Submitted for the July 2024 prompt: This Mortal Coil

It's a normal Thursday morning when my underwear starts to beep. Not the pair I'm wearing, but the dresser drawer where I keep the clean ones. I rummage through the boxers and briefs looking for whatever lost electronic thingamabob is attempting to get my attention. Turns out, it's a gadget I've never seen before.

 

A metal orb about the size and shape of an old pocket watch lies nestled amongst my tighty whiteys and Christmas boxers. There's a tiny knob on it, and when I push it, it recesses and melds with the rest of the device.

 

And it stops beeping.

 

"What the hell is this?" I ask the empty room while turning the object over in my hand to examine it.

 

"Hello, Richard," says the orb.

 

I jump and nearly drop the thing. After staring at it and doubting my sanity, I ask, "Who is this?"

 

"I am the Deputy Administrator of the Temporal Accounting Department at the Central Time Bank of the Government of the First Galactic Spiral."

"That's a mouthful," I observe.

 

"You can call me Carl," it says.

 

"Okay, Carl, so this is some kind of communicator? But how did you put it in my drawers without me seeing you?"

 

"It would take far too many femtoseconds to explain," says the voice in the orb. "You don't have that kind of time in your account. But I can demonstrate the answer more quickly if you step outside for 9.614 times ten-to-the-fifteenth femtoseconds."

 

"Ten to the… what are you talking about?"

 

"Let's just call it a… moment. Walk outside for a moment, Richard."

 

This feels like a prank, but I struggle into my walker and shuffle onto my front doorstep. My neighbor stands reading a piece of mail he's retrieved from an absurdly short mailbox. Denise from next door has stopped her Prius in the middle of our street and is staring intently at… something. A Pan Am 737 hovers overhead on final approach.

 

Wait… a jet airplane… hovering?

 

"What the…?" I said, staring open-mouthed at the enormous stationary aircraft above me.

 

"It doesn't make any sense, does it?" asks the voice.

 

The orb starts to beep again.

 

* * *

 

My eyelids flutter open. A heart monitor beeps rhythmically on the wall behind me. Tubes connect me to plastic bags hanging on nearby stands.

 

"Mr. Dedekind, you're awake again." A young lady wearing scrubs turns off the monitor so it stops beeping. My wife Julia and our two adult kids stand beside the bed and look down at me with sad eyes. Julia has been crying.

 

"There was a man, in my dream," I tell them. "I'd never met him before, but it felt like I'd known him forever. We talked for a long time."

 

"Dreams are like that, dear," Julia whispers. "They only last for a moment but seem to go on forever. What else happened in your dream?"

 

"Some stuff… I didn't understand. It's all starting to fade out of my memory already."

 

Julia smiles and touches my forehead. "Try to get some more sleep, dear. It's very late now."

 

As I doze off again, I have a random, irrational thought that I may have mumbled aloud.

 

I don't want to die. I want to live forever.

 

* * *

 

"You see," says Carl, "it's like this…" I know Carl, but I'm not sure how. 

 

"Moments are a free creation of the human mind," he continues. "Your mind and your memory are wired to deal with and remember rational moments — points on the temporal spectrum that make logical sense. The past is an infinite set of rational moments. So, too, is the future. But in between we have, this..." Carl makes an expansive gesture with his arms, indicating the scene before us. We sit in a familiar-looking churchyard where an array of etched glass gravestones marches down to the shore of a vast purple ocean.

 

"After all the rational moments of the past, and before those of the future, there is… now," Carl says.

 

"You mean the present?" I ask. "But the present's over as soon it happens."

 

"Yes. Measured in terms of rational moments, it has no duration whatsoever. But there are many, many irrational femtoseconds between every pair of moments. Infinitely many cuts in the fabric of time."

 

"Can someone choose to live here? In between?"

 

Carl looks directly at me and smiles. "They can, and they do. All the time."

 

"Am I dreaming?" I ask. "Is this real?"

 

"Yes," says Carl, "and yes. Irrational perhaps, but certainly real. More than real —  it's surreal, Richard."

 

* * *

 

I'm wandering around in my house, which is full of people at some kind of party. Everyone recognizes me, but it's as if I don't matter to them anymore. They're startled out of their conversations when I approach them.

 

I try sitting in various familiar places around the house, but nothing's comfortable, so I go out to the front yard and lie down on a footbridge. Its arch feels good to my back. A couple approaches as they're leaving the party. They stop suddenly and turn back when they see me.

 

I go for a walk around the neighborhood with Cooper, my dog. I can hear the music from the party over the outside speakers as we wander through neighbors' yards and examine their stuff: cars, bicycles, toys. I remember that it's September 11, around 10 am, and I'm embarrassed at the noise coming from my house, so I walk farther away.

 

When I try to return home, everything's changed. There's nobody around  —  nobody on the streets. Cooper and I are completely alone. I start to panic but then focus on my dog running around sniffing things with a smile on his muzzle. I take off running alongside him. We run faster and faster; his ears flap and his tongue lolls, back arching with youth and vigor. I look down and see my feet are now bare, and my body is that of a 12-year-old.

 

"Come on, boy!" I shout. "Try to keep up!"