whiteboard, about to stand up, when he hesitates.
‘The first time I saw you jump from standing …’ I point as I say it. ‘You were behind the couch.’
‘Oh … okay. Good.’ He heads around to the back of the couch, takes a breath, and disappears.
I’m already sitting beside the whiteboard, my shorts and shirt back on, when Mason comes back.
He wobbles then cracks up as he regains his balance. ‘This is amazing.’
‘Do you find it easier to jump?’ I ask. ‘Now that you’ve heard … like what you’re going to learn?’
‘Definitely. But you know what helps more than anything?’ He’s still standing behind the couch, his chest flushed from jumping. ‘The way you describe being lost in the sinkhole and then making it out … that freaking terrifies me. And now I hear it’s the key to rewinding your timeline? It’s spinning me out, to be honest.’ He leans his forearms against the back of the couch. ‘The very thing that used to scare me most, it’s exactly what I’ve been searching for …’
I lean forward. ‘So you think you understand what happened to me?’
‘Not for sure. I’m still getting my head around it. But I –’
‘Explain it to me?’
‘Okay.’ Mason pulls on his jeans and comes round to sit on the couch. ‘Time travels forwards, right? Rivers flow in one direction. It’s no accident that we only learnt to go forwards when we skip. That’s the way the world works. People are born, we live, we die. It doesn’t happen in reverse.’
‘Like the domino effect?’ I shuffle on my knees until I’m closer to the couch and sit on the floor with my arm resting on the seat next to Mason.
‘Sure. And I don’t think your body physically travelled back in time. I suspect that it reappeared in the same timeline as normal, but is perhaps in a coma or struck with amnesia or something. But here’s the thing …’ Mason repositions himself on the couch so that he’s facing me. ‘Time doesn’t exist inside the sinkhole. So it’s not ruled by cause and effect. That makes me wonder: once you lost your way, you weren’t trapped by everyday perceptions anymore. You weren’t held back by your expectations of what’s possible.’
‘So getting lost, forgetting who I was … helped me come back here?’
‘Yeah, at least, that’s what I suspect. When you boil down the equations of Relative Time Theory, time stops being a straight line. It isn’t a single river, exactly, more like a whole network of streams. Each moment contains an infinite number of possibilities. And it’s our choices that make one of those possibilities become a single actuality.’
‘Right, ah … okay.’ Not that I get any of that. ‘So … the blue goop in the injection. You’re saying that didn’t make this happen?’
‘No, the opposite. I’m saying that a rewind might never have been possible without it. Now that I hear what’s happened to you, I think our perceptions of reality would always stand in the way.’ He slips off the couch, beside me. ‘I need to find out what was in that syringe, and how it worked. And Scout … you hold the key.’
Mason pulls a folded whitesheet from a drawer under the coffee table and grabs a pen. ‘We need to work out what was in that drug. Tell me everything you remember about that final skip.’
Together we go over it all again, somehow ending up with more questions than answers. What was in the drug? What was it designed to do? The way the police reacted when Mason slumped, I don’t think they expected that to happen. Did they plan to send me here, or was it an experiment gone wrong?
The worst part is that, as far as we know, the drug doesn’t even exist yet. From what we can work out, the police here don’t even know that time skipping is possible. Mason’s been searching for clues about Relative Time Theory in their servers but no matter how deep he hacks in he can’t find any hint that government scientists are studying it at all.
The
‘The first time I saw you jump from standing …’ I point as I say it. ‘You were behind the couch.’
‘Oh … okay. Good.’ He heads around to the back of the couch, takes a breath, and disappears.
I’m already sitting beside the whiteboard, my shorts and shirt back on, when Mason comes back.
He wobbles then cracks up as he regains his balance. ‘This is amazing.’
‘Do you find it easier to jump?’ I ask. ‘Now that you’ve heard … like what you’re going to learn?’
‘Definitely. But you know what helps more than anything?’ He’s still standing behind the couch, his chest flushed from jumping. ‘The way you describe being lost in the sinkhole and then making it out … that freaking terrifies me. And now I hear it’s the key to rewinding your timeline? It’s spinning me out, to be honest.’ He leans his forearms against the back of the couch. ‘The very thing that used to scare me most, it’s exactly what I’ve been searching for …’
I lean forward. ‘So you think you understand what happened to me?’
‘Not for sure. I’m still getting my head around it. But I –’
‘Explain it to me?’
‘Okay.’ Mason pulls on his jeans and comes round to sit on the couch. ‘Time travels forwards, right? Rivers flow in one direction. It’s no accident that we only learnt to go forwards when we skip. That’s the way the world works. People are born, we live, we die. It doesn’t happen in reverse.’
‘Like the domino effect?’ I shuffle on my knees until I’m closer to the couch and sit on the floor with my arm resting on the seat next to Mason.
‘Sure. And I don’t think your body physically travelled back in time. I suspect that it reappeared in the same timeline as normal, but is perhaps in a coma or struck with amnesia or something. But here’s the thing …’ Mason repositions himself on the couch so that he’s facing me. ‘Time doesn’t exist inside the sinkhole. So it’s not ruled by cause and effect. That makes me wonder: once you lost your way, you weren’t trapped by everyday perceptions anymore. You weren’t held back by your expectations of what’s possible.’
‘So getting lost, forgetting who I was … helped me come back here?’
‘Yeah, at least, that’s what I suspect. When you boil down the equations of Relative Time Theory, time stops being a straight line. It isn’t a single river, exactly, more like a whole network of streams. Each moment contains an infinite number of possibilities. And it’s our choices that make one of those possibilities become a single actuality.’
‘Right, ah … okay.’ Not that I get any of that. ‘So … the blue goop in the injection. You’re saying that didn’t make this happen?’
‘No, the opposite. I’m saying that a rewind might never have been possible without it. Now that I hear what’s happened to you, I think our perceptions of reality would always stand in the way.’ He slips off the couch, beside me. ‘I need to find out what was in that syringe, and how it worked. And Scout … you hold the key.’
Mason pulls a folded whitesheet from a drawer under the coffee table and grabs a pen. ‘We need to work out what was in that drug. Tell me everything you remember about that final skip.’
Together we go over it all again, somehow ending up with more questions than answers. What was in the drug? What was it designed to do? The way the police reacted when Mason slumped, I don’t think they expected that to happen. Did they plan to send me here, or was it an experiment gone wrong?
The worst part is that, as far as we know, the drug doesn’t even exist yet. From what we can work out, the police here don’t even know that time skipping is possible. Mason’s been searching for clues about Relative Time Theory in their servers but no matter how deep he hacks in he can’t find any hint that government scientists are studying it at all.
The
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