I don't mean to alarm you, but I just go back from a trip. I know you didn't notice I was even gone. That's the weird part. I was just watching TV one moment and the next I was still watching TV, but it was last week. Everything just blinked and I looked down and I was wearing different clothes. The clothes I had on the week before. Totally weird! I know it is hard to believe/ Let me tell you about it.
See, I was just scanning through the Roku looking at all the new and often kooky channels that had been added. I came across scores of church ones and a lot of ones dedicated to one old black and white TV series or another. A big chunk of school channels and real estate channels with the expected scattering of outdoors, guns, weed, and yoga themed channels as usual. Then I came across a few cool ones I marked for later, but I had to stop on one in particular and check it out right away. It called to me in the oddest of ways. It was called the "Time & Space & Dimension & Plane Transport Channel plus+".
I selected it and loaded it and opened it up and it was a totally boring menu that looked like it had zero options. I tried to navigate around the screen to see if there was something hidden on the screen that I just wasn't seeing. Nothing came up. I punched the asterisk to see if there was a search function, and still nothing. Maybe because of the title I sat there longer than I usually would have. Maybe it was just luck. There are some Roku channels that just play on there own with no options or controls. Maybe I thought it was something like that. Either way I came to after a moment and the TV had started changing a little. The gray background was a little less gray. The sides of the screen were a little wavy and out of focus. Then imperceptibly at first a pleasant hum started coming from the screen. Just as subtly words began to appeared above four other words that seemed like options on the screen.
Would You Choose?
Time Space
Dimension Plane of
Existence
I must admit I had some trepidation before bouncing around the menu and "playing" the game. I figured it was some old text based game or some weird meditation thing and I would get bored and then I could delete the channel and go make a sandwich or something. So, with fleeting concern replaced by flippant disregard I randomly clicked on wherever the cursor happened to be at the moment.
At first nothing happened. Or it seemed like nothing happened. More accurately it seemed like something was trying to make it feel like nothing was happening but something was happening, but every effort of concentration was bent against me even perceiving that something was happening. It was a very strange sensation. Apparently what I hit was "Dimension" because when I finally got a chance to look around, everything was at the wrong angle and the clock keep trying to tell time by dividing by zero and eggplant cutlets. It was very purple and had a faint scent of what I can only describe as the number 11 after a good scrubbing.
Luckily it didn't last long because I somehow hit the back button and returned to the sparse menu. You would think I would run away screaming at that point, but really, it was cool that something happened. I wasn't planning on anything else for the next several hours, and I had already flipped through Netflix for 20 minutes without ever finding anything that piqued my interest. That meant that currently this was the best thing on TV by a million miles, and I wan't about to leave without seeing what this could do.
After thinking about it a little more, I landed on "Time" as the first willful choice from the menu. Leaving it up to random chance had been a little too weird, even for me. I was uncertain of when it would send me, but felt a little less nervous when second menu appeared once I selected "Time". The new menu just said "When?" and so I clicked on that and a chart came up with dates and times. What was weird is that it wasn't every date and time. After closer examination, it appeared to be a chronological list of all the time I had sat on the couch watching TV for the past several years. So, to make it simple, I picked a time 3 days ago when I had sat and watched several hours of "Adventure Time" while failing to also fold the laundry that I meant to. Again the sensation of nothing and yet everything happening. A small blink on my part, and then somewhere between closing and opening my eyes I was back three days ago. I knew this because I was wearing different clothes and watching an actual program on the TV. Luckily the same controller was in my hand. Luckily no one else was in the room.
As I sat there deciding the next step, I decided to test out how things worked. First I hit the back button and in a few blinking instances I was back to the present. That was comforting. Next I picked another day and time and blinked back to that moment. Different clothes. Sitting on the couch. No one in the room. For the first time I got up and started walking around to see if anything else was different. I walked down the hall to the front door and opened it. Neighborhood looked the same. Quiet and boring suburb. Went back in and looked for my family. Found my wife in the bedroom watching her own show. That's when something significant happened. As soon as she saw me the remote disappeared from my hand. I tried to hide the shock and panic. In retrospect, I am guessing that if time travel has rules, then new interactions in the past mean that you have to live through the new time-line. This is some after the fact pondering, not the thought in the moment. I shook it off and delved into the casual conversation and offered to make lunch to get me out of the room for a moment.
Instead of heading to the kitchen directly, first I took a side trip to the TV I was watching and looked for the remote. There was a remote, but somehow I knew it was the current remote from the current time I was in. I immediately went to the menu and tried to find the app for the weird time-travel thing I was currently stuck in. No luck. It looked like I was just going to have to live through my life again to the current time. So, I made lunch and did most of the same things that I had already done the first time through. The cool thing was that I knew when and where the traffic jams were going to be, so on the re-lived Thursday, I left early and totally missed the massive wreck that caused my 20 minute commute to take two hours. It was pretty cool. An idea began to form as well. Basically I can go back and relive a time and maybe change the stupid thing I did.
So, I do now and then take a trip back and redirect. I try and refrain from overuse or neurotic recalculations of the same event. I have watched a lot of sci-fi and know where that can get you. I am working up the nerve to try out the other menu options. I am theorizing that some of them will let me keep the remote even if I move around, but I am nervous to find out because if I pick "Space" and move myself to, say, another planet, how do I get back without a back button? I do ever so often pick "Dimension" just for fun, because it is sort of relaxing in an odd way and helps me de-stress, but I haven't gotten off the couch yet because the first step seems like my leg will have to pass through several universes and a Korean bakery before it lands on something that sort of resembles a floor. So I just stretch out and watch the clock divide by eggplant cutlets and sniff the fresh cleaned eleven scent while the wind from the flying turtles sends cooling custard winds across my intermittently present body.
See, I was just scanning through the Roku looking at all the new and often kooky channels that had been added. I came across scores of church ones and a lot of ones dedicated to one old black and white TV series or another. A big chunk of school channels and real estate channels with the expected scattering of outdoors, guns, weed, and yoga themed channels as usual. Then I came across a few cool ones I marked for later, but I had to stop on one in particular and check it out right away. It called to me in the oddest of ways. It was called the "Time & Space & Dimension & Plane Transport Channel plus+".
I selected it and loaded it and opened it up and it was a totally boring menu that looked like it had zero options. I tried to navigate around the screen to see if there was something hidden on the screen that I just wasn't seeing. Nothing came up. I punched the asterisk to see if there was a search function, and still nothing. Maybe because of the title I sat there longer than I usually would have. Maybe it was just luck. There are some Roku channels that just play on there own with no options or controls. Maybe I thought it was something like that. Either way I came to after a moment and the TV had started changing a little. The gray background was a little less gray. The sides of the screen were a little wavy and out of focus. Then imperceptibly at first a pleasant hum started coming from the screen. Just as subtly words began to appeared above four other words that seemed like options on the screen.
Would You Choose?
Time Space
Dimension Plane of
Existence
I must admit I had some trepidation before bouncing around the menu and "playing" the game. I figured it was some old text based game or some weird meditation thing and I would get bored and then I could delete the channel and go make a sandwich or something. So, with fleeting concern replaced by flippant disregard I randomly clicked on wherever the cursor happened to be at the moment.
At first nothing happened. Or it seemed like nothing happened. More accurately it seemed like something was trying to make it feel like nothing was happening but something was happening, but every effort of concentration was bent against me even perceiving that something was happening. It was a very strange sensation. Apparently what I hit was "Dimension" because when I finally got a chance to look around, everything was at the wrong angle and the clock keep trying to tell time by dividing by zero and eggplant cutlets. It was very purple and had a faint scent of what I can only describe as the number 11 after a good scrubbing.
Luckily it didn't last long because I somehow hit the back button and returned to the sparse menu. You would think I would run away screaming at that point, but really, it was cool that something happened. I wasn't planning on anything else for the next several hours, and I had already flipped through Netflix for 20 minutes without ever finding anything that piqued my interest. That meant that currently this was the best thing on TV by a million miles, and I wan't about to leave without seeing what this could do.
After thinking about it a little more, I landed on "Time" as the first willful choice from the menu. Leaving it up to random chance had been a little too weird, even for me. I was uncertain of when it would send me, but felt a little less nervous when second menu appeared once I selected "Time". The new menu just said "When?" and so I clicked on that and a chart came up with dates and times. What was weird is that it wasn't every date and time. After closer examination, it appeared to be a chronological list of all the time I had sat on the couch watching TV for the past several years. So, to make it simple, I picked a time 3 days ago when I had sat and watched several hours of "Adventure Time" while failing to also fold the laundry that I meant to. Again the sensation of nothing and yet everything happening. A small blink on my part, and then somewhere between closing and opening my eyes I was back three days ago. I knew this because I was wearing different clothes and watching an actual program on the TV. Luckily the same controller was in my hand. Luckily no one else was in the room.
As I sat there deciding the next step, I decided to test out how things worked. First I hit the back button and in a few blinking instances I was back to the present. That was comforting. Next I picked another day and time and blinked back to that moment. Different clothes. Sitting on the couch. No one in the room. For the first time I got up and started walking around to see if anything else was different. I walked down the hall to the front door and opened it. Neighborhood looked the same. Quiet and boring suburb. Went back in and looked for my family. Found my wife in the bedroom watching her own show. That's when something significant happened. As soon as she saw me the remote disappeared from my hand. I tried to hide the shock and panic. In retrospect, I am guessing that if time travel has rules, then new interactions in the past mean that you have to live through the new time-line. This is some after the fact pondering, not the thought in the moment. I shook it off and delved into the casual conversation and offered to make lunch to get me out of the room for a moment.
Instead of heading to the kitchen directly, first I took a side trip to the TV I was watching and looked for the remote. There was a remote, but somehow I knew it was the current remote from the current time I was in. I immediately went to the menu and tried to find the app for the weird time-travel thing I was currently stuck in. No luck. It looked like I was just going to have to live through my life again to the current time. So, I made lunch and did most of the same things that I had already done the first time through. The cool thing was that I knew when and where the traffic jams were going to be, so on the re-lived Thursday, I left early and totally missed the massive wreck that caused my 20 minute commute to take two hours. It was pretty cool. An idea began to form as well. Basically I can go back and relive a time and maybe change the stupid thing I did.
So, I do now and then take a trip back and redirect. I try and refrain from overuse or neurotic recalculations of the same event. I have watched a lot of sci-fi and know where that can get you. I am working up the nerve to try out the other menu options. I am theorizing that some of them will let me keep the remote even if I move around, but I am nervous to find out because if I pick "Space" and move myself to, say, another planet, how do I get back without a back button? I do ever so often pick "Dimension" just for fun, because it is sort of relaxing in an odd way and helps me de-stress, but I haven't gotten off the couch yet because the first step seems like my leg will have to pass through several universes and a Korean bakery before it lands on something that sort of resembles a floor. So I just stretch out and watch the clock divide by eggplant cutlets and sniff the fresh cleaned eleven scent while the wind from the flying turtles sends cooling custard winds across my intermittently present body.
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