The Time Traveler's Almanac

I look over at Max, who has now stopped waving his arms and is examining me curiously. I walk over to him, pick him up and sit him on my hip. He stares impassively and I’m afraid he’ll cry.

“Hi Max,” I say quietly, and then turn to Genie, hoping that if I act naturally, he’ll feel comfortable. “Leila … she really should have talked to Dany.”

“Yeah, why didn’t she? I thought he was nice. And so pretty.” Her eyes sparkle mischievously.

“You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

“What?”

“One of the skip-girls that Dany was seeing – I think she’s pregnant.”

“No!”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. I nearly asked her but … it was awkward.”

Genie shakes her head: “He’ll never change, will he?”

“He’s okay,” I say, “He doesn’t really hurt…” I stop myself.

Max starts to cry and holds his arms out to Genie, who laughs. She takes him from me. Safe once more Max turns and frowns at me. I’m getting used to the frown.

“Don’t worry,” says Genie, “he’s like that with everyone.”

“Hey,” I say, “do you want to hear my new composition?”

“Sure,” she says.

“I got the idea from Mozart. It’s sort of a requiem.”

I walk over to the old computer in the corner of the room – my old computer. I start it up, touching its old keys lovingly.

Shortly afterwards the piece is playing, filling the room with the sound of deep voices and high strings. No complex beats but a few electronic noises fading in and out – I wanted to keep the classic feel. Genie and I sit on the couch together, Max on Genie’s lap, listening as the music fills the room around us. I close my eyes and listen as the voices come in, singing back at the past.

IN THE TUBE

E.F. Benson

E.F. Benson was an English writer best known for his ghost stories and gothic tales. Writers like China Miéville have expressed great admiration for Benson, who was not just prolific but also a clever and sometimes profound writer. He was greatly influenced by J.W. Dunne’s theories about time. Dunne put forth a theory that time possessed a geography that could be explored. “In the Tube” was Benson’s exploration of this idea, first published in 1923 in Hutchinson’s Magazine.

“It’s a convention,” said Anthony Carling cheerfully, “and not a very convincing one. Time, indeed! There’s no such thing as Time really; it has no actual existence. Time is nothing more than an infinitesimal point in eternity, just as space is an infinitesimal point in infinity. At the most, Time is a sort of tunnel through which we are accustomed to believe that we are travelling.

“There’s a roar in our ears and a darkness in our eyes which makes it seem real to us. But before we came into the tunnel we existed for ever in an infinite sunlight, and after we have got through it we shall exist in an infinite sunlight again. So why should we bother ourselves about the confusion and noise and darkness which only encompass us for a moment?”

For a firm-rooted believer in such immeasurable ideas as these, which he punctuated with brisk application of the poker to the brave sparkle and glow of the fire, Anthony has a very pleasant appreciation of the measurable and the finite, and nobody with whom I have acquaintance has so keen a zest for life and its enjoyments as he. He had given us this evening an admirable dinner, had passed round a port beyond praise, and had illuminated the jolly hours with the light of his infectious optimism. Now the small company had melted away, and I was left with him over the fire in his study. Outside the tartoo of wind-driven sleet was audible on the window-panes, over-scoring now and again the flap of the flames on the open hearth, and the thought of the chilly blasts and the snow-covered pavement in Brompton Square, across which, to skidding taxicabs, the last of his other guests had scurried, made my position, resident here till to-morrow morning, the more delicately delightful. Above all there was this stimulating and suggestive companion, who, whether he talked of the great abstractions which were so intensely real and practical to him, or of the very remarkable experiences which he had encountered among these conventions of time and space, was equally fascinating to the listener.

“I adore life,” he said. “I find it the most entrancing plaything. It’s a delightful game, and, as you know very well, the only conceivable way to play a game is to treat it extremely seriously. If you say to yourself, ‘It’s only a game,’ you cease to take the slightest interest in it. You have to know that it’s only a game, and behave as if it was the one object of existence. I should like it to go on for many years yet. But all the time one has to be living on the true plane as well, which is eternity and infinity. If you come to think of it, the one thing which the human mind cannot grasp is the finite, not the infinite, the temporary, not the eternal.”

“That sounds rather paradoxical,” said I.

“Only because you’ve made a habit of thinking about things that seem bounded and limited.