Time Travel is not what you think it's like (part 2).

Part 1/2
Emma and I spent a lot of our time crying.
What else was there to do? Imagine it. You are stuck in a room with nothing to do but stack chairs or topple over empty bookcases in frustration.
We tried to have sex. It was just another thing to do to pass the time. But with no blood pumping through our veins, it made things difficult. We played all of the name games, invisible tic tac toe, tongue twisters, etc. We can’t exactly play iSpy because our options for colors are either “white†or “void-esque.†Sometimes we try and sleep to no avail. We just lie there, occasionally together and sometimes apart. Eyes closed, with no rhythmic rise and fall of our chests, no soft sound of a heartbeat—just udder silence.
I didn’t think I’d ever make it out.
I’m not sure of the total time I spent in there. It was hard to tell and grew more difficult as time went on. At first it was easy. You could tell a couple seconds had passed, then minutes grew to hours. But especially after Ryan left, it was difficult. There was no rising sun. There was no moonlit sky with a glittering of stars. There was no feeling tired, no sleepiness or droopy-feeling that settled in after a long day. I felt as if my internal clock was reworking itself to be, well, broken.
Emma and I were starting to really lose it, but not in the same way Ryan did.
To curve our sad days, we’d play ‘pretend’ like we were kids. I’m not sure if this was an actual decision on our part, or if our minds were making us do it in return for a flake of sanity. Sometimes one of us would be a waiter and the other would be eating at a fancy restaurant. Sometimes we’d play doctor and one person would have to undress and be examined. In some scenarios she’d be my wife. I’d come home from a long day at work and she’d have dinner prepared for me. She’d call the kids down and we’d pretend to eat, and I would tell her all about my day while sneaking table scraps to our dog.
Our favorite scenario was “Strangers.†At least that’s what I call it now, looking back. We didn’t have a name for it then.
I’d be sitting at the table, pretending I was at a bar or a club. She’d walk up and grab a seat, and I’d give her a couple glances and side-eyes before telling the bartender I’d buy her a drink. She would try to contain her glowing smile and would bat her eyelashes at me. Then she’d make her way from across the table—across the bar—and take the chair next to mine. I’d ask her name, and then we’d slowly go from surface-level conversation into the world of getting to know each other deeper—childhood memories, fears, aspirations, secrets, dreams.
Then eventually one of us would break character and we’d laugh. We would also write plays in our head for each other and perform them. Or we’d make scripts for TV shows or movies and act them out—mostly improv. Those were the good moments. The secure ones. Those escapes for us were equal to the escapes of regular people in the real world, who were watching tv or scrolling through an app so they don’t have to face the reality that engulfed them.
But at some point, reality always sets in. Our entire world was in that room. I started to forget what my mother’s face looked like. I started to forget what my face looked like.
One day, or night, or whatever, I looked off into the void. Emma and I treated it like someone would treat a naked homeless man screaming at them—it’s best not to look for too long, but it’s okay to glance or catch it in your peripherals. I stared off into it, wondering about its color. Its absence. I wondered where we were, physically. Were we somehow in another dimension? Were we being observed now?
As I stared off, I saw something. I know I did. It was impossible to miss, like a brush stroke on a blank canvas. Yes, it was there. It was something that existed in that vast expanse of nothing. A tree. It was a tree. A perfectly symmetrical pine tree, almost like those abstract ink blot tests used for psychiatric evaluations. It was just like that, sitting dead center in my vision. It wasn’t like spotting a tree from inside a window in the real world. No, I wasn’t there with the tree. I was merely observing it. I felt like an alien from another planet witnessing it. The tree didn’t know I was there, and I didn’t know where it was.
Suddenly, a strong and swift open palm made contact with my cheek and I heard Emma yell.
“Snap the **** out of it, Clark, PLEASE!â€
“Ah—†my face stung, but the pain was dulled as I noticed she was crying, “woah hey, hey what’s wrong?â€
“You—oh God, you’re really back, you’re really back thank God†she said through quivering lips, “you were just staring out there for ****ing days. I couldn’t do anything to snap you out of it!â€
“Da—Days?â€
“Yes! God I would cover your eyes or shake you, but nothing was working so…â€
She kept talking but her voice sounded like it was falling down a well, as my own thoughts took over my attention. Days? I looked outside for ten seconds, twenty tops. There was no way days had gone by. I told her this.
“What?†she said, “are you ****ing around? You stood there, right there! Still as a statue for so ****ing long. I was screaming, I was shaking you, I was pleading with you.â€
“I swear I’m telling the truth.†I grabbed her hands consolingly. “All I remember is seeing something out there, then I don’t—I don’t know what happened.â€
“What did you see?†Her crying had subsided a little and her sadness was replaced with curiosity.
“Eh, I think it was a tree.â€
“A tree?â€
“Yeah, well kind of. It had a—like a motion to it, like it was growing. Not from the ground like a normal tree, but it was—spreading, I guess. Like when you take the netting off of a Christmas tree and all the branches fall and the tree looks fuller. It was just like that, but constant—constantly expanding like an optical illusion.â€
She looked at me as if I just told her I had cancer—an expression of sympathy tangled with worry. She let out a heavy breath, “I was so worried you were going to leave like—like he did.â€
I hugged her and scratched the top of her head in an attempt to comfort her. Then she grabbed my neck and kissed me lightly. It wasn’t the first time we’d kissed, we had plenty of times before. I don’t know how it started. I can’t even remember our first one. It was too long ago. But every so often we’d just look at each other and kiss. Was it a relationship, or boredom? I knew everything about her it seemed, but I don’t know. I was stuck there with her, what else were we going to do? Would we have gotten along on the outside, in the real world? If this experiment worked, would we be ‘together’?
I don’t know.

---

A lot of time passed since Emma slapped me to ‘snap out of it.’
We were more quiet than usual—more thoughtful because of the events that had occurred.
She brought it up first, interrupting our previous conversation, “So, hey, let’s say we make it out of here. Whether that be in million years, or a billion, or whatever.â€
“Uh huh.â€
“Well, you know how you were looking out the window, and days passed in a couple of seconds? What if—what if that’s the best thing to do. To pass those years. Maybe if we just look out, it’ll feel like a couple of hours and then, boom, we’re back to reality.â€
I had wondered about it too. “What if we never snap out of it though? What if we walk out like Ryan did? Or what if we’re just stuck in here forever, hypnotized?â€
“I know, I know,†she said. “I’ve thought about that, sure. But…â€
“But what?â€
“But—ah I don’t know. What’s our other option? Realistically? We can’t keep living like this. We can’t keep spending every day going through the waves of talking and silence and laughter and crying. I’m losing my ****ing mind and I know you are too!â€
I tightened my lips together, and my silence answered her, so she continued.
“What’s worse? Spending a trillion years in this room until you pull your hair out and slowly slip down the insanity slide, or looking at—at that ****ing abyss of nothing? And yeah, there’s a chance we’ll go off the rocker like Ryan and hypnotically walk out that door, but is it worth it? I—I think so.â€
We had spent too much time in there. I don’t know how long, but it felt like multiple lifetimes. If this ended in death, I welcomed it. I knew we had to do it. It was our only option.
“Okay. We’ll barricade the door,†I proposed. “We’ll put the table, the bookshelves and everything else in front of it. It’s at least one line of defense against us leaving.â€
“Yeah, it’s no guarantee, but I like the idea.â€
And we did just that. The idea that we could be out of there in a couple of hours was the only motivation we needed.
After the furniture was moved, we sat on the floor in the middle of the room. Our legs were crossed, and we faced each other.
“I’m uh, ****ing terrified,†she said openly.
“I know. I am too.â€
“What if we never see each other again? What if we never see anyone again—what if this is it? Like, It? "
I grabbed her hands and pulled her a little closer before replying.
“No matter what happens, I’m grateful that I had you here with me. I couldn’t have been here alone. This place is Hell, but it would’ve been so much worse without you.â€
She gave me a nod and smiled. I returned the same gesture.
We both adjusted our bodies, still in a sitting position, to face the window. I looked to my right and admired Emma’s gaze out the window—just as I did when we were ‘transported’ here. I squeezed her hand.
“Ready to spend an eternity together?†She said with a shaky breath, almost laughing.
“You know it.â€
And with that, we peered off into the nothingness.

---

It’s hard to describe what I saw.
The first thing I saw in that vacuum of the void was once again, the tree. It moved and breathed and acted like it had before. After a while, I noticed I couldn’t see the walls of the room anymore. It was as if I was enveloped in this darkness—like I was a lone astronaut without any planets or stars for guidance. I couldn’t feel my butt against the floor anymore, nor Emma’s hand gripping mine. In fact, I couldn’t really feel anything. It was like I was slowly losing each of my senses.
That horrifying nothing-color slowly dissipated, and the tree did as well. The best way I can describe what came next is by comparing it to something you have all seen.
If you close your eyes, you still see some light. You see shapes and objects and other things your brain tells you to see. If you stare at a wall, a blank wall, there’s almost a movement to it. A static-like sensation on the wall that you never really notice until you focus. That’s what came next. As the ‘nothing’ disappeared, I could see these shapes in the darkness. Random patterns, stars, and static filled my vision.
I felt like I was falling. The randomness of the shapes took form into my most nostalgic memories—things I didn’t even know I remembered from the trenches of my mind. I felt this, this itch almost. I swear in those moments I didn’t have a body, didn’t have eyes, yet I could see. I felt like someone moved my still-active brain into a jar to keep me alive, and that’s what I was experiencing.
Just my brain, doing its thing with no outputs or inputs. I felt a prickling, but I wasn’t sure where I felt it. I existed, but not in a physical sense. I thought I was dead. I hope that is not what being dead is like.
And then, faster than a light switch, with no sound effect, no transition of any kind—POP—I was back, standing in that room.
Sunshine made its way through the overcast sky and immediately flooded the window. I was not facing the window, though.
I was facing Emma, with Ryan right behind her. Both of them were looking out the window, just as we were before everything went dark.
My focus was on Emma’s pupil, just as it was before. It did not change in size.
Before I could begin to process what was happening, Ryan screamed louder than I thought physically possible. I jumped and started to back away, but Emma didn’t even flinch. Ryan grabbed the lamp from the table, smashed it on the ground, picked up a large piece of glass, and pushed it through his chest and into his heart. His hands were bleeding and his chest was discharging blood by the pint. He died within a minute.
He was smiling the whole time.
Emma, still unmoved, kept staring out the window. I was just trying to process my thoughts, which were abundant—Ryan stabbing himself was the least of my concern to be honest with you. I backed up against the wall opposite Ryan and slumped until I hit the floor. I sat in a fetal position and was praying the doctor would come down the mountain.
The experiment had worked, kind of. The room did disappear, and we reappeared exactly three hours into the future. Dr. Olsen said he installed the window in case we could see lights or flashes. He did not know about the void. After Ryan’s death, the University shut down Project bTaOw33 pretty quickly, but I doubt that was the last the world will see of it.
Dr. Olsen can only hear the events that took place from my perspective. Emma is in a catatonic state. She hasn’t spoken a word or made a noise since returning—she’s completely unresponsive. There is no sign of her getting better. I visited her once at the home she lives in now, and I’m never going back.
She stares off at the walls the same way Ryan stared into the void. If there’s a God out there, I just pray she isn’t still there somehow, in that place. I hope her mind is free, or at peace.
Why am I not catatonic? Why did I make it out okay? Did I see the same thing Ryan saw? I’m not sure. I try not to think about it. I have lived, subjectively, longer than anyone will ever have to experience—to suffer. I don’t have the guts to kill myself, though I think about it often. I don’t really care if I get in trouble with the law by sharing my story. It’s therapeutic to share. And like Dr. Olsen said from the beginning, no one will believe me anyway.
Day-to-day life doesn’t bother me. I don’t mind interacting with people. I like eating food again or taking a nice hot shower. I like knowing I can die, that I will die.
It’s not the waking moments that disturb me, no. It’s when I sleep. My dreams are awful and are almost always of that place, that room. The doctor says it’s because that room is where my brain thinks it has spent most of its life. He says they will lessen as my stimuli from the ‘real world’ increases.
But dreaming isn’t the worst part about sleeping.
It’s every other moment between dreams.
As I slip away into oblivion, so does my body, and so do my senses.
My mind is still active, but I’m encompassed by that void. Drowning in its emptiness.
That color.
That nothing.
Every night.
It haunts me.
I hope to God you never see it—
Never realize it’s there.
Because when you do—
It won’t go away.


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