Zephyr Dorsey

“Out of Time” (short story version) [play version appears in The Burning Page]

So it’s daytime.  You’re flying though a frozen blue sky, coming into the City inside a spectacular giant metal hummingbird with one central wing moving faster than the speed of a teenage summer.  From this establishing shot, it is evident that this will be an urban story, a big city story in fact.  Flying on, your helicopter shadow snaking up and down the cityscape like a sick sine wave, you pass, in jumpcut shots, a few recognizable monuments to human hope, hype, and hypocrisy, educating you as to which particular American city you are in.  You go past the morally poisonous quills of the skyscrapers and begin to zero-in on the building in which I work, a not particularly tall, not particularly elegant, not particularly old or new structure.  Then, dropped by your bird like a passed raspberry seed, you find yourself swinging at the end of a sort of bungy snot drop dangling from a gargantuan giraffe of rusty origami– a godzillian crane, from which dangling perch, you peep through a plate glass window with no more discretion than if you were passing by a restaurant full of chatty masticators.  You see me from the back, busily at work in my tiny office.

See me?  I’m the little guy with the wavy red hair, wearing a brown jacket and sitting at the desk, scribbling something.  Both of my elbows are out to either side and resting atop the desk, my thin neck winching my head down close to what I’m writing. 

Through the magic of editing, and possibly with the trickery of special effects, you float through the large window and enter the room.  You drift across my shoulder, a not especially broad shoulder, like dandruff in a gust of wind, and continue on, over the desk.  You see that I’m writing on a lavender Post-It note in a cramped style.  There is a very large computer screen, the old kind, blocky, weighing at least thirty pounds.  The rim of the screen has several, multi-colored Post-Its attached to it.  There is also on the desk a yellow legal pad and a stack of Post-It notepads, each pad a different pastel color. 

On the other side of the desk you plant yourself and turn and look at me.  I look over my thick-rimmed, black glasses at you.  My eyebrows are red and a little on the bushy side.  My eyes are small, maybe even beady.  They could be any of the darker hues, it’s difficult to tell.  You see that I am middle-aged, my face not lined but bony with angular cheekbones, my flesh pale and hairless, my lips thin, my nose slender and longish.  My tie does not quite match my jacket–  I find it difficult to match to brown.  I guess a brown tie would match, but then that would be just too much brown.  Brown is the color of barrenness.  My life is barren enough.  But I do like my jacket.  It has cool elbow pads, the kind like the nice fathers used to wear in the old black and white family shows that always ended in a group laugh.  That was just television, though, not real life.  Real life doesn’t really end with a group laugh.  Sorta the opposite of that really.   

You realize I’m still looking over my glasses at you.  I tilt my head to my left, signaling you toward a low bookcase set against the wall.  With an acquiescing shrug, you go to the short bookcase and sit yourself on top of it as I pull the sticky lavender Post-It from the pad I’ve been etching with deep grooves of black ink and let it fall to the floor behind my desk.  I put down my pen with an air of accomplishment.  The floor to the place being uneven, the pen rolls across the top of my desk and over the edge and comes to rest on the carpet.  I sigh and leave the pen be.  You get the impression that this is not the first time this has happened to me. 

You look about the room.  Admittedly, it’s small.  The walls are an off-offwhite, yellowed by a century of cigarette smoke.  The brown carpet is thin and ugly, very ugly in fact.  There are wood-paneled file cabinets on the wall opposite my desk, where the narrow door is also placed.  On each of the three windowless walls hangs a framed object.  The wall across from you holds what is probably a diploma from a legitimate college.  To your left, over the wooden file cabinets, is a landscape painting, a green field of tall grass with a barren tree in the midground and hazy, purple mountains in the background.  Behind you is a certificate of some sort.  It’s not immediately clear what the certificate certifies, but there’s a golden embossed star in its lower righthand corner, and it looks official and laudatory. 

You probably feel like the place needs more sun.  All the shadow makes you feel droopy and yellowed.  I agree.

I have just said these last two words outloud to you, and you turn your head toward me from the hard angle you had assumed in order to see the framed certificate above you. 

The place is a dump.  I admit it.  This computer screen, for instance.  Come on.  It’s the size of a Mumbai automobile.  I’m surprised it doesn’t come with taillights and a spare tire on the back– and a rearview mirror saying, Warning:  Objects Reflected In This Screen Are Of Even Less Importance Than Said Objects Think They Are.  I mean, look at this crap.  And this desk.  I’m surprised it even holds up under the weight of my mainframe here.  And knock on it.  No really, give it a good rap.  Like this.  Hear that?  That’s not even real wood.  That’s pressboard.  It’s like cardboard with an inflated ego. 

And look at this carpet.  You know why it’s brown don’t you?  So it doesn’t show all the flecks of human flesh that have been sloughed off and deposited on it through the decades.  Actually, it probably wasn’t even brown to begin with. 

I guess no one figures it matters much.  And it doesn’t really.  Not to anyone except me.  And who am I?  I’m just a guy with two certificates hanging on his walls and the ugliest tie collection in the City.

My patients sure as heck don’t care.  Most of their minds have been screwed-up by drugs, prescribed or otherwise, along the way.  Just so many losers on the treadmill, going through the motions the court has prescribed for them after being caught for a quote-unquote drug-related crime.  Or maybe they’re finally acquiescing to the pleadings of their families to seek help.  Who knows?  Maybe their lives are just so screwed up that they don’t know what else to do, so they throw up their hands and say:  I give up.  Somebody else make decisions for me for awhile…  I sympathize.  There’s admittedly a certain allure to the maintenance of an aloof irresponsibility for your own life. 

With the good-looking female patients, I hold out the hope for at least a little transference that will eventually lead to sexual intercourse once they’ve stopped coming to see me professionally (through a hiccup in the law, I’m not allowed to screw my patients; hence the abrupt ending of sessions before I search their files for their addresses and show up at their houses with booze and prescription drug samples).  With the men, I just try to think about the money I’m making while they boohoo about how they’re letting down their families and moan about the general mess they’ve made out of their pathetic little, meaningless-anyhow lives.

There’s a knock at the door.  She’s here.  My next appointment.

Now, just act natural.  You’re just living furniture.  And do you have to droop so much?  Your posture is an embarrassment.  “Come in!”  How do I look?  Is my tie straight?

The door opens.  “Seymour?  Are you ready for me to come in?”

I meet the young woman halfway across the small space of mucky carpet.  I hold out my hand.  She takes it.  Her hands are cold and soft. 

“Please, call me Doctor,” I say.

“Oh, I didn’t realize—“

“Of course you didn’t.” 

“You’re not wearing any shoes,” she observes.

I look down.  She is right.

“Very astute, young lady.  You have passed the first test.”  I release her hand and close the office door.  “I saw on your chart that you were having difficulties processing visual cues.  But obviously you can see at least down to the floor— Let me ask you this.  Do I appear to be wearing socks to you?”

She looks down at my toes twitching in the dirty hairs of the ugly carpet.  She bites her lower lip as she thinks.  A lovely little lip.  Her eyes squirt a blue question.  “No?”

“Excellent.  I’m beginning to think you’re quite the observant one.”

She seems pleased with herself.  “And your tie doesn’t match.”

“Yes, well.  Enough eye tests for now.”  I begin back toward my fun swivel chair, raising my arm toward the office’s other chair, situated across the desk from my own.  “Please, have a seat, ah, Miss Cochran, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

As I come around my desk, I cast a glance at you.  I raise my furry red eyebrows and widen my little beady eyes and make a whistling face with my thin lips, all the while waving my outstretched fingers like I’m drying nail polish– all this to convey to you the simple fact that I, indeed, have noticed how pretty this young thing is.

The patient has seated herself before I’m through testing the wheels on my swivel chair.  There’s a greenish plastic covering on the carpet behind the desk—my desk—and the wheels roll very easily.  Perhaps after Miss Cochran’s appointment, I can play race-car.  Yes.  Capital notion. 

“So, Miss Cochran—“  My computer monitor is blocking her from my view.  I lean forward around the mass of electronics.  “Would you mind maybe scooting over just a bit?  This computer screen.  You could hide an elephant behind it.  Not that you’re–  I mean, you’re obviously very thin.  You, ah, jazzercise?”  I raise my boney arms up and down like I’m lifting a barbell.  “Yes.  A little more to the right, please.  Thank you.  So, uh, you like my plant?”

She follows the direction of my uplifted arm to the short bookcase on her right.  “What plant?”

“Precisely.  A pitiful excuse for foliage.  It’s this office.  Toxic environment.  Simply toxic.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yes.  Very,” I say.  You may not can see from where you are, but she’s wearing a skirt so short that it rides up over her crossed knees.  Long, well-toned calves lead to the narrow straps and soles and heels of her footwear.  She seems a little nervous.  Her bright blue eyes glint and flicker like the pilot lights of a gas stove.  Gas stoves are dangerous, so they don’t let us have those here.  But I know all about them. 

She breathes out heavily, putting her interlaced fingers on top her uppermost knee.  In the act of outstretching her arms and bringing her hands together, the insides of her upper arms push slightly against the pert breasts behind her thin, cream-colored blouse.  The room gets hazy.  Actually, my glasses are fogging.   

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” I ask, rubbing my glasses with my tie as I stand, falling forward as the back of my bare ankle catches the rough underside of one of the legs of my chair.  I don’t look down.  There could be blood.  The sight of blood makes me faint.  Even ketchup makes me woozy. 

“Sure.”  She smiles a little when she says it.  There is a radiance there.  And those lips…

I go to the wide windowsill behind my desk.  The view from my office is like the calf-view from the middle of the herd.  The bare, red brick of the building across the alley blocks any sight whatsoever of the greater madness of the City.  I reach for the pitcher of water I keep on the windowsill.  I find that the water keeps very cool there, on the windowsill that is, as I get not a beam of freaking direct sunlight in this rodent hole. 

I look over at you surreptitiously.  I tick my head toward the window.  You don’t move.  I tick harder.  You take your time coming.  You’re feelings are probably still a little hurt about what I said earlier about you being a poor excuse for a plant.  I’m sorry already.  Geesh.  Don’t be such a big seedling.  “Would you care for a glass of water, Miss Cochran?”

“No thank you, Doctor.”

You finally arrive at the window, looking a little pouty still.  I whisper to you through gritted teeth:  I’m really only pretending to pour myself a glass of water so I can talk to you.  Well, okay, I really am pouring myself a glass of water, but I pretended to want it so I could a collect my thoughts.  “So are you originally from the area, Miss Cochran?”  

“I’ve been in the City about three years.  I moved here after college.”

She’s awfully good looking for a drug addict, don’t you think?  Come on.  Who is she kidding?  I’ve seen a few movies in my time.  I know a femme fatale when I see one. 

“I noticed you said, after college.  Is that code for, I went to college but never graduated?” 

And smell that?  Perfume.  It’s the sulfur of an impending lightning strike to me. 

“No.  I graduated.  Philosophy degree.”

Don’t look at me like that.  Go back to your bookcase.  Go on. 

You do the ol’ sulk and skulk back your bookcase top.

“Is anything wrong, Doctor?”

I turn toward her, holding my glass of water, obviouslike, in front of me, so that she can see I really poured it.  

“Hmm…  Oh, no.  Just a little thirsty.”  I bring my water back to my desk with me and take a nice long gulp after I sit, like I really needed it.  “So, Miss Cochran…  what made you choose this fair city of all cities after graduation?”

“My family found this place for me.  They thought it would be good for me.  The rest is history.”

“Yes, but is anything really ever history, Miss Cochrane?”   I lean closer to her, staring seductively into her gorgeous blue eyes— my elbow misses the desk and I fall forward.  My swivel chair spins out from under me.  I leap up from the floor holding the pen that had rolled off the desk earlier.  “Just had to get my pen,” I said, flattening my dull red hair down against my head.  I retrieve my chair.    

“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” she says as I’m reseating myself.  She shrugs her shoulders a little when she says it.  Her breasts bounce a little.

“Is that how you see yourself, Miss Cochran?  Like moss?”

“What?  No.  I wasn’t talking about me.”

“Oh, so you think I’m moss.” 

“No!” she says.  “Your chair rolls.  Get it?  You’re a rolling stone.”

“Which one?”

“Ringo?”

“I see…  Delusions of other people’s grandeur,” I say as I write hurriedly and with great flourish on a sky blue Post-It and toss it into the floor.  “So tell me, Miss– ,” The computer monitor is still a little in the way.  I set down my pen and use both hands to turn it on its stand.  It’s very heavy.  When the universe finally collapses in upon itself, the direct center of that massive singularity will probably be inside this monitor.

“You’re pen,” she says with touch alarm.

“Hmm?” I ask, then follow her blue gaze to the edge of my desk.  Sure enough, my pen rolls off.  “How– how did you know that would happen?” I ask after the pen softly thuds.

“How did I know your pen would roll off?”

“Please do not repeat my questions, Miss Cochran.  We’ll never get anywhere.”

She looks at me quizzically.  She is obviously measuring me for something.  Maybe for a coffin for all I know.  Oh she’s tough as nails, this one.  Hot tamale fatalee.  If I’ve seen one, I’ve seen a hundred. 

“Well,” she begins, uncrossing her legs as she leans closer.  My eyes are instinctively drawn to the shadows of her skirt as her legs move.  “That’s what I came to talk to you about… Doctor.”

I pull my legal pad close to me like a shield in battle.  “Yes, go on.” 

“Well, you were right.  My vision is giving problems.  But it’s not exactly getting worse—“

I hold up my hand like a traffic cop.  “Hold that thought.”  I bend over to pick up my pen.

“You’re water!” she says.

My arm knocks over my glass of water, soaking my pad, the desk, and quickly beginning a puddle in the carpet.  The femme pulls out some Kleenex from her purse and begins to mop up the water from the pad and from the desk. 

“How clumsy of me,” I say.  “Thank you.”  I take the Kleenex gently from her hand, her soft, feminine hand.  I smear the rest of the water from my pad and tear off the top several pages and throw them and the Kleenex into the wastebasket beside my desk.  I lean back in my chair and click my pen into action, the pad in my lap dampening my pants (which by the way, are really pajama bottoms that can also pass for real pants; I’m a very practical man).

“You did it again, Miss Cochran.”

“Did what again, Seymour—I mean, Doctor?”

“You knew my water was about to spill before it actually did.”

“That’s what I was telling you about.”

“Please continue.”

“Doctor… You’ve heard of soothsayers?”

“Of course, I have.  Like the guy who told Caesar he was about to die.  Fear the ides of December! he warned.  I read it in the original Greek, of course.”

“I think that was in March.”

“He said it in March?  That’s a long lead time.  Seems like Caesar could’ve figured out something by December.  Woulda saved alot of knife cleaning.”

“No.  I mean the soothsayer, Tiresias, told Caesar to fear the ides of March.”

“Maybe that’s why the senators caught him by surprise in December.”

“Yes, well… My point is, Doctor…  You know how those soothsayers were always blind?”

“Yes.  What about it?  Everyone knows that soothsayers are always blind.”

“I think I understand why.  They weren’t really blind.”

“Not really blind?”

“No.  They were the opposite of blind.”  She is speaking in a near-whisper.  I watch her lovely mouth softly move.  “They saw too much.  They could see the future, and that future-sight ruined their present vision.  And… and it’s happening to me, Doctor.  I’m frightened.  You must help me.”

“Alright, stay calm, Miss Cochran.  Don’t give into the fear.  Worry never solved anything.  Please state your exact problem to me.”

“Doctor… I can see the future.”

“You can see the future?”

“Please don’t repeat me, Doctor.  We’ll never get anywhere.”

“When did this… clairvoyancey start?”

“About six months ago.”

I scribble on my pad while saying outloud with some emphasis:  “Let the record show.  Six months went by before the patient sought treatment.”  And then calming my voice:  “Go on, Miss Cochran.”

“Well, I’m not a full-fledge soothsayer yet.  I’m only up to seeing about a second or two ahead.  That’s why my eyesight is blurry.  If an object is just about to move, it gets blurry.”

 “And what about the present?  Can you see that as well?”

“Don’t be silly, Doctor.  Of course I can.  How else would I know when to zip up my pants?”

“I see…  Zip up her pants,” I scribble importantly.  “Now we’re getting somewhere.  So, Miss Cochran…  Am I blurry to you right now?”

“Yes.  You’re constantly fidgeting.  No offence.  But that makes you a blurry all the time.”

“Hmm…  Well then, tell me, Miss Cochran.  What am I about to do next?”

“I can’t tell you.  I can only see about a second-and-half ahead, and it’s all a little indistinct.  I’m still figuring out how to decipher all the fuzziness.”

“I see–”

With the speed of a bolt of lightning, I reach to snatch one of the Post-Its from the computer monitor and toss it toward her.  The Post-It, a pink one, flutters downward.  I notice Miss Cochran had placed her arms up in a defensive position long before the Post-It hit the floor. 

“Impressive reflexives,” I say, trying to figure out what her trick is.  I am more convinced now than ever that this broad has walked straight out of a Bogart movie.  “You saw it coming, didn’t you, Miss Cochran?”

“Yes,” she says, lowering her arms and straightening her suit.  “Just a second before it happened.”

“I see…  What do you think the cause of your problem is, Miss Cochran?”

“I think my Time-filter is slipping.”

“Time… filter,” I repeat, scribbling.  “Slipping.  Go on.”

“Well you see, humans have several senses they use to help them get along in the world.  Sight, smell, hearing.  That stuff.  I think the sense of Time is a sense like that.”

“Uh-hmm.”

“You see, Doctor, our senses are actually quite limited.  For instance, we can’t see every little molecule or hear the scratching legs of every little ant.  That much sensory input bombarding us would be overwhelming.  We’d go crazy with information overload.”

“Crazy?”  I shudder at the thought.

“Yes.  So we sense only small portions of the universe, in small bands of perception.  Just enough to operate, to survive, but that’s all.  We’re totally oblivious to ninety-nine percent of the universe.”

“Speak for yourself, Miss Cochran.”

“And it’s the same with Time, Doctor.  If we saw all eternity in a glance, our limited brains would explode like melons struck by a sledgehammer.  We would go absolutely insane.”

“Insane…,” I scrawl.  “Miss Cochran.  The Earth is hurtling through space at thousands of miles per minute.  You are aware of this?”

“Constantly.”

“Well, don’t you see?  If you could see into the future, then not just a few objects would be fuzzy, but each and every object would be an immense blur since all of it, everything, is moving at an incredible velocity.”

“Yes, but so am I.  And at the exact same speed.  That cancels it all out.  As Einstein said.”

“Yes, of course.  As Einstein famously stated.  Every good doctor knows all about Einstein.”  I suck on my pen, thinking of my next approach.  Tasting the acrid taste of the ink, I realize I am sucking on the wrong end of the pen and yank it from my lips. 

She continues:  “The only things that are blurry are movements relative to my own movement through Time.”

“Through Time?  From Future to Past, you mean.”

“Actually, Doctor.  We don’t have that kind of Time.”

“Of course, we do.   We’re only half-way through the session.”

“No, I mean that the Past does not truly exist, and the Future is a hoax.  These are only relative terms we humans impose, as Kant conjectured.”

“Yes, of course, Kant.  But what Kant failed to see was that Time cannot, in actuality, be a purely subjective bias.  After all, the universe was developing long before there were any Subjects around to think about it.  Think about it.”

She thinks about it.  “Yes… if the cosmos was not developing before we got here, then how could we have evolved to the level at which we could impose Time upon the universe?” 

“Precisely,” I say.

“Maybe Time is another word for memory.”

“How so?”

“Without memory, we’d have no concept of the past.  And without a sense of past, we’d have no reason to suspect a future.  Thus, Doctor, we’d have no concept of Time at all…”

I flip the yellow page on my pad energetically, folding it behind the soggy cardboard, saying outloud:  “No memory equals no Time–”  I flip the page again, my hand moving almost frantically as great and important revelations cascade through my mind—“No Time equals no cause and effect.”  I throw the page over the spine of the pad–  “No cause and effect equals no reasoning power equals–”  A new page and I gasp:  “No thought!”   

The patient examines her nails.  “The average person sees the world like she’s looking through the wrong end of the telescope.  I feel sorrow for you, really.”

“But, Miss Cochran, we do think!  Therefore, if thought requires Time, Time must exist.”

“Perhaps you merely think you think.”

“And perhaps you think I think I think.”  I feel a little dizzy.  A thought occurs to me (or does it?!):  “What of the notion that Time is a property of the fabric of Space, itself?  Wouldn’t that be the most straightforward explanation?”

“But Space is nothing.  How can nothing have any properties?”

“Miss Cochran…,” I begin patiently, putting my pad down on the desk and pushing my glasses back up my thin nose.  “We have established already that the bands of human perception are quite limited.  Just because we sense nothing in Space, does not mean there is nothing there.  For example, many believe that it is the warping of Space that causes gravity.  If Space were nothing, there would be nothing there to warp, now would there, Miss Cochran?”

In an effort to emphasize my point, I lean forward with a suddenness that sends my swivel chair out from under me.  I leap to a standing position.  “Excuse me for a moment, please.”

I clear my throat and grab my water glass and motion you with my head to join me again at the windowsill.

When you arrive, I speak softly from the corner of my mouth:  I’m not sure what to think.  On the one hand, delusionals can create amazingly intricate, personal universes.  On the other hand, she did see the falling pen, the spilt water, and the Post-It tossed at her before they actually happened. 

You look skeptically at me. 

“Who, who are you talking to, Doctor?” she says, in a voice all innocence and seduction.

We better go back to our seats.  She’s getting suspicious.  We split up. 

I turn around smiling.  “Me?  Oh, I’m just talking to the plant.  Plants thrive in the carbon dioxide released in our breath.” 

“And yet, in that sense, to ourselves, words are poison.”

“Yyyes… Now, Miss Cochran,” I say, sitting at my desk.  I have forgotten my water on the windowsill, but I decide that less attention would be drawn to that fact if I ignored it entirely than if I went back for it.  “Where were we?  Or should I say, when were we?”  I laugh at my witticism.  She does not.

“Doctor…  I fear you are not taking seriously my ability to see the future of objects.”

I push one of the wavy strands of red hair away from my glasses’ frame and lean forward, carefully putting my jacket’s elbow pads on the edge of the desk.  “You do realize, Miss Cochran, that the same object is never present from second to second.  Molecules are constantly flying in and out of it.  Electrons are exchanging faster’n fluids at a co-ed youth retreat.  Time could not be attached to the object, as your symptoms suggest, because, in reality, there’s nothing there to be attached to.  It’d be like trying to hook the shifting sands.”

“Oh, but I agree with you, Doctor.  All boundaries are merely human contrivances.  The Universe is a vast, interconnected system of rivers and streams.  But what many people do not realize is that everything is constantly blinking in and out existence as our mind refreshes its picture of the universe.”

“And how fast is this refreshing process moving?”

“At what we call the speed of light, Doctor, which is really another name for the speed limit of the universe.  Which ultimately is, itself, another name for the speed of thought.”

“So, in other words, the speed at which our picture of the universe refreshes itself is what sets the speed of light.”

“Yes.”

“Let me get this straight.  Time cannot a property of Space, because nothingness is that which possesses no properties.”

She tilts her head:  “True.”

“And Time cannot be a property of the objects, themselves, because objects are shifting collections of particles that can provide no anchor for Time there.”

“Yes.”

“And Time cannot be pure conjecture from the subject, for the evolution of the universe suggests that Time existed before there was anyone around to perceive it.” 

“Okay.”

“Well, Miss Cochran, it seems we have not left anyplace for Time to exist at all.”  

“Your comprehension of the matter is truly amazing, Doctor.  For a non-soothsayer, that is.”

“Well, thank you.  I do have two certificates on the walls, after all.”

“So what do you think I should do?”

“Do about what?”

“My condition.  My ability to see what most people would term, the future?”

“Well… have you thought about playing the ponies?  And by that I mean the stock market.”

“I wouldn’t use my powers like that, Doctor.  With great power comes great responsibility.  I want to use my powers for good.”

“Yes, yes.  Of course.  I can see you have a kind heart, Miss Cochran.  Maybe you could help the police solve crimes.  Prevent them even.”

“Yes.  I could be like a superhero.  They would call me…” she lowers her voice and juts out her cute chin, “The Soothsayer.”

“Yes…” I say.  I stand and begin to pace.  The pink Post-It that I earlier threw across the desk is kicked up by the movement of my pajama bottoms and drifts over toward you.  “Maybe we should set up an appointment with Stan Lee or Frank Miller.  If Time does not exist in any concrete way, they may still be alive somewhere.  I could be your agent.”

“But what do I do about the blurriness?”

“Ah yes, the blurriness…”  I put my hands behind my back and lower my head as I walk around the room.  I stop abruptly, raising a finger.  “I’ve got it!”

“What?”

“Since your own Time-filter is slipping, there is nothing for it but to construct for you an artificial Time filter.”

“To filter out artificial Time?”

“No, no.  To filter out real Time– alleged real Time, that is.”

“I must admit, I’ve been toying around with the concept, myself.  Do you think it’s possible to construct such a filter?”  She practically leaps from her chair in her girlish excitement.

“Of course it is.  Humans have been playing around with the widths of our perception-bands for ages.  Think of sunglasses and hearing-aids.  Microscopes and telescopes.  It can be done, Miss Cochran.  It can be done.”

“Please, call me Laura.”

“Laura, then.  But where to start?”

“Actually, Doctor—“

“Please.  Seymour.”

“Well, actually, Seymour, I have already been at work experimenting with different metals.  So far, aluminum has shown the most promise in focusing the Time-band.”

“Aluminum?”

“Yes.”  She reaches into her purse and pulls out what appears to be layer upon layer of aluminum foil pressed together and curved into the shape of a bowl.  She puts it on her head.  “The aluminum seems to act as a buffer to some of the overwhelming amount of stimuli bombarding us.”

“We should do some experiments,” I say, remembering that I am a man of science.

“And guess what else, Seymour?”

“What?”

“The name aluminum.  I don’t think it’s just coincidence that aluminum sounds so much like… illuminate.”

“You’re right!” I say.  “But we need tests, hypotheses, verifications–”

“I’ve got it!”

“Got what?”

“There’s a bingo game tonight in the group room,” she answers.

“The bingo game?  But isn’t that for the…” I lower my voice:  “crazy people?”

“So what?  All the easier to stay incognito.  I’ll wear my special helmet to help limit my Time-sight, focusing on just the near future.  We can try to win a few games— purely for scientific reasons, of course.  We could donate any monies-accrued to charity.”

“Or to further our scientific research,” I add.

The door opens.  A tall man in a white coat comes in.  He seems startled to see us.

“What are you two doing in here?”

“It seems we’re out of time for today, Laura.”

“Get out of my office this instant,” says the man, wearing his serious face.  “You know this is an off-limits area.”

“Yes, of course,” I say.  “It’s your turn to have the office, Doctor.  That’s proper play.”  I raise my furry red eyebrows to Laura, whispering, “A little territorial, aren’t we?”  We both giggle.  I take her arm in mine.

“I do hope he doesn’t feel the need to mark his territory,” she says.

“Don’t worry,” I say, traipsing over the nasty furry brownness in my bare feet, “It could only improve this carpet.”

Laura and I exit the room arm in arm, she in her aluminum helmet, me in my raggedy brown jacket with the unmatching tie.  It was a good session. 

You stay behind, rather awkwardly I might add.  The man in the white coat sighs, begins towards the desk, and notices the pink Post-It on the floor.  He bends over to pick it up.  He pauses to read it.  It is his own writing.  You read it along with him:  “4pm— Laura —Delusional—Time SUPERPOWERS!” 

He tilts his face toward the ceiling and puts the back of his hand on his head:  “Oh geez!  I forgot her appointment.  No wonder they were in here.”  A strong sigh puffs out his cheeks.  “I guess I should apologize.”

He crumples the note and walks around his desk, tossing the note into the wastebasket.  He steps in the puddle of water and immediately glances toward his pitcher of water on the windowsill.  He sees it is mostly empty and spots the glass of water I had poured earlier, still sitting there on the sill as approaching night darkens the City.  He goes to window, picks up the glass of water, and turns.  He spies the immense pile of Post-Its on the floor that I have marked up during the course of the afternoon.  Sighing again, he walks toward you.  He tenderly brushes back the strands of your hair.

“You could use some more sunlight,” he says as he pours the glass of water slowly over your head.