Mountain Qualia

NaNoWriMo Day 10

Tipi was in a bit of a hurry. When he was having lunch, he had the time to take in the menagerie of people that converged at this hub for food and pleasure. Two men who acted like bird watchers with ridiculously large binoculars had been sitting on a rock nearby. It had annoyed Tipi that he felt the binoculars piercing the back of his neck. There had been no birds near him, even though his lunch would have been inviting enough for a crow or two.

When Tipi and Julian walked down the slope again, both men got up as well and followed them from a distance. He wanted to tell Julian they were being followed, but he decided against it. First, he was quite sure he was the only one being followed, the only people looking for Julian would be his parents. And second, he didn't want to upset Julian even more than he probably already was.

"Do you believe in time travel?" Julian asked.

"You want to turn back time to undo your mistakes?"

"No. I just want to know if you believe in it."

"I'm not even sure time exists," Tipi said. He was reluctant to talk about the concept of time to a six-year-old. "But sure, why not?"

"I do it all the time," Julian said.

Tipi kicked a rock by accident and then kicked it again with his other foot on purpose. "That's nice."

"Look, there, on the path down there," Julian said. Tipi squinted his eyes expecting to see people resembling parents. "It's the future. We're here now, and in a while we will be there."

Tipi sighed, but the boy continued. "So I've looking into the future for all my life, sometimes close and now very far into the future."

"Some people live mostly in the past," Tipi said.

"They must walk backwards," the boy said. He then turned around as if to try it out. "It's stupid, I can't see where I go." Then after some silence. "What about you, Tipi? How do you time travel?"

Tipi thought hard. "I send messages."

"What?"

"Never mind," Tipi said, unsure what he meant with messages himself. "They told me I lived in the present. They called it enlightenment. It is supposed to be a wonderful thing."

Julian did not respond.

"Of course you always live in the now. We're not in the future or we would see ourselves standing down there on the path. But they mean being in the now in your head, without worrying about matters to come, or about situations that have already happened."

"You'll fall," Julian said. "If you don't look ahead, you'll fall, just like if you walk backwards. You can't see where you're going!"

"Yes, I guess you're right," Tipi said. "Our brain doesn't take in everything at once either, it is constantly buzzing around electrical signals in a steady rhythm, so the present takes some time."

"What does you brain have to do with time travel? My legs hurt. Is it far, can we stop?"

"At least an hour still I think." Tipi checked his wrist to find it empty. "Hey, kid. Do you have a watch?"

"Yea, " he said. "But I can't tell the time yet." He looked away and put his hand over his watch."

"That's okay, I don't want to know the time, anyway. I want to show you real time travel, give me your wrist." Tipi took the wrist of Julian before he could do it himself. "There, you see the thin hand going around? Those are the seconds. Notice how it ticks steadily every second."

"Now I can make that second last twice as long," Tipi said. "Just look at me and then flip your eyes on the seconds hand." Julian did. The hand of the watch hung on the number two and seemed to push to get to the next second but it stayed there. Then, after what seemed like forever, the hand moved again and then it kept going second by second past all the numbers on the watch' clock face.