Poppins’ Return
Chapter 3 – Time Space History 101
I didn’t do very well on campus that day. I tried, but my mind was stuck in a sexual rut. Between Miss X’s sweater, and her missing name, I was a basket case. Men just shouldn’t try to do anything when they’re horny. There should be little huts where they can go and execute a Manual Override to at least let off a little of the pressure that accumulates over time when they aren’t getting any. I guess those are called whore houses. I had serious girl-on-the-brain, and nothing, no matter how distracting, was going to change that fact. A 747 could have crashed right in front of me and I wouldn’t have noticed.
When I returned home that night, Grandma saw my forlorn look.
“Why the long face,” she asked, handing me a cookie from a massive, white jar. To her, a cookie was the solution to everything. Maybe she was right.
“Oh, nothing… Just girl troubles.” I replied, the weight of the oatmeal delicacy in my hand being far too much to bare.
“Speaking of girls, did you have a chance to meet Marly this morning?”
BING!
“Thanks Gran!!” I yelled, even as I was floating up two flights of stairs. Suddenly, everything in the world was bright and alive again. Hope had once again returned me to the land of the living, and I had courage like never before in my life.
Marly… Marly… I repeated her name reverently as I coasted down the hall to my room. Reaching it, I stopped and turned around for a moment, looking at her door. How had she done it? How could she have not been visible when I pulled my little Peeping Tom trick? The hall was too wide to allow one to span the walls on either side. There were the blind spots directly to the left and the right of the door, but she would have to know the exact moment that I was looking, and then move into position the second I stopped.
Taking a step up to her door, I put myself in the same position that she had been in when I opened my own door. Then, taking a step to the left, I tried to put myself into one of those blind spots. Sure, it could work, but how did she know when to step back?
Kneeling in front of her portal, I looked at the pattern of lights from under the door and got an idea. If she had seen my shadow… I was considering whether the light would have been right in my room at that hour when there was a click and I was suddenly staring at her sandals.
“You’re right on time,” she said above me.
I was frozen like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck. I expected some form of blunt instrument to come crashing down on my head at any moment.
“Well?” She asked, tentatively.
I slowly raised my head, admiring the view along the way. By the time I had brought up my gaze enough to see her face, I also found that I was staring right up her skirt. Like I mentioned, nice view.
“Uh…” I replied, trying to come up with some reasonable excuse for why I might be kneeling out in front of her door.
“We are really going to have to work on your communication skills. Come on…” Then she was helping me up. Standing, I remembered to close my mouth before I drooled on the floor, and then stood there looking like a lost puppy. The next thing I knew, she sighed in exasperation and grabbed my hand, yanking me forward into her room.
This surprised me a bit. I mean, it’s not like I was resisting or anything, but I’m a pretty big guy, and it takes more than a little tug to get me moving, especially when I have major nervous feet. You know, when your shoes feel like they are glued to the ground because you are too afraid to step forward into the future. But in her case, I might as well have been mounted on roller skates. I cruised into her apartment and looked around, trying to find something that would prove to me that I had bumped my head and that this was all just a very nice dream.
Marly came around and sat on the bed, her arms slightly behind her. Her position pushed her breasts forward nicely and the overall effect was stunning. I was about to join her on the bed, when she pointed behind me. I turned and saw a chair and a table with a little vase in the middle. A tiny yellow daisy basked in the sun that streamed in from her one window. Getting a clue, I went over to the chair and quietly had a seat, my mind envisioning large electrodes affixed to the back for a quick execution.
She just sat there for an indeterminate time staring at me. I wanted to explain myself, but my mouth had stopped working. Besides, I knew that she didn’t want me to talk. She wasn’t waiting for an apology, she was checking me out. All those years of brazenly ogling females came back at me in an instant, and I felt like one of those lobsters they have in expensive restaurants. Condemned, they all pray that the eyes will favor their fatter brother.
“You’re going to be a lot of work, but I think I can do it.”
“Pardon?” I asked, considering again that I had hit my head.
She stood up and walked over to me. Taking me by the ears, she turned me this way and that, looked into my eyes, and had me open my mouth. “Not bad, really… Just rough around the edges.”
Not understanding what the hell was going on, I kept my mouth shut and just let her touch me. Words would have just spoiled the fantasy I was having.
“Okay,” she said, sitting on the bed again. “Here’s the deal. I need you to sit there and listen, and I don’t want you to interrupt unless absolutely necessary. Can you do that?”
I nodded enthusiastically.
“Good,” she continued. “So pay attention. About four millennia ago, there was a king named Nebuchadnezzar. He was an alright leader, but where he really excelled was battle. His forces managed to occupy most of the known world at that time, which is a pretty amazing thing when you consider that nobody, even the Romans has managed to pull that off since.
“But he didn’t get to be so good at winning wars because he had the biggest army, but rather by being smart. His enemies could never figure out how things just happened to go his way all the time. It was almost as though he was just plain lucky. But what was really happening, was that he had brought in a ringer. Being an open minded guy, old Neb believed in magic, or what we would call magic, or advanced science, or fairy tails. It all boils down to that which is undeniable, but unprovable by normal means. Are you with me so far?”
I made a bit of a face, but then nodded.
“Good. There’s hope for you yet.” Her smile was so intoxicating that I almost forgot about her sweater. Almost.
“So Neb sent out some of his wisest wisemen to scour the lands in search of these unprovable things with the order that they bring back anything that might be useful to the empire. Well, most were predictably unsuccessful, but one chap, a man by the name of Pagino, did bring back some useful information that had to do with the whole aspect of time as a non-linear plane.”
“Huh?” I gasped, the language suddenly going over my head in a big way. She hardly paused.
“Imagine a small lake. Say that it encompasses all of history. You are sitting in a small boat with the point at which you leave the shore as the start of your life, and the point at which you come back aground, wherever it may be, being the end.”
“Okay, I’m there,” I replied, squinting.
“Now imagine that I have a pebble in my hand, and that the pebble represents an event in history. I take that pebble and I toss it into the lake so that it falls into the water at a certain place and it makes a little splash. It also makes a ring of ripples that spreads out across the surface of the lake in all directions. Okay, now imagine that you are rowing across the lake, and so moving through time. If I throw the pebble into the water in front of you someplace, then eventually, you will see the ripples from that pebble as they meet you. By looking at the diameter of those ripples, you could probably tell approximately how far away the pebble’s entry point is from you, right?”
“Yeah, sure… I guess so.” Damn her legs were nice.
“So what that means is that by looking for those ripples, we can know of events that will happen in the future.”
Something went DING! in my head, and her words suddenly broke through.
“Wait a sec… So what you’re saying is that this Pagino guy could tell the future?”
“Not exactly. What he found was a legend that told of a type of being that, among other thing, COULD see those ripples, and so was able to tell when major changes in history were about to take place. Naturally, Pagino was sent back with huge resources at his disposal in order to find these beings and enlist them into service for the good king. Once he got talking to the right people, it was only a matter of time before he was able to bribe his way into a meeting, the result of which was nearly disastrous because the entities had absolutely nothing in common with humans other than general appearance. They spoke an unknown tongue, and used completely alien terms of relationship, making communication all but impossible. But not wishing to disappoint his boss, he persevered and with time he was able to find a human interpreter.”
“I thought you said that they were completely alien?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“Nearly so. The one female human candidate was sort of a fluke. The being’s language was based on mental functions that most humans no longer possessed. But this woman had somehow retained them and was able to pick up their language in only a few days. The beings were quite eager to teach her, indicating that they had been waiting for centuries for the chance to mingle in the affairs of men. The woman’s name was Heila.
“So Heila became an adept. She learned the ways of the beings as best she could, and although she was unable to see the ripples of time, she did acquire a number of fantastic abilities that were marvels in and of themselves. Working with her teachers, and acting under the instruction of Pagino, the services of these strange entities were brought to bear on Neb’s enemies, with devastating results. Having even a vague idea of coming history was extremely valuable in world conquest, and had Nebuchadnezzar been happy with simple world domination, everything might have turned out okay. But Neb was greedy. He wanted to know the secret of forecasting the future for himself, and demanded that the beings teach him. To make matters worse, these beings had no idea that the king was using their knowledge for his own personal gain. Pagino had run a number on them and convinced them that they were helping all of humanity, not just a defined portion of it. When they found out, they were outraged and left the king’s company swearing never to return. Shortly afterward, the king’s empire crumbled.
“Rather than return to her own people, Heila decided to stay with the entities and continue to learn and help them in any way she could. They were of course delighted, and so she sort of became the eyes, ears and hands of the beings to the human race. You see, being benevolent creatures, they very much wanted to help humans and encourage them in how to take care of their world. Seeing terrible change coming, they worked with Heila to bring about counter changes that would keep humanity afloat, even when the waves of ripples indicated global disaster.”
I scrunched up my brow as I considered this. “What kind of changes?”
“Well, a couple of world wars for starters.”
“Wait a second! That happened dozens of centuries later. Heila couldn’t have been around for that…”
Marly rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you been listening? Let me spell it out for you. Heila worked with the beings to counter events that were going to occur in the far future. It didn’t matter how far into the future they were because if they could see ripples from specific events, then they could do things that might influence or block the effects of those events and so change possible outcomes.”
My head hurt.
“Okay…” I moaned. “But I’m not quite clear on one thing. If time is non-linear, but already defined by the surface of the lake, then how does doing anything now change the future? Isn’t it already set?”
She sucked in air through her lovely teeth. Obviously, this was an area she didn’t really want to go into right now. “It depends on how you look at it. From an omniscient point of view, the events in time are flexible and changeable. One event can change the outcome of another because you can see the whole lake. For us, however, history is fixed. Even though we may be able to see the effects of things in the future as ripples, the event that created that ripple is going to have to happen. There are other factors involved such as clarity of vision and deep sensing which are likened in our lake analogy to fog and the sound of something splashing into the water. Fog obscures how far away we can see the ripples before they hit us, and being able to hear a splash from a large event, whether or not the ripples hit you at all, can make all the difference in the world when it comes to changing the future.”
“Hearing a splash?” I could tell she was frustrated, but she took a deep breath and began again.
“Say you are sitting in your boat, leaning over the front watching ripples of future events as they reach you. Suddenly, off in the distance directly in front of you, you hear a large splash. You have several choices. You can continue on your present course, and let the ripples from the splash reach you full force, or you can change course such that the ripples hit you later, and so are weaker, less influential. Sometimes, you can bypass the ripples of an event altogether by turning in the right direction because events can cancel each other out.”
“Oh man. This is getting complicated…” I groaned.
“I tried to warn you.”
“So if you hear a big splash in front of you, can’t you just turn right around and go the other way, thus avoiding a potential threat?”
“Certainly, but you don’t know that the splash you hear is a threat. For all you know, it could be something wonderful, and that by turning away from it, you are sending your life into constant stagnation. To make matters worse, you might just turn in a direction that would put you ashore…”
“Death.” My head had deep creases as my brain soaked up the growing analogy with considerable effort.
“That’s right. And in many cases, you can see the shore, so not wanting to end your life, you may have no other choice but to head straight for something big.”
She stopped and was silent for a minute or so while my brain caught up and processed everything.
“But if you can’t tell if a splash is positive or negative, then what good is hearing it,” I asked, leaning forward in my seat, noticing her legs once again.
“Remember that it’s literally raining rocks and pebbles all around you. Splashes, large and small are occurring all the time, and most of them meet you unnoticed. You feel their effects, and now and then a larger ripple will manifest itself in a way that causes you know whether it was good or bad. Say you win the Lotto…”
“You win the Lotto.” I was smiling.
“Smart ass,” she continued unfazed. “You would probably consider that a positive event in your life. If you knew what to look for in the ripples, you might even be able to catch a few that influenced other things around you in such a way as to cause you to eventually meet up with that one ‘Lotto winner’ event.”
“Okay, that makes sense.”
“And if you were really paying attention, and knew just what to look for, you could see certain trends in the ripple patterns and steer your boat so as to increase your chances to hit the win event head-on a second time.”
I was suddenly speechless.
“You need to understand that it’s not just being able to see the ripples that counts,” she continued. “We can all actually do that. But rather being able to interpret what you see and take the correct action in response to get where you want to be in terms of history.”
“Wow,” I exclaimed, genuinely flabbergasted. “That’s sort of like setting your own destiny.”
“Sort of. I need to add one more concept to our metaphor I’m afraid,” She said with regret in her voice. I just groaned.
“Think of the lake as being fairly shallow. As events fall into the lake as pebbles and stones, they accumulate on the bottom and gradually build up. If enough events fall in a given area, they will eventually break the surface and create an obstacle.”
I squinted again and decided to jump ahead. “… And if you run into one you’re dead…”
“Well, not usually,” she continued. “But you can get stuck in a direction that forces you into one of those larger events, and whatever consequences it might bring. Most of the time, the obstacles start far apart, and get more dense as you move in one direction, funneling you towards a fixed conclusion. Getting around that one major event gets more and more difficult as you move closer and closer.”
“This is complicated,” I said, blinking.
“Believe it or not, I’m just giving you the Reader’s Digest version.” Her smile was warm and friendly.
“Really?!”
“Really.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be a philosophy major, would you?”
She grinned broadly, and I was reminded of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. I never could remember if its intentions were favorable or not.
“Oh, I’m not going to college right now.”
Her words caused me to snap my head up from admiring her calves.
“You’re not,” I asked quizzically. “But then why rent a place like this, so close to campus?”
“I’m here for you, silly…”