At first, I couldn’t be sure. Soon enough, it was a conclusion I could not escape – the clock on the computer at work was losing time. Seven minutes per day to be precise. This may sound like a lot of not very much – after all, what can you really do with seven minutes anyway? Turn up on time, for starters. Catch the right tram. When you think about it, dislocating yourself by seven minutes in each twenty-four hour period can really catch you off guard. Worse still, the effect was cumulative. Today it’s seven minutes. Tomorrow it’s fourteen. As I write this, I am not in the here and now but am stranded twenty-eight minutes ago. Spooky, isn’t it?
At first, I couldn’t be sure. Soon enough, it was a conclusion I could not escape – the clock on the computer at work was losing time. Seven minutes per day to be precise. This may sound like a lot of not very much – after all, what can you really do with seven minutes anyway? Turn up on time, for starters. Catch the right tram. When you think about it, dislocating yourself by seven minutes in each twenty-four hour period can really catch you off guard. Worse still, the effect was cumulative. Today it’s seven minutes. Tomorrow it’s fourteen. As I write this, I am not in the here and now but am stranded twenty-eight minutes ago. Spooky, isn’t it?
Before you write in, let me be clear and say that I know how to fix the clock – all I have to do is ‘click’ in the right corner and adjust the time manually. And given that this is a simple and mostly painless procedure, you probably think I should stop harassing the IT guy at unsociable hours and rectify the whole clock schmozzle myself… That’s where you’re dead wrong. As unusual as it is for me to try and fix anything that could easily be fixed by others, on this occasion I’d given it a red-hot go. But despite returning the clock to the correct time, I would find those seven minutes would vanish again soon after. Where could they possibly be going? If I peel away the couch cushions, will I find my missing minutes hiding there? Are they escaping one at a time or is it an exodus more in the manner of a mass-breakout? I suspect they wait until they know I’m away from my desk before making their big move. There were more question than answers but, lucky for me, I had enough time to get to the bottom of things.
I’m not ashamed to say that I’m quite the science buff. By ‘science buff’, I mean that I own a copy of Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ and have even read the blurb on the back. Also, over the full period of my life, I have watched several minutes of ‘The Curiosity Show’, just not all at once and purely by accident when flicking between stations. So, as a scientist, I know for a fact that time travel is simply hokum conjured up by a bunch of Hollywood types. That is, of course, unless you can get your hands on a flux capacitor and a DeLorean. Sadly, we only have a Ford Focus at present. Even if I could get it up to eighty eight miles per hour, a Ford Focus isn’t the kind of thing you’d want to be seen driving back through time in.
But despite my lack of a flux capacitor, I had unwittingly unlocked the secret of time travel. I’ve done some calculations. If I keep this up, by next Thursday, I’ll be back in last week. By Christmas I’ll be in March 2002. Come the end of financial year, I’ll be in third-year Uni. Before you can say ‘grunge’, you should expect to see me wearing acid wash jeans and a pair of Blundstone boots. I won’t sugarcoat it – this is going to get ugly, and not just sartorially. Life was hard enough going forwards. It can only be more complex in reverse.
There are some people who lament getting older. Not me. Frankly, I couldn’t stand being younger and much like a bad cold, was delighted when I finally shook it off. Like the weakest link in a compulsory team lap around the oval, my clock is now starting to fall behind and dragging me along with it. So far, the changes have been negligible – incapable of detection to the naked eye. But I fear all that is about to be unleashed. Soon, the years will start to fall away and I’ll be getting younger instead of older, just like Brad Pitt in that movie – Fight Club.
But what if I start losing more than just seven minutes a day? What if the clock starts to gain some momentum? Before I know it, I might find myself heading backwards in time at a great rate of knots. All of which leads to the big question – why is this happening? The way I see it, there are two possible explanations regarding my missing minutes. It could be a minor technical hitch. Presumably, the ‘server’ will be to blame. Truth be told, I don’t believe that the ‘server’ exists. Like the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot or Winston Churchill, I think the ‘sever’ is just a figment of somebody’s rather over-active imagination. Just like the Boogie Man or J. Edgar Hoover, such things do not exist in real life. Believing in ‘the server’ is, I feel, pretty much akin to claiming that the world is flat. Not very scientific at all.
But perhaps I should stop fearing time travel and embrace it. After all, how many people ever really get a second chance? As I lurch backwards through time, this is my opportunity to set things straight. To do things a little better. To, where necessary, make amends. To correct just a few of the mistakes that have my marked my journey from ‘there’ to ‘here’. To finally get things right….
…They’re back. Without warning and without explanation, the seven minutes have returned to the clock. Perhaps it’s for the best. Maybe the past should be left precisely where it is. Time travel may be glorious in theory but, when all’s said and done, we are driven to move forward. Whether that’s in a DeLorean or a Ford Focus is hardly the point. The server, should it exist, would doubtless agree.