TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 16: Bowl Time Revelations

Dreamlike image of Ray's ecounter with the Timekeeper during the Notre Dame/Stanford game

The drive to Gina’s home was almost uneventful. On the way I realized I had forgotten to buy some beer for the adults to chase down the BBQ food so I stopped at a convenience store and bought a six-pack of one of those fall seasonal craft beers that looked like it could do the job. The checkout lady, who had an uncanny resemblance to one of the alter egos of Melissa McCarthy’s character in the movie ‘Spy’, looked at me funny and said:

“Honey, are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine. But I know I look like crap.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. I mean you being a customer and all, but yeah, you look like you could use some rest… and maybe some chicken soup too.”

“I’ll do just that. Have a good day… oh, and thanks for caring,” I said and the lady’s face beamed with a smile.

I finally made it to Gina’s and as soon as she opened the door the first words that came out of her mouth were: “Ray are you okay? You look like shit.”

“And a good day to you too,” I said.

“Sorry I didn’t mean to… you know, it’s just that I haven’t seen you since Wednesday morning and you look like the rest of the week piled up on you,” she said apologetically.

“Don’t sweat it, my bathroom mirror and the checkout lady at the convenience store agree with you. I just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Still having those weird dreams you told me about?”

“Sort of… but today is all about indoor camping, BBQ and some Notre Dame/Stanford football, not about weird dreams. What do you say we get this tailgating going?”

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “Chris, Mel, come on over. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Christian and Melanie were Gina’s niblings. He was six years old and she was four. I was surprised at how well mannered they were. Gina introduced us and Christian extended his hand to shake mine while saying: “Nice to meet you.” In my mind I questioned whether this kid was for real. Melanie was a little shy so she just said hi while grabbing Gina’s thigh.

Gina led the way to the kitchen and helped me unpack all the goodies. I had brought hamburgers and hotdogs for the kids and some Italian sausage and ribs for the over-21 crowd. The ribs were the unpack-and-heat-up kind; I wasn’t such an accomplished BBQer. As it turned out, the kids had had hot dogs the night before and little Melanie loved ribs so the menu was set at one hamburger for Christian, ribs for everyone else and Italian sausages as appetizers for Gina and me. I added one cheeseburger for me simply because I loved them, although I didn’t know how I would be able to eat all that stuff.

The BBQ in Gina’s backyard was in excellent condition and everything turned out delicious. I hurt my sore tongue with a hot sausage but I solved that with a cold brew. After eating to our heart’s content, Gina and I sat down to watch the game. I recall watching the opening kickoff and not a single down after that. Without warning I found myself in the company of the Timekeeper in the place he called the Anteverse.

“Welcome back to my domain,” said the strange creature over the constant humming that permeated the featureless place(1).

“What is this place… this Anteverse?” I asked.

“It’s the place that exists an instant before your present,” said the Timekeeper. “It exists between the construct of the past and the energy of the future.”

“What do you mean by the construct of the past?”

“As you have discovered, time is the universal materializer, and that means that what you call the past is a solid construct. Something like frames in a movie with each frame being a moment in time. The moments exist forever, unaltered, created by the effect of time on the three-dimensional space of energy, and spilling over into your present. See, you are actually living ‘in the past’. Everything that surrounds you is a remnant of the past; an existing past construct that spills over into your ‘now’. An that ‘now’ is the edge of creation.”

“So, if the past is a physical construct, then it has mass… Can it be visited?” I asked.

“Once materialized, the past stays there for anyone to visit. Like a museum with every instant of existence frozen in an endless stream. Its mass affecting the present from an unseen source.”

The Timekeeper went on talking about how the theoretical dark matter is in actuality the mass of the past, but I was more concerned with the nonstop whirring.

“What’s with the constant humming?” I asked.

“That’s time interacting with the energy of the future,” said the Timekeeper. “What you call the present is a materializing process and the humming you hear is the sound of time creating your immediate future.”

I had many questions and had lost track of time when a distant voice started to warp the Anteverse.

It was Gina pulling me out of the Timekeeper’s domain.

“Ray, Ray wake up. Hey Ray. Earth calling Ray. Come in Ray…”

“What… oh crap I fell asleep. Is it half-time already?” I asked groggily.

“The game’s over Ray, you slept through it. I tried to wake you up earlier but you were sound asleep and snoring like a bear in the middle of winter. I think there’s a video of you sawing wood in YouTube now. Sorry, the kids’ idea, and I thought it was pretty funny.”

“Oh well, I hope it goes viral. Who won anyway?” I asked.

“Not Notre Dame,” said Gina grimacing. “What was your bet with Bob?”

I took a deep breath and started to feel the pain of what was coming to me. “Must go to the office all dressed up in red and every time somebody mentions my name I have to say I went to Notre Dame because I wasn’t good enough for Stanford.”

Gina burst out laughing and said: “I’m going to have so much fun that day.”

 

(1) For more on the strange Timekeeper character go to Chapter 6: The Timekeeper, and Chapter 8: Time Out… Sh*t!

 

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