Time Police
I realize that incredibly famous and learned scientists with German accents have theorized about time being relative, in fact I once tried reading a book called, “General Relativity, for Babies.” All I need now is another book explaining how babies in STEM became authority figures on physics because I just don’t see those types of infant schools in our public neighborhoods, and if this is some elite ruling class of baby physicists, I fear seeing what those hungry little sycophants do with that education.
Time has been baffling me lately. I have been traveling for work; my travels have taken me to Montgomery Alabama which is actually only a stone throws away from Texas, my home. That is, if the stone was encased in a missile. When I work in a new location I need to drive through new security checkpoints and must be on my absolutely best behavior to the constables with the guns. I ready myself at the checkpoint id card in hand, smile affixed to my face; I am a safe, warrant-free, credentialed, calm, and polite citizen. Then, without fail, I get my “ have a nice day!” “you too!” exchange in and …. sit there, facing forward for what feels like 20 seconds before actually accelerating my car and driving away.
WHAT KIND OF ROBOT CREATURE DOES THAT?
Time feels uncomfortably slowed in that moment. In that half a second of brain fog, my cursor is lost, I glitch and forget the next step and stare into the abyss as though I am waiting for the line of non-existent school children to finish crossing so I can drive forward. It’s not sometimes, it’s all the time. The most embarrassing aspect of this phenomenon is my thinking that the security guard is documenting this. In my weird little self-absorbed world, these people collectively tally my zone outs on a giant whiteboard they keep in headquarters. The report at the end of the month will go straight to the office of the president and a montage of my dead stare will play on the big tv of the situation room. The worst part of it all, the president will not deem me an enemy of the state nor a person of interest but rather a drooling moron whose data can be erased off the giant whiteboard, and the guards will have wasted their time tracking me.
Its really a dull problem I have concocted and the only solution I can think of is to become a serious threat…. a menace over time, idling at the gate like a sleeper agent in a fiat, letting the tension stretch just long enough that somewhere at the pentagon a red button starts to glow.
