Once an eternal visitor
Abandoned objects (and persons), deep-sky exploration from your desktop, not being pessimistic enough with our dystopia.
At the crossroads, a car door slammed the same time as a woman’s voice yelled words I couldn’t hear. They hung in the air, like stains of pain. The car sped off, leaving a young man standing alone on the asphalt. He paused for a heartbeat and started walking the other way, tracksuit pants hanging halfway down his hips, steps unsteady. Body buckling against the biting wind, he pulled the hood of his jacket tighter around his face, winter sunlight glancing off the rings on his ungloved fingers. A balaclava hid most of his features, but I could tell: he was young.
Silently, I bid him good luck. Perhaps the day might take a turn for the better.
I ducked through a side street I’d never taken before, cutting from east to west. This wasn’t a city I lived in, but I knew my way around well enough. Laughter and snatches of radio drifted through an open door, behind which a kitchen hand busied with dishes in a sink. A woman—dark hair, dark skirt—stood in front of a building hidden from the street, waiting for something, or someone. She must have been there awhile; impatience whirled about her in furious waves. I tried not to catch her eye.
When I finally emerged onto the next main street, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d accidentally stumbled into another version of this world.
It seemed always possible to tell the visitors apart from locals in this place. Locals strode with purpose, going about their business. Visitors hadn’t yet mastered the speed at which a pedestrian was expected to move at, nor understood the notion of sharing the pavement. The city becomes two places simultaneously: a fantastic urban wilderness for those discovering it for the first time, or a jungle of obstacles for those who know their way. Former visitors like me get caught out between both worlds—a crumpled page in a secondhand paperback.
At the café, I finally settled down with a coffee, a pen and notebook, ready to polish off a poem. On the table next to mine, a student switched their focus seamlessly between tablet and phone.
“Can I please sit here?” came the voice of a woman balancing a small tray with a steaming pot of tea, a sugar bowl and an empty cup. Her vermillion nail varnish matched her lipstick, her knitted sweater and the headband holding back her straightened brown hair. My neighbour murmured something incomprehensible, but moved to make room, so the woman set her tray down on her newly acquired half of the table. She lowered her black faux-leather handbag to the floor and slipped into the small chair. An uncomfortable moment festered while time rearranged its skirts and held its breath.
Moments later, with a furtive glance across at my preoccupied neighbour, she migrated to a freshly vacated table and fished out her own tablet from the handbag. When I looked up from my notebook—she’d wandered off and left her tablet unattended, her handbag standing abandoned on the floor next to an empty chair.
I sighed. A new visitor. She might have to learn the hard way.
I kept an eye on her belongings until she returned—one visitor looking out for another.
There comes a time when one eventually learns how to blend in, how to navigate invisibly. Being an eternal-visitor for some time, my scars may no longer show.
Those d*** rabbit holes
Despite a week of wrestling with tax returns, work and frantic scribbling writing, I did manage to accumulate a few random tangents:
The phrase “Beam me up, Scotty” was never uttered in the Star Trek episode or film. Similar to the “stardust” vs. “star stuff” misquotation of Carl Sagan, I wonder if there’s a term for how the collective unconscious tries to make amends for words that should have been said in mass media.
A fellow writer got me hooked on toying with Celestia, though I’m still very much in love with Stellarium.1
I ended up explaining the origin of “sus” to a friend because of a trending GIF on Giphy.
DeepMind Wants to Use AI to Solve the Climate Crisis. I’m somewhat torn up about this.
Your 2050 dystopia is weirdly optimistic. A fascinating read. I’ll be coming back to this article multiple times, and not necessarily with the help of time travel.2
May your journeys leave you unscarred and optimistic.
Thank you, Clockwooork.
Thank you, alxd.