The Argument of Constants
By
Mikael Aizen
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PUBLISHED BY:
Mikael Aizen
The Argument of Constants
Copyright © 2012 by Mikael Aizen
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Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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The Argument of Constants
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The problem with Traveling is that to change the past, you have to know something. Something that changed your mind, convinced you. Was important enough to Travel for. If you could go back in time and make that thing that happened not happen...then you would have never known or cared in the first place.
You would never have Traveled.
This is The Traveler’s Hypocrisy. More accurately named “The License” because for Travelers, the Hypocrisy is License for depravity. A way to cheat morality and never be caught. License to murder, steal, destroy. Life without consequence. The Hypocrisy means that what is done is done--the past is written…
The Hypocrisy is a lie.
When we travel, we change the past--and the future with it.
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"We call it the Real and the Unreal." The yellow-green woman in the baggy purple jumpsuit was mocking Taimu, she had to be. "Everyone would like to believe that they are Real, more Real than anybody else. The truth is that they are not. Not compared to you or me." The yellow green woman gave Taimu a big toothy grin. They were white at least, even if they did look like shark teeth.
Taimu's hand hesitated over his wheelchair's control stick. They were on the sidewalk outside his house. He had been getting his mail, as usual, and this weirdly colored woman intercepted him. He stared critically at the woman's skin, it didn't look like paint. "Is this some kind of joke?" Taimu asked.
Yellow-green woman laughed like Taimu's question was the joke. "No," yellow-green woman said. "Not at all," she paused.
Bird calls, the cool breeze that shifted through overhead leaves, the yellow-green woman. He had that odd, out of body feeling as the woman's pause becoming an extended, awkward, silence.
"Um..." Taimu said.
"You see," the woman interrupted, "most of your reality is not, in fact, Real. I am a Traveler," she pointed at her jumpsuit, lined with tacky silver frills. "I Travel through the Unreal, looking for things that are Real." She pointed at Taimu. "You are Real."
Taimu no longer hesitated. He pushed the control stick forward. "You should move...it or lose it," he finished, trying to make his voice convincing. He made it a habit to be polite to crazy people, just because. But even he had his limits.
Yellow-green woman did not move. She just stood there until the wheel of Taimu's wheelchair climbed right up her combat boot, whirling in place. The wheel slipped off, jarring Taimu as it caught sudden traction.
Taimu scowled and maneuvered around the woman. "Don't follow me," Taimu called over his shoulder.
"Look at my boot."
The unusual request, and sheer cursed curiosity made Taimu turn, he looked at the boot--it was a boot.
"My boot is Real," yellow-green woman said.
"That's great. Really. I have things to attend to. I'm busy with real things in my life to worry about." He didn't have anything to do except watch TV, but that's what you say when certain insane people don't leave you alone.
"You should look closely at my boot." Yellow-green woman had taken it off. She held it out in front of Taimu's face.
It stunk, the kind of stink that you could smell from the other side of the coffee shop. Taimu jerked his head away.
"Look," yellow-green woman said. "No scuff marks."
The woman was right. No scuff marks. Taimu didn't care. "So what?"
"Your wheelchair isn't Real, thus, it cannot harm things that are Real." Yellow-green woman lifted the boot and threw it to the sidewalk. Bits of rocks exploded with a poof of powder and a small stream of concrete dust trickled when yellow-green woman picked it back up.
"Holy crap! What just happened?" Taimu stared.
"Yes, holy poop. You see, since my boot is Real it has a much larger effect on the Unreal than something else equally Unreal would have." The yellow-green woman's skin suddenly glittered, a look of pleasure crossed the woman's face. She took the boot and threw it at Taimu.
Taimu screamed for his life and raised his arms, too late. The boot struck him on the face and bounced off. Chalk-like powder puffed his face.
"What was that?" Taimu demanded. "You could've..." Could've what?
"You are Real," yellow-green woman said again.
"Look, I don't care if I'm Real or fake or whatever." Taimu wiped his face with his sleeve and decided that no matter what the woman said next, he wouldn't stop for any reason. Even if his life depended on it. He didn't know how the boot thing had happened, but he also didn't quite know how magicians pulled rabbits out of hats. In both situations, it didn't matter. A trick was a trick.
"You can stand again, if you wanted."
Taimu's wheelchair halted.
"Try it," the woman said. "If you believe with all your heart that you can stand, then you will."
Taimu pushed the control stick forward again and let go of it, again. She was playing with him. Anyone knew what a cripple wanted more than anything. So why was he listening to her?
"You are Real, Taimu."
How does she know my name?
"Your heart will always be more Real than your physical body. Trust it. Deep inside you've always known that you were meant not only to stand but to run. And even fly. You, though you are Real, have been imprisoned by your mind and your perception of this world."
Taimu remembered when he was eight years old, right after the car accident. It hadn't been Batman or Spiderman cartoons that he looked forward to watching on the hospital TVs. It'd been Superman. Superman who was indestructible, an alien who's only weakness was Kryptonite and sometimes the love of his life.
Something inside Taimu heard the yellow-green woman on a higher level. He didn't know if it was the way the woman said it or the way that Taimu could feel the woman stare through the back of his chair, through his spine, straight into his soul. Whatever it was, a part of his heart called back.
"Taimu, stand!"
Taimu stood.
His body hit the pavement. You idiot. You totally deserved that.
Taimu lay on the ground, staring across the sidewalk from an angle that he hadn't seen in some time. His forehead stung.
"At least you have the desire if not the will," the woman said.
Taimu didn't answer. Anyone who'd play of mind game with a paraplegic for fun didn't deserve an answer. Anyone this cruel, anyone who'd mock the misfortune of someone else as entertainment deserved nothing else but cursing and swearing.
But Taimu was too nice. His Japanese mother had taught him to be nice. Though Taimu had seen his American dad take advantage of his too sweat mother to the point of her sudden suicide, she'd taught
him well. So Taimu just lay there without the will to stand and without any desire except to lay flat on his face, listening to laughter from his cynical inside-self echo through his cave-empty skull.
"When you're ready, you must jump from the top of the AIG building, facing north. I'll be waiting for you on the other side. I'll leave you my boots. Wear them when you jump." Yellow-green woman's boots dropped by Taimu's head. The concrete puffed into Taimu's face.
Then she was gone and the stench of the boots was all that was left.