Chapter 96 — Mica’s Eulogy
The Curve of Time, Chapter 96 —— Mica’s Eulogy, in which Mica reads Saskia her own eulogy.
Followed by some short musings on writing fast.
Listen to full episode :
— 96 —
Mica’s Eulogy
Saskia worked her fingers between Mica’s toes, gently stretching them in a way that made Mica coo. She felt lucky to have been the one left behind, but uncomfortable too. Was that survivor’s guilt? And was her fate really free?
Perhaps she was basking in the ephemeral glow of the sun in those last minutes of the day, as it ducked under the canopy of a nearby tree, but before it disappeared below the horizon altogether.
In front of her, Mica purred as Saskia ran a finger along the arch of her instep.
The last month had the patina of a liquid dream.
“I wrote a little something,” Mica tendered. “For Saskia. It really ought to be a front page story, but . . . ” She shrugged.
Saskia propped herself up at the foot of Mica’s bed. “Read it . . . ”
Mica reached for her phone, nestled atop her duvet, and with three practiced swipes easily found her notes. Her eyes flicked forward across the screen, orienting her. Then, she started: “Saying goodbye, at the pub or a cafe, we don’t think much about it, expecting that the time until we next meet will fold in upon itself, as if our relationship will pick up, no more interrupted than a tape deck stopped and started again; the continuous flow of our relationship given a merely temporary pause.” Mica’s eyes nervously checked that Saskia was paying attention, before, satisfied, she continued: “On the other hand, longer jumps in time——gulfs occasioned by a move to college, or a stint in a foreign country, for instance——anticipate a different emotional break, something more akin to the expectation that our connection and rapport are about to take on a disconnected leap; as if we anticipate that the proverbial tape of our relationship will be fast forwarded between stop and play.”
Mica’s shoulders rose and fell as if her emotions required their own steadying.
“Death,” she pressed on, “is more permanent, though it’s not entirely final; not as if the tape had been stopped and ejected altogether. This, since one sometimes continues conversations, in our minds, but——perhaps more significantly, in a world in which time travel exists——since we can always go back and revisit our lost friends.
“One might even be lucky enough to snag a replacement.”
Saskia’s hand froze as Mica paused to scroll down.
“But replacements are never one for one,” Mica continued. “Even before time travel, twins gave us some sense of this truism: the passing of a twin being no less meaningful because there is a carbon copy left to interact with. And, no, twins are not true carbon copies, but, then, neither are time travel doppelgangers. Both cases, can make life harder, just as the grandson who looks like his grandfather can make the loss of the grandmother’s husband more painful.”
Was Mica trying to tell Saskia that her very existence made her double’s disappearance harder? To Saskia, her other self’s sustained absence, was an affirmation that she had successfully changed her timeline, and that, thus, they were now living in an aborted branch.
Again, Mica’s eyes met hers, only now they were glassy. “Today, I lost someone dear to me.” The corner of Mica’s mouth tipped up. “I’m reminded of her every time I look into my lover’s eyes.”
Saskia rested a comforting hand on Mica’s leg.
With her thumb, Mica brushed away the gathering tears. Stoically, she continued: “Is this what makes losing a child so painful? You see them in your partner?
“I knew my lost Saskia but a couple of days, or a month, depending on your reckoning. A short time, either way. But relationships are better measured by ants on unicycles than hours and minutes.”
“You know it’s been two months for me,” Saskia interjected.
Mica cocked her head as she met Saskia’s eyes.
“If I count the time I’ve lived; including my time rolling the world backwards. My lived time. Even if you weren’t always by my side——and we never are, really——you were always in my mind.” Saskia shook her head at herself. “Sorry, keep reading.”
She reflected that time, as Einstein had suggested, really was relative, and time travel only made it more so.
Mica found her place and started again: “I knew my Saskia, and I loved her. I still do.
“That she’s gone, that she hasn’t come back——it doesn’t mean she is dead.”
Mica paused and Saskia’s mind drifted: had her doppelganger excised this timeline, and, if so, would it just go zooop? What if the time their world had left was measured in the days it took her twin to go back to her chosen fracture point and change everything? That would take her a fortnight, maybe, of her lived life. If that were the case, they had——this world had——but a dozen days left.
“Saskia’s life had meaning,” Mica continued. “Not everyone discovers a cure for cancer, but we all make a difference. And, even if our differences are invisible to most everyone, they might still be the biggest difference that anyone has made.
“I loved two versions of Saskia. But one has gone now. Her tape has been removed from the player, but Saskia lives on.” Mica looked up and met Saskia’s eyes. “I still have her with me. A factory twin, placed in the player. I will see her every day, and I will not forget her. We still have a life to enjoy together, because of the Saskia we’ve lost.”
Was her double now the mother of time travel in a world in which time travel no longer existed?
“I hope Saskia makes it. That she does eliminate our capacity to slip in time. We have plenty of challenges here, but it would be nice to think that in at least one branch of the universe, time travel is not one of them. There is value in the struggle.”
Did Mica know what she was hoping for? If Saskia was right, her twin’s mission left about ten days until this timeline was swept away. Excised as a cancerous growth must be.
That was chapter 96, Friends, I hope you enjoyed it! I’m honestly so close to this right now that I have trouble evaluating it.
Normally, there is a significant gap in time between when I’ve written something and when I air it for public consumption, but as you know my lead in The Curve of Time has dwindled. I’m very comfortable with the structure of what I’ve got in this chapter, but like many events in life, writing requires distance to gauge how effective it is. I mean, I’m sure there are writers who have the ability to objectively evaluate their work as they write it, but I’m equally sure those writers are the rarity. Moreover, the older I get, the less sure I am of when something I’ve written really works in the immediate aftermath of writing. It’s a bit like my sight, really: I need extra distance to make sense of what is in front of me.
Another interesting consequence of my recent pressure-cooker writing is the realization of just how dramatically iterations of text I’m writing improve it. Under normal circumstances, I tend to flit about, cycling from one story element or section to another. Part of this is conscious, because, as I’ve alluded to above, if I’m iterating so fast that my goldfish brain actually remembers the text I’m editing … well, that tends to confuse my goldfish brain. That said, it’s also that when writing under normal circumstances I tend to be constantly following threads, tying new strands in and then weaving them through the rest of the story, which in turn, inevitably, turns up new ideas, which leads me to yet other chapters. And by the time I find myself back at something I’ve written not-so-long-ago, it’s still a lot-longer-ago than the revisions I’ve been encountering in my recent drafting. As I said, that distance helps me read from a fresh perspective which is incredibly helpful; but what has been helpful in the last few weeks is seeing just how much can change from one pass of a chapter to the next.
In fact, I’ve kind of found myself falling into a rhythm of sorts: first marshaling the ideas of the chapter, then ordering that list, then fleshing the bullet-pointed draft out, then word-smithing. I suspect I normally go through a quite similar sequence, but with so much time between the stages in my evolutions I haven’t really noticed the form underpinning my process.
Funny, that once again, I see another side of the truism of writing: writing is rewriting.
Anyway, enough musings for today. Next week is not far away and I’ve got another chapter to write!
Until then, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
