Fourth-Dimensional Shit, Tyrone

By RADDman

Fri, 05 Sep 2014

4274 reads

12 comments

Joanna brushed past me without a single hey, tumbled on the sofa, and politely requested that I shoot her.

Oh, brother, I roll my eyes. “Whatever’s the matter this time, Joanna?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she promises. Considering how unusual our jobs are, I probably won’t. But I try her anyway.

“Okay, so you remember when I told you a while back that I was getting close to cracking the code to time travel?”

How odd of her. “Uh, don’t you mean fourth-dimensional -”

“Fourth-dimensional shit, Tyrone, it’s fucking time travel. The university can hide it under whatever scientific jargon they want, it’s fucking time travel.”

Well, someone’s moody. “Sorry. Yes, I remember … You were picking up on Dr. Handler’s research, right?”

“Yeah, you remember it right. Well, I gotta tell ya, Tyrone … I did it.”

“Really, now? You don’t sound proud, you don’t sound pleased.”

“I did it! I swear, I did it! Today, at 6:59 and 7 seconds, I unlocked the key to time travel! I finally figured out how to harness it, control it, ensure that anything put through it doesn’t get its atoms ripped apart, everything!”

For one second she seemed to be smiling under the pillow her face was stuffed in. Then the atmosphere sank into an almost tangible awkwardness again. I didn’t ask how it went wrong.

Joanna explained, “Then the weirdest thing happened. At 6:59 and 8 seconds, when I was just starting to realize that I did it, there was a big kaboom behind me. I turn around and see some chick with these wild, angry eyes and this ripped-up shirt and some crazy, neon, - fucking time jetpack or something, just made a big hole in the wall!”

“I’m sorry, did you say ‘time jetpack’?”

“Yes I said time jetpack. So she just busted into the lab, and she just started blowing everything up! With this little gun, looked like a toy - she just started shooting it and there were explosions all over the place!”

Interesting idea. I should propose it to the university. “Wait, why was she doing that?!”

“She didn’t say anything the whole time, but the first thing she did was blow up my equipment. Then she started shooting up everything else in the lab - she even exploded my papers, all my research, all the work … And then the damndest thing happened: she just disappeared.”

“You mean like she got away? With her jetpack?”

“No, I mean she was shooting and the next she just … vanished. Like, if you blinked and she wasn’t there anymore. That fast. And it wasn’t even 7:00 yet.”

“Hm … Think she might have traveled back?”

“I don’t think so, she didn’t push a button or anything. But I think maybe after she … goddammit, after she ruined everything, the future changed so she couldn’t travel back with her jetpack, and so she just … poofed.”

What the … “But then that means she couldn’t -”

“Don’t talk to me about the time paradox, I’ve been studying time for years and I know that this logically means she couldn’t time travel back because the time machine was destroyed because she traveled back and yadayadayada, but that’s what happened. She disappeared forever, my work is all gone because of someone who doesn’t exist anymore, and the university’s gonna have my ass when they find out.”

“Ooh … shit.”

“Yeah.” At last she peeks her eyes out of the pillow and stares at me. “Mind if I crash here for a little while?”

Like you have to ask?

She smiles, and this time I can see it.

Comments

Author Notes

Permalink Submitted by RADDman on Fri, 2014-09-05 16:32

I wrote this one on April 16, 2014 in a wild late-night hour of inspiration. I walked out of my dorm room to go to the communal restroom for our hall's floor at about 1:30 AM, the time when weird shit just comes to your mind, and came back with an idea and a fire inside.

With this story I decided to try a writing style of my own where absolutely nothing I deemed unnecessary was written. That's why the story is so punchy and terse, why the only long sentences are in Joanna's rants, and why some lines of dialogue aren't even shown and merely implied by Tyrone and Joanna's thoughts. I very much liked the result, a personal rebellion against the long-winded, flowery, overly lengthy writing of old-time writers like Marcel Proust and Nathaniel Hawthorne (their sentences sometimes encompass pages and their paragraphs are monumental!). I think I'll stick with it, refine it, make it my own.

I've contemplated making this a series! If only I can get ideas for it ...

quirky and punchy and makes

Permalink Submitted by celticman on Fri, 2014-09-05 18:12

quirky and punchy and makes sense (kinda).

Thank you, celticman!

Permalink Submitted by RADDman on Fri, 2014-09-05 18:31

Thank you, celticman! What didn't make much sense to you?

1 User voted this as great feedback

Energetic, reads a little

Permalink Submitted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 2014-09-05 19:55

Energetic, reads a little like a script. Great excuse for not being able to hand your work in.

Thank you, Philip!

Permalink Submitted by RADDman on Fri, 2014-09-05 20:39

Thank you, Philip! I appreciate the feedback and the humorous response. I'm glad that you like some of my work :)

the fourth dimension and time

Permalink Submitted by celticman on Fri, 2014-09-05 20:05

the fourth dimension and time travel - minor things, but great writing.

From what I understand ...

Permalink Submitted by RADDman on Fri, 2014-09-05 20:41

While the second dimension is length and the third is something like volume (squares and cubes, respectively), the fourth dimension is time. Time travel is to the fourth dimension what walking around a space is to the third dimension. But that's just from what I've read and I might even be remembering it wrong. Hope this helps, sorry I didn't make that clear.

1 User voted this as great feedback

I also enjoyed this, nice

Permalink Submitted by Broamalia on Sun, 2014-09-21 02:50

I also enjoyed this, nice spin on the time paradox thing, and I feel like it does make sense. (Assuming it was a future her that stopped herself from finalizing the solution, thus erasing her own time stream). I have to assume a lot, but it works for me.

Also I will back up what u say about 4th dimension equating to time. Your fourth dimensional self looks like a vast worm extruded from the place of your birth, stretching through every point in space that you visit, and terminating at the place of your death. Donnie Dark stuff.

Thank you, Broamalia!

Permalink Submitted by RADDman on Sun, 2014-09-21 19:27

Thank you, Broamalia! I was actually thinking that it was just some random person from a dystopian/post-apocalyptic/just plain terrible future who realized that time travel was the direct cause of this terrible world. She then went back in time to undo its invention, in order to save the future. Basically, she's the hero of her own sci-fi story - and I thought it'd be funny to tell it from a complete different and totally confused perspective.

But the time traveler being an older Joanna is an awesome interpretation - it at least explains how she knows exactly what time and place to travel to. Ideas like that are partly why I left so much unsaid and vague (why you had to assume a lot), it just makes stories more fun like that.

I appreciate you backing me up with that info! I feel a little more secure in the science of this story now. I don't do much sci-fi, certainly no hard science fiction, primarily because I'm not great at science.