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Ship Trap. Chapter 4: Premature Celebration

Dark waters lead to dark troubles.

By Thavien YliasterPublished 2 years ago 12 min read
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Ship Trap. Chapter  4: Premature Celebration
Photo by Alwi Alaydrus on Unsplash

Tilting his head up towards the tiled ceiling, letting out a sigh of relief, David couldn’t help but to think of the possible outcomes for his travel tomorrow.

“Huh, it’s weird when I think about it. It’s like I’m traveling tomorrow, but I’m traveling not where, but somewhen before tomorrow. I’m going all the way back to 1912. My great grandparents weren’t even born yet. I don’t think their chromosomes even formed yet. Heck, not even their parents were born yet.”

Finishing paying his water tax to the pied piper, he pulled up his pants, and tended to his zipper just before he went to wash his hands. Just as he had reached the sink, the bathroom door opened.

“Knew I’d find ya’ in here.”

“Hmmm… how do you do Sam?”

“Well, I’m two shots into the evening and afterwards I’m following it up with a few more drinks. Naturally, after the first one with you I’d figure you’d be in here if you weren’t on the dance floor.”

“What can I say? Alcohol dehydrates.”

“Meaning that it takes water with it. Hopefully it’ll make your traveling easier tomorrow.”

“Well, I am going to have to get pumped, but a well hydrated traveler is an energized and alert traveler. Hey Sam?”

“Yeah David?”

“Do you ever think that the fabric of time allows us to travel back within its matrix since it already needs that outcome for its future matrix to persist? Like, what happens when you change things too big or small that can cause the difference in somebody living or dying, someone’s birth happening or not even being conceived at all? Don’t those people have a right to not have their lives, or the potential of their lives to not be interfered with?”

“You mean like how if you can possibly change one thing somebody isn’t born, so the only way for them to stop you from preventing their existence is to stop you from changing the circumstances of their potential birth?”

“Yeah, like what if the timeline allows us to do certain things, not because it needs it or wants it, but because it’s just indifferent. Think about it, all the other laws of physics are.”

“So, just since we have the freedom, technology, and knowledge to do something, should we limit the already existing freedom of others that have already come to exist before us by ensuring that our present, which is in their future that could either be centuries or if not millennia ahead of them, will occur based upon us changing certain factors before them?”

“Yeah, cause think about it. What if one person’s success leads to another person’s attainment of recognition and personal fulfillment never occurring? If the person who never succeeds was actually supposed to be the first person to attain such fulfillment, but instead the second person who came before them attains it instead, we don’t just remove the first person’s contributions, but what about their potential for something greater? By advancing the rate of advancements we might be taking them away from great minds that were already suited for the original time period in which those advancements occurred based upon the current, later becoming previous history that we knew.”

“Well, you know what they say about the stock market.”

“When somebody makes a killing in the stock market,” David ended.

“It means that somebody else just got killed in the stock market.”

“So, you think that time’s fabric has a natural balancing system for itself when it comes to who’s existing and who’s not?”

“All I know is that our chances of being born were low. I could have been any other person in life. Any other race, any other sex, on any other side of the world. However, that person wouldn’t be me, and I would not be them. The chance for me to exist would have reached its apex, come, and gone. Then the chance for that person would reach the apex, and off from the realm of probabilities into the realm of existence.”

“Probabilities and possibilities, both are capable. Though at times they can be two sides of the same coin, but sometimes it seems like they’re opposing plates of a scale. However, one tipping to balance out the other occurs in rare occasions in which they both decide to coincide together.”

“Precisely,” Samuel said. After tidying himself up, he met David at the sink. “Life’s all about the possibility of things being capable of happening, and us giving that possibility the highest probability of existing.”

“The more committed you are to a possibility, the higher its probability occurs at,” David wiped his face after drying his hands. “When it comes to chaos and order, they birth one another. Chaos births order into existence. Order does not birth previous forms of chaos which were only attainable without order. Yet, without order, newer forms of chaos would not be capable of occurring, let alone having their conditions met for their possibility to have any occurrence of probability.”

“As always, you’ve nailed it on the head.” Throwing their paper towels away in the trash, they walked towards the door. “Shall we?”

“The night’s only as young as you make it,” David answered.

“Youth and age are only a matter of time.”

“Catch you on the dance floor.”

As the night progressed David and Sam had formed several dancing circles around them. Though he was prevented from leaving early, he decided to stay a bit later in the night. It was as if he never wanted it to end. As if wishing to not take the actions and inactions needed for his trip tomorrow, he wanted to remain in control of tonight as much as he possibly could.

Only after he had danced up a storm and got the place going on a karaoke high did he cool off on the second floor’s balcony. With everybody else living it up having a good time, having the time of their lives (as per usual before a traveler was being sent on a mission), he was debating on when he should leave for the night.

“David,” Peterson walked up behind him, a cup of iced brandy in his hand, “you’re enjoying yourself, right?”

“Yeah,” he cocked a smile, “I am, but it just feels like, there’s something more that I’m missing. Maybe it’s for myself, maybe it is me, but although everybody’s here, something’s just not there.”

“Hehe,” Peterson knew his student all too well, especially since he was a young man once himself, “I know that feeling all too well.” He grunted and pulled up a seat next to David. “I’m just glad that you’re not trying to force it. Since then, the universe would only meet you with an equal and opposite force.”

“Hm, hm, hmmm…” Peterson lightly chuckled. Taking a sip from his drink, he spoke, “Learning to give energy not just to construct the environment around you is of importance, but also in submitting. There are energies from sources that we cannot control, but we can at least learn to reserve our energy to leave or wait to construct the environment at a later and less hostile time, but also by submitting, we allow other people around us to construct the environment in which they feel the most comfortable.”

“As always professor, you are a fountain of wisdom and knowledge unto me, however, whether or not I know how to properly use it is a testament to my exercise of it.”

“All good things come to those in time. Yours will surely come.”

“Then the chance for that person would reach the apex, and off from the realm of probabilities to the realm of existence,” Samuel’s words echoed off in the back of his head. “Yeah, I think I get it now. Not entirely, but I guess that-”

“That’s the submission part,” Peterson pointed a finger from his hand that held his glass.

“Thank you, professor. Though I may have drunken a bit tonight, I think it’s run its course. So, the only confidence within me, is that which I’ve naturally cultivated myself.”

Peterson stood up, as he proceeded to walk away. Placing a hand upon his pupil’s shoulder he said, “I’m glad that you’ve learned how to rely upon your own confidence and not that of other substances, including that from other people.”

“External validation is a bi-… My apologies, I don’t mean to be vulgar. External validation is a pain-and-a-half. Pain from yourself, and the perceived pain that you think you get from others when you don’t receive the desired attention you’re chasing after.”

Patting his shoulder, Peterson walked on by, “Ah, you have learned much and more. I’ll see you off tomorrow. Time for me to take my leave and rejoin the rest of the party.”

As he watched Peterson walk down the staircase, his eyes caught another figure leaning over the balcony. With a form more sumptuous than that of a Ferrari, and as voluptuous as that of an hourglass he thought to himself, “Will you take this moment into your own hands, or should you submit and allow the grain of sands not to slip past yours, but into the palms of another? Only time will tell.”

Sipping from her martini glass, her eyes glazed over the party. She sighed. It was as if, she was always looking. Looking for an achievement, looking for a goal, looking for an opportunity, looking for another task, looking for another job; it always seemed that she was looking for something. Yet maybe tonight was the night that she stopped looking for something. Maybe tonight was the night that she started looking for someone.

Tiring at looking out over the balcony she turned her tilted her head over towards her right and caught a glimpse of someone who was also eyeing her. She was almost startled for a moment and nearly spat her drink out back into her glass. He couldn’t help but smile at her being so human. Putting a hand up to cover her nose and mouth, she started chuckling a little bit. Turning away from him briefly, she wiped her face on the inside of her suit jacket, before walking over.

Her gait, her stride, the click-clacking of her heels, though they may have been drowned out by the sound of the music, it was as if they were echoing in a large corridor hallway to him. Taking in a deep breath, he put himself at ease. “By submitting, we allow other people around us to construct the environment in which they feel the most comfortable.” In this lesson, he was going to learn that in order for him to take charge, and to lead the way, to submit to allowing somebody wanting him to lead. Whether it happened or not, would be up to her to give, and him to reciprocate.

“Mind if I sit down?” She started.

“Not at all.” He continued, “Please join me.”

“You know, tonight’s your big night before tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but it’s not my first rodeo, and hopefully if all things go well, it won’t be my last.”

“Well, why aren’t you partying with everybody else if it was thrown for you?”

“I don’t know.” He answered. “It’s like, I’m here, but I’m not present. It’s like I’m searching. Like-.”

“Like you’re still looking?”

“Yeah, it’s like, well you remember your first time, right?” She nodded her head. “It’s like I’m waiting to travel, but I feel like there’s somewhere else I should be traveling to.”

“I know that feeling. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting places, but did I really get there the right way?”

“I know, I know. It’s like, why am I traveling, and sometimes, why does it feel like I’m on the right path, but everything’s not quite there.”

“Well, what do you think that part of everything is?”

He picked up his drink and swirled it around a little bit. After hemming and hawing for a quick moment, he said, “Well, what if it’s not the destination that’s the problem. It’s the journey.” He left that open purposefully, hoping for her to complete it for him, wanting her to complete it for him.

“When you put it like that, it’s not just the journey that matters,” she reached out a hand and placed it atop his, “but it’s also about who we go on that journey with.” The smile on her lips was stunning, but the smile in her eyes absolutely made a warm feeling in his chest arise as if he had just downed a shot of fireball.

“Journeys are always worth it, even if the destination’s wrong, as long as you take them with the people that matter most.” After having locked eyes with one another, they turned their heads to the dance floor, looking at all of their colleagues dancing, drinking, and having a good time. Some looking for connections, others having connections, and others that were connecting without even knowing it.

They could feel things picking up. The momentum was carrying. As the song “Summer” reverberated in the background with the bass picking up, they could feel it deep within their hearts too.

As he turned to get up, she grabbed him by the hand.

“You don’t have to leave.”

“Well, I do have to travel.”

“I know, but do you want to travel so soon?”

“No.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“I guess you could say I want a journey.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

She stood up with a grin, grabbed him by the chin, and brought him in for a kiss. “Your place, my car, you’re driving.”

“What are we waiting for?”

Still holding him by the hand, she started to run, bringing him behind her. Under the cover of the dark, with the lights flashing in between, she pulled him along from the second-floor balcony, down the staircase, and across the dance floor.

As they moved hastily past several colleagues and friends, a song by a band’s name so iconic came on, that they felt it must’ve been a sign. Just because it’s a small world, doesn’t mean it has to be a lonely one. Though they were never alone by themselves, like the pinch point in an hourglass, if they were two grains of sand, time had brought them together for this moment. Not stuck, but holding each other up, as all others fell into the background around them.

There they were. Sharing a journey that neither of them wanted to end, going anywhere.

Young Adult
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About the Creator

Thavien Yliaster

Thank You for stopping by. Please, make yourself comfortable. I'm a novice poet, fiction writer, and dream journalist.

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