A Mirror in Time

You pull the little brass colored key from your pocket and insert it in the lock to the industrial looking, matte silver mailbox. The apartment building is nearly fifty years old, and it doesn’t exactly cater to high-end renters. When the builder installed this mailbox, he was thinking function over form. It is plain but sturdy. He was probably hoping that it would outlast the building—one less thing to have to worry about repairing or replacing. The patinaed lock even still functions, though you have to know how to jiggle it exactly right. 

You grab the stack of mail and hit the stairs two at a time without hesitation. The builder went cheap on the elevator too. Just another dull metal box, but unlike the mailbox the elevator is a complex machine. Maybe it is in desperate need of repair, or maybe it was always a piece of junk. Either way, the stairs are faster and you don’t run the risk of getting stuck between floors waiting for the maintenance man who lives in a small basement apartment to get you out—a fate that seems to befall some unsuspecting visitor every few weeks. 

In a flash you are inside your apartment on the fourth floor, and you let the door swing shut behind you as you toss your keys on the hall table next to the door. Like the rest of the building, your apartment is not much to look at, but then again who cares? It will all be irrelevant in a year. There will be no mansions, no luxury cars, no steak dinners, no grand hotels playing host to opulent weddings. Even if you had the means to afford something nicer, it is better to get used to the inevitable sooner rather than later. You won’t have it as bad as others, but you were also told not to expect any more than what you currently have. Happiness is relative, so in some sense you can live with that outcome. 

As you sort through the stack of mail that you dropped on the counter, you cannot help but wonder if future generations will look back upon this time in awe filled wonder or with pity. Maybe both. 

“They had it so good,” they’ll say, “and they squandered it by being petty. There was so much to go around if they could have just been civilized. Of course, if they knew the consequences of their actions they would have changed.” 

That is what they will say, or at least that is what you think they will say.  Of course, hindsight is both a burden and a gift. If you think of it through that lens, it is a miracle it lasted this long. 

It is hard to avoid constantly thinking about these things when even the most mundane tasks, like sorting through a stack of mail, trigger extrospection. 

10% off window cleaning services—junk. 

$0.30 off ground pork at the supermarket—junk. 

Electricity bill—soon to be junk. 

Magazine filled with pretty people selling a fictional lifestyle even for this time—destined to be a reminder of a future that almost was, pinned up in some unfortunate soul’s shanty. 

 Then, you see it sitting on top of the dwindling pile of mail--a small rectangular envelope with alternating red and blue stripes around the edges. Your heart stops as recognition takes over. For a moment you are in disbelief. The letter is not due for another year. It must be some kind of mistake. Maybe it is not the letter after all. You inspect the address scrawled on the front in blue ink. Yes, it’s your handwriting; you definitely wrote it. 

Well, you didn’t write it. Yu wrote it, but that is just splitting hairs. Aren’t you and Yu one in the same? People may distinguish points along Route 66 by mile markers, but they are all still just points along the same road; they are all Route 66. 

You think back to the day six months ago when Yu arrived. Of course, you did not introduce yourself as Yu, just as “you from the future.” You both agreed, that Yu seemed like a fitting name, though. A clever play on words to reduce confusion. You try to remember whose idea it originally was. If it was Yu’s, then was it yours. Was the seed planted then, and if so, does that mean that you actually came up with the idea? 

You stop yourself from spinning down that rabbit hole again. One thing Yu taught you is that there is no clear path to the other side when you start those conversations. It all devolves into the highly theoretical—best to stick to the facts. 

“Yes, time travel is possible.” 

“No, you can’t use it to play the stock market—people have tried, and it never works out.” 

“Yes, you can change some things but not others—don't ask because we don’t fully understand it.” 

“No, secret government scientists didn’t discover it, it was a university experiment gone wrong—or right depending on your metaphysical beliefs.” 

“Yes, you are in extreme danger.” 

The last comment hangs in the air like it spent the last six months trapped in a jar on the bookshelf in your living room waiting to be released at this exact moment. 

You tear the right edge of the envelope off, and out slides a single sheet of paper. Unlike the envelope, which is battered and has what appears to be a drop of dried blood near the corner where the return address would go, the paper inside is pristinely white. The two-word statement stares up at you from the spot where it landed on the counter.   

It simply says, “GET OUT.” 

You squeeze the top and bottom of the envelope, fanning out the open end, and thrust your fingers in searching for anything else. Empty. 

No instructions. 

No plane ticket to Hawaii—what will supposedly be the last paradise left. 

No address for Dr. Mann’s secret compound. 

Just a fucking note that says, “GET OUT.” 

“And go where?!” you scream. 

What good was all the planning? What good was all the risk that Yu took—and you took for that matter—if that is all that was in the envelope. Yu would have been better off sending a nice note, “We had a good run. See ya in the next life, kid.” 

What was Yu thinking? If this was the eventual outcome you could have had a blast blowing what little savings you had cobbled together over the years. It’s not much but it would have been enough to go out in style, especially if you only had to make it last a few months. 

It is hard not to feel ripped off. It is hard not to feel angry, but who would you really be angry at, yourself? At least this has a certain poetry to it. Your life hasn’t exactly amounted to much. It is only fitting that Yu, or you, or whoever would fail spectacularly as you exit life stage left. 

Part of you was looking forward to the end of the world as we know it. Ok, all of you was looking forward to it. Yes, there was the thrill that you were an insider to the biggest secret in all human history, but that was not the only reason. This was your chance to wipe the slate clean.   

The fact that you threw away love did not matter anymore. 

The fact that your career never amounted to anything beyond a monotonous middle management job that was destined to be eliminated by an efficiency expert someday did not matter. 

The fact that you had no real connections beyond shallow work friendships forged over cheap happy hour specials did not matter. 

Yu proved that. Yu showed you that you are somebody special, that you are a survivor, and that you deserve to be part of the new world.   

“Only the strongest will survive,” Yu told you. 

You turn and look in the mirror hanging in your hallway, your jaw clenched tight with anger. You are biting so hard you can hear your teeth grind in the back of your skull. You focus on the right side of your face in the mirror, the side where Yu’s scar was. You run your finger along the memory of it from just under the eye down to the cheek bone. Not a nasty jagged scar, rather a thin, faint line like you spent all day out in the sun with a short, wet strand of spaghetti unknowingly stuck to your face. 

You look down below the mirror at the vase sitting on a small wooden table that serves no real purpose--just some cheap piece of mass market shit that came with the apartment. You pick up the vase and stare at it in your hand as you turn your back to the mirror. Then without a thought—as if for a moment you had no control over your impulses—you turn without warning and hurl it at the mirror with every ounce of strength you can muster. 

The vase is a cheap piece of junk too, but it is heavy, probably to give it the allure that it is expensive. It hits the mirror dead center with a thunderous crack, sending shards of reflective glass flying in all directions.  What is left of the vase falls to the floor with a thud, and then silence retakes the room. 

The only sound you can hear is your heart pounding and the blood rushing past your ears, but after a few seconds, even that starts to dissipate.   

That is when you feel it. A warm liquid sliding down your cheek. It smells metallic. You touch two fingers to your face and inspect the tacky substance they collect—blood. You walk to the mirror and look in a section that is spider webbed but still intact enough to be serviceable. That is when you see the broken shard the size of a thumbnail protruding from your cheek. You touch it gently, assessing the damage. Then you grab hold of it with your thumb and forefinger and pull it out slowly. It sticks at first, or you are just nervous about yanking too hard. Eventually, it comes loose, and the blood starts to flow faster down your face.   

You walk to the kitchen, pull at the dish towel hanging off the oven handle and press it up to your face to stop the bleeding. You stand there wondering to yourself if this is the plan after all? Did Yu lead you astray on purpose? Was it always meant to be this way? The cut on your cheek proves that, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t. Yu said some things can change and others cannot. Maybe the scar is set in stone but how you acquire it is not. 

It does not matter. The only thing the scar means is that it might not be too late, and if there is a chance, you are going to take it. You throw the bloody towel in the sink then run into the bathroom to clean up. You look for the scar cream you bought years ago when you cut your finger opening an Amazon package with a kitchen knife, but you cannot find it.   

Figures. 

You flush the wound with water, then apply a bandage. When you are confident it will stay put, you walk to the closet to find your go-bag. The urgency seems to have left your body, though you are not sure exactly why. Your go-bag is a briefcase with a ribbed, silver, plastic outer shell. To any outside observer it looks like something a businessperson would carry. Too small to hold much, but big enough to fit a change of clothes, a laptop maybe, and those crucial documents for the client pitch. Of course, it has none of those things in it. Instead it has the things that Yu said to take—the only things that you will need from here on out. 

You take the suitcase in your left hand and walk to the front door of your apartment. You pick up your keys off the table and open the door, but you hesitate. You look down at the cluster of metal in your hand. The keys grant access to your most important possessions—your house, your car, even your inexpensive storage locker in the seedy part of town. They do not matter anymore, and for the first time in your life you wonder if they ever really did. 

You set the keys back on the table, take one last look around your apartment, then walk out into the new world leaving the door wide open behind you.