I'm walking through the office space and open the door to my personal office and settle into my swivel chair. I rub my eyes, wondering once again why I'm doing this. I'm a paper pusher. A supervisor. I wasn't always doing this work. I won't always do it, either. Plenty of adventures in my future, as well as my past (and aren't they often the same). But for now, I'm an office drone. I'm not sure how I ended up here. Failed upward in the company, but it's hard not to when shit is this boring. I close my eyes and try to remember what it was before this. I was a blacksmith in 18th century England. Before that, I was computer chip developer in 1987. And then there was innkeeper in Egypt in like, oh god when was that, like 104 A.D.? A Meta janitor in 2037. An actor in the mid-'70s, only a couple prominent roles. I'm thinking about getting into law next. Mid-aughts, probably. There's a well-known judge around that time that used to be a celebrity. Maybe my minor celebrity from that one big movie I was in will give me the opportunity to get into law with him. In any case... my time at this paper-pushing accountant type thing is almost up.
Because, like, everyone is so goddamn burned out here. You should see my one worker, I can tell he's zonked. Every morning he walks into the office and says "Hey Eddie" and I say "Hey Dave" and I see the bags under his eyes and I see that he's not invested in the work. Why would he be? I'm not either. I feel empathy for him whenever he passes my office door throughout the rest of the day. Dude refills his water bottle like twice an hour. I know he's just killing time. I've also heard rumors that he's writing TV reviews during work hours, on his work computer. I don't care. I won't tell him that, because I'm tasked with maintaining some semblance of authority in my current position, but I really don't fucking care. He can do what he wants. Just like I do what I want. The only difference between me and Dave is that he occupies whatever space he wants, whereas I can occupy whatever time I want too. I am a time traveler. Perhaps the less said about this, the better.
There are others like me out there. Maybe you can ask them about it. Just let me do my work in peace today.
Save the musings about death for tomorrow. I think about death all the time, though, is the thing. How could I not? Death is always around me. My dear friend Olivia Newton-John died four years ago in chronological time, but for me, it was yesterday, and it is tomorrow. I visit any time all the time, so quickly it feels like I'm in every time at once. Olivia is dying every moment of my existence, so the pain never stops. Every millisecond, she's alive and then dead, the action taking place repeatedly in that micro-short span of time. One moment, we're on the set of Grease, and she's giggling when I hit coach with a pie, and in that same moment, she's in an ornate casket, John standing next to me, his face stretched back from all the Scientology-funded cosmetic work, a single tear leaking down both our faces. John went through that moment once. I go through it always.
I relive good moments as well. The only moment I can't relive is the incident that led me to be a time-traveler. I can only go back that far. Some type of machine, if I recall. Not a large one that I can step into, more like... a container. When touched, I became who I am today, and time ceased to matter.
I've seen every episode of my favorite TV show ever. It's an American sitcome called 'Til Death. Not only have I seen ever episode, but I watch every episode every second of every minute of my unchronological life. It all happens at once, despite being able to simultaneously say "I am here." So when I experience death, everyone's death besides my own, everyone on earth, then I can also play in that moment the episodes of 'Til Death that give me comfort. There's one particular episode, it's called "Four Neighbors and a Funeral," and in it, a hitherto unmentioned elderly neighbor passes away, and our four main leads find discomfort in this fact, and start to bicker with each other about their own places in the world.
The tall guy, ya know, the voice of Fireball Frank from that old Disney cartoon Bonkers, that guy, him and his hot wife, they didn't even know the guy who died, and are surprised to find that this upsets them. Meanwhile, the pasty pie fucker from seven different American Pie movies is treating his wife (character actress Kat Foster) with great disdain—they, in contrast, did know the deceased, but now they see the ritual of "sending him off" differently, with piefucker trying to usurp character actress Kat Foster's role as eulogist. It's all pretty rote, in terms of how sitcoms function in the late '00s. But I can see more of it, because of who I am.
I can see that these people are just struggling to stay above water. That there's death all around them. That they are not good people because they are so quick to try to use the corpses of their loved ones as flotation devices against the oncoming floods. That the fact that they are not good people is not a judgment, it's just a fact, and a true one, when considering the entirety of the human race across space and time. We bicker and we fight because we are afraid. Afraid of what's coming. As someone who knows what's coming, due to his condition, I can tell you that you have every right to be afraid.
I sigh, and rub my eyes again. It's going to be a long day. But then it'll be over, and you'll move to the next one. I'll be right here, again. And I'll be with you tomorrow. And I'll experience all the pain that the entirety of the human history entails. I will wait till death, and maybe one day it'll come. In the meantime, more papers to push.
GRADE: 5 pukes out of 5
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