THE SPECIOUS PRESENT

Dear Eya,

               Hello, friend! How are you? It is so nice to meet you (I know this doesn’t really count, but still). I should introduce myself… My name is Zoe Black and I live twelve minutes ago.

               I know that seems like I miswrote, but it’s true. From your perspective, I live twelve minutes ago. So, if you’re reading this (which you are) then I no longer exist. If you had read this twelve minutes earlier however then I would exist. Does that make sense? No, it doesn’t. Hold on, let me draw a diagram…

               OK, so, this is you, here:

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIvIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

               And this is me:   

IIIIIIIIIIII^IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

               You see? We’re unsynchronised.

               Yes, I know, now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Wait a split-second there, Zoe, that’s not right, I don’t exist in one moment, my diagram is more like this:”

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

               Not quite, cookie. You might think that you exist in past, present and future but if that were true then how come you can’t affect the past or the future? Sure, you remember being in the past but you don’t exist then, you are only ever present. Same with me, but my present is in the past. Your memories (of twelve minutes ago) are my present. For me, the future, where you exist, doesn’t exist and so neither do you.

               Get it? No, OK, let me try to explain one last time (I promise).

               You only ever experience the present. You have memories of the past, but you can only remember them in the present. Everyone you know seems to live in the same present, but do they? How can you be sure? The last person you spoke to could think their present is three years from now. The instance you think of as ‘now’ has already happened to them. For them, the events have already taken place, the decisions have already been made.

               Your present doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else’s. In fact, your present doesn’t have to be this particular point in time at all, it could be, oh, I don’t know, twelve minutes ago.

               Why not?

               Alright, now you’re wondering, “How? Why is your present this particular point in time and not any other? And also, how?” Yeah. I can’t help with that either. I’ve read every book I could find on relativity, time dilation and metaphysics but unfortunately, physics doctors don’t offer diagnoses. In fact, I was kind of hoping that you might have a few more answers than I do.

               My best guess is that it has something to do with my birth. My mother would never admit it but I think my birth was quite traumatic for her. I was born twelve minutes early (which is close enough if you ask me) in my parents’ house right on the edge of Verilsberg (it’s in Europe, look it up). The doctor was late and had to travel over from the town on the other side of the valley. Here’s when it started to get freaky, you see, without a baby, the doctor declared that I had been a phantom pregnancy. My mother was terribly confused until twelve minutes later there was a flash of red and she suddenly remembered that I had, in fact, been born.

               Any sane doctor would have dismissed such a delusion as the result of some kind of post-natal depression, but at that moment the doctor also remembered my birth, despite the unshakeable feeling that it had never happened.

               From then on, my mother raised me as best she could, always a little after the fact, but always with love. Growing up was not easy, especially when it came to making friends. You see, some people would remember me, but they’d never remember having met me. The only way I could communicate was through letters. I struck up a handful of pen pals, but they all ended when their parents learned of their child’s ‘imaginary’ friend. It wouldn’t have worked out anyway, after all, how could you be friends with a memory?

               Don’t worry about me, though, I live a happy life. I enjoy long walks, reading, people watching and writing letters. In the end, I settled with being with myself, not with loneliness, but with being alone.

                Although I had come to accept who I was, I had not come to accept how I was. I researched for years, but how do you even look up a condition that doesn’t have a name? I went with ‘temporal ghost’ for a while, but that’s a bit of a mouthful. More recently I’ve borrowed from the Icelanders (I hope they don’t mind) and have come to call myself a ‘hidden person’.

               I found occasional mentions of other people caught between space and time, but I passed them off as myths and hoaxes until, one day, I came across you.

               In all my research it seems you’ve only been sighted three times (a good start). You’ve spoken directly to people, so you don’t have exactly what I have but get this (that’s for dramatic effect, I know you already know this) the gap between the first and last sighting was an impossible 120 years.

               The descriptions all match: a red-haired woman who seemed to move through space and time in an instant with a red flash. And crucially in one report, you’d given your name: Eya Vane.

               I’m not sure you’re even real, but if I’m real, then I don’t see why you can’t be too. So, I’m leaving this letter where you were last sighted in the hope that you might find it and somehow help me. I know you don’t have what I have so I’m not expecting a cure and I’m not expecting to be brought to the present, but if you can move through time at will, perhaps you could meet me, actually meet me and we could just talk.

               I’ll check this spot regularly, so if you do find this letter, please leave me a reply. Hopefully, you don’t leave as long a gap as last time, I am so excited to learn all about you.

               Until I’ve found you, I wish you well and if ever you need me, I’m only twelve minutes away.

               Yours,

                              Zoe

ANAX.

LOOSE CHANGE

“Please insert cash or select payment type.”

Inserting cash had indeed been Glyn’s plan, but at that moment he hesitated. Glyn set down the plastic bag of loose change and tried to place the feeling that had suddenly washed over him. It was impossible to place, like déjà vu but for something forgotten or lost.

Glyn didn’t normally pay by cash, he had by now almost completely phased out physical money from his life, choosing instead to pay by card for most transactions. Three weeks ago, however, he was clearing his attic and came across a box full of old change and expired foreign currency. After sorting the crowns from the krona and the bahts from the buttons, he then separated the pennies from the pounds and put all the change he could still spend into separate bags. Upon completing this rather tedious task, he then made a point of bringing a bag of coins with him on each subsequent shopping trip and decant the change into the self-service checkout machine for a small discount off his groceries. He had spent the bag of pennies, the two pence bag, the ten pence, the twenty pence and then the fifty pence pieces. Now, all he had left was to offload this last bag of pound coins and the occasional two-pound coin, before the currency was updated and these coins became worthless.

Although accrued over the years from various sources including leftover holiday cash, found pennies and pocket change, the largest portion of the stash came from Glyn’s childhood piggybank, frugally neglected until lumped in with this box many years later.

Glyn had forgotten the origin of his piggybank savings, but the forgetting had begun many years earlier, when he was just a child. Glyn had forgotten, perhaps deliberately, about his friend Oliver.

***

Despite their differing personalities, Glyn and Oliver had become good friends quickly thanks to their shared love of playing ‘spies’. It became almost all they did, that and discussing what they would do once they grew up and became globe-trotting secret agents. Whilst many friends fall out over who gets to play the hero and who plays the villain, Glyn always wanted to play the good guy and Oliver happily played the baddie.

One day Oliver took Glyn to their secret den behind the school and showed him a new wallet he’d bought. Oliver neglected to mention that it wasn’t new and he hadn’t bought it, but ‘borrowed’ one from his father. That day they made a pact to each contribute no less than one pound every week from their own pocket money and eventually, they would have enough to buy a secret base.

The plan was simple, Glyn would have it for a week and at the weekend give it to Oliver a pound heavier. Oliver would then look after it the next week before returning it to Glyn with his contribution. This continued for some time until the wallet became fully stuffed and rather too cumbersome to keep carrying between the two boys. Oliver by this point had also become rather worried that someone might find out about their plan and intercept their savings.

Thus, one weekend, rather than making the usual exchange, the two cycled out into the woods and ceremoniously buried the wallet in a small hole in the stump beside the rusted gate. Now the boys could surreptitiously add their contribution without even needing to meet, which, to Glyn’s disappointment, became increasingly frequent.

One weekend Glyn rode out to place another pound in the stump. By this point, the wallet had overflowed into a pile of coins stuffed inside the old tree. It had been so long that the niggling question of the money’s true purpose had begun to play on Glyn’s mind. Glyn dismounted, climbed the gate, and walked over to the stump. Upon crouching down and lifting aside the stone, Glyn found an answer to his question. The money was gone.

Initially, Glyn feared a passing walker had somehow come across their stash, just as Oliver had suspected might happen. However, when Oliver failed to appear at school the next day, or any day after that, Glyn constructed his own narrative. Glyn now believed that Oliver had planned this from the start and Glyn had been foolish enough to play along. Oliver had hoped the pot would keep growing, but when his parents decided to move house, he had been forced to cash out early.

This explanation stuck with Glyn and his resentment grew until the bad overshadowed the good and he had little memory of their friendship left. Glyn did not hear from Oliver again, apart from one day, years later, when cycling in the wood, Glyn took a shortcut and found himself by the old gate. On a whim of curiosity, Glyn dismounted, climbed the gate once more and knelt beside the stump. Glyn pushed away the stone and looked into the stump. There it was, all the coins returned. And on top of the sum there was no old wallet, but instead, a scrap of paper, dusted with mould that read simply, “I’m sorry.”

***

“Please insert cash or select payment type,” the impatient machine repeated. Glyn blinked back to reality. He had been unable to place his feeling, unable to remember that these specific coins had carried such weight for him as a child. After all, surely a pound coin is the same as any other pound coin.

And so, Glyn poured out the bag of cash. In the end his secret base fund was spent on a pint of milk, six eggs, a loaf of bread, a bag of carrots, six apples…

ANAX

ON COSMONISMS

---Whilst the origin of cosmonisms remains uncertain, in recent duodecades there has been significant progress made in the field of cosmonic zoology. As to the various theories that abound, I will only briefly note that all postulated explanations of their origin have yet to withstand scrutiny; A. G. Garis is perhaps the most outspoken proponent that they are “a by-product of human colonisation”; the FOTA seems certain they bear the mark of machine work and those of the Burcanian school suggest an altogether alien beginning.

In order to illustrate the full wonderous breadth of complexity that these creatures hold, allow me to introduce a few specific forms that you might encounter should you venture into those regions-interstellar, habituated by the cosmopods.

Ystatozoa [/i:sˌtatəʊˈzəʊə/, ee-sta-to-zoa] (the broad name for space-dwelling cosmonisms) exist as giant, complex, organic, near mechanical structures. They appear translucent due to their exterior cell walls commonly composed of silica microtubules. This non-crystalline structure forms a semi-rigid lattice, able to bend, stretch and, most importantly, allow a controlled flow of substance into and out of the cosmonism. Ystatozoa with neural structures have yet to be discovered.

Cosmonisms are commonly divided into heterotrophs and autotrophs. Of the autotrophs, the heliotrophs derive their energies from stellar radiation and can be found in the near orbit of stars, whilst dynatrophs derive their energies from the minute field fluctuations in the vacuum of space and can survive deep into the uncharted void. Heterotrophs, on the other hand, gain energy in the consumption and digestion of inert matter such as nebulous gas, asteroids, planetoids, or, more commonly, other cosmopods. Heterotrophs have been found thriving across many varied regions of the observed universe.

Whilst all ystatozoa are at the whims of solar winds, gravitational tides, and space-bound debris, almost all known species have developed methods of movement which vary from species to species. Velates, for example, extend large sail-like structures and attempt to harness the propulsion of natural forces such as solar winds. Ejectates, on the other hand, expel their own propellant, often waste matter from digestion, and manoeuvre themselves in that way. Great pseudopodia, however, are perhaps the more perplexing as they are able to alter their molecular state from solid to gas and back again. This cosmopod will alter a part of itself into a gaseous form, disperse, then reform in its new position. Such a process has also allowed this class of cosmonism to consume matter and even engulf space vehicles.

Even the simplest of the ‘spacimals’ (as the layman terms them) bares such immense beauty and majesty; the single-celled macrostentor, for example, identifiable by their long tubular shape, are noted for being among the largest known single-cellular cosmonisms and have been recorded reaching sizes of up to 12 billion kilometres across with a mass of 6 solar masses. Such forms could theoretically consume entire systems, as some mythmakers and wayward mariners have alleged to have witnessed.

Another stunning aspect of the macro cosmonic universe is when different spacimals find symbiotic harmony and form colonies. Aphanizomenon major, for example, exists as two symbiotic cosmonisms that form rigid, thin stalks that are particularly adapted to stretch across asteroid belts. Voltox too is notable for spherical colonies stretching far across regions of warp trails, often disturbing space freighter routes.

Some species have adapted a symbiosis with human systems. The species nallonas, for example, has adapted to consume by-products of spacecraft fuel and expel gases useful to humans. Nallonas and other similar species have thus far been---

Fragment ends.

ANAX

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