TripDown by Memory Lane
Sci-fi Flash Fiction
Memory Lane was running a New Year’s sale because folks love another shot at last year’s resolutions, so I thought I’d spring for a TripDown reservation on a lark. Sent in my DNA swab and everything.
That was years ago now. Then there in the inbox of my mailpad was a message that began:
Welcome to Your Second Chance
The facility is spa-like. Soft lights and air thick with essential oils and terry cloth robes. It’s nice, actually. They bring me to a room with wood slatted walls where a little brook babbles from end to end next to a me-sized mother-of-pearl pod.
They begin with a big speech. It’s mostly corporate jerk-off type stuff, but they deliver it well. About how happy they are to have me. How wonderful my experience is going to be. Which celebrities I’m suppose to care used their services. It’s fluffy, I’m bored of it, and my mind’s half gone away anyhow.
I’m thinking about him. I’m thinking he won’t be happy to see me. But that can’t be, I’m realizing. Because when I wake up, it will be during the last moment I ever made him happy.
They ask me to lay back in the pod. They tell me the interior is plush and upholstered with a leather that has a fancy marketing name I don’t recognize. It feels fine. Comfy enough for the trip.
My head is cradled into a basin full of lights that must mean things to people much smarter than me. They tell me this is where it all happens. It’s state-of-the-art.
The pod is closed, leaving me staring at the slogan printed inside:
Don’t Re-gret, Re-do!
Catchy, but not accurate, is it? This isn’t really a trip back to do what I should have done in the first place. This is a trip into a me that was already going to do it. I’m just taking credit.
Their voice comes through a speaker in the pod. They start a rundown of technical jargon I don’t follow, but they give a lay summary that it will feel like I’ve blinked and then I’ll be in the moment. In my body but not my body. At the crucial pivot. And all I have to do is the right thing. Or continue doing the right thing, I guess.
They ask if I have any final questions. I ask what happens to me-but-not-me? They say:
You are you, no matter who.
It means nothing. It’s from a brochure probably. It’s not true.
You are you, and I am me. You were always going to say no to him, and I was always going to say yes. That’s why you are not in a pod, and I am. We are not the same.
Addition by subtraction and subtraction by addition. You are you, and I am me.
Foresight and hindsight. You are you, and I am me.
A photo and its negative. You are you, and I am me.
Paying him back means robbing you. I know that, no matter how they spin it. It’s an inter-dimensional Ponzi scheme. I don’t think I can do this. I’m not the type. Would you be?
You are you, and I am me.
They were speaking, I think. I missed most of it. The voice sounds serious. I catch them confirming I understand what “output only” means. What “getting lost” means. I don’t. I wasn’t listening, but I can’t admit that, never have. You would have told them, I bet. Asked them to repeat it. Because you are you, and I am me.
They tell me a countdown will begin. To relax. To imagine a lighthouse beacon. To imagine a lightning rod. To focus on my moment of regret and only the regret. As if it’s hard. As if regret isn’t the background radiation that defines the whole origin of my universe.
So I focus.
On the lit-up head bowl.
10
On the pod.
9
On the brook.
8
On the walls.
7
On the terry cloth robe.
6
On the essential oils.
5
On the soft lights.
4
On the message in my inbox.
3
On the years-old swab.
2
On our marriage and our collapse and my inertia and his wasted time and taking the easy way and the trip to Italy and the fallout and whose fault it was and how it was mine and wanting to feel good again and wanting to feel good again and wanting and wanting and wanting and never giving and only taking and taking still here now from you and you who is the best of me and me who is the worst of you and how I’m sorry and how I regret ever coming here and how I regret being born.
1
Have a nice trip.