The Time Traveler's
Travelogue

Perspectives on the universe.

Full disclosure: I have not met The Traveler, nor do I know anyone who has met The Traveler. For all intents and purposes, he exists as a kind of figment of our collective imagination, like the Tooth Fairy, or the Man on the Moon. When I was a boy, my mother would tell me bedtime stories, and if I asked if a particular story were true, she would tell me they were all true, that the power of the collective imagination is so powerful that stories could move from our hearts (where my mother claimed the imagination lived) into the real world, like ghosts passing from room to room through various walls.

Even though I have never met The Traveler, he tells me to tell you hello. He wants you to know that he's doing well, despite his favorite baseball team ending last season under .500. He misses attending games in person, and he wishes he could experience "Netflix and chill," a phenomenon he heard a lot about when he was visiting 2017 but doesn't quite grasp (I didn't have the heart to explain the nuances).

Being that I am a journalist of no acclaim, and The Traveler is one of the most famous people in the universe, I was heartened that he would share such banalities as his favorite baseball team and streaming site. This, more than any other response to a direct enquiry, led me to believe that he is indeed doing well. He made no comment about, for example, the continuing wars in Arabia, the American presidential election, the increase in ozone that makes everything smell like iron, or the random appearances of penguins everywhere you look these days. I credit his broad perspective of both time and space to the absence of such enquiries. Perhaps it is my optimistic nature, or naivete, but I like to think The Traveler knows that, after all the fake elections that led a cartoon character finally becoming President of the United States and after all the strokes and heart attacks caused by flightless birds, all would end well.

Me: "Why a travelogue?"

The Time Traveler: "To record my thoughts and observations."

Me: "But to what end? To what purpose? Who is it for, and why?"

TTT: "For me, obviously."

Me: "Not for posterity? Not for mankind?"

TTT: "Certainly not."

Me: "Then why should we care? You're the most famous person in the universe."

TTT: "Well that's certainly no fault of mine!"

Me: "But is there anything you'd like to leave us? You've been traveling space and time for thousands and thousands of years. Is there anything you'd like to say to people reading this?"

TTT: "Oh, yes!"

Me. "And what is that?"

TTT: "Stop talking so much."

The Broken Library

When you climb the Eight Great Hills of Serendipity, you will most likely pause at the foot of First Hill to take in the view and to read the inscription on the monument you pass just after the entrance gate: "You can see only what's already inside you," it reads. "Preposterous," you think, if you think anything at all. "The ramblings of someone with far too much time on his hands."

But then you look again at the Eight Great Hills, and you see that something has changed. "The wind," you think, "or the direction of light." You push it away and hope to think nothing of it, even though you do. You think about it more and more, and more and more those subtle changes build on themselves and become larger changes.

What do you see now? A sea of wildflowers? Pilgrims on the open plains? Waves of blood or flames?

"You can see only what's already inside you," you think, and this time you almost believe it. Maybe not as you climb First Hill, or even Second or Third. But as you near Four and Five, you notice something coming. You look close. There is a gray haze obscuring the vision, but soon it clears, and you take a deep breath, raise your hand toward the oncoming thing in greeting or defense.

And the sound that comes out of you is something you have never heard before.

- from The Time Traveler's Travelogue

Sons of Jupiter, a novel

Eleven-year-old Temple Avery lives with his aunt, who checked out from the world when her husband died during an alien invasion. Temple's mother is dead, and his father, Paris, is in space fighting the invaders. Bullied and alone, Temple tries to find his place in a world reeling from the deaths of a billion people.

Amazon

Moon City, a novel

It is 1985, and Kadance Jerome leaves home for a new life on the moon.

"Don't go!" begs the librarian. "The moon is full of them."

"Full of what?" asks Kade.

"The moon is full of monsters."

Moon City

Water, a story

It has been raining for a thousand years. The sky is flooded, and the people build up from the ground stone by stone, and one day, if the rain does not stop and the water does not recede, they will reach the heavens.

Water

The Future is Through the Back Door, a story

He looked up at her even though he didn’t want to. Ever since the apocalypse his imagination changed her appearance. Young in the morning, old in the afternoon, middle-aged in the evening. He’d sometimes get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and she’d be a complete stranger. He worried that his memories of her were withering like old paper. Eventually she’d be nothing but shadow and a strange voice.

The Future...

There are, at times, events so magnificent in scale that no one, no thing, takes notice.

The Big Bang, for example.

Imagine a monkey riding on the saddle of a photon. Would she fully comprehend the events taking place around her? I would argue that no, she would not. There she'd be, moments before go-time, having maybe a shadow of an idea - from a flier in the office, an email, something scribbled on a post-it note - that something of some vague importance was scheduled for later in the day.

A luncheon perhaps, or a birthday party for one of the engineers who went around worrying about everything and holding their palms to their cheeks because they seemed to think it wise to advertise to the rest of the world, "I am not completely here."

Whatever the case, there was that notion, that hint, that smell in the air that something was about to go off.

And go off it did. It was the beginning of the universe, the beginning of our reality - though there had been an infinite number of realities before, concurrent to, and since, but let's not complicate things just yet.

There's our monkey, trying to remember if she should have brought a gift for the scheduled event she couldn't quite remember the details of, or at the very least, a card. There must have been a low rumble, a hum or a vibration, then a blinding flash followed by silence.

Things would have immediately gotten more comfortable, not being packed in so tightly.

Would the sudden distance between, say, water cooler and copy machine have caused a moment of nostalgia, a longing for the days when all things occupied the same minute space since forever ago?

Maybe a moment. But our monkey, now riding the saddle of a photon, doesn't have much time to think about it.

No time, really, since photons are famously weird about time. Do you think photons go around with their palms pressed against their cheeks? I think they probably do.

Our monkey looks around, sees the first blades of grass, the brain of an octopus, Percy Shelley writing a poem about tormented sea tics, only to discard the poem half finished, forever denying the universe of the transforming beauty of the tormented sea tic.

She sees the first hints of war, genocide, slavery, and convenience foods. She sees the rise and fall of empires. Great art, science, and philosophy. She sees the hand of God holding together the seas as they connect to the land as life emerges from the magnetic spaces between the tiniest bits of matter.

That tiny bit of matter, for example, used to be our monkey's next door neighbor Shell, and in a billion years will be, among other things, a duck, a human toenail, banana tree, a fire that will consume a forest, and an early draft of the Magna Carta.

But will any of this be noticed, marked down, discussed, analyzed in committee for the megabytes of data that might assist in some future endeavors?

Of course not. Because the monkey riding the saddle of a photon while the Big Bang takes place all around her is too busy with life to notice anything her uncomplicated life hasn't already taught her to notice. She sees what she can see, but that doesn't mean she can see everything, and that doesn't mean she can see much more than nothing.

How many things go unnoticed, whether it be the drop of a pea or a hurricane? The world goes on. Life goes on. Because it has to. -from TTTT

We Were Seventeen, a story

When the future came, and I was the only one left to bear witness of the thousand meaningless stories that made up our little lives, I would look back at the moment when I am sitting on the floor looking at my best friend from halfway across the library. She has curly blond hair and blue eyes. Her mascara is dripping down her cheeks.

I Can See Cottages From Here, a story

Walter knew from the dog’s expression that something was amiss.

It was the way the dog tilted her head, with eyes half shut, and that rolling bit of flesh dangling from her forehead that gave it away. The last time she had given Walter this look was the day his wife left him. That was almost a year ago. She'd driven off in her brother's orange van, and over the next six months managed to take from Walter the house, the Toyota, and Walter's collection of novelty candies.

I Can See Cottages From Here

We Were Seventeen

There is a ghost at the bottom of the well.

A boy.

Made of nothing.

Made of air.

There is a ghost at the bottom of the well.

And if you happen by

On your stroll on the path.

Look down.

Linger.

He will ask you a question

You didn’t expect to hear.

“Do you mind practicing your accordion over there?

By the brambles?

By the stairs?”

There is a ghost at the bottom of the well.

Made of nothing.

Made of air.

You look down.

You see his eyes, red from dreaming.

The ghost at the bottom of the well

Does not hear very well

So he will ask you to draw nearer

Which you do

Because you are nice

And because there is no one waiting at the end of the path

But then you slip on something insignificant

A lie you once told.

Something you lost.

Your innocence.

Maybe someone’s laughter.

There is a ghost at the bottom of the well.

It’s dark.

It’s lonely.

And it’s gloomy.

And all you see are shadows.

Bone.

And memory:

The thing you lost of such insignificance,

Now comes pouring in like the rain.

You are a child on a train

Propelled forward

Into empty, unknown spaces

Afraid,

And thinking only where to hide

In dark places and alone

You are a child on a train

And the only choice you have

Is where to get off

Here?

Or here?

Maybe here?

You are a child on a plane

Propelled forward

Into the empty blue

With the birds

And all the other planes

Filled with the Old

Going in the opposite direction

This is you now, on a bus

It is full of passengers, all sleeping

It is full of memory

In glass cups

Overflowing with dreams

You had

When you were young

And fighting against the world

But now you are old

And Time is kind

And you are in a chair

Going nowhere

Maybe to the bathroom

Or the kitchen

Or to the window

To watch the cars passing by

“Time is kind,” you say

And you almost believe it

After all

What else has given so much,

And taken so much away?

You are young, in the back of a truck

With a rifle in your hands

Resting on your lap

You are young, you will not let go

Until Gravity, Time’s only friend,

Holding you firmly to the ground,

Teaches you all Her lessons

Like this one:

All that draws blood is sin,

Except love

Except love.

All that draws blood is sin,

But love.

And all the rest is water

That flows

Remorseful

Into the past.

The woman in the chair

Isn't

Going anywhere

She sits and she sits

Just staring

Into the air

Then one morning

A child awakes

Who has dreamed of the

Woman

In the chair

I don't suppose you've any sweets, my dear

Says the woman in the chair

She gnobbed and she gnobbed

At her silver-black hair

til the child, now old, ran away in fear

What was it now

That can cause so much fear?

Was it the cold silence

Of each passing year

Or the tick and the tock

Of that rattling chair?

was it the Man

Who stood at the rear

Of a room kept in secrets

And dirty air

With a whoosh

And a bellow

Of old age, and new

A Man in the shadows

Who was just

passing

through?

I came home a boy

I was happy and new

With Angels at my shoulders

And Devils there too

A good while later

In a forest of my own

I came upon the seller

Who sold me a song:

"It was forty years of waiting

And forty years alone

In the wind and the sand

And the sunlight and gloam

When I was a boy I had beauty with me

I had starlight and moonlight

To guide my way home.

I had beauty and starlight

To guide my way home."

The woman you gave me

Was beauty, and she knew

I am slow and I am breathless

Though my body is new

And yet she still loved me

And kept me fair company

A love that’s too good to be true

So when she came near to me

And whispered right in to me

The boy in me was nowhere around

So I said, no, and I'm sorry,

I don't think I'll partake

I'm a man of no courage

Or fields to retake

The boy is unspotted

He’s slow ammunition

Awakened by the paupers and gold

He says, don’t fear to come near me

See me or hear me

I’ve got nothing, but I’ll carry your load

The boy is unspotted

He’s slow ammunition

He says,

I’ve got nothing, but I’ll carry your load

Scott Michael Brady was born in San Diego, California. He was educated at California State University, Fullerton, and Concordia University, Irvine.

Scott married his high school sweetheart in 1993 and together they have two daughters and two sons, all of whom are smarter, more creative, and madder than he could dream to be.

He hopes his creations will inspire others to madness, frivolity, and joy.