Part 9 (2/2)
theorems, miscellaneous At some point in your life, this statement will be true: Tomorrow you will lose everything forever.
When it happens, this is what happens: I shoot myself.
He's waiting for me. Down there. The man who is going to kill me. The man I once was.
I know it happens, already happened to me, and yet, somehow, I have to stop it. I know, I know, I can't. But it's different when it's happening to you.
We're in the approach.
TAMMY arranges her pixels into a sad-faced clock.
11:46:00.
I have one minute left.
Feels like a month, maybe, but if you told me it was less, I'd believe you, and if you told me it was more, I would believe that, too.
I ask TAMMY to calculate the diameter of our path.
”I'm sorry?” she says, and I say I'm sorry, too, for everything and for not being better to her and all that good stuff. The fact that I'm in my last minute of life is making me mushy.
”No,” she says. ”Not I'm sorry like I'm always sorry. I'm sorry as in I don't understand your question.”
”Let me rephrase that,” I say. ”Objectively speaking, how long were we in the loop?”
”I'm afraid I still don't know what you mean.”
TAMMY makes a confused-face clock.
11:46:20.
”What is your problem?” I say. ”It's a simple question. How long has it been since we left?”
”The answer to the question of how long it has been since we left,” she says, ”is that we haven't left yet.”
”Oh my G.o.d,” I say. ”You're right.”
”You shot yourself, and then you jumped into the machine at eleven forty-seven a.m. that day. From there, you tried to skip ahead, go into the future, but when you did that, you encountered nothingness. There was no future. You hadn't been there yet. And you still haven't. Instead, you got shunted off into that temple, which is completely outside of time, and then your zombie mom gave you the creeps and you spazzed out.”
”I didn't spaz out.”
”You did, and then you got shuttled back into time, into the fatherson memory axis. Which is the past. Which means.”
”Which means.”
”Which means.”
”Which means what?”
”Sorry, I had too many programs running. Which means that, from the point in time at which you shot yourself, you haven't actually ever moved forward. Not one second. Not one moment.”
Holy Mother of Ursula K. Le Guin. She's right again.
”But I've aged, haven't I? Haven't I? Don't I have some way of proving it? Five o'clock shadow?” I inspect my face in the mirror.
”Have you eaten anything since jumping in here?”
I think about this for a second. ”I guess not,” I say. ”But wait, aha. I've talked to people!”
”Yeah? So?”
”So talking takes time.”
”Who have you talked to?”
”My zombie mom.”
”Not a real person. Also, exists on a plane outside of temporal existence.”
”Shuttle guy.”
”Doesn't exist in time.”
”My dad.”
”Those were memories. Not events. Also, that's the past. We're trying to figure out if you've moved at all into the future.”
Right. Hmm.
”I've been jabbering away with you.”
”I'm a computer program. We talk fast. Plus, more important, you talked to me inside this TM-Thirty-one. Which we've already established never moved forward in time after eleven forty-seven.”
”I talked to Phil.”
”Also a computer program. And again, you talked to him while inside this box.”
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