Month: July 2017

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 4: Working Late

An image of the city late at night with some strange atmospheric phenomenom

I stayed late at the office that evening. My encounter with Professor Murdock earlier in the day had stirred in me a desire to do some research on the nature of time.  I took his visit as a sign to look for new insights relevant to the Chronologix pitch.

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that I was able to start researching the topic. By the way, did you know that nobody really knows what time is? I mean, we measure it, but we don’t know what we are measuring. One of the definitions I found that night stated that time is what keeps everything from happening at once. Really? Is it a cosmic funnel in the space-time continuum? Is it a god-like guard that keeps everything in line? “Hold it right there, not your turn yet…”

Another source said that time is a measure in which events can be ordered from past to present to future. A measure? The question is what is the nature of that which is being measured.  And it was on that line of thought that I found my favorite worthless definition: “time is what clocks measure”. Mic drop…

After that I should have turned off my computer and gone home, but Joann, one of our senior copywriters, walked in to tell me that some of the guys were going to Brody’s – our favorite watering hole – for tapas and beers. Any other day I would have grabbed my coat and headed straight to pub land. No questions asked. But that day, for reasons that defy logic at so many levels, instead of saying “let’s go”, I decided to vent my frustration regarding the research results. Joann listened patiently (some would say ‘saintly’) and said:

“Listen Ray, don’t complicate things. For this presentation we really don’t have to go that deep. There’s no need to spend time in philosophical debates about what time is or isn’t. Let’s just work on the idea we discussed this morning. What you said about the Chronologix watch being a time machine because it allows the wearer to travel through time in a more efficient way IS the way to go. I truly believe we have a winner there. Come on, it’s been a long day. There are a couple of beers screaming your name at Brody’s. Don’t let them down.”

I should have followed her advice, but instead I told her that I wanted to work on this a little longer.

I never made it to Brody’s, and from what I heard afterwards, I missed one hell of a good time. Bob was joined there by his wife Iris, a wonderful woman with a fabulous sense of humor. A very talented former model who would have gone far in the business if she hadn’t decided to be a full-time mom to their two kids. A hard decision she hasn’t regretted for a second.

That night was our new receptionist Tanya’s first time at Brody’s, and after being introduced to Iris, she asked her and Bob how they met. Actually, I’ve heard that story before and it’s pretty funny.

It starts with Bob in his most expensive designer suit feeling and behaving like a Hollywood star. He was having dinner with some clients on the second floor of this five star restaurant built inside an old mansion. At some point he needed to go the restrooms, which were on the first floor. As he approached the main stairwell to go down, he saw these two extremely attractive women on the landing coming up. He started to go down the stairs smiling at them and on the second step he slipped and ended up on Iris’ feet.

Bob always says that, to his credit, he made a perfect landing. No broken bones or sprained muscles, but his pride, on the other hand, needed an emergency room stat. Something that’s a little hard to imagine since that guy’s self-esteem can fill up the Gulf of Mexico. Anyway, that’s the story, and listening to Iris’ side of it is usually very funny. To this day she’s still impressed by how Bob handled such a potentially humiliating situation. She usually ends the tale with: “And this beautiful, impeccably dressed man, still lying on the floor, extended his hand towards me and said: And that ladies, is how you make an entrance, Bob Olsen.” Yep, that’s Bob alright.

I left the office around ten that night and went straight home. At the time I lived on the 21st floor of an exclusive apartment building not too far from the office. The security guard on duty in the lobby was a burly Scottish fellow named Alastair.

“Guid eening Mr. Young. You look loused tonicht,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m beat. What can I say, it’s been a long day. And call me Ray.”

“Can’nae dae that, Mr. Young. Company regulations, ye know.”

I usually enjoyed talking to him about rugby, a sport I knew very little of, but one I was determined to understand and maybe play a friendly seven on weekends; but that night I was too tired to chat so I simply wished him a good night and headed for the elevators. Nevertheless, Alastair’s remark about my tired appearance made me realize that I had been working very long hours for an extended period of time. To be honest, during the previous month I had been working over 60 hours a week and sleep was becoming restless. I wondered if I was turning into a workaholic? As the elevator doors opened on my floor I decided not to worry about it.

When I got to my apartment I thought I saw a bluish glow coming through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the doorway, but when I opened the door the place was dark as usual. I turned the foyer light and went straight to the kitchen. I was famished.

From the kitchen I could see the balcony, and that’s when I noticed him. He was smoking a pipe and looking straight at me.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 5: Der Depperte

Ray sees a stranger in the balcony of his apartment

What the f…?  A stranger in my apartment?  I grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer, rushed to the living room and turned on the lights. The man stepped in from the balcony and said something I couldn’t grasp immediately because of his heavy German accent. He came into the light and that’s when I realized he had an uncanny resemblance to Albert Einstein.

“Zis is a fery nice fiew of zee city. It schtimulates zee creatiffe mind,” he said pointing outside with his pipe.

“How did you get in here? Who the hell are you?” I asked holding my knife in menacing fashion.

“I’m terribly zorry. I zought by now efferybody vould recognise me. Allow me to introduce myzelf. I’m Alpert Einstein und I’m here becauze you zummoned me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said as the terrifying realization that I had a mentally disturbed person inside my home dawned on me.

“Listen, let’s not make a big issue out of this little incident. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll call building security and a good man named Alastair is going to escort you down and make the necessary arrangements with whatever mental institution is currently helping you with your condition.”

“Zure,” he replied, “do vadeffer you feel you must, but I fear you might end up looking like a… vat’s zee vord for it?  Oh ja, ‘doofus’.”

Without taking my eyes off the intruder, I pulled out my iPhone and called the security desk downstairs. Alastair answered promptly and, following protocol, proceeded to call the police.  In the meantime, the Einstein doppelganger was babbling about some nickname a maid had given him when he was a little kid.

“Did you know zat zee term ‘doofus’ comes from zee German vord ‘doof’ vich, originally meant deaf und vas uzed zen to describe schtupid people becauze in old times zey zought zee deaf vere not intelligent,” he said. “I bet you didn’t know zat ven I vas a little boy one of mein family’s maids referred to me as ‘der depperte’? It meant ‘zee dopey one’.  I didn’t find zat funny but almost efferyone elze did, und by looking at zee face you’re making right know I can understand vy. Ray you look like ‘der depperte’. Ray?”

I was frantically trying to make sense of the whole situation in my mind. Everything was so surreal and bizarre that the man’s ramblings sounded more like background noise to me. Until I heard him utter my name…

“How do you know my name?” I asked raising my knife.

“You know Ray, I understand your reaczion perfectly vell. Mein prezence here is inexplicable by your current schtandards. But, zere are two vays to liffe: you can liffe as if nothing is a miracle; or you can liffe as if efferything is a miracle. By zee vay, if you’fe heard zat before it’s becauze zat phraze has been attribuded to me by zome people, but to tell you zee truth, I don’t remember effer zaying zat undil now.”

“How do you know my name?” I asked again.

The conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Buildin’ security,” said Alastair in his colorful Scottish accent.

I turned my back on the crazy old man to go open the door. Alastair with two police agents entered my apartment and one of the officers asked me what the situation was. I pointed towards the stranger and told them the man had entered my apartment illegally while I was at work. The three of them looked confused and a second later I understood why. When I turned towards the living room the old man wasn’t there. A frantic search of the apartment ensued, but the intruder was nowhere to be found.

“Sir, is there another way in or out of this apartment?” asked one of the policemen.

“Well, in theory, he could have jumped to the balcony of the apartment below us, but that would be a hard number even for a young man. This guy must be well into his sixties and we’re on the 21st floor. I don’t think he could’ve pulled a stunt like that,” I said.

“We’ll check it out anyway,” said the second policeman.

After making sure that the uninvited visitor wasn’t in my apartment, the police left to search the floor below as well as the building’s public areas. Alastair took me through the security procedure that would ensue following the incident.  It included, among other things, examining the surveillance tapes to find out when and how the man gained access to my place.

“We’ll get tae th’ bottom ay thes, Mr. Young,” he said. “Hae a guid eening now.”

After everyone left I gave the apartment another thorough inspection and once I was absolutely sure the man was gone I collapsed on the living room couch. I wasn’t even hungry anymore; the whole incident had been very unsettling. I was just starting to doze off when it hit me like a speeding truck: the old man said I had summoned him!

 

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 6: The Timekeeper

An artistic rendition of the Timekeeper's eye as seen in Ray's dream

I recall finding myself surrounded by nothingness and a prevalent humming was all I could hear. A tall silhouette was walking towards me twirling what looked like a fancy walking stick with sparks coming out of it in all directions. He was bald and wore a glass derby hat, a midnight blue frock coat with gold trimmings and knee-high boots. As he got closer I could see that his eyes looked like the whole universe resided in them. He waved his fancy stick and directed sparks to a specific spot in the nothingness around us. A window started to form and his dark lips broke into a smile as he spoke to me:

“Greetings, I’m the Timekeeper and this is my domain. I call it the Anteverse, a place that exists an instant before your present. I can sense your curiosity regarding the humming. All you need to know for now is that it connects closely to what lies ahead: a future without time.”

I tried to speak but no sound came out of my mouth. Through the window created by the Timekeeper I could see the sun rising behind the cityscape. The strange entity continued its monologue:

“You’re being shown a road. Follow it and you’ll discover what the future looks like. I assure you it is not what you’ve been told before. Let me present to you something intimately linked to your quest. You see the city coming alive through the window? Just a short while ago it was all energy. What you seek is all about energy.”

A distant electronic sound started to break through the humming. As it got louder I realized it was my wake-up alarm. The Timekeeper and his Anteverse went back to the dream world where they originated as I woke up in a sweat.

I remember feeling very disoriented as I went through my morning routine. The weirdness of the previous night encounter with the ‘Einstein’ intruder combined with the acid-type dream of the man with a glass derby hat and a sparky thingamajig had rattled me more than I cared to admit at the time. I decided to shake it off by walking to the office that day.

Throughout the day I found it very hard to concentrate on the Chronologix presentation. My mind kept going back to the old man’s claim that I had summoned him. I ate half a sandwich on my desk as I worked over lunch. Around 2:00 PM one of our art directors brought me a promotional piece he got during lunch. It was a small glass derby hat.

He liked the piece and was talking to me about how we could do something like that as a follow-up piece for the new business presentation. I could hardly hear what he was saying. The little glass hat had a logo that read Clear Heads and the slogan ‘Hats off to great coffee’. It instantaneously transported me back to the weird Timekeeper dream. The coincidence was too much. I took a deep breath, told the art director to work out the specifics of the follow-up piece and decided to, once again,  go for a walk to clear my mind. Something that didn’t work at all that morning but out of pure stubbornness I decided to try again.

While walking, the details of the Timekeeper’s dream came back to me. Some of the character’s claims made me wonder what, if anything, was my subconscious trying to tell me. Was it that I was on the wrong track in my research about the nature of time? What road was I being shown? And what was that ‘future without time’ claim all about? After mulling over my memories of the dream for a while, I decided that if my sub-conscious was indeed talking to me through the Timekeeper character then I would follow its advice. If it believed that what I sought was all about energy then I would redirect my research towards the relationship of time and energy.

Feeling reinvigorated I went back to the office. My plan was to do some research but as soon as I got back I was pulled into a meeting to review what was being done for the Chronologix presentation. The meeting took the rest of the afternoon. Around 6:00 PM I finally made it back to my desk and the lack of sleep caught up with me. I dozed off until 7:30 PM when the sound of the janitorial crew’s vacuum cleaner woke me up. Figured it was time to go home.

I stopped by a hamburger joint on the way and had a blue-cheese burger with bacon and a large side dish of wedge fries with ketchup. It was delicious and I really, really needed that. I chased everything down with a Belgian beer which further lowered my engine’s revolutions. I was finally ready to call it a day.

When I got home there was a new security guard on duty. I asked about Alastair and he told me it was his day off. Of course, it was Tuesday, I had lost track of time. I asked the new guy if he had any information regarding the security tapes and last night’s intruder. The young man was still wet behind the ears but what he lacked in experience he more that compensated with good disposition. He told me he would find out and get back to me.

I went up to my apartment, opened the door and there he was again…

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TIME MATTERS: CHAPTER 7: Desperately Seeking Subtitles

Einstein smiling next to his famous formula E=mc2

The Einstein lookalike was back in my apartment. That time I opted for a different approach. Instead of confronting him, I quickly shut the door and stayed outside blocking the exit while calling the security guard downstairs. The young guard came up and we entered the apartment. The old man had disappeared again!

We searched the apartment to no avail. Frustrated by the whole thing I asked the guard if he had talked to his superiors about the security tapes.

“Yes sir, I did. I was about to call you. They found nothing on the tapes sir.”

“What about today?” I asked.

“Protocol calls for our company to monitor the tapes closely for 72 hours after an incident like yesterday’s. There hasn’t been anything suspicious recorded at all today. And nobody matching your intruder’s description has entered the building while I’ve been on duty.”

At that moment it occurred to me that there might be something terribly wrong going on in my head. I had a flashback of me watching the movie A Beautiful Mind. You know, the one about the brilliant Dr. John Nash’s schizophrenia. I decided it would better to be alone for a while so, instead of pursuing the intruder matter any further, I thanked the young security guard for his help and dismissed him as politely as I could given my confusion. Once alone in the apartment I felt compelled to do something I can’t explain, even today.

I said out loud: “Ok, you can come out now.”

A dark figure in the balcony lit up a pipe and started walking towards me. The man with the uncanny resemblance to Albert Einstein was once again talking to me in my home.

“Is zat vat you zink zis is Ray? Ein schizophrenic hallucination?”

As soon as he started to speak, a funny thought crossed my mind: If I created this character, why did I give him such a hard to follow speech pattern? His heavy accent had me desperately looking for subtitles to understand him. I did catch the word Ray and asked once again how he knew my name. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I realized the question was academic. If this was indeed all happening in my mind, he would, of course, know everything about me. Duh…

I was half expecting another ‘doofus’ reference but instead ‘Einstein’ walked over to the console table were I kept my snail mail and picked up a letter.

“Ein man schould look for vat is, und not for vat he zinks schould be,” he said showing me the envelope. “I know your name becauze I zaw zeze letters addrezed to you ven I arriffed. Zee zecurity guards today und last night couldn’t zee me becauze zey vere not looking for me. You, on zee other hand, zummoned me. You vere looking for me.”

This guy had me doubting my own doubts. Was it all a figment of my imagination? The whole situation was getting weirder by the minute but I decided to roll with the punches and asked when had I summoned him.

“Ven you schtarted tapping on zee univerze’s informazion field,” he said.

The effort to understand him was giving me a headache. It reminded me of a meme about some people being so hard to understand that is was like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end.

“When the hell did I do that?” I asked wearily.

“Ven you began looking for anzers zat are not currently affailable in your vorld und you schtarted to look for zem in your head. By zee vay ven I zaid zat time is vat clocks meazure, vat I meant vas zat time is merely zomething humans uze to meazure zee days und organise zeir actiffities, it vas not ein attempt to define its nature. Anyvay, your zearch brought me here. Becauze zee door zat leads to zee anzer you zeek is E=mc2.”

“What answer? You sound like Yoda but with normal syntax… and a pretty heavy German accent,” I said.

“Funny you schould menzion zat becauze it zo happens zat zee man who dezigned zee Yoda character uzed his face und mine as models. Zo maybe I schould talk more like zis: Vat time really is, zee anzer you zeek,” he said in a lousy Yoda imitation.

I was about to ask him how he knew that, when all of a sudden the corresponding synapses in my brain came alive and I realized the relationship between the separate messages my subconscious had been sending me.

The Timekeeper’s assertion that what I sought was all about energy, and Einstein’s famous formula E=mc2, in which E stands for energy, was the way to understanding the true nature of time. I started to pace around the apartment trying to put it all together in my mind but the Timekeeper’s “future without time” element was still hanging there with no apparent connection, so I decided to ask ‘Einstein’ himself.

My unconscious pacing had taken me over to the bedroom and when I went back to the living room he was gone. Only the pipe smell lingered…

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 8: Time Out… Sh*t!

Image of a bizarre dream with the Timekeeper crying time out

After searching the apartment and confirming that ‘Einstein’ was really gone I turned on my computer and started the research on the time/energy relationship I was unable to do at the office. Two hours later I found myself at a dead end so I called it quits and went to bed.

I woke up 5 hours later startled after another bizarre dream with the Timekeeper. That time I was playing basketball for an unidentified professional team against Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs. To this day I haven’t found a single reason to explain that particular team’s presence in the dream. Perhaps it was because of their black uniforms… maybe because Duncan was a fellow Caribbean who had retired not that long ago… or that their coach Gregg Popovich had been in my social media feed recently… or maybe it was because they were considered the smartest team in the NBA at the time… I don’t know. Anyway, there was some sort of commotion in the dream. I couldn’t tell what was happening but the Timekeeper was frantically shouting “Time out, time out!”  The weirdness of the whole thing woke me up.

I got out of bed and went straight to the kitchen to brew myself a cup of strong Puerto Rican coffee. It was scalding hot and I burned my tongue with the first sip of the much needed morning infusion. While waiting for the coffee to cool off a bit, I pondered the idea of sharing what was happening with someone I trusted. For me the three obvious options were Gina, Bob and Professor Murdock.

I dismissed the idea of talking to Bob fairly fast. He had a tendency to overreact at times and I didn’t want him thinking his partner had lost his marbles. As for Gina, I wanted to discuss it with her, but talking about what I feared could be a schizophrenic episode with someone I hoped to have a romantic relationship with was definitely not the best approach to win her heart. The Professor was the safest route. It was still too early to call, so I sent him an email saying I had an urgent matter I wanted to run by him, and asking for a good time to stop by his office.

While I was writing, the ol’ professor was checking his email so his answer came fairly fast. He was going to be at his place all day and invited me to stop by any time. The weather forecast called for a rainy day, and dressing up for the office on a day like that was not in the cards. So I showered and put on jeans, tennis shoes and a Notre Dame sweatshirt.

When I got to the agency I ran into Gina who teased me about the attire.

“Well, good morning Mr. ND, aren’t you wearing the YO! Bowl good luck sweatshirt a little early?”

“To tell you the truth I didn’t do it on purpose, but the way they’ve been playing lately, any help is welcome. You know what they say, it’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”

“Did you know that the Michigan Wolverines’ distinctive football helmet was originally worn by the Princeton Tigers?” she asked me.

“What?” I said distractedly.

“Back in the thirties, the Princeton coach wanted his players to look like tigers so he had the helmets painted in orange and black. The unusual forehead wing and stripes were one of the reinforcement patterns used on the leather helmets of the time. He just painted them. They went undefeated and became national champions the very first year they wore them. Maybe that philosophy of ‘it’s only weird if it doesn’t work’ was the reason he took that particular paint job  to the University of Michigan when he became their head coach. Anyway, nowadays when people see the design they think of Michigan but it was Princeton who wore it first… Ray, are you feeling OK? You seem a little scrambled.”

She had this uncanny ability to see right through me. So even though I had decided not to mention anything to her, she opened a window and I jumped right  in.

“I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” I told her. “Very weird dreams,” I added while thinking how to tell her about the ‘Einstein’ visits.

“Want to talk? My 9:00 o’clock  was cancelled, why don’t you walk me to my office and tell me all about it?”

I did. I told her everything except that, in my account, Einstein’s visits occurred in my sleep just like the Timekeeper’s.

“And you think this Timekeeper character is related to Einstein?” she asked after listening the whole story.

“I think so, yes. I know it sounds weird. But it feels like my subconscious is using these characters to help me understand in my sleep the information I seek while awake.”

“The human mind has been known to do stranger things,” she said. “So, the last thing this Timekeeper guy said was ‘time-out’? What does that has to do with Einstein’s E=mc2 formula?

“I don’t know,” I said a little discouraged.

“Did he say ‘time-out’ with a hyphen or ‘time out’, two words?” she asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

“I don’t know, the dream had no captions,” I said sarcastically but apologized immediately. “Sorry, I was just trying to be funny, I know you are trying to help. The context of the dream means that it should be ‘time-out’ with a hyphen, but then this is such a odd character, created by my subconscious, who absurdly happens to be managing an NBA basketball team, so I guess it could also be time out, two words. Where are you going with this?”

“Just wondering, that maybe what the Timekeeper was trying to tell you was to take time… out of the Einstein equation,” she said signaling with her hands the separation between the words ‘time’ and ‘out’ to make it clear she meant eliminating time from the equation and not taking a break from it.

“There’s no time in E=mc2,” I said

“It’s energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared,” she said. “Speed is distance over time.”

“Shit…” was all I could utter at the time.