The Bittersweet Necessity

Last night, I dreamt of it again.

The vision would begin with the simplicity of the student-desk tan filling my line of sight. I would see the little carvings and scribbles made by the other students, and I’d feel my intestines begin to twist into the all-too-familiar knot that defined a decade of my life.

As many dreams operate, in these involuntary fantasies I had no memory of life after being fourteen, I lived very much in the here-and-now of this vision, and in this here-and-now, I was miserable.

All the other kids were excited and thrilled, filled with joy as they exited the classroom, but I, under the teachers’ direct orders, was demanded to stay there.

“Ashton,” she had said, “I need you to stay here and speak to you for a moment.”

Snickers and various whisperings filled the room as I looked down at my desk (where the dream began) and all the other students began to file into the hallway. Should an outsider be passing by at this particular moment, they would know that I was hardly a popular eighth-grader.

“Unpopular,” however, would be under-selling it; the phrase “loser-amongst-losers” would be more accurate, as I would even be bullied by people who’d have the audacity to call themselves my best friends, as well as by kids who were generally themselves regarded as “losers” amongst the school’s student-body population. On a daily basis I would be taunted and mocked and laughed at, right in the face; upon reflecting this I recalled the one time I shoved someone who was laughing in my face, and not only did he and his friends shove me to the ground, I was given a “silent lunch” by a teacher for inciting such violence. I had to realize young that the world was unfair and that teachers oftentimes had a bias toward certain students (and against others).

I had become not particularly bitter, or angry, but quiet and jaded, with a neutral indifference to the world around me. Therefore, I had no real expectations nor hopes toward anything, up to and including the event today, the one known as “Face to Face.”

“Face to Face” was an installation into the American school system for all public schools in the preceding five years; ever since the creation and legalization of government-approved time-travel, certain education legislators had pushed for this incentive for students to not only push harder, but to literally give their older selves a once-over and see what they could achieve (or possibly change).

Time-travel had been around for about fifty years, but as soon as it was implemented as not only a possibility but an actuality, the American government put an immediate ban on all forms of it, and, after several series of tests and conferences and boards of mathematical equations that I doubt will ever see the light of day known as the general public, four-and-a-half decades after its discovery, time-travel was legalized. However, based on the conclusions of those boards of equations, a few rules-of-facts were made known about the physics of these sojourns.

The “Face to Face” initiative, like all things that involve the shepherding of adolescents, had a few distinct rules, such as: 1. The future-self you will meet will be (to the day) twenty years your senior; 2. You will speak to your future-self for about a half-hour, before they return to their original timeline.

The one rule, however, that was most relevant to the “Face to Face” program, was that after meeting and speaking to your future-self, it was very much possible to make the proper changes in one’s life to not become that person. This rule was deemed a simple law of physics, and obviously was not a rule implemented by the government or school system, however.

For example, say young eighth-grader Joey meets his future self; the fourteen-year-old Joey is enthusiastic, bright, and athletic. But then he meets thirty-four-year-old Joey and is anything but pleased. He is a garbage collector who has the attitude of a deadbeat and the physique of a wrecking ball.

If Joey is as motivated as he is displeased, he can technically overcome whatever perils come his way that orchestrate such an overweight and underpaid future. He can remain physically active, maintain his straight-A’s and go to a good school, and personally see to it that he surrounds himself with the positive energy that fuels his extraverted nature; in this, he can change the course of his own history and become a different thirty-four-year-old who exerts the confidence he craves.

Although the principles and ideas of “Face to Face” are to show the students what wonderful adults they’ll soon be, incentive to make these changes are also encouraged by the principals and teachers. At this point, there was a generalized humanistic outlook toward the nature of time-travel, and it was genuinely believed that people could carve their own paths in this life.

This was not at all an easy feat, however. Changing what already seems to be preordained is, as discovered in that series of tests, one of the most difficult things one can accomplish. It has (supposedly) happened, although many physicists were (at the time of my “Face to Face,” at least) still studying those results to see if the scientists or subjects involved made any errs in their hypotheses or processes.

Excited as many students were to meet their thirty-four-year-old selves, I had grown so numb to the world around me due to the preceding two-and-a-half years of constant abuse, and, as aforementioned, was very indifferent to what I would experience.

My attentiveness grew, however, as Ms. Sanders instructed me to stay put as all the other kids funneled out of the room.

Ms. Sanders (as I remembered in my dream) was a hopeful new figure in the teaching field of Odar Middle School; young and hopeful enough to be naïve, certainly naïve enough to give me a look of sheer pity as she approached my desk. I feared I already knew what she was going to say, such fears being only affirmed by her words.

“I’m sorry, Ashton, I’m afraid nobody came for you; why don’t you just sit and wait for your friends to come back?”

She completely avoided answering the question that was clearly on my mind, so I figured I’d just

ask: “Where is he?”

She sighed, “I’m afraid that sometime after your twenty-sixth birthday, nobody had heard from you since.”

And that’s where the dream became more cinematic than realistic. My line of sight would then take a jump-cut, whereas instead of seeing the fake-melancholy of Ms. Sanders’ face, I would see the other students laughing and mocking me, all for a newfound reason: they had concluded that my future-self, finally self-aware in his own worthlessness, had committed suicide. And it would be at the very height of their shrieking laughter, that I would once again wake up in a cold sweat in the dead of night, listening to the clock in our bedroom:

Tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik

I, Ashtar Ember, formerly known as Ashton Embry, fully understand most of the transgressions that went on that day.

In this, I firmly recollect the days and weeks that followed my paradoxical absence during the “Face to Face” I experienced as a fourteen-year-old; I recall sobbing vehemently at my home’s desk, swearing under my breath that I’d hurt someone, all at the same time not wanting to hurt anyone other than myself. In this, I would feel the comforting touch of my mother’s hand on my back, accompanied by her soothing whispers, possibly mixed with her own held-back tears. With a brother who was only two at the time, and a father who was very emotionally distant, I felt at times she was all I had in this world.

I understood this fully when I chose to reinvent my perspective and identity throughout my twenty-sixth year. I’d spent most of that year being paranoid about my pending suicide and/or disappearance. Instead, something else happened.

My lovely mother passed on. Nobody but I saw the cancer coming, for I could always foresee some brand of tragedy rearing its ugly head in the course of that year. I was, however, nevertheless quite devastated at the sight of my foregone mother in the seconds and minutes after her actual passing; I remained strong for the sake of my brother, who himself was fourteen at the time (although “Face to Face” had been long cancelled by this time, therefore he did not have to suffer through it), but I could feel myself being internally shredded and torn by the passing. Our father, stuck in his old ways, remained equally silent. In this dark and tranquil hospital room, the sole source of sound would be my brother’s sobs, with his head buried in my shoulder.

It was upon my mother’s objectively premature death (predating her sixty-fifth birthday) that I simply decided that life was too short to live in such fear; therefore, I chose to finally send my manuscript to publishers, under the guise of a certain Ashtar Ember (to maintain my singular authorial voice [assuming it’d be published] as I’d always loathed the idea of authors being celebrities or personalities [known for anything but their work and their craft]). The novel was published, and the fallacy of a name I’d provided skyrocketed into literary fame.

And as if by some force of seismic shift, I can say that after this move, everything was different; I moved into my first house, gave money to my remaining family, and, mere months after the initial publication, fell in love with my publisher, marrying her three years later.

The mystery remains, however, as to what stopped me from going back and visiting my younger self on this very day, September 28th; as I remember the day twenty years ago clearly, and, now being a successful and happy thirty-four-year-old without even the slightest thought of suicide, I could not conjure why I would not go back to the Odar Middle and try to set things right, to tell my younger self that everything was to be all right, maybe even to act as the (paradoxical) father figure I did not have in my own upbringing. While I know why they couldn’t find any Ashton Embry (for I changed my name legally a few years after the first book), I don’t understand what would (supposedly) stop myself from going changing my depressive and suicidal past, this being the only day to do so (the government is allowing former students of “Face to Face” a trip back twenty years, to flesh out and fulfill their prophetic moments with their past selves [despite the program’s cancellation]).

My wife is on a work trip, and my house is currently empty. The school is about an hour’s drive away. The program begins at about noon, and it’s 9am. I’m going to drive their early to see to it that I can very well change the course of history.

I open the door and am greeted by the picturesque and musical birds-and-sunlight, accompanied by the nice breeze of a new Autumn. I walk down my porch, down toward the car parked in the street when a figure is formed by my sun-obscured sight.

I know and don’t know altogether who this gentleman is, meaning I have suspicions but I am very much terrified, for if such suspicions are correct, my hopeful world could become much darker.

I try to ignore him, evading eye contact and continuing my stroll toward the car-door despite his obvious attempts to lock eyes with me; he has long straggly hair and a beard. When I can finally make out his hair color, I become even more frightful of who I think he is.

“Hey!” he barks at me. I ignore him. I put the key in the car-door.

“Hey! Ashton!” he says.

I turn in utter shock. For I had not been referred to as Ashton in well-over five years, especially not by a stranger. My suspicions fade away as I get a closer look at the man through his facial hair. He is not a stranger, he is me.

He (I?) smiled at me.

“What year are you from?” I ask.

“Twenty years from now,” he replies, “But not exactly what you think.”

I curl my fingers, trembling, forming a fist that would utilize my keys as brass knuckles. I become very angry, and try to let my rage shine through my voice more so than my fear and anxiety.

“How’s that?” I ask.

“Well,” he said, “Yeah, I’m you, and I’m fifty-four. But…”

“But what?”

“Well… Things might make a bit more sense if we shook hands,” he extended his arm.

I reached out carefully, making sure I knew full-well that there was nothing that resembled trappings or machinery on his palm.

It was upon trying to touch his hand, however, that I realized his hand was holographic; my hand glided right through his.

I just stood there; I felt dizzy. And a ringing, somehow accompanied by my watch, filled my ears:

Tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik

I now sit at the bottommost step to my home, which ends via the cobblestone path, awaiting the disappearance of the hologram before me; it has been almost three hours, hours that could be categorized as both tumultuous and boring.

The straggly and transparent figure who’d approached me was indeed my future self; apparently in twenty years they reauthorize time-travel, albeit confining it to that of a holographic figure. The real Ash (which is apparently how I address myself starting ten years from now) is actually still in the future, twenty years to the day. He is in a laboratory somewhere, with a headset and goggles, all placed in motion to stop me from visiting my past self.

The less I thought about it, the clearer my head would become.

Nevertheless, he told me the absolute truth: he told me that I would indeed go to the past and give myself the inspirational (fatherly?) pep-talk that I was so convinced I deserved; I would sit down with the timid young man and tell him everything I would accomplish. I would be wise enough not to tell him of the morbid motivations or the tumultuous beginnings; all I would tell him about really would be the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

However, in a grand twist of cruel irony, this would do more harm to me than good. My teenage self would then become overconfident, cocky even. Instead of being inspired to start an early career, I’d put things off. Rather than gather a B.A. fresh out of high school, I would get a menial low-paying job and move into a cheap apartment. I would be robbed and mugged multiple times, even brutalized on more than one occasion. Not a single word of manuscript would be written.

And I would do all of this under the guise of things just getting better.

I would apparently neglect to instruct the wayward teen about how exactly such things operated. He would never learn the essence of hard work except under the pretense of making a living and simply getting by.

Therefore, the hologram before me was apparently somebody who had managed to go back and change the course of things, and instead of being granted happiness in longevity, he would be granted momentary, perhaps even meaningless happiness, the fleeting kind.

Apparently, instead of publishing his first work at twenty-six under the motivation of watching his ailing mother pass away, the holographic man before me would publish a much shorter, much more mediocre work at fifty (after fighting a several-decade severe depression following his mother’s death), making just enough money off of it to afford this trip back, apparently blaming his thirty-four-year-old self for the false sense of security he was given as a teenager. In this, he understood the necessity of hard times.

I racked my brain with options as to how I could still change the past in order to give myself some brand of preordained hope, assurance that everything would be okay. But I would consistently come up short, and just vehemently stare at the hologram while staring daggers that came out of my hot eyes.

I would do this until the clock struck twelve, whereas the hologram would quietly fade away, and I would realize the bittersweet necessity of hindsight; my watch had given way from a dead battery whilst I awaited the inevitable. All I could hear was the fading watch on the hologram as he evaporated into nothingness:

Tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik…