Time is merely an illusion.
How do I know this?
Right now, I'm in the year 1976. I have a lover here, and a ragtag group of people you could call my family.
Now, I'm gone.
I was never there, I was a snapshot, a grain of dust in an immeasurable desert filled with millions of others just like me.
We only remain where we are because we want to.
Something keeps us here. Something. Someone. Some tangible thing that keeps our heart and soul tethered to one place in time, never to leave, but to just be dragged along.
I never had that.
Well, I suppose I did. I was in love with a girl, many years ago. Does time even matter now? Is it even a concept anymore? I tear it apart with my mere existence, tearing the paper to shreds with the sharp points of my eroded teeth.
I suppose it's not fair that I get to do this, is it? I suppose I could visit her again, the girl I speak of.
I can't say that anything remarkable happened, that she died or was a member of some incredible and heroic uprising for human rights somewhere that led to her downfall.
She said my dick was too small and left me.
When that happened, I was unhinged with the illusion that time is a law. I saw it merely as a... Gateway, as it were. Imagine time as a mall, and all of the time periods are all of the stores you can visit, mingling and looking at all the products and people inside before leaving for another one.
You cannot fathom, as a person who still believes in time and the restrictions it brings along and piles on top of your back, the amount of power I have over you. I can ruin your life in ten different places in a matter of seconds, killing your future child and drawing a dick on your face at your future wedding. Hell, I could just hit your father with a car and have you never be born.
But I think I may stay somewhere, for once.
A place stole my heart.
Otherside.
Such a beautiful town, with the yearly hot air balloon releases and all of the pale, handsome women.
It wasn't Otherside, though, that kept me here in the lovely year of 1985. However nice a place is, it's never perfect enough to keep me there for long. Maybe long enough to have a few beers and see if the town has any kaleidoscopes I can buy.
As fate would have it, Otherside is the only town I have ever had the pleasure of visiting that had a kaleidoscope store. Every kind you could imagine, from old antiques to the new, modern versions. Modern for 1985, at least. You should see the ones they have in 2177.
Otherside also had the most beautiful girl I've ever seen running the store, keeping track of it while her father was away.
Her hair was golden, with thick curls at the bottom of her pale neck. Her teeth were perfectly straight and white, and her smile was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. She didn't have much in the way of breasts, but that was forgivable for a ten year old.
Being that I was approaching forty if you counted in traditional, "mortal" time, it would be wrong for me to try and pursue a relationship with the girl. Perhaps, in some people's minds, it was wrong for me to even think of being in a relationship with her, despite me wanting only the purest of intentions and understanding that time, especially in my case, is only a dial to be turned.
"You're quite beautiful," I told her, while buying three antique kaleidoscopes. I had plenty of money on hand, because I always won bets with people on what would happen in politics within the next year; I would just have to return sometime in that time period to pick up my two-hundred or so dollars. It was a good way to make a living.
