Like the opening line predicted she didn't take the email very seriously. In the blur of caps, gowns, sixteen parents, nine grandparents, and cornucopia of siblings even weirder than themselves, the eight of them hardly mentioned it. It was precisely the kind of prank Jeremy played when he got so high that he wouldn't even remember doing it. Or maybe it did snag in everyone's mind the way it did in May's, briefly but thornily, the absurd possibility of it, a pause of contemplation and then gone. Maybe it really was just too much to really believe.
The month had been so rife with surreal events that maybe it just didn't seem any stranger than what happened to Willie, or the Lake, or the Ebola outbreak in the suburbs that terrorized the city and their parents, who just wanted to see them graduate without worrying so goddamn much about the masks or screening points or cautionary quarantines.
At least all their names were on the bottom. Although they couldn't have left one out. It would have messed things up, right? What if their future selves were messing things up? But maybe it had always happened this way; maybe their future selves knew to write this email because they had received it 20 years ago. May realized that if this were authentic they would have to get together in 20 years and send the identical email. Was that how it worked?
She skimmed through the things she knew about time, time travel, the future and past. Back to the Future. La Jetee. In her mind, their future selves sent the email because they received it 20 years ago, and they received it because their future selves sent it, and it circled round and round like a mobius strip and the difference between then and now was an illusion. Time like a parachute spread out in every direction, folded and touching and precariously stitched with a tiny turquoise thread.
Outside the sidewalks were neon yellow, covered in a single layer of dusty catkins, like tiny tails blown from the trees. She wished to press them back into the branches, pin each one back where it came from, stop the trees from their spring orgy or reproduction. The insistence of nature was troubling.
The names at the bottom signified nothing. One of them could have sent it, and written all the names. Someone else sent it, and wrote all the names. Or she'd have to send it, and write all the names, because that is how it is, how it is, how it is.
What she thought about next was an essay she wrote for a class she was just now scamming a final essay for. Fate of the State in a Globalizing World. A class with a professor whom she liked very much, who had always liked her and helped her with her disorganized projects and schemes. A class she'd been blowing off, showing up late to, blatantly making things up in small group discussions to see if she could. She could. It made her feel dumb and smart at once.
She'd hardly completed the midterm assignment, substituting what was pretty much a creative essay for the required analytical one, describing (predictably) a dystopian future. Fate of the State! What a class. The state of fate, she always called it.
The state of fate. In her dystopia, exploring alternatives to a system of independent federal states, she described a world owned by corporations, who had already in present day figured out how to run things much more efficiently. The inefficiencies of even an efficient state were too long to list. The inefficiencies of, say, Google, were minimal and constantly being snipped out. The end of the world, etc. In Fate of the State she'd been forced to think about how short states had existed, anyways. Before that: feudal system. Before that: tribal system. Before that: nothing. Just some humans trying to survive. Loose family structures.
Time felt brittle or maybe loud, or maybe she just had the nausea you feel when you hear a bone break.
from: Graphene Labs noreply938324@googlegraphene.com
to: May McGregor, may.mcgregor@gmail.com
cc: Merrie Gatewood, mel.gate@gmail.com,
Daniel Fallbrook, danielfallbrook2011@u.northwestern.edu,
Mavara Moghaddam, mavmoghaddam@u.northwestern.edu,
Dominick Huntington, domhuntington@gmail.com,
Gideon Glass, gglass89@gmail.com,
Kevin Clancy, kevin.kittle@gmail.com
Jeremy Orono, jsorono@gmail.com
date: Sat, June 18, 2011 at 1:33 PM
subject Happy Graduation from your future selves!
hide details 1:33 PM (0 minutes ago)
You may receive this email with disbelief and that's ok-- we wouldn't send it if we thought you'd take it too seriously. The eight of us are gathered here today in reunion of our happy year spent together at 1107 Gramercy 20 years ago, and decided to pull a few strings to say hi to our former selves. As 2030 is coming to a close we're all reflecting on the joys of that simple year, before Willie's accident, and, well, you know the rest. (It'll get better; that much we can tell you.)
Of course you might wonder why you don't receive emails from the future often or ever. Google Graphene built the technology about 5 years ago, shortly after they purchased the U.S. debt and started to run the country. Of course no one has access, because of the disruption it would cause. Dom's recent promotion at Google allowed him to bend a couple rules, and this has been carefully crafted to protect you from any details that might harm us. Or you. We can tell you that we all look back on that year or most of it at least with very fond memories. Congratulations on receiving your diplomas.
May, Danny, Mav, K.C., Jeremy, Merrie, Dom & Gideon
The month had been so rife with surreal events that maybe it just didn't seem any stranger than what happened to Willie, or the Lake, or the Ebola outbreak in the suburbs that terrorized the city and their parents, who just wanted to see them graduate without worrying so goddamn much about the masks or screening points or cautionary quarantines.
At least all their names were on the bottom. Although they couldn't have left one out. It would have messed things up, right? What if their future selves were messing things up? But maybe it had always happened this way; maybe their future selves knew to write this email because they had received it 20 years ago. May realized that if this were authentic they would have to get together in 20 years and send the identical email. Was that how it worked?
She skimmed through the things she knew about time, time travel, the future and past. Back to the Future. La Jetee. In her mind, their future selves sent the email because they received it 20 years ago, and they received it because their future selves sent it, and it circled round and round like a mobius strip and the difference between then and now was an illusion. Time like a parachute spread out in every direction, folded and touching and precariously stitched with a tiny turquoise thread.
Outside the sidewalks were neon yellow, covered in a single layer of dusty catkins, like tiny tails blown from the trees. She wished to press them back into the branches, pin each one back where it came from, stop the trees from their spring orgy or reproduction. The insistence of nature was troubling.
The names at the bottom signified nothing. One of them could have sent it, and written all the names. Someone else sent it, and wrote all the names. Or she'd have to send it, and write all the names, because that is how it is, how it is, how it is.
What she thought about next was an essay she wrote for a class she was just now scamming a final essay for. Fate of the State in a Globalizing World. A class with a professor whom she liked very much, who had always liked her and helped her with her disorganized projects and schemes. A class she'd been blowing off, showing up late to, blatantly making things up in small group discussions to see if she could. She could. It made her feel dumb and smart at once.
She'd hardly completed the midterm assignment, substituting what was pretty much a creative essay for the required analytical one, describing (predictably) a dystopian future. Fate of the State! What a class. The state of fate, she always called it.
The state of fate. In her dystopia, exploring alternatives to a system of independent federal states, she described a world owned by corporations, who had already in present day figured out how to run things much more efficiently. The inefficiencies of even an efficient state were too long to list. The inefficiencies of, say, Google, were minimal and constantly being snipped out. The end of the world, etc. In Fate of the State she'd been forced to think about how short states had existed, anyways. Before that: feudal system. Before that: tribal system. Before that: nothing. Just some humans trying to survive. Loose family structures.
Time felt brittle or maybe loud, or maybe she just had the nausea you feel when you hear a bone break.
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