Timestream - Ep. 2 - Tragic Rewind (466 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 2 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Remy L (View user info) at 2006-02-15 16:39:52 EST
Timestream - Ep. 2 - Tragic Rewind
My mind, my soul, however you want to say it, has been around for about 50 years. My body is approximately 27 years old because I've been very careful about controlling my aging. The trick is to try not to have any Pauses, Slows, or Fast-Forwards in the past. Too many Pauses and Slows, and my body is older than it should be. Too many Fasts and it's too young. You get the idea.
The operative word there, though, is "try." If I have to Slow in order to accomplish a task, I *try* to Rewind to a point where I can accomplish the task normally. It doesn't always work, but I can usually get pretty close.
The reason my soul is twice as old as my body falls into the story of my most tragic Rewind.
When I was about 16 years old I was depressed. At some point in those delicate 7 years, what teenager wasn't? I had only recently discovered that I could control my Timestream and I didn't think too hard about the consequences. I didn't know the technicalities yet. Hell, I hadn't had the need to change time by more than a factor of 10.
I got it into my head that I could fix all the problems with my parents' marriage, my social life, and my sister's problems. I tried to figure out how far back I should go. I decided to crank it all the way back to birth. I reasoned that if I was aware and thinking, like we all do now, but as a baby, I could listen in on conversations and learn the best way to figure out how to keep my parents together and how to best be a brother to my sister.
Relaxing my mind, I Rewound.
My live reversed itself and I had the sick and dizzying feeling you get when every sensation is felt in high speed and in reverse.
As a baby, your vision is mostly colorblind and very blurry for a bit. I Rewound too far and ended up in the womb, a day before I was supposed to be born.
There are no words to express what it felt like. First of all, I started to choke, because my mind was trying to re-establish control of a body that couldn't breathe. Slowly my subconsciousness took over and I settled. Later, my mother would say she felt me kicking and pushing harder than ever. It was also pitch black. I felt cramped, and warm, and scared. As a baby, I probably didn't mind, but with a 16 year old soul, it was claustrophobic in there.
Realizing I went too far, I decided to Fast-Forward to when I was born. Right about this time, my mother's water broke and she was on her way to the hospital. I thought I could just Fast-Forward through the birth and I wouldn't have to deal with all the pain and suffering I figured babies went through.
This is how I learned the problem with Fast-Forwarding. I accelerated time around me and expected to experience 2 hours in 2 seconds. Remember how I said that to me the world would move fast but to you I would be slow? I had Fast-Forwarded by a factor of about 60x. When my mother arrived at the hospital, the doctors told her that my heartbeat was dangerously slow. The average heart beat is about 72 beats per minute, or 6 beats every 5 seconds. The doctors were seeing mine beat once every 50 seconds. Instead of a quick 2 hours like my mother had told me, there was an emergency C-section. All this commotion gave me cause to stop my Fast-Forward, but by then it was too late.
I experienced my own birth by C-section.
The next few days were similar to having mono, pneumonia, the flu, and muscle atrophy all at the same time. I couldn't move at all, I was tired, cold, and I felt like shit. I couldn't talk. I knew not to try to move too much because my muscles weren't developed yet.
I still didn't understand why my mother had a C-section instead of normal birth like she had always told me. I hadn't understood the difference between my time and everyone else. I learned very quickly.
I tried again to Fast-Forward, this time by a factor so large that a year would pass in a minute. I closed my eyes and Fast-Forwarded. I opened my eyes in pitch blackness and no air. Still a 2-day old baby, I started to black out and quickly Rewound. I controlled the speed of the Rewind enough to understand what had happened.
Now, understand that I had my eyes closed the whole time I Fast-Forwarded that year, so I couldn't see. Smell doesn't work the same because it depends on air-flow and I won't even try to tell you what it feels like to breathe in reverse. But hearing works fine. You hear everything backwards, of course, but if try hard enough, you can learn to understand. Almost the whole year was in the dark, when finally I watched a lid open above me. I resumed time to it's normal flow and immediately there was a commotion of everyone around me. As I was lifted, I saw my coffin.
My parents thought I had died. Their baby boy was 2-days old when they saw him, eyes closed, not breathing, laying in his crib.
That's when I learned the perils of Rewinding. There is no way to Fast-Forward back to where I started. The world would see me as dead or missing. I would have to hide if I wanted to Fast-Forward for any period of time, and be sure I Rewound back so that no one would notice I was gone.
I Rewound back to the crib, 2-days old. I was 16 years old and trapped in a 2-day old body. My lesson, my punishment for my stupidity, was to live my life over again.
By next day, 3 days old, I knew that I would know the future, to a degree. I would know plots to movies that had only been out for a day. I would be able to breeze through school. I knew who won Superbowls and World Series. I knew the Challenger would explode. I knew Bush would be elected after Reagan. All of these things were in my head.
How I used that knowledge and the choices I made based on it is a story for another day.
---
Timestream - Ep.1 - Technicalities - http://www.ubersite.com/m/83953
User Reviews
Submitted by Calios (user info) at 2006-02-24 03:17:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-02-22 07:27:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting. +2 for the concept, but the execution was a little bland -- you got bogged down on explanation, which can be boring when you do too much with it. I imagine it's a tough thing to explain in a story like this.
Submitted by GuinnessSince1759 (user info) at 2006-02-16 03:05:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/84024
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-02-15 23:09:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
really cool.
Submitted by VelvetElvis (user info) at 2006-02-15 22:59:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
nice.
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2006-02-15 21:53:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
So its easy to rewind but not easy to fast forward?
Submitted by ripple (user info) at 2006-02-15 19:24:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
the idea of fast-forward and rewind is different than other time-realted stories that ive read, and thats good, but the writing is inconsistent in its quality. keep writing though. i want to read the rest.
Submitted by HighVoltage900 (user info) at 2006-02-15 17:03:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-02-15 16:44:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Are you familiar with Chrononauts?