The Time Beings

“You rang?” I hear from the empty. “Who goes there?”

“Who said that, Lucky?” I ask.

“The question is not who. But what. Who you are.”

“I’m Austin.”

“We know that. We know everything. We are the time beings. Someone said our name.”

Suddenly a string appears in front of me.

We bounce right off.

Then we get sticky. 

I land in another one’s arms. It catches me. 

“We are the guardians of outer space.”

“They kind of look like silly string,” I tell Lucky.

“Are they string theory?” I ask.

“A very interesting space ship they have here.”

“It doesn’t compare to the Martians.” Partiñas Another string-arm pops out. Then thousands. They use all their feelers.

“Now, we can’t simply have you flying around willy nilly through space without a clue where you’re going,” one says imperiously.

“It’s not our faults! Someone slobbered all over our equipment!” Lucky says.

“Well, for the time being, I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any.”

(“They sure like talking in third person,” I say to Lucky.)

Lucky whispers back to me, im not really sure they’re persons at all.

“We have ears you know!” the blue one says.

“Actually we don’t,” the orange one reminds it.

“We have heard many excuses in our days,” the green one says.

“That’s right. Just the other day” (the red one says) “I was passing through the fifth dimension. I heard this incredible noise…it was beautiful. It made my whole body shake.”

It kind of sounded like popcorn popping in a microwave.

“Oh no!” I say to Lucky. “I think we left on the microwave!” I smell the sweet sweet smell of hot butter.

They hum. They run up their bodies like scales.

“So that was you!”

The pink one goes really shrill. 🙂 Lights and different colors flash on each time.

“What universe do you come from?”

Lucky and me and Isabelle look at each other. “Huh?”

“Fourth dimension, fifth, third, twenty-second…”

“The sheer impertinence!” the pink one says.

“You don’t have to be so rude,” says the blue.

“There are multiple dimensions?”

“I thought you knew everything!”

“Yes. If you would like, I can show you. We’ll come to that later.”

“Can you do magic tricks?”

“Of course we can!” He pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

“Wow!” we giggle. 

“Now can you show us the other dimensions?”

“Yes. If you would like, I can show you.”

“Would I!?!?” I exclaim.

The Calabi-Rau manifold

We’re in this space of shifting planes. Shifting light. Some are green, some are blue, all transparent, translucent, vertices and matrices of strings vibrating. I look into the portal. One of them is showing creatures with flying wings and elephants floating and flying pigs

“Some may call us string theory. You may have heard our music.”

“I knew they existed!”

and zebras, and unicorns, and fish and seals with horns, there’s comets flashing from sheet to sheet, the other is showing raining cotton candy and sprinkles, and another showing people like my people talking, I try to talk to them and they’re saying Hi, Austin but they can’t hear me. Or at least I can’t hear them, the Lighthouse of Alexandria

“What’s going on?”

“You’re at the crossroads of the cosmos,” the pink one says. “We are like the universe. We have no beginning or ending. The past, the present, and the future is always there. That is why we are called the time beings, or time keepers of the multiverse, if you prefer. Why do you think that clock’s there? 

Time will slow or speed depending on where you are in the past the present or the future. Take, for example, this simple piece of paper.”

The string reaches its hand into the portal. He takes out a piece of paper. The girl in the portal keeps writing. 

“I suppose I also need a pencil.”

He takes her pencil.

She keeps on writing.

“If I make a dot on this end of the paper, like so, and then on the other side, like so, wouldst thou agree that is a lot of space, billions and billions of light years, to have to travel?”

“Yeah,” I say. I don’t get it.

“What if,” it says, “I simply bent it?”

The dots go on top of each other. “Now we are fused. We are in our eternal membranes.   That is how so-called ‘time travel’ is possible. We can open up wormholes. It is a small matter to bend time. Our strings run through everything. One could say we’re super symmetrical. Now how would you like to imagine the other 26 dimensions?”

There’s all these strings talking at their desks, talking on their phones. My body bends as I play my xylophone. They’re all answering the switchboards. “First dimension! Second universe! Third sheet! Is there anyone there? Is there something there?”

“The entire universe, or I should say, multiverse is composed of vibrating strings, endless directions and destinies. Just this morning I saw one cockatoo fly out of its cage, get lost, and fly out of its own dimension into outer space and into another dimension, where it became a snowcatcher. 

the land of the Immortals. their shapes and outlines. There they are who live forever. Here are those who live in Peace. Here are they who can teleport; who never go hungry; who are free from all disease, from cancer, from sickness. Here are they who have the most advanced the technology. the Technarati.

They show me what’s going on back home. What it’s like without me. If I never even existed. Everyone’s saying “Where’s Austin? Where’s Austin?” Lucy who called me gay and straight. I’m still wondering what it all means.

“Can I reach in and touch them?”

“Sure.”

I stick my hand in. It ripples as it passes through the brane. Then I step in. I’m in my own home world. I stroke my Mom’s hair on the grass and walk through. A ripples on the water. She changes shape. I barely recognize her. There’s lots of things crashing and burning. 

And then it’s a perfect paradise. There’s elephants running in a stampede. And then…I’m standing on a cliff…and I don’t see anything. And everyone’s smiling and just so happy.

There are no beginnings or endings. The structure of time is such that we can fcontinue talking and everything gets done and the little points and the lights and the stretching of space and time can all be united in a single overarching theory a string theory or supersymmetry if you please where everything has an equal, these tiny points of light are actuallys trings propgating through different dimensions on various world sheets, and world lines, that can propogate through time, each with their own destinies that overlap sometimes and sometimes others do not, and little red balls jiggle on each side of them like beads and these beads form abaci that all add up and amount to the same thing, which is to say, a grand masterpiece, a grand unifying theory, a theory of everything, which you may come to know in your time as astrophysics or (ToE), a toe that supports an ankle which supports a knee which supports a leg, which supports all the resto f your body, 

and thsi body, immortal, spreads out throught he galaxy, and you may call it God, but we know better, we call it ourselves, we call it the Time Beings, which is how we got our name—we do not know who names us—but we come into being a sour spirituality, as our spirtis, we flya nd flock through the galaxy, like birds, like beautiful beasts, as you can see, and this 

is why we have found you, are talking to you, so we can explain this grand masterpiece, that may be known in many other times,a nd by many other names, coffee hot chocolate, sounds good 🙂 and we would lvoe to meet you and see you again someday, and today, which are the same, as we spread thorughout the univesre, as you and us, as strings, spread thorughout the universe, and propogate…

“What did you see?” the time being says.

“What did you see?” Isabelle asks.

“Nothing.” I wipe the tears from my eyes. “I didn’t see anything.”

“I saw my Mommy.”

“Well. I think it’s time we getting back. This is a lot to see for mortals (immortals) such as you. There is just one thing we wonder about what you’ve seen, for we were watching”

“Would you like to experience anything?”

“We share in everything.”

“But,” Isabelle says, “Do you know what it means to be happy?”

“What’s that?”

“Come on!” I say. 

We swing from lasso to lasso. We swing from string to string. We open up portholes and zoom right on through. I catch her. The Time Beings say “Thank you for lightening up our lives.” They can’t stop giggling. We know a place that we think you might like. 

“No, Isabelle,” I say, “I think we should go our separate ways.”

“Someday you may re-unite.”

“I guess this is goodbye.”

“Well, it looks like it’s just you.” Hig turns to face to me.

“Don’t forget Lucky!”

“And Lucky,” Hig says beneficently.

…and there was nothing there. (It goes into a comic book voice.) That whole entire universe was blank.

He pauses.

He continues.

So I went there to investigate. And I came back with…nothing.

“For the time being,’ I always like to say,” it says in its normal voice.

“We time beings can move from place to place, we can see everything taking place, we can even become a part of it—but you see, we cannot change anything. That is the one drawback of our race. That is why,” he pauses, “We would like you to go to investigate this nameless place. It is already expanding…go there and give it a name.” We have opened up a wormhole for you. Step on through, and remember us.

There are various time warps

a time opera 

we see everything passing back and forth

something called a pre-Big Bang

“I don’t want to go there! Let’s go here! Let’s get out of here!” I tell Lucky.

“I don’t want to go there! I want to go here!”

“Let’s think!”

“I think!”

“Just remember us!”

“My name is Hig!” the orange pipes up.

“My name is Alpha!” the green one says.

“My name is Strange Quark,” says the blue.

“And I’m Up”

“I’mD own”

They look kind of like my crayon marks. 

“My name is __________,” they look at us.

They push us through the wormhole. Everything shakes. We step on through

…and back out.

pre-Big Bang cosmology

“No! What do you think you’re doing?” They shout.

We hit the self-destruct button.

“Lucky,” I say, as we start disappearing, “I think this is going to be a bright new beginning.”