Joseph Trance

Paper Trails

 

 

 

   Mike Denton looked at the piles of writings that were laid out on the conference table before him.  He closed his eyes and then slowly and gently let his hands slide along the stacks of paper, that captured forty years of his life.  He had started journaling when he was sixteen, and now at sixty, they were the only thing that seemed real to him.   He picked up one of the piles and slowly brought it to his nose.  He inhaled, smelled and smiled.  Paper.  Not CD’s or Flash drives.  Not computer generated, or copied.  Paper; yellowed with age, written in different colored ink.  They were not typed or on digital voice recordings.  They were all hand written… in blue and black , red and green ink.  Hand written.  His  hand.

   

  He had stopped writing about his life four years ago and was at a point now where he realized he had made the right decision.  He needed the time to process all his memories and experiences and the last four years had given him the time to do that.  He was ready now.

   He looked over the stacks one more time and smiled as he scanned the titles on post-its over each stack:   “High-school, College, Inventions, Ideas , Music, Jesus, Education, Autism, Electronics, Counseling, Prayer, Science, Teaching,”  and all the  other piles that completely covered the table.  He looked at the stacks of his Creative Writings; short stories, and poems, and journal memories going as far back as high-school.  It was quite a collection.  Forty years of his life all on that one table.    He got up from his chair and walked to the other end of the table and picked up the “Science” stack.  He leafed through the stack until he found the one marked,

“Memory Theory and Machines,” he looked that one over and then, “No.  Not this…the other.”

He leafed again and found the one called, “Sensory.”  He quickly read the 1st page that outlined the basic ideas of the paper, but then again, “No.  Not quite right.”

 

He scanned the table one more time and his eyes finally came upon the pile titled “Comedy.”

“Hmmm,” he said.  He quickly scanned pages of old jokes, and memories of things that had made him laugh.  Humor was as another side of him that helped keep the balance in his life, and helped him look at things in different ways…”slanted perspective,” he called it.  He had a special love of puns…which led him to…

 

  He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes.  He deliberately began to slow down his breathing to quiet the excitement that had been building within him.  He could hear the low hum of the Time-Back Trips Technology  and couldn’t help but smile. 

 

“No.  Not this time.  No helmets, no playbacks of memories, no virtual time-trips.”  He needed something more.  He needed more than the memories of the experiences…he needed to be there. 

“But you can’t go back into the past.  It’s just not possible,” Lydia was saying.

“You can’t turn back time, Michael.”  He stared at her and just quietly said,

“I’ll find a way.  I will.”  And he did.  He shook his head “yes” and dismissed the memory of their conversation. 

 

He turned his attention towards his newest toy.  It looked like an office copier on steroids.  He looked at the W.A.M.D. (Written Access Molecular Doorway) and smiled.  “Better,” he said.  He got up and moved to the insert shaft, that would feed his “data” into the machine.

     It was another perspective of Time-Back Technology that he had developed as a result of his “punny” sense of humor.  He had been able to use his client’s writings to help them remember and take their virtual trips, but it wasn’t until he took the literal meaning of  “paper trail” to heart, that the real doorway into the past opened up.  It wasn’t just the written memories of the experiences that could be used to jar the senses and bring back the past, it was the stacks of paper themselves that were the paper trails; hand written, all the ink and paper;  molecules that captured time.  Each written letter, each symbol, each dot, was a time capsule.  And the energy signature that fueled the writings; his hand, his energy, captured as well.  And upon these things, this paper trail, he would be able to go back…literally. 

 

 



Another story featuring Mike Denton, inventor, writer and scientist. A more improved level of
Time Backs trip Technology.
Authors comment

All rights belong to its author. It was published on e-Stories.org by demand of Joseph Trance.
Published on e-Stories.org on 07/05/2010.

 
 

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