NOVEL NEXT Expanding Into Yesterday 2/13
Aaron found himself in his usual recurring dream. It was set in a white room with what he understood to be a computer sitting on a work desk. The thing looked nothing like a computer, he knew it wasn’t a computer, but if he were forced to explain the thing the only words that came to mind painted the impression of a computer.
Aaron was never comfortable calling this experience a dream however; parts of it felt too real and time seemed to hold still when he was experiencing this space. The second aspect had served him well in the past. The fact that he could sit and mull over his problems for what felt like an eternity had allowed him to shrug off some of his bigger problems in the past. One such occasion had even saved his life.
Aaron had developed a variety of ways to track time accurately without any external reference points. By one such measure, namely the progression of his thoughts, he had spent a month in the place before he felt ready to deal with the outside world. The space was a rare chance for him to address his problems so even though he had managed to put the scene in his classroom behind him he spent what seemed like another week relaxing and making plans.
When Aaron finally felt ready to wake up he turned to the computer-thing. It took him an apparent moment to notice that the information he was feeling from it was different from the usual “continue screen he had come to expect. The ‘friends’ section was blank, as usual, and while it stung as it usually did that wasn’t what drew his focus. Typically the screen let him select between a few times to wake up like it did now. This time however, instead of displaying times in the apparent future from when he fell asleep there was only one time. He could only choose to wake up “one cycle ago” presumably at the time he had last awoken. Something about that just felt correct.
Aaron spent what felt like hours deciding what to think. In the same way he knew most things about the space when he was in it he knew that, at least this once, he would wake up the previous morning and the day he had just experienced would have never happened. Aaron wasn’t frightened, the knowledge had a fundamental nature to it that placed it on a similar level as knowledge that the planet is orbiting the sun at a speed that simply can't truly be understood by the human mind, only modeled and shrunk to a usable scale. Eventually Aaron decided that he shouldn't have gone to school that day. Aaron figured his friend might call him superstitious but it wasn't like he had to return the book that day, and now he had a good reason not to.
“Afterall, if I had known I would have never gone into school.”