“Emergency Instructions” by R.M. Cooper
I. REMEMBER: You will never convince them why you did it.
A. Everyone believes hypotheticals about time machines right-
ing wrongs.
i. E.g., you should find/kill baby Hitler (you aren’t a baby-
killer) or snuff the match that started the Chicago fire
(it’s probably in the common interest that Chicago is no
longer made of balsa wood).
ii. There are things you don’t have the stomach for, and
there are things that happen for a reason, and history is
filled with both of them.
B. Everyone wants/believes in time travel.
i. In a recent survey asking, What future technology are
you most looking forward to? 85% answered C) Time
Travel.
1. Second was B) Cure for Disease (9%).
2. A) Flying Cars and D) Space Travel combined for less than 6%.
ii. Time travel in application only works once.
1. Not once per machine. Not once per person. Once, per
keeping space/time from folding into itself like an
existence-crushing origami swan (discounting multiple
realities).
2. This is problematic (see I. A & B).
II. Set the date to 4:13 p.m., May 4, 1977, and leave it.
III. Don’t get lost in the novelty.
A. In addition to everyone else on the ball field, you will see
Benny Jennings in left field (dead, car accident, ’83), Floyd
Gilmore at shortstop (dead, throat cancer, ’12) and your
brother-in-law Connor pitching (not speaking, Christmas,
’97).
i. The moment will change if you try to warn Benny or
Floyd about their death(s). Ditto for Connor (who was
a prick before and after ’97; if it wasn’t the chocolate
pudding, it would’ve been something else).
ii. If you change anything, you might miss Tess.
B. Don’t do anything.
i. Don’t bury a 2029 quarter in the dirt for the sake of
scientific masturbation.
ii. Don’t try to talk to your past self and cause a paradox-
aneurism in nine-year-old you.
iii. Mathematics says nothing about the divergence of real-
ity(ies).
C. Act like you’ve been here before. (You have.)
IV. Observe.
A. After finding your clothes in the luggage compartment:
i. Move quickly.
1. It’s a five-minute jog between the garage and ballpark.
2. This will leave you twenty-five minutes at the park to
catch Tess.
ii. Find somewhere secluded with a view behind first.
1. Tess will emerge from the home dugout to argue with
Connor on the mound. (Five minutes later, the game
will be called for rain.)
2. From behind first, you’ll have a good view of yourself
at third.
iii. Stay out of sight: the game was called once when a home-
less man pissed over the right field fence, and Joey White
was skittish ever since. (Your hanging about might draw
attention.)
B. Do’s and Don’ts:
i. Don’t focus on Connor and Tess’s argument. (Expect
screaming and a few tears.)
ii. Don’t think about Tess in terms of the past/future. (For-
get the night you spent together on the hood of your
Ford; forget the day beneath the elms; forget your child
staring up at you with her eyes; forget the months of
Tess at the hospital; forget the tests; forget words
like tumor(s), aggressive, genetic, inoperable; forget the
sound of ventilators pumping air in and out of her; for-
get the way she felt in the end, already so weak that you
couldn’t feel when they turned off the machine.)
iii. You only have twenty minutes; you can’t have her again.
C. Remember to look beyond Tess and Connor arguing. Focus
on (young) you standing at third. Look at your furrowed
brow. Look at the way you smack your glove impatiently.
Listen to the edge in your voice when you yell, “C’mon,
let’s move this along.” Watch the relief on your face when
Connor and Tess go quiet. Watch your smile when Connor’s
kid sister leaves the mound. Watch the way you bend your
knees and squint, anticipating the next pitch. Memorize that
moment, the game, the pitch, you chasing a foul ball behind
third. Remember how time once passed as if that girl in the
dugout didn’t mean a thing in the world to you.
