That was all decades ago.
I don’t know why this took me so long to write about. I truly don’t, and I can’t say that anything beyond the basics of age-induced nostalgia triggered my sudden desire to put pen to paper on the subject, but there you are.
Maybe, like I said, I just didn’t know what to say. Time may make fools of us all, but to give credit where credit’s due, it also tends to clear the dust and debris that so often stops us from saying what we want to say.
As for the machine itself: we destroyed it a few years after it was built. Both of us used it again, several times, but soon realized just how dangerously addictive it was becoming, and that it could very easily consume us, drive us to the point of obsession.
It was hard to let go, as I’m sure you can imagine. But we knew we had to.
As for Bill, he has long since passed, gone about ten years now. Disease.
I know what you’re thinking: I’ll see him again in that timeless place when I go.
But here’s the thing. I know he was certain the whole thing was real, and it sure as shit felt real to me when I went, the first time and every time after that. Having had decades to think about it, however, I have to concede that both of us, like anyone would have, were letting the emotional attachment (and, in Bill’s case, the scientific achievement as well) sway our beliefs.
Listen:
I want to believe it. Anyone would. And on some level, I still do. For all I know, it really could all be true.
Maybe this was a real place, and through his sheer genius Bill somehow found a way to tap into it and send a human consciousness there.
Or maybe his machine just did something to the human mind to manifest such an illusion and distort one’s perception of time.
I truly don’t know. All I do know is that Bill built something, both of us used it, and through it we spoke to the souls of those we knew and loved in life. Whether or not those interactions were truly real, only time will tell. It breaks my heart to admit it, but I just can’t bring myself to fully believe.
So I don’t think that I can tell you whether or not what you would see in this hypothetical life-after-death, were this machine available for your use, is what you’ll see when your time comes.
But all of that is beside the point. Whether or not this place was real, whether or not what Bill and I saw was real, it taught us both something very, very important about the life we live here and how screwed our priorities tend to get while we’re living it.
That’s what got me truly writing again. Not the adventures themselves - we never did tell anyone else about the machine, although Bill always gave me his say-so to do so - but what they taught us about our lives here, and who we’d want to see again when they’re all said and done, if we had the will to make it so. The idea that above all else, what matters most are the people in our lives.
And that’s what matters about what Bill discovered. Yes, the scientific implications, if it’s true, are absolutely staggering, but being in that timeless place really puts a perspective on just how little time we have here, and how much we risk wasting by not appreciating the people that help make this all worthwhile.
If you were able to, once this strange journey was all over, once you and everyone you know are all gone from here, who would you want to speak with, to smile with, to laugh with, to cry with again?
Who would you want to see?