The Time Trotter

It’s my sister’s birthday today, and this story is for her, but feel free to read it as everyone can find a piece of themselves in this story 🙂

Happy birthday sis!!!

THE TIME TROTTER

“This is it?” Nadine rolled her eyes in sheer disappointment as she pushed and rolled over the device to one side with her index finger. The three interlocking gears at the base were furnished with cobwebs. She pulled her hand back quickly and rubbed her fingers onto her t-shirt to ditch the possible presence of sticky web particles she’d nearly poked through.

“It is,” Jerzy said almost shouting. “All the indications are there, right in front of us…staring at our faces…”

Nadine fixed her gaze at the device once more and chuckled. “The only thing staring at our faces is most likely a hairy, little spider.”

Jerzy toppled the device back over and took out a small notebook from his back pocket. He started shuffling through the weathered pages.

“Your grandpa was nuts guys,” Leo said. He had helped himself onto a dusty chest in the far corner. “Old Felix’s attic is full of weird junk like this… and none of them is of any good.” He noticed Jerzy wasn’t listening, but carried on anyway: “Teleportation chamber? Clean energy generator? And now a time machine? Come on…”

“Here!” Jerzy shouted as he opened a page in the notebook and showed it to them. The diagram drawn on the page was no doubt the blueprint of the device that was lying on the table now; an antique pocket watch screwed to a sizeable wooden box with knobs and pegs on each side. The lidless cavity at the bottom of the box housed some kind of battery or a power source, impossible to identify in its current horrible condition. And wires… lots of wires coming out of the device in chaotic tangles. Each part of the device was labelled in almost illegible handwriting with the heading in all caps over the drawing: ‘The Time Trotter Prototype and its Parts’.

“So?” Leo still seemed uninterested.

“This,” Jerzy said as he picked up the device. “…is the only ‘junk’ we found in grandpa’s attic that came with a manual… including the blueprint and operating instructions!” He quickly skipped over a few pages with his free hand and showed Leo and Nadia the page titled: “Step by step instructions”.

“Step by step instructions? That doesn’t sound like something a scientist like grandpa would write,” Nadia said as she carefully took the device from Jerzy’s hand and placed it on the table before she bent over to examine the device more thoroughly. “Even the bedtime stories he used to tell us years ago were riddled with technical and scientific terms.”

“Not if the manual was intended to be found by the likes of us,” Jerzy protested waving the manual.

“Jerzy,” Nadia finally said. “You’re my brother and I love you for that… but a mechanical, antique pocket watch… it’s so outdated. I am not sure if it can even point out the right time, let alone travel.”

“All the early prototypes of great machines were… outdated at first. Think about the first mobile phones as thick as bricks, all the way to the smart phones of the modern era not much thicker than an ID card.”

“Ok genius, so how does it work?” Leo cut in with a hint of boredom in his tone. He was holding a ceramic jug with no labels on, possibly one of the scattered, ordinary junk in the attic with no superpowers allocated by Nadia and Jerzy’s granddad.

Jerzy was already on it, finger lining the relevant step on the manual. “Place the device on a steady surface,” he read aloud and checked whether his sister followed the first step. The device was indeed on the table, Jerzy just pressed hard on one corner of the table to see if the legs were even. It didn’t budge.

“Next, we press the stem until it clicks,” Jerzy read before pointing out the sticking metal piece on top of the watch. Nadia pressed it hard and they all heard the clicking sound. The hands started spinning at an incredible speed in opposite directions until they stopped, displaying five past four.

Jerzy quickly checked his phone and to his expectations the time was exactly the same as what the pocket watch was claiming it was.

“That was weird,” Nadia said as she looked at her own wristwatch. “Now what?”

“Look! It started ticking…” Jerzy was astonished to his limits. He kept on reading. “Pull the stem out and start turning it in the desired destination: Counter clockwise for the past, and clockwise for the future.” He put the manual back into his pocket and rushed to the device. He got hold of the stem in no time. He pulled it slightly out and began turning it counter clockwise… allegedly into the past.

After a couple of turns, he stopped. “This shouldn’t be the way,” he thought. The pocket watch read twenty past two, but as soon as he released the stem, it went back to the original time. A tiny spider started scurrying away to safety… towards the absence of mechanical tampering.

“You just scared off the operator,” Leo said laughing as the spider found new shelter under the junk posing as the clean energy generator.

“No,” Nadia said. “The time on my watch also went back a couple of hours, but it’s back to normal now. Did we really go back in time?”

Jerzy shook his head. “I don’t know,” was all he could say.

At that moment, Leo smashed the ceramic jug in his hand by throwing it to the floor. “I have an idea,” he said. “Just try again, but go slow…super slow.”

Jerzy was at the wheel again. He started turning the stem in the same direction as before. Weirdly enough, he could take back the seconds which shouldn’t have been possible… Seconds at a time…

The smashed tiny bits of the jug started moving towards each other until they slowly started forming the original, unscathed jug. The pieces were sticking together on the floor with no indication of having been smashed before. When the jug was complete, it slowly started rising in mid-air and moved towards Leo’s open hand… the one that smashed it seconds ago… or the one that will smash it seconds later.

Jerzy let go off the stem in sheer joy, but now the time went back to its original position and they all had to witness the jug being smashed again in fast forward.

Nadia pulled out the manual out of Jerzy’s back pocket and quickly skimmed through it to the very last page. “Time is never steady, it can flow in both directions… but it’s intended to go only forward to avoid confusion and chaos. I invented the ‘time trotter’ for the sole purpose of providing myself tiny comforts like taking back time a couple of minutes before I made a huge mistake or travelling forward to avoid waiting hours for my favourite evening show. But even then, the need to hold the stem in an upright position was never worth the trouble. Time catches up in the end.” Nadia put the manual back into Jerzy’s pocket before mumbling “I’m outta here,” to herself as she left. Leo soon followed.

Jerzy spent the next couple of months experimenting with the device. He found out that he was stuck in the attic as he couldn’t take the device with him, he could never find a steady surface to allow the device to work elsewhere. All the unlabeled junk around him started to make sense now. The old TV unit in one corner, the bathtub and the toilet in the other with complete plumbing. The browned out mattress, too. Their grandpa lived nearly all his life here.

Just as Jerzy was about to give up, he found an old photo album buried deep in the shelves. The photos were of his childhood, Nadia and him as toddlers, grandpa and his youth… Something was strange… really strange… as the young grandpa Felix looked exactly the same as Leo in the present. He couldn’t stop now… there was a way… he needed to find it.. just like grandpa!

Morals of the story:

Stick to the present… don’t burden your life with the past and thus stop living the present, the moment. Same with the future in a way… Long live carpe diem.
Most things that seem complex at first like the time trotter device with lots of pegs, knobs and wires, can work with much less. Don’t scare yourself with possible obstructions that may arise in achieving your dreams.
Leo, in fact, isn’t the younger version of Felix, but we like making connections between unrelated things to support what we really want. Felix Leo!!! Even the photo Jerzy found had little resemblance to his grandpa’s youth but that’s how our minds work if we are inclined to believe in something. We only see what we want to see.
Family is important… but how you perceive family members and how they affect you is vital…

Urban Sounds, the Constant Noise and the Longing for Silence in Cities

Constantly humming engines each tasked for humanity’s various comforts, concerts where the pointless cheering of the audience surpasses the actual music being played, people shouting at each other for no good reason… the list goes on.

The world is getting more and more noisy each passing day. Naturally occurring sounds are much less heard and man-made clamor starts taking up most of our daily lives, especially in urban areas… It rains outside but frequent car honks replace the sound of raindrops. You cook but the soothing sound of crackling fire is almost always suppressed by a piece of metal or wood clashing into other cooking utensils in arrhythmic bursts of underestimated auditory disturbance. People downstairs argue in the loudest way possible about which side of the egg to pierce… the flat end wins by the power of extremely overused vocal chords.

We are living in a world where even complete silence is becoming white noise. When did we last enjoy watching the dumb night sky accompanied by silent but bright stars? The quiet of the sun rising over distant mountains? The soothing calmness of deep underwater? The mute work of art; a painting perhaps, telling us all kinds of stories silently if we have the imagination? The voiceless communication of two lovers carefully examining each other’s facial features while smiling occasionally (and sheepishly)?

The natural sounds on the other hand, add depth to whatever we are experiencing like condiments on fries… whether it’s sea gulls gawking over a deserted beach or logs crackling in a fireplace feeding it’s conqueror… but all these natural sounds have been exiting our lives silently, leaving their places to metallic, mechanic, digitized sounds.

Do you know how many words we have invented just to name all the different sounds that are being manufactured mechanically or electronically?

Whirring, buzzing, clanking, clinking, clicking, clunking, clattering, smashing, slamming, honking, ticking, banging, pinging, blipping, etc…

And add to this the fact that we use some words like “hissing” to describe escaping gas rather than the sound a slithering serpent makes.

Music has become the only cluster of man-made sounds that seem to work and change our moods for the better, but even so, it’s starting to decline in quality over the last couple of decades. More and more singers and bands pop out each year and soon forgotten… who could beat the satisfaction we got from the Beatles, the Doors, Queen, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Madonna, Aretha Franklin, Muddy Waters and all the Classical music composers that have fed our souls for years (or even centuries)…

Music is food for the soul, but it has become junk food lately… And just as junk food being bad for our physical health, bad music or the disturbing noises we hear everyday in our lives is equally bad for our mental health.

So, what can be done to enjoy the world without all the disturbing noises the modern life throws at us?

No, we may not get rid of our alarm clocks and replace them with roosters if we are urban dwellers, but we may still…

Refrain using shouting and yelling of any caliber as the main form of communication with others.
Allocate more funds to invent motors or machinery that make less sound.
Build more soundproof houses with thicker walls so that we won’t get to hear the neighbor flush every time.
Spend more time in nature.
Make or encourage musicians to make better music.

Vampire Philosophy: Thought Shard no:411, On God and Religion…

Throughout history, philosophers have been tackling problems relating to a variety of subjects like existence, society, political theory, ethics, values, art, epistemology etc. As most of philosophy is directly questioning aspects of human life and its relations to other matters like the ones mentioned earlier, it can be objective only up to a degree as we are all human after all. What we lack is total objectivity, which can only be possible by viewing these matters from a completely different perspective; a non-human one. This series of texts (recordings) attempts to question us from a unique perspective with a vampiric touch to all matters that matter to us…

Here goes…

“Greetings Human!

The crystal shard you’ve just found is one of the many thought shards belonging to the Strigoi; the vampires as you commonly name us and its purpose is to transfer our philosophy to you when you have evolved enough to understand it. The crystal thought shards were recorded hundreds of years ago and possess the capacity of adapting to your current understanding by accumulating data from its surroundings as time passes and updating themselves in a lexical and intellectual manner to make a smooth transfer of our philosophy, making it a version you may comprehend if you have an open mind. I am Adonis Loscemus of Cumae. This is thought shard number 411, recorded in 1158 AD, based on our perception of God and religion.

Mankind, or better known and labelled as “Sophisticated cattle”, by our kind – Strigoi, has a concrete belief the whole universe was created by God. One god for everything! A single entity capable of creating all life itself; from lichens, flora and animals, to even us vampires as well as all the way to beings of other galactic realms. The belief in favor of existence of one god is irrelevant at this point. As you might have guessed, the human race is just cattle to feed upon for most Strigoi. The question I want to pose is, if there’s God for you, is it the same one as your cattle’s? Do our sophisticated cattle believe their cattle have a god of their own? Like…

The sheep god?
The cow king?
The Parthenon of calves?

Or are your cattle atheists?
Can creations that do not have the capacity of sparking a belief in their minds be held responsible and labelled as heretics?

As for us, Strigoi deists believe that “mankind” was created by the one and only God to feed the Strigoi, but that’s surely not what the humankind believes; to be created just to be consumed by a superior race can’t be the God’s great plan. But, humans have no trouble believing that sheep exist solely for that reason.

You see yourselves as God’s children and pray and worship God on a regular basis, yet as the biological offspring of your mundane parents, you never think of praying and worshiping them. Just a bit of love, following their teachings and being a good person is more than enough. Are you showing off to be in the good books of God? And if God sees everything, don’t you think your true intentions are not as honest?

You build houses of God for a display of your religion’s power. Yet, isn’t the whole world, and the nature surrounding it, God’s house? Not to mention you believe in one God but multiple religions… all fighting for different versions of the same glorified outcome.

You shall not kill… unless it’s in the name of God…
Then, starting wars and taking lives that God forbade, suddenly becomes a cleansing.

The notion of God exists for us Strigoi too, but it’s far away from what you perceive now. You lack the commonsense of seeing everything on a greater scale. If God is the creator of the whole universe, why downscale and limit the divine just to Earth.

The next thought shard can be found in the Lascaux cave inside the borders of modern France.

The end of transfer…”

Abortion of the Inner Child

We are born as small, cute and cuddly creatures; totally naked as there’s nothing to hide or be ashamed of, in this new, alien world. Soon as we start growing up, we display our emotions in the forms of genuine laughters or cries as honesty is always default at earlier ages. We are amazed by fireworks, cartoons etc. and believe in fairies, angels, monsters…

As children, we have huge dreams although our under-grown bodies have very limited capabilities. We are taught how to poop for instance. We think we can accomplish anything, but we are never given a chance. Our dreams get older and wither much faster than our bodies and brains.

Just as we reach our golden ages, we find out that we have to go to school and blend with the society and its unspoken rules. Just like all the junk in Pandora’s box, school teaches us useful stuff like reciting the periodic table!, as well as what’s right according to them and how to lie. All the contents of the education box are unleashed into our spongy, egg-shelled minds. Still, it never teaches us how to make deep, honest connections with others and be happy in life.

Late school era friendships start relying on selfish and personal interests. Most of us have friends so that we can show the world we are better than our buddies. We become jealous beings which will actually be the force that drives us into struggling to achieve so-called success in later life.

We graduate. We get jobs, routine becomes our thing. We work hard to afford things we don’t really need. We get bored and boring at the same time and start judging the few people, who are still clinging onto their dreams and inner child, as being immature and not acting their age. Perhaps it’s the big ball of fury and jealousy they have against us (Yes, I am with child) just because they have had an untimely abortion of their inner child.

We finally reach an age when most people expect us to die. It’s only then, we revert back to our childhood and do stuff which is considered stupid by the norms of the modern society. Luckily, old age is a great excuse to be truly ourselves just like back when we were children. But, in fact we have missed a whole chunk (the long, middle part) of our lives. The inner child has been reborn but sadly it doesn’t have much time now as it’s connected to our physical bodies. We never die alone in the end.

Magic ceased to exist for most people long ago whereas it’s all around us… just give a long hug to an upset person without uttering gibberish like “I know what you feel” or talk to your plants daily and observe the change. We are all magicians if we believe we are.

So, next time you see a child disguised in an adult meat suit,

…helplessly trying to tie their trainers…

Or…

…gaping with awe to their surroundings in a toddler’s toy shop…

Or…

…smiling upon listening to a well-known fairy tale they had heard 100 times before…

Or…

…cooking in the messiest way possible…

Just look them in the eye and hug them.

Love is all we need after all.

The Illusion of Freedom

Freedom exists in…

… schoolbooks,

… dictionaries,

… fairy tales,

… video games,

… dreams,

… in the little daily choices we make, like having a pizza for lunch or going for a burger… and that’s only if our dietary restrictions allow us…

For more complex choices , the society we’ve been forced to live in by so called ‘free will’ makes the decisions…

With friendly imperatives starting with “Don’t…”

“…wear that…”
“…eat that…”
“…drink (that)…”
“…smoke (that)…”
“…be different…”
“…be weird, people are watching…”

All the demonstrative ‘that’ chunks uttered above vaguely indicate that they were actually remote choices of both the wrong-doer and their angelic companion bound by the unspoken rules of the society we may feel so detached from.

Most of us have the illusion of ‘being free as birds’, but the question is “Are birds really free?”

“Are they?”

They can fly, but so can we… by planes…

And that sums about everything they can do freely. They can’t swim, dive, run, write, make instrumental music, paint or have a pizza takeout etc.

So, why does it feel like they are the free ones?

Connections…

No matter what material it’s made from, any kind of chain is tough to break apart as each link supports each other by touch…

Even the most expensive sattelite TV is useless when not powered up through its power cable leading to the outlet. The power it needs to operate surges along the line…

A subway station is useless on its own. A train going nowhere isn’t the best travel option for physical journeys…

Just as the things mentioned above, people need connections to support each other, operate, function or even get somewhere in life.

We are born alone (even twins take turns during birth) and we die alone (even in mass, freak accidents) but it’s up to us to have connections throughout the longer and the duller stages of life.

There’s one little setback though; not everyone is compatible. You can’t just plug your phone charger into your nostrils (or anyone else’s for that matter) and expect it to power up.

To find the right people to click, just be yourself, do crazy things together, and be totally honest. Most will run away, but the ones who stay, will be attached to you for life.

A Touch of Existence

At extremely rare times, especially when you start to think friendship is an empty shell, love is just for the show and every other relationship relies on mutual greed, someone really special pops right into your life and once again restores your faith in humanity.

But, how?

How does that special person come into existence?

Can it be magic?

Hardly. As magic is all about spells, dragons, rituals and enchantments in long forgotten languages.

Fate?

Nope. Fate is a way of escape for the hopeless to justify the doings of life or what they haven’t done. It also promotes negativity beyond its surface.

Divine intervention?

See Fate above. Minus the negativity.

Sheer luck?

Not really. Luck is highly associated with unexpected financial growth in our era (and again with no personal effort involved).

Whatever the reason might be, that special one will always find you…guide you through life as if magic, fate, God’s intervention and sheer luck, are all working together in a weird combination.

In my whole life, such people (angels?) penetrated right into my egg-shelled shield at the rightest times. One goes away and another one comes right in like changing shifts with none of them ever disappearing from my life.

I love you all…

Thank you for existing.

CAST : (In Order of Appearance)

R.D

E.T (Not the alien)

A.D

M.K

A.U

A.U (Not a typo, another one)

D.C.Y

B.B (Special thanks to her)

P.B

P.O

B.K

and finally

A.G

Stay existing…

Roses in a desert

Sometimes you just wander through an endless desert called life… Heat is intense and everything is far from being pleasent. Your constant sweating drowns you… in the slowest way possible. Drowning at a place where there’s no water. It’s hell on Earth without a parole… and you seem to be sentenced for life. Then, you come across a single red rose in the middle of the desert. It’s out of place but you don’t care… you realize that even the wildest dreams can come true and it has nothing to do with faith. It is rare but possible… like diseases that hit one in a million and you’re the sole winner….or loser. There are many more roses in the desert… oases…where there is water, too. Keep going or else you will be stuck stampeding your own footprints and you’ll sink…

Get away with crime and make yourself and everyone else happy

The human kind has always had a darker side. A blotch in the soul fueled by violence, greed, jealousy, pride… and such. Our souls have long been contaminated. Perhaps, that’s why it stinks when we fart; it’s just the scent of our rotting spirit trapped inside a prison called ribcage. We all have moments when our evil deeds emerge… wanting just to be pure evil.

Well, good news!

There are ways to feed our dark side, be the evil incarnate and still get away with it even when we are caught.

Here goes:

1. Kill….. time with people you love. It really doesn’t matter what you do. Being together should suffice on its own…

2. Steal….. someone’s heart. Love is still the best medicine out there for our souls even if we do stupid things or it ends badly. Live for the experience.

3. Break all the rules….. of society. You are defined only by you and yourself only.

4. Lie….. on the meadows, watching clouds linger by slowly and spend time alone, just thinking. Sometimes, you only need yourself.

5. Hack…… life itself. Try to find easier and more convenient solutions for any problem you come accross.

6. Poach…… eggs in a frying pan. Nothing beats starting the day with a good breakfast.

7. Kidnap….. your own inner child and never let go until you die.

8. Bribe…. your loved ones with soft kisses and hugs as often as possible.

Soothe your demon…

The Alien Society

aliens

No more wars… Eternal peace on Earth… Is it even remotely possible? Not every human is fond of wars, as nothing good ever comes out of them. But, most are… Perhaps, not directly vouching for wars, but admiring violence in forms of entertainment. In ancient Rome, it was the gladiators and in modern times, through films, video games and paintball (The last one was a joke). Perhaps, that’s because we humans are ultimately divergent amongst each other; just like different species trying to live with each other. Imagine two armies of hedgehogs on a battlefield, with both sworn to crush the other or a huge field of sun flowers staring at each other with intentions of gutting (perhaps, this is not the right word to use for sun flowers) its opponent. It will never happen as they are the same species. But, humans? Have we evolved backwards on the way or are we different species amongst us indeed? I believe some of us don’t belong here and never have… Don’t the stars on a pitch black night amaze you? If yes, is it because you are into astronomy or simply… Do you feel homesick?

Some people always feel alone although they are surrounded by people (but of different species) all the time. We are constantly searching for fellow-minded people, but we are stuck on an alien world and bound by gibberish rules invented by the natives called “society”. The anagram of “society” is “yeticos”; a word that does not mean anything… just like the concept of society.

Reach out…

Or…

We are doomed…

Barış Cansevgisi

Author

Tag: people