Where are all the time travelers?

Where are all the time travelers?

Chances are you’ve seen or spoken to one at least once. They might even have told you. 

I know one well, actually. He doesn’t travel to watch the titanic sink, or see dinosaurs, or get to know his great great great great great grandmother when she was his age. He frequents libraries, roller rinks, places where time doesn’t pass. Places that haven’t changed in decades and won’t change for a few more. He doesn’t like being outside during the day, where you can watch the sun rise and set like a gargantuan hour hand reminding him of his felony. Chrononauts are fugitives, and Change isn’t a person you can run from. So they hide. Hide and hold their breath and hope that Change doesn’t reach between the couch cushions.

The freshest air is warm July nights of new moons and the same seven pop hits on the radio. In, out, he breathes, repeating to himself that he feels alive. It’s a necessary lie. He knows who’s looking under tables and opening closets ready to deliver an infuriated “there you are” and throw the curtains to let in the light of the sunrise. Wheels spin wildly clockwise and clockwise and clockwise while the chain of skaters rolls counterclockwise and counterclockwise and counterclockwise. He stops when the DJ announces the last song of the night and starts again after the first one, so he can make his song requests, letting the counterclockwise spiral sweep him along again.

Watch him long enough and you’ll see him pick a book off the shelf to read the back cover, seem intrigued, and find a worn-out bean bag to enjoy it in. Make no mistake, he’s playing the hits. Ask him something about the book and he’ll say he’s never read it but his eyes will protest that those pages have turned and turned back more than they’d care to admit to themselves. If he cries, let him be. Let him think it’s from reading his favorite character’s last words again. It only happens once for us, but he’s stopped counting how many times he’s done it.

For their own safety, they don’t know each other. If he ever met the museum guide with the smile worth a million dollars and just as many entertaining facts about burrowing insects, or the comic store owner sorting boxes of Batman onto their appropriate shelves and making the best ones stand out a little more than the others, or the late night coffee shop regular who never quite finishes their mocha or the short story pages away from completion, if they ever met him, they’d cease to be strangers. Strangers never change, everyone but strangers can’t seem to do anything else. 

They like to “tell” people that they’re hiding sometimes, showing off their odd predictions or wealth of niche knowledge like cries for help, coughs from the hiding place under the table while the seeker stands inches away. Remember that they don’t want to be saved. They wish to be forgotten. Assuming you abide by the letter of the law, you will only be able to see them for a short handful of days before they vanish from this world completely. Let their time pass and don’t keep them late. Too long in the sun burns. 

I’ll never forget how he told me how he loved to hide, how he loved letting Change pass right by knowing they’d never think to look down, how he loved seeing Change’s victims come and go and disappear into tomorrow. I told him he had nothing to hide from, that Change stopped looking for him a long time ago. He got angry at me and skated away, and we haven't spoken since. I write this for him. Maybe he’ll see it and realize that I never meant to hurt him. Maybe he won’t. Either way, he knows when to find me.