Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.
Hosted by Denise, constrained by a sentence limit (high and low) of six, there are worse ways to spend the remaining time you have on earth.
Previously… Well, in a sense… but you start adding time travel as a plot device, and logical narrative continuity pretty much goes out the window, ya know?
Prompt word:
ORDER
“Here, lemme get that for you…”
The abrupt truncation of the Sophomore’s offer to help the girl struggling with her luggage in the dormitory lobby was very much one of dramatic necessity:
- Dramatic: because an immeasurable instant before saying, ‘Here’, he had been siting in the front passenger seat of an Audi A7 doing 85 mph on Rt 80 in the middle of Pennsylvania;
- Necessity: the ellipsis hung in the air, (as is it’s nature), not only because the German luxury car interior had become a dormitory lobby on the weekend before the start of Fall Semester, but because it was intransigently familiar, not, ‘Of course I know what the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel looks like’, rather in the, ‘This is where we first kissed’ (I was so there) sense.
Ethan smiled down at the girl, ‘Sherry’, a forgotten volume of memory provided as, parting her long, brown and clothes-iron straight hair to either side of her gold wire-rim glasses, she held the door onto the inner courtyard.
All his efforts to convince himself he was car-ride dreaming flew out the no-longer available passenger side window as the couple were hit with waves of music, courtesy of a pair of Pioneer speakers in an open window; Jimi Hendrix singing, ‘Ya Got me Floatin’.
The girl frowned as the boy with her suitcase froze in place; in the forgotten codex of late adolescence, her furrowed brow was a demand for reassurance rather than impatience for the lack of progress.
Ethan van Decken, having experienced, (involuntary) time transit before, wasn’t helped in his struggle to maintain equilibrium as Jimi sang,
“My friends are gonna be there too; I’m on the highway to…”
*
About clarkscottroger
It sounds like Ethan time transitted back home to Sherry. I wonder what she is like compared to Rosetta.
Since this is all involuntary on Ethan’s part this makes for great situation changes that can pop out of nowhere. This accidental time travelling technique is more flexible than the rabbit hole that Lewis Carroll came up with. Looking forward to more of Ethan’s adventures.
Good get.
Damn! Dude! You ask the ‘Do you have an hour or two?” questions!
Easy one first, by all measures, Sherry is no Rosetta. Which is not really such a bad thing. Average college coed in the early ’70s She is: young, intelligent, attractive, did we say, ‘young’? (and not yet burdened with the burden of life) at least not in any meaningful sense when compared to full-on adult.
Your second observation is as on the money as most of your others. Change is not only possible, it is inevitable
Note: given your proclivity for scrying my obscure plot manipulations, your opinion on my use (this week with both Sixes) of a subtitle. If it sounds old-fashioned then I’m on the right track, trying to channel Charles Dickens (the father of serial stories)… but this particular subtitle addresses the second half of your Comment regarding change. I’m paraphrasing Heraclitus’ ‘You can’t step in the same river twice’.
So will Ethan find what he experienced (the ‘first’ time) or will he shape the reality (subtily or otherwise) by virtue of being older than he should be.
thanks for the Comment
If you have to time travel, make it be to happier (and safer) times!
What? 1970s!
Granted, up until relatively recently (say the 1990s) I would’ve said, ‘The seventies? ewww’
But compared to now? Maybe not as bad as we might remember, “Yeah babe, that’s a genuine sterling silver mood ring. ‘nother Sunrise?
It has to be a bit unnerving, to say the least. Some theorize we can’t change the past, but if we could go back, would be doomed to repeat it.
(imo)… worse! imagine going back (the Sophomore has)… you take everything with you …everything
now imagine connecting with your best friends. this is there Present (and now your Present) the challenge is: remember how/who they were as people… we’ll for starters they are 18 yo
I know you know where this scenario leads… (further complicated by the fact that you can never get back to your time/your life
Involuntary time travel. Gosh, nightmare.
true dat (see Reply to Mimi)
If only we could all travel back in time, reboot and start again.
I think that past is past for a reason and would not want to time travel even in these flashbacks
It was a good story:)
ty
Keith’s Comment generated a bit of discussion (ok, mostly my discussion…lol
the classic question. if you take your life experiences with you (who you
are
) it would be special kind of hell (see Rely to Mimi below/above) if you don’t… then it wouldn’t matter, aka would not be a story (Like the old saying: reality is a story in progress, we are stories being written by ourselves a minute (or a lifetime) in the past)
Generally rebooting often works for a brain… yes, really!
true
Gives new meaning to “bad trip”.
Ethan’s time transit – Static in nature? Merely revisiting a moment in time having no temporal side effects for having done so aka changing the future? Let’s hope so for our story’s sake!
we’ll soon find out! (hopefully)