It is a pleasure to welcome back to the blog the splendidly talented dm gillis, conjurer of words, with an ability to spit out swearwords with the staccato sound of a machinegun. Grab a coffee, settle down and make time... for iTime.
iTime
by
dm gillis
~
June 24, 2013 ~
I
flinched as she reached across and brushed something off my cheek
with a balled up paper napkin.
“Just
a crumb,” she said.
“You’re
not my mother.”
“I
could be your grandmother.”
“You’re
not that either,” I said.
I
was starting to hate myself, for showing no respect.
We
were in a Robson Street coffee shop, where the owners had let artists
and photographers hang their overpriced works on the walls. I looked
around with mild contempt.
“Why’d
you choose this place,” I asked.
“It’s
a nice place.”
“I
need a drink. A bar would have been better.”
“You
drink too much.”
“How
would you know?”
“You
always did. Too much liquor, among other things.” She gave me a
maternal smile.
And
there it was. She was 80 years old, and I was 27. We’d only dated a
little while, but she knew me well. I’d never been so infatuated
with another person. It had been like torture, when we split. I
promised myself then that I would never allow myself to go through
anything like it again. Now there she sat, so damn old now. Was that
anger in her voice? Of course it was.
“Besides,”
she said, “you said on Facebook that I could choose the spot. You
were never big on keeping your word, were you?”
“Guess
not.”
“I
brought you something,” she said.
“I
don’t want anything.”
“Here
you are, nonetheless. Don’t worry. It’s really not a gift. Just a
reminder of different times.”
She
pulled a small, crumpled CHANEL bag out of her purse and pushed it
across the table. I looked at it for a moment. Michelle could be
hard, complicated, mean even. I grabbed the bag, opened it and took
out the contents: three boxes of Botox and a package of nicotine
patches, all of it still unopened. The boxes were yellow with age;
decades had passed. Yet I’d given them to her only the night
before.
“I
never bothered trying any of it,” she said. “The syringes are in
the bag as well.”
“Just
full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“Me
and you both,” she said. “Now I’m going outside to have a
cigarette. You can join me if you want.”
She
shuffled out of the coffee shop with her cane, and stood smoking on
the boulevard. I hated watching the elderly smoke, the way their
failing bodies struggle. Then, for a split second and without
warning, her eyes met mine. A critical beat in time that summed up so
much. She smiled crookedly, then turned and walked away. It’d been
a brief meeting, briefer than I’d hoped.
Knowing
that you’re incapable of committing to a lifelong relationship with
another person is a painful thing, and lonely. But I’d always
feared the organic flow of time, with all its consequence. I could
never standby and watch a lover age and decay.
A
photograph of Michelle at her finest was the best I could do. Taken
on some New Year’s Eve long ago. Just before she left her apartment
for a party. Looking every bit like a dime store Audrey Hepburn. That
was the picture I had of her, framed and sitting on my desk. She was
young, and stunning. How could she have grown so old over night?
*
* * * *
It
was in 1955 that I first learned that I’m a dirty dog. A woman
named Edna told me so on May 23rd of that year. I’ll explain
how I got to 1955 in a minute.
“Tucker,”
she said. “You were supposed to meet me at the Commodore Ballroom
at 9:30 p.m. last night with a bottle of rye and your
dancing shoes on. I waited for you until 10:45, and you never showed
up. So I went to the White Lunch to cry in my coffee, and there you
were with another girl. You’re a dirty dog.”
I
decided then that women named Edna were too much for me. Their
expectations were far too high, and a guy like me didn’t have a
hope of delivering.
And
it wasn’t just the Ednas of the world, either. During the month of
May, 1955, I swore off all Debbies, Gildas, Sallys, Daphnes, Jo Annes
and Joannes, Robertas, Francines and Amelias, for similar reasons.
But in the end, it was Michelle who really made me want to return to
2013.
She
filled out a blouse better than any of them. That’s how I fell.
After
all, it was the fashion and the look of the time that drew me to the
period between 1955 and 1965 in the first place. Women gave up on
glamour after that. They forgot how to dress. Whining all the while
about uncomfortable foundation garments, and the tricky intricacies
of stockings and garter belts. Oh, how the shoes pinched, they
complained. And heaven forbid they should watch their damn weight.
All they seemed to want to wear after 1965 was tennis shoes and
potato sacks. Think of Mamma Cass in a muumuu – see what I mean? I
absolutely shudder.
Now
think of your average Vogue models, say 1957, with their wasp waists
and ample topsides suitably accentuated by expertly engineered and
constructed brassieres and corsets, full skirts and seamed stockings.
It was stunning.
They
sat in twos at stylish tables gossiping over endless cups of
calorie-free, gloriously diuretic black coffee, daintily chain
smoking appetite suppressing Benson & Hedges 100s, allowing the
scent of the tobacco smoke to mingle lusciously with their CHANEL No.
5. They wore perfectly coordinated accessories, like gloves and hats.
It all matched exquisitely. Women were works of art in the fifties.
Suggest to a woman that she present herself thusly in 2013, and
prepare yourself to be mocked by some half-done quail who’s
mortgaged the farm to look like she’s dressed her chunky self out
of a Salvation Army dumpster.
But
wait. I said it was how Michelle filled out a blouse that made me
fall for her, but that isn’t completely true. There was definitely
something else. An intangible feminine quality that’s different in
each woman. The item a woman will bring out and subtly fling at a man
when the moment is right, like a barbed harpoon delivering nearly
equal amounts of agony and ecstasy. Once it’s in, it’s nearly
impossible to remove. Michelle had let me have it big time, no mercy.
Now
you may be asking how I got from 2013 to 1955? I travelled there of
course, no big thing. It’s really just kind of like hopping into
your Jetta, and driving to the mall. Did I go back in time just to
ogle women in general? Well yes, but more specifically there was
Audrey Hepburn.
I
remember seeing her for the first time in Sabrina with
Humphrey Bogart. I must have been eight years old when I first saw
the movie on VHS. My jaw dropped the moment she walked onto the
screen, and I haven’t been the same since. It was my ultimate goal
to see Audrey live and in person in 1955. That was her best year.
Michelle
looked an awful lot like Audrey Hepburn. She didn’t have Audrey’s
diction or carriage, and I doubt Audrey was a gum chewer, but
Michelle had the big dark eyes and the modest chin that followed the
little nose up into the air whenever she was confronted by a slight
or something she didn’t understand. That’s how I got stuck in
1955 Vancouver, and never got to fly to Hollywood to see A.H. in
person. Instead I saw Michelle in a night club and that was it.
Michelle
Gibner was twenty-one, and a very junior secretary at Maxim Forest
Products when we met. She was from the east end of Vancouver,
and had struggled to complete secretarial school. She confined her
reading to pulpy American scandal rags and second rate glamour
magazines. But she dressed and did her hair like Audrey. She knew
what she was doing. She was a real tomato.
But
as much as I like to obsess over Michelle, I think this might be the
time to explain the discovery of the human ability to move
nonlinearly through time. And understand, I do this for purposes of
context only. Don’t try this at home.
Back
in the eighties when Steve Jobs was busily stealing from other
sources all of what would ultimately become Apple and Mac, he
stumbled across a quirky little algorithm developed in the Quantum
Physics Department at MIT by a pathologically introverted young woman
named Nancy Limpinchuck.
Nancy
Limpinchuck’s time flex equation first appeared on a Burger King
napkin that Limpinchuck had left behind in a computer science lab.
Those who remember, say that there was an endearing smear mustard
across the napkin upon which Nancy had scribbled her
masterpiece. For those first to see it, however, it was just another
tidbit of genius in a place where the genius ran thick and fast. It
was fascinating but still theoretical, nothing special.
Nancy wrote
a million of ‘em. She was brilliant and prolific. But once she
wrote out some small bit of earth shattering virtuoso brilliance on a
scrap of paper, it was all over. The thrill was gone, and she moved
onto the next. Only the conniving and malevolent mind of Steve Jobs
was able to recognise the algorithm for what it was. It came his way
via a classmate of Nancy Limpinchuck’s named Bruce, who followed
her around, picking up and inspecting her discarded scraps.
When
Jobs got his hands on it, he called it the iTime© code.
Nancy went
on to marry a Boston stockbroker named Floyd Nipslim. The
two of them did fairly well together until 1994, when Floyd got
caught with his hand in someone else’s cookie jar. When Floyd
realised he was going to do time over it, he took it hard. So one
night, after a completely depressing meeting with his lawyer, he came
home and shot Nancy where she sat working away on that day’s
New York Times cryptic crossword puzzle. She’d almost finished it,
too. Then he turned the gun on himself, and did what any right
thinking American in his position would do.
Now
this might seem like a digression, but it’s not. Because with Nancy
Nipslim nee Limpinchuck out of the picture, Jobs could do more than
just underhandedly hold on to her algorithm, secretly tucked away at
the bottom of his virtual sock drawer. Now he could take the iTime
code, and put it to use without having to give Nancy credit
or share any of the proceeds. You see, Nancy’s scribbling
provided mankind with its first practical insight into how time
endlessly twists around upon itself, and where all of the prime
jumping-off points are, and how to get to them. It was exactly what
the planet needed. Just think of all the grief, prevented.
Unfortunately,
Jobs sold a limited share in the algorithm to the highest bidder,
first chance he got. That happened to be Halliburton, for
$350,000,000. That’s right, $350,000,000. And when a Satanic pack
of corporate ogres like Halliburton pays out that kind of cash for a
share in a sticky, used Burger King napkin, you know it has to be
worth it.
Dick
Cheney and the boys used it first to determine the best way to pull
off 9/11, thereby reinvigorating the American Military Industrial
Complex that had suffered so tragically as a result of the planet’s
first Peace Dividend delivered under the Clinton administration.
Halliburton
continues to use it to this day to decide how best to squeeze every
possible tax dollar out of the citizenry through prolonging America’s
various shady and illegal military operations around the world. And,
thanks to the iTime code, every future war that the US plans to start
has been mapped out, scheduled and budgeted for right down to how
much money they’ll need to borrow from China, and the number of
beauty school dropouts required to keep the various arms of the
American military fully functioning.
Of
course, many other upper echelon bottom feeders have dashed in like
pigs to the time travel trough. Stock market speculators among them,
which is ironic considering Floyd’s ultimate plight. But there you
are; life’s unfair, and then you become orally intimate with a
snub-nosed pawnshop .38.
Now,
I said The Evil One Steve Jobs sold a share of Nancy’s
algorithm to Halliburton, which is true. But not before Hal Snimlings
tossed a digital spanner into the machinations of His Wickedness. Hal
Snimlings was a software designer who worked on the little known
Ocelot version of OS X. (Let’s face it, they were running out of
cats species to name it after.)
Hal
was a decent guy who recognised something criminally inelegant in his
boss, the man who ran Apple. Besides, Snimlings carried with him a
significant resentment for having been severely reprimanded for
installing pornographic Easter eggs into previous versions of OS X.
So when, one day, in what turned out to be an epic case of industrial
sabotage, Nancy’s equation mysteriously appeared in Hal
Snimlings’ inbox, put there by an Anonymous sender with complete
instructions, he knew he had his chance to shake things up. He
immediately installed it into the H Section of the OS X
Ocelot World Book Reference Suite, under the
heading How to Time Travel.
There
it sat in Beta limbo for nearly a whole year without being noticed,
until a review by some nameless systems manager revealed it. The
systems manager couldn’t identify it for what it was. He just knew
the code’s presence in the operating system was all wrong. He
brought this to the attention of some higher-ups, and they initiated
an investigation. Snimlings’ deed was uncovered, and he was snuffed
mob style in a back alley in Pasadena, California in
the summer of 2007. But not before he had distributed an undisclosed
number of copies to various hacker miscreants worldwide, including
me.
It
arrived at my condo in Vancouver via FedEx at 9:27
a.m. on Thursday April 17, 2007. To avoid any obvious digital trail,
encrypted or not, Hal had sent it by land.
I
recall being surprised that it was actually Thursday, when receiving
the package at my door, surprised that it was 2007 for that matter.
More than a week on mescaline will do that, even to the finest mind.
I also discovered that morning that there’s nothing intuitive about
opening a FedEx package. After giving it a couple of tries, I put it
on top of the iguana tank. Then I heard the lava lamp call my name.
Next
thing I knew, it was Saturday. I took a couple tabs of Ecstasy,
stopped by the liquor store for a bottle of Jack and then went skeet
shooting. In short, I’d forgotten all about the FedEx envelope. I
forgot about it for three months, until I discovered it mouldering in
the tank.
It
took weeks to properly understand how the iTime code worked, even
with the detailed instructions. Central to understanding it was the
fact that it was the modified CPU that did the travelling.
Peripherals, like the user, were only along for the ride. This was
why the instructions stated over and over that only a battery powered
laptop should be used. A desktop computer was useless, as it would
become unplugged the moment time travel commenced. The instructions
also made it clear that a backup computer go along. And that the
further back in time one went, the more fully charged batteries one
must bring. This applied to future travel as well, as one never knows
what condition the planet will be in tomorrow.
First,
I used the iTime code to travel into the future. It was a no-brainer;
I needed cash. I went ahead to the following Wednesday, and got the
Lotto 6/49 numbers. But I discovered that even if I played all the
numbers correctly, extra included, some Bozo in Mississauga was going
to do the same. I’d have to share what was going to be a $20
million jackpot.
There’s something about sharing
a loto jackpot that doesn’t sit well with me. So, I got all the
info I needed regarding his whereabouts and returned to my home point
in time, or hPIT. (FYI: The hPIT is a very important element of the
iTime code. It means the difference between returning home and
floating in a randomly changing cloud of events, forever.) Then I
flew out to Canada’s most boring city, and iced the mother
fucker’s cake before he could buy the ticket. And why the hell not?
The iTime code had made me superhuman. I didn’t have to play by the
rules anymore. Besides, the guy managed a Money Mart. It wasn’t
like he’d be mourned.
It
was nice to get the cash. I quit my job and bought a vintage 1956
Studebaker, which helped me travel the present in style. But in order
to tour time in style, I travelled ahead to 2022 to shoplift a
MacBook Super Stealth Pro with an iFlux25z Cool CryoGel Corp chip.
Returning
home, I modified it with iTime.
I
snatched the beast, by the way, from the Pacific Centre Mac Store in
Vancouver. Their security gets a little slack after 2018, in case
you’re interested.
It
took me six years to learn how to travel safely, and it didn’t take
long to discover that the future will suck. Don’t get me wrong, it
has its moments. Like when the photos of President Donald Trump
crossdressing for a dominatrix (who looks an awful lot like his
daughter) get published in The LA Times. That’s just a couple of
years away, incidentally, so be patient. But mostly, the future’s a
boring, beige coloured Walmart dominated shit-hole. In other words,
the future is mostly kind of like now.
The
1950s, however, were magic. There was a pleasant blend of innocence
and elegance in the air. Sure, there were economic disparities and
fears of war. There were racial tensions too, same as today. In June
of ’55, the Rosa Parks thing was still a few months away. But all
in all it was a grand time. Sadly, though, the pot was crap. And when
you asked people where to score a blunt, they looked at you like you
were a communist.
So,
anyway, I eventually arrive in 1955 Vancouver via my laptop using the
iTime code, and I meet Michelle in a night club. We go out the next
evening and the evening after that and so on, and we really hit it
off. She knows I’ve got an Audrey Hepburn fixation, but she’s
okay with that. I have cash to throw around, and we go places she’s
never been. Things go so smooth in fact, that I figure it might be
time to reveal a few things about where I really come from. That,
though, didn’t go so well.
In
fact, it kind of went like this:
~
evening of June 23,
1955 ~
I’m
sitting in the lounge of the Sylvia Hotel. Michelle will
meet me in a few minutes, and I’ve brought along some gifts from my
hPIT. (I’d slipped back to 2013 to get them, because I thought
she’d be impressed.)
The
night before was difficult, and I’m still a little raw. We went to
this swank joint for dinner, and I told her over wine that I was from
the future. I told her that I travel time via my computer.
At
first she laughs, like it’s a joke. Says she thought that she was
my laptop. Then of course, I had to explain a computer to her. Later
in the evening when I show it to her in my room, she reacts
strangely. She gets angry and asks me if I’m dumping her because I
think she’s stupid, or because she’s gaining weight, or because
as much as she tried to look like Audrey Hepburn, she could never
actually be Audrey Hepburn.
Maybe
my truth was too much for her. Let’s face it, Chevys didn’t even
have fins yet. How was she supposed to grasp a MacBook Pro, which I
myself had snatched from the future?
Anyway,
I’m stirring my drink and basking in the low light ambiance of the
Sylvia Lounge. All of it seeming far more of an authentic and
enjoyable barroom experience with the blue cloud of cigarette smoke.
I smile thinking of how explaining the MacBook was nothing compared
to what it would take to convince someone in this crowd that smoking
would one day be banned on the premises.
I’m
wearing a suit with some zoot lines but not the full-on zoot suit
cut, since that’s kind of out of style and has a way of attracting
the cops.
When
Michelle enters the lounge, she’s still wearing the cloak of
hostility from the night before. In my mind, I fastened my seatbelt.
I figure this is going to be another perilous journey.
“How’s
my intrepid time traveller this evening?” she says seating herself.
“Bump into any little green spacemen today?”
“None,”
I say hailing the waiter.
Michelle
lights a cigarette and says, “I looked up the word computer today
in the dictionary. I had to go to the library to use the really thick
Webster’s with all of the words in it. It said that a computer is
someone who counts things. So, whatever that thing is upstairs, it
isn’t any computer.” She takes on a triumphant look. Score one
for the steno pool.
“That’s
purely a matter of etymology,” I say.
“Huh?”
“Word
usage, honey. It changes over time. The language evolves.”
“Why’d
you wear that suit,” she says. The waiter arrives. “I’ll have
a Manhattan.”
“Another
Johnny Blue Label,” I say. “Double.” Then, “You don’t like
the suit?”
“You’re
not a negro or a Mexican, or you?”
“Pure
Irish white trash,” I say.
“Hmm.”
“Look,”
I say, wanting desperately to change the subject. I retrieve a bag
from under my chair and place it on the table. “I zipped back to my
hPIT and made some purchases. Some items from the future you might be
interested in.”
The
bag I’ve brought the items in is a small CHANEL shopping bag,
glossy white paper with the signature logo. I’m hoping it will
spark her interest. First I bring out the Botox. “I can help you
with this,” I say. “It needs to be injected.”
“What?”
“It’s Botox.”
I’m smiling with a new enthusiasm. “It’s a protein derived
from botulism toxin. You inject it underneath your skin in order to
minimize or smooth out lines and wrinkles on the face. It actually
paralyzes or relaxes facial muscles, gives you a nice clean, smooth
facial appearance.”
“I
didn’t know I needed help in that area.”
“Well,
you don’t,” I say. “That’s the beauty of the stuff. You start
using it now, and you’ll never have wrinkles. Isn’t that great?”
She
lights another cigarette off of the previous.
“You
see,” I say pointing. “That’s the thing, you smoke. Today,
you’re all smooth and gorgeous. But whenever you draw on a
cigarette, your mouth goes all wrinkly. When the smoke rises from the
end of the cigarette, you go all squinty eyed. That’s all gonna
stick one day, baby. If you don’t do something now, one day you’re
gonna look like some sad old bingo Betty, a real Walmart shopper.
You’re laying the ground for an early old age, even as we speak.”
“This
is getting boring, Tucker.”
“Whatever,”
I say with gusto, “but just look at this.” I pull out the next
miracle from the future. “It’s called NicoDerm. It’s a
nicotine patch. You wear it on your skin. It helps calm the cravings
that make quitting smoking so hard.”
“Quitting
smoking? Who’s quitting smoking?”
“Well
baby, you gotta quit. It’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“Kill
me?” she says. “Nine out of ten doctors recommend this brand.”
“Oh
baby, that’s just bullshit.”
“Watch
your mouth, Tucker,” says Michelle, gulping back her drink. “You
know, some guys buy their girls perfume. Know what else? You seemed
like such a swell fella when we first met. You seemed so smart and
funny and sensitive. Now all of this. You’re afraid I might age
like everyone else? Well too bad. That’s how things work. You’re
born, you grow old, you die. No matter what you inject under your
skin.”
“But
you don’t have to look bad doing it, baby.”
“Oh
that’s rich, Tucker. And then there’s the time travel hooey. I
think you’re a mental case, a really insensitive mental case. I’m
leaving.”
So,
she stands, turns and heads for the coat check. I pick up the Botox
and NicoDerm, stuff them into the bag and follow her.
“Wait,
Michelle. Don’t leave like this.”
“I’m
not just leaving,” she says. “I’m escaping. Don’t follow me.
I don’t want to see you anymore. Lose my phone number, and forget
my address.”
The
coat check girl looks concerned.
“Michelle,
please.”
“Go
away, Tucker or I’ll scream for the cops.”
“Okay,
fine,” I say, as I follow her out onto the street. Freighters are
lit up out on the bay. Michelle walks onto the road without looking.
Oncoming traffic screeches to a halt.
“Stop
following me, Tucker.”
“Okay,
okay. But here,” I say when I meet her on the other side of the
road. I hand her the bag. “At least take this. A memento. And as
time goes by, and these things emerge into realty, it’ll be proof
that I’m not crazy.”
“Fine,”
she says snatching the bag out of my hand. “Now fuck off.”
“I’ll
send you a message on Facebook tomorrow,” I say.
“Fine.
Whatever that means. You’re so strange!”
Broken
hearted, I rode the laptop home that night, and never returned.
~
June 24, 2013 ~
Now
it’s the next morning, and I’m sitting in a 2013 coffee shop.
Elderly Michelle, who I met when she was 21 in 1955, has just hobbled
away on her cane with a cigarette in her mouth.
She
never used the Botox or the nicotine patches. I could have supplied
her indefinitely with these and other things from the future, but she
refused, at the time, to believe it possible.
If
I’d stayed with her then, I’d be old now too. But we’d be old
together. I still don’t understand the appeal of that.
As
I leave the coffee shop, I toss the bag containing the Botox and
nicotine patches into the trash.
dm gillis is a Vancouver writer who conjures sinister visions from coffee and synapses. Follow him on Twitter here or on his blog.
