Hidden in Time

“So, that’s you?”

“That is correct, James.”

“You’re a baby, Sarah.”

“I know, James.”

“Help me out here. How could you co-exist with your younger self?”

“I told you, I have no idea. I don't understand that stuff at all.”

“Eight billion people on this planet, and you go to meet yourself as a baby?”

“The person I wanted to see the most,” Sarah said, her eyes twinkling.

At The Corral Café in south-central Copenhagen, James Grimm and Sarah Nielsen discussed his problem.

“When we met,” he said, avoiding the perplexing time-travel paradox for the moment, “you told me you had issues with time. I thought you meant time as a concept. Actually moving through time, now that’s something different.”

“Sure, but you have travelled in time yourself, James, haven’t you? We’re all moving in one direction or another.”

“Eh, Sarah, which year did you say you came from again?”

“2077, but I did stop in 2061, 2044 and 2031.”

“Right. And the year 2001 because I remember us having this crazy discussion then. You were the one who convinced me to come here today. That was twenty-four years ago.”

“That's still in my future. The timeline gets hazy for me.”

They moved over to a bench near a small park in the outskirts of Copenhagen. James and Sarah knew each other, but in different eras. James, in his mid-forties, had waited half a lifetime for this. Sarah, in her fifties, knew nothing of his purpose or his questions.

“Well, every stop is supposed to be meaningful. That is what I was told”, Sarah said. “I guess looking at myself as a toddler can definitely be considered meaningful. Gosh, I was one fat baby. My profile includes caring and a close relationship with my family. That is family”, she said and pointed towards herself across the street.

Trying to avoid looking as though they were ogling someone's child, they kept talking. Both confused and intrigued.

James massaged his neck with his right hand. “I guess what bothers me is how you are supposed to get back into the future. I mean, surely it is being rewritten by your presence here?”

“Not my problem”, the time traveller replied distantly.

“I…, no? It’d be on my mind every minute of every day. I mean, cool to see yourself as a toddler-”

“And as a teenager. I performed in a mall. Dressed terribly, but I remembered it so strongly. It was a dream to re-live it from the audience.”

“OK, fair enough. But at some point you must have considered how, and when, you would go back? Don’t you have family and friends you want to get back to?”

“I mean, why wouldn’t I?”

James paused.

“Tell me a little about the company that organised this”, James began, trying to get a grasp of Sarah’s situation. “Is this a common hobby? Do you know if other people got back?”

“Well, presumably? I mean, they must have, right?”

James tried to contain his inclination to throw a tantrum. How could she be so damn relaxed about it?

“Sarah, please tell me about yourself. What do you do in the year 2077? Do you work, like we do?”

“I mean, no. Not as such. We have machines for most of it. The computer handles that for us. I don't know how much I will tell you in twenty years, do you recall?”

“I was young, just another idiot. The questions I asked you were rudimentary, I didn't know what I wanted to know.”

“And now?”

“I thought I did, then it changed. What is the computer?”

“James, I am just trying to enjoy myself, I don't ask too many questions. You know what they say, ‘Questions beget questions.’”

“Very well, Sarah. Are the stops planned?”

“Not sure. No, don't think so. Look! I threw up!”

James lost context for a bit, then noticed that baby Sarah had thrown up over her mother's shoulder. The mother had not noticed, as she held the baby to her body.

In a rush of déjà vu, James remembered something. The memory took a moment to load.

“Sarah, I just remembered something. You are a lot more worried about this than you let on. You were shaken when I met you the first time in 2001. Something had made you question things.”

“Can’t imagine what”, Sarah replied, watching herself get carried into a crowded stairwell. James could tell she wasn’t focused. He couldn't let go of an emerging sense of duty.

“Sarah, listen. Why did you go on this temporal trip? Please!”

“Oh, everyone else was going. It didn’t cost anything, it was all part of the care-package.”

“What is a care-package?”

“Oh, right. I forget, these are the dark ages. Look, a government is a…”

“I know what a government is, Sarah! And these are not the dark ages. This is the computer age.”

Sarah looked at him with a benign smile. “No, the computer age doesn’t start for another twenty years. You are living in the twilight of stupid, James.”

James struggled to read Sarah. She sounded apathetic, yet considered herself superior—just as she had twenty years ago.

“Computers have existed for about eighty years now, Sarah. Give or take a definition. I know, I use them every day now. Look”, he said, and grabbed his phone. “This is a portable computer. I can do loads of stuff with it. I can have it monitor how many steps I take, fetch information about anything in the world, it can be used to play games.”

“That’s not a computer, James. That’s a tool. You have to do those things yourself, it doesn’t act for you, it reacts to you. Man, this is really elementary stuff.”

“What?”

“A computer does things on its own. Our computers grow our food, build our roads, provide everything we need. That’s a computer. That,” she said, pointing at the impotent device in James’s hand, “is just a tool.”

James stared at her. This wasn’t the future five hundred years from now. This was the future fifty years from now. Potentially within his lifetime to reach.

“Then, what do you people do in the future?”

Sarah smiled, happy to get a question of interest. “We play games, travel the world, follow the space race. It’s all just good. Nobody needs to work. No one has to do what my mother had to do; getting vomited all over. Changing nappies. Cooking food. The computer handles that for us.”

“But, what about research, what about books, movies? Games? Who develop these for you? Who creates, invents?”

“Computers.”

James felt a panic emerge, twenty years of panic, finally emerging. “So, did a computer invent time travel?”

“Well, yeah. Of course. How could a human do that?”

James didn't know how to respond to such a statement. But it did raise another question, and he asked it in the calmest voice he could muster: “If you don't have to do anything, what level of education do you have?”

“Education? That's no longer a requirement. I have eight years of school, but that is because I am old. Our kids only have to learn how to interface with a computer.”

“So, how do they learn how to do anything?”

“If they would like to learn, the computer will teach them.”

James still wasn't sure how to react. The future sounded horrible. He also noticed Sarah's use of the definitive “the computer”, rather than “a computer”, which triggered another line of inquiry.

“Can you describe your computer, Sarah?”

“What do you mean?”

“We all have mobile phones, here in 2025, but you seem to have a different relationship to computers. Please tell me about your relationship with the computer, in 2077.”

“I mean, it is everything. You get access when you turn seven, and it does anything you want it to do. If it's legal.”

“How do you interface with it? Like, I look at my mobile screen, handle input with either voice commands or text. And the text is input via touch screen.”

“Yeah, but everyone can read and write in your world. That's no longer true in mine. No need for it. Just spoken language.”

“Have you handed over all your power to a machine?” He clumsily blurted out. “Who owns the computer? Who runs the world?”

Sarah laughed out loud. “You sound like my parents. This wasn’t done overnight, it took years for people to accept it. And ever since, our lives have been wonderful!”

James gazed up into the sky. So many questions, so little interest in the answers. If Sarah had intrigued him to begin with, she, and the people of the future, scared him. She really didn’t care.

“Ignorance is bliss, I guess”, he muttered.

“Ignorance is bliss, James. I know this might be hard for you to understand, given how your kind have to work and cook and clean and all. But the future is fantastic.”

They sat in silence as James began to sweat. He felt an existential dread he’d never known. How could they hand their lives over to a machine?

Then, an even more worrisome thought entered his mind.

“Sarah, how many of you go back in time like this?”

“Almost everyone, this is the latest in awesome experiences. The release day was crazy. I stood in queues for hours to get my trip!”

“Yeah, no shit”, James commented incredulously. “And how many is everyone?”

“About five million, give or take.”

“Wait, what? Are there only five million people in the whole world?”

“Yeah, so?”

“There are over four billion people on this planet today, how can that be reduced to five million?”

“No idea, but who cares. We’re all doing OK!”

***

They walked around the park, Sarah occasionally bending over to smell a flower or two. James looking more and more as he needed to throw up.

“OK, but what if the computer needs maintenance, or improved software? Or hardware?”

“You sound like a technocrat, James. They are the ones who care about learning this.”

“And?”

“I just realised that I know the unexpected winner of next year's Football World Cup. You want to know who it is? It was one of the more popular places to visit.”

“Focus, Sarah!”

“But you're asking boring questions, looking for tedious answers. I wish to experience new things!”

“Is that all you do, in the future? Experience ‘new’ things?”

“Of course, what more is there?”

“Work? Responsibilities? Duties?”

“The computer does that, I told you. I think I should get going soon. I don't enjoy this conversation.”

The park was now emptying. The building over the street, where baby Sarah and her mother had entered, was dark. No life in any of the windows, no movement in, or near, it.

“It’s not about enjoying it, it’s about understanding it.”

“You know, in the future, we aren't concerned with understanding things, or learning to remember useful facts. We live in the now, ever fleeting. Our emotions, experiences and freedom, that’s what matters. It’s about living, not about toiling.”

“What are you talking about? Someone provides that for you, right? It can’t just be a computer!?”

“Yes. The computer solves all our problems.”

“And who controls the computer? Who built it? Who maintains it?”

“I don’t remember their name. It isn’t relevant. Drop it.”

James began to notice that most people around them had gone. It was a late summer afternoon, it was usually crowded at this time. An old man walked the gravel on the other side of the lawn, a car in the distance.

“It is relevant if it controls your life, your freedom, and existence. How can you trust it if you don’t understand it?”

“James, don’t the people of your time trust their governments? Without fully understanding how they actually work, without complete insight into what they do, how and why?”

Surprisingly insightful, James did notice that Sarah sounded bored. And superior. But he couldn’t acknowledge her superiority. She was from the future, yes, but one that didn’t sound all too appetizing to him.

“What if the computer turns hostile, Sarah? Then what?”

Sarah gazed out over the surrounding lawns. The park bench they occupied was starting to feel uncomfortable.

“I don’t enjoy this conversation, James. Tell me something fun!”

James was hit by a migraine. Hard. Almost as though it were connected to Sarah’s wellbeing.

“When I first met you, back in 2001, there was a terrible storm. I hit you with my car as you just materialised in front of me. I always thought the storm made it difficult to see, but you just ended up there, didn't you?”

Sarah was quiet. Fiddling with her fingers. Her behaviour suddenly felt off, almost as if she didn't know how to behave with other people.

“Sarah, do you have clear instructions for how each time jump will take place?”

No response.

“What happens if you die? I could easily have killed you that night. What happens if you die?”

“I don't like this conversation, can you please leave, James.”

“When you started talking about time travel with me, in my kitchen, I thought you were just shaken from the accident. It took me years to accept that you were right. All those events you remembered from our future came true. You were right. That is why I’m here today, Sarah! You must have asked me to meet you here for a reason.”

She picked up a flower from a flowerbed next to them, smelled it, then threw it away. This wasn’t what she wanted. This man bored her. The gravel under her shoes was mundane, and the weather out of control. Bland, cloudy, chilly.

James backed off on that particular subject, but another one just had to be addressed: “What happens if you change history, Sarah? You must have some kind of instructions to not mess with history.”

“Yes, but who cares, James!”

“I do, Sarah! This is my future! You are moving away from it, but I’m rushing towards it against my will. I need to know that my life won’t be controlled by a computer.”

“You will change your mind, James.”

“Or, I’ll do something about it. Please, just give me the name of the company. Throw me a bone. Something. Please.”

Sarah wriggled as they stopped next to an old, majestic oak tree. Like a young girl, being forced to do something boring.

“It doesn’t have a name, it’s just a letter, X. It’s everywhere. You make it sound horrible, but to me, it’s my whole world. I have seen films of how you people spend your whole life toiling. Throughout the centuries. Bored. Fat. Tired. Worn. Unfulfilled.”

She turned around and looked him right in the eyes. “We don’t want that. We won’t have that. We are the satisfied generation, James. And we love it!”

They stood in silence for a while. Sarah’s words echoing into eternity. James questions unanswered, unnecessary. Unwanted. He felt how the point of those questions became inconsequential. The machine would win anyway. Some people knew it today, everyone would embrace it tomorrow.

“Did anyone get back before you went on your journey through time? That should be instant, right?”

“What are you talking about, James?”

“Did they show someone go back in time, get photographed or something, and then come back? What proof did you have you would come back?”

“The computer said we’d get back, that’s all I needed to hear.”

“Sarah, what happened to all the people between now and then? You said there live five million people in your time, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And there are a hundred times more people living today, half a billion people, on this planet. A hundred times, Sarah! Where do they go in the coming decades?”

The number felt wrong as soon as he said it. Hadn’t he been thinking of a much larger figure just moments ago? He shook his head, blaming the migraine he felt coming on.

“Who cares?” Said Sarah, without inflection.

“Who cares? I am one of them, Sarah! Chances are just one in a hundred that I’ll make it into the future!”

“I don’t know what happens, and I don’t care. I will move on in about an hour, James. Can’t we go see something interesting here? I’ve never been to Nyhavn in the olden days, let’s go there! Have ourselves a beer, perhaps?”

But James sat down on an empty, wooden park bench, his head collapsing into his palms. He knew that Sarah was from the future, there was no doubt about it. And he knew that she would move on. He’d been there. On the other hand, the conclusion to his paranoia couldn’t be ignored. Telling her should not affect his chances of trying to fight the future. However, once she knew, chances were the computer would know.

He had to tell her, she had to listen. A whole world, twenty-five million people, were at stake. So many lives. His heart ached, as it pounded heavily like a locomotive.

Sarah sat down next to him. Unsure of what to do, this world was boring. Empty. Void of interesting experiences. She looked at James, as he looked back at her. Against his own good judgement, he vented his fears to his old friend:

“Sarah, I think you are being sent into oblivion by the very machine that controls your society. Can’t you see it, won't you understand?”

A gust of wind. The song of birds faded, cars went silent. And away.

Sarah looked at the empty building in front of her. She wanted to comment on it. She had some connection to the people living there. But she couldn't remember. The urge to tell someone, but next to her on the bench sat no one. She knew nobody here. In fact, she had a hard time remembering why she was here at all.

Ephemeral memories, maybe she was just caught in one.