Page 107 of Alone With You in the Ether

He answers the phone on the second ring; he didn’t think she would call.

She hadn’t planned to, but here she was.

(Silence.)

For what it’s worth he’d hoped she would. But then again it’s not strictly within his skillset to hope.

She disagrees. His profession is built on hope, isn’t it?

Funny she should say that. He was just starting to think she might be right.

(Silence.)

Well, anyway, they didn’t need to get into that again. Not yet.

Yet?

No. Actually, she called to tell him something.

Oh?

Well, more accurately, she called to talk to him about something. She wants to have (and here, another breath of pause): A Conversation.

Okay. (Is he smiling? He is.) Okay, he’s free, he can talk. What does she want to talk about?

She wants to talk about time.

Time?

Yes, time.

He thought time was his thing.

Well, it’s about his thoughts on time, so yeah, it is.

Okay, tell him.

Well, she was thinking about what he said; about how he could turn a corner and walk into some other situation that was nearly the same but different. What exactly did he mean by that?

(A pause.)

Well, he thinks time is some sort of cycle or loop, right? But seeing as it’s more likely to be a hexagon than a circle, because of nature etc etc, that means time must have corners.

So, she could turn a corner and end up as… what, exactly?

She’d still be herself, only she’d be herself as she would have been in the direction time was movingat that point.

Okay, so say she turned a corner and she was… maybe eighteen years old or something, but say she carried with her some vague memory of who she’d been before. Could she do that?

She can do anything she wants. (He sounds like he means it.)

Okay, cool, so she turns a corner, she’s eighteen, it’s a past that isn’t heractualpast, so she’s in love with him but she doesn’t know it yet.

If she’s eighteen, then they don’t know each other at all.

Right—notyet, but maybe they meet a different way that time. Say they meet at a party, for example.

A party? (He’s skeptical.)

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