Visible Wear

April 23, 2019 – 5:03:57 AM

“And in future news tonight, the following six people will win the 12.4 million dollar lottery jackpot next week – Gerald…”

I’ve read a lot of science fiction, and I don’t think anyone ever predicted that time travel would be invented by the press. Still, I’m not actually surprised that it was.

October 19, 2013 – the New York Times slips in a mention of a traffic accident yet to happen on the second to last page of the main section. Several people call them on it and the Times passes it off as a misprint. One week later a package delivery man on his way to an illicit rendezvous runs into a stalled ice-cream truck, resulting in the grisly ice-cream related demise of one frozen treat vendor — exactly as the Times had printed it.

At that moment the cat was out of the bag. By the very next issue the New York Times began the ‘Upcoming News’ section of their paper and began running stories up to a week before they would take place. This put to test the theory that the future was linear and unchangeable as some unfortunate people would read about their own fates and try to alter the outcomes. Sometimes they could, in which case the Times would print a retraction, but other events proved themselves more stubborn to change.

To be more clear, the device used by the Times wasn’t exactly time travel. That is to say, nobody actually traveled anywhere. It was more of a time window as events of the future could be observed, anywhere at anytime up to a week in the future. But experiments to transfer objects to those future locations always resulted in those objects seemingly ceasing to exist. Therefore, the Times’ time machine would remain only for the purpose of peering into the future and knowing where to send their reporters to be on scene for breaking news.

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that other news outfits had also been working on their own time travel devices. The Times had filed a patent on their device soon after its existence was revealed and similar technologies had to be altered sufficiently so as not infringe on the patent. Within the next half decade, every major newspaper, broadcast news program, and Internet news site, had their own version of the future news running.

The ’scoop’ was redefined once the New York Times had their time machine placing their reporters just where every story was about to take place. Now the race was on to stretch time travel farther and farther out in a bid to take the lead on the future news scoops. The Times had the lead but the Wall Street Journal finished strongest with their “In Three Months” columns, which could actually go so far as three months, five days, and two hours in to the future.

Of course, it would come as no surprise that world leaders had strong interests in time travel. Mostly, politicians wanted to ensure the outcomes of their endeavors whether they be elections, bills, or even wars. Ultimately, however, their knowledge of the future proved one of those things that defied most change. Winners would win, losers would lose, and that held true throughout the spectrum of things that held political interest.

So it remained to reporting the news that time travel remained useful.

As strange as it seemed in the beginning, when news was being delivered fresh days before it would happen, it has become part of our daily existence now. Like a new townhouse complex where once there was a scrap yard, it simply became one of those things we quickly grew to accept as normal. The adaptiveness of humans is one of those uncanny things, that we can take something that shortly before didn’t exist and then turn around to think it had always been there.

How many of us can honestly say we don’t pick up the morning paper, flip on the TV news, or load up a news blog, and take for granted the events taking place in the next three months. Who among us is at all surprised anymore when we read that next week a car crash will claim the life of some celebrity, or that political unrest will shake up a whole nation two months from now.

Not me, that’s for sure.

Well, that’s it for me this week.

Signed,

Time Skipper

Just another random voice on the Internets.

p.s. Remember to look both ways when you’re crossing streets twelve days from now. Who knows — it may make a difference.

The dragonfly flitted within mere inches of my face, it’s translucent wings catching the sunlight in a neon display of violet, green, and pink. Its flight path took it to a nearby tree branch where it hovered a moment before gently alighting upon the branch, folding its wings back and settling in.

I let go of the spray head on the garden hose and lowered it gently down. It was a hot summer and yard work was a good choice for summer vacation work. Nobody wanted to be outside in this heat, much less working in their yard, but at the same time nobody wanted to have anything less than a green lawn in this little slice of suburbia. I didn’t particularly care for the work either, but it was earning me good money and I needed a car for senior year and college after.

The biggest downfall of the work though, aside from the scorching heat, was the incredible boredom of it all. Even the most remotely interesting distraction, well, distracted me. Right at this moment it was a slender, long-winged, little dragon.

Fixing my eyes on its current position I cautiously stepped closer to the resting insect. I walked forward softly and wondered if doing so made much of a difference. It may have though, as I got to within a foot of it, and again saw those colors reflected in its wings.

Satisfied that it wasn’t going to take off on me, I said, “Hey little dragonfly, tell me, where did all the dragons go?”

“What do you mean where did all the dragons go? You’re looking at one right now,” it responded right back.

Well, that was unexpected.

I blinked a few times and looked again at the dragonfly, only to realize it was, in fact, looking directly back at me. I blinked several more times in response.

“Hey, you got something in your eyes, maybe?” it said. Or rather, he said, as it was a male voice, however squeaky.

“I uh, I uh, I uh,” I answered.

Great, here I was with the greatest scientific find since, well, okay, so science clearly isn’t my strong suite, but what would it matter if I had a talking dragonfly…

Wait a minute, what did it say?

Wait, did I say that out loud?

No, it’s not answering.

“What did you say?” I asked my meal ticket.

“What are you, dense?” it said. “I said, you’re looking at a dragon right now.”

“But you’re tiny. And a bug.” I wielded my reply like a crushing sledgehammer of logic.

“Yeah, and you’re big and an idiot,” came its reply.

“Okay, sorry, wrong foot,” I started over. “It’s just that you’re nothing like the dragons I know about. The huge kind that breathe fire, terrorize villages, and kidnap princesses so knights can come kill you and be a big hero afterwards.”

“You’re right about that much, I’m definitely not one of those.” it answered. “The kind of dragon you described would’ve been more like my great-great-great-grandfather’s time.”

“So what happened?” I asked and the dragonfly flitted its wings, possibly in annoyance, and I regretted the little laugh I had as I asked my question.

“Pfft, magic is what happened. You know Merlin?” the dragonfly asked and I nodded. “Well, that guy was a load. He couldn’t do squat, just impressed the king and knights with a little hocus bogus. That’s all he could do, or so we thought.”

“Oh?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.

“Yeah, the king and his people weren’t exactly taken with us dragons and so he ordered Merlin to get rid of us,” it replied.

“And Merlin cast a spell which turned dragons into bugs?” I exclaimed.

The dragonfly flitted its wings again and walked a few steps before stopping.

“That’s the story I’ve been told,” it said. “Not exactly the height of our existences, you know?”

“No, I guess not,” I answered. “And you don’t know any way to change yourselves back?”

“Well, there is one thing that might work,” it started. “But I’d need a human to help me.”

“Hey, I’m a human!” I shouted my revelation and I thought I saw the dragonfly shake its head.

“Okay, here’s what you’ve gotta do. Take a couple steps back, say ‘Aye Mah Bud Hed’ three times, and run as hard as you can at me. You have to do it just right or the magic won’t transfer over to me,” it said. “Alright?”

“Alright,” I said, taking a couple steps back. “Let’s hope this works.”

“Aye Mah Bud Hed, Aye Mah Bud Hed, Aye Mah Bud Hed.”

I repeated the magic words and added a battle cry as I charged the little dragon. At the last moment as I neared it the dragonfly took off and I collided hard with the tree it had just been on, falling back on my butt.

A roar of laughter erupted from the tree and I thought for a moment that I had screwed up and cast my spell on the tree, bringing it to life. That theory died soon after though, as the laughter died down to choking gasps and snorts and turned to words from the same voice as the dragonfly.

It said, “Oh, I can’t believe you fell for that. I left that transmitter in the tree hoping to scare the mailman or some pedestrian but I got you so good.”

I turned around on a hunch and saw a boy about ten or eleven in the window of the house I was just working at. He waved at me and held up a walkie talkie. He pressed a button and the voice came back again.

“By the way, you really are a butt head,” he said.

I shook my head and rubbed my tender forehead. This was going to be one long summer.

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