units in the summer. Until then everyone was forced to wait on plush plastic couches as people were called into the operating room, concealed behind large white barn doors, one at a time.

It was almost an hour before Brian was finally in front of the doctor, a woman in her late fifties who kept rubbing her eyes from exhaustion. She ran through the procedure, informing Brian of the various health risks and considerations to be accounted for. “Are you healthy? Have you had three cups of water? When was your last dental exam? Are you feeling mentally stable?” This was all simple procedure, answers that Brian had already filled out on the paperwork, and so they breezed through it without much care.

The doctor lay Brian down on a hospital bed, which like the room was a clinical white colour. She read the dates he had requested. “What happened 20 years ago?” she said, making idle conversation as she typed the data into a computer.

Brian relaxed on the bed, two wires attached to nodes on his face, his vision dimming as the machine took effect. It was an apparatus not unlike the thing attached to a dentist’s chair, and it hummed gracefully in the background. His senses were falling into a sleep-like state, but he was just able to hear the doctor’s question. “That’s the night I left my family,” he replied.

The doctor gave a chuckle. “That one’s a regular.” She gestured to the door to the lobby, in which all the line of people were waiting for their turn at the machine. “I’d say half the men here today are going to do the same.”

But Brian didn’t hear any of this. He was already dreaming.

He had returned to a night that haunted him in both his waking life and his sleep. It can’t have been earlier than three or four in the morning when he arrived and began walking down the stairs, fully dressed and ready to leave. Back then, he had figured it would be easier that way. Now he followed his past self’s footsteps, heading towards the door. His bags were already packed and thrown in his van. He was set to go, to disappear into the night.

Reaching the door, he turned back for one last look at the house, just as he had done on that night all those years ago. And, just the same as back then, there was someone waiting for him. Little eyes belonging to a blonde, half-asleep child stared down from the top of the staircase. It was his son.

Back then, he had pushed his fingers to his lips in a shushing motion and quickly stepped outside. In that instant, the child had been left to be brought up by his mother. But now, reliving the memory, Brian stayed perfectly still. It took a moment for him to work up the courage necessary, but he knew what he had come to do and was committed to carrying out his plan. It was time to right his wrongs, to finally deserve that peaceful night of sleep he’d wanted for so long.

He climbed the stairs and sat next to the boy. He explained the problems he was having. There were more and more fights with the boy’s mother. There were money troubles, and debts that he would never be able to pay. And, most importantly, was Brian’s guilty secret; he had never wanted to be a father.

He told the boy this, but clarified it with something he had learned many years later - he wasn’t ready. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his son, it was that he was too young to know how to do it properly. He hoped the boy would understand.

Kissing his son’s forehead, he realised his time was up. The world was losing its texture and the lights were fading. The child disappeared in his arms, but it was okay - Brian had made his peace.

He blinked and suddenly lurched forwards onto the hospital bed. He swung into an upright position, sweat dripping off his face.

The doctor unclipped him from the machine and gave him a towel to wipe himself with. “How’d it go?” she asked. Brian took a second to compose himself, observing his breath, which was sucking in and out at hyper-fast speed. He realised he was smiling and that his heart was racing. But everything felt good. He felt fresh, ready to face the world.

Engrossed in his thoughts, Brian thanked the doctor and made his way to the exit. He was so incredibly content with everything in his life, and couldn’t help admiring it all. He was proud of what he had done and happy with himself - a feeling he had only known as a child.

As he left the operating room, the snub-nosed kid entered. They looked at each briefly but said nothing. “For example,” thought Brian, still finding reasons to praise himself, “I could be as ugly as that guy. News flash kid: no amount of reliving your past is gonna make you hot. God, how does someone even end up that careless about their appearance?”

Brian laughed at his inner monologue and strode out onto the street. It was no longer raining. He had the day to himself and life was beautiful. He would sleep peacefully tonight.

Back in the clinic, the snub-nosed man laid himself onto the hospital bed. The doctor again made idle conversation as she went to type in the time of his desired memory. “Huh,” she said in surprise. “It’s funny - we just had a man who went back to this date.”

“Weird,” said the snub-nosed man, as his senses dimmed. The operating room disappeared and he was swept away into an ocean of old memories, searching for inner peace. He was off to ask his old man some questions.