I have always been interested in stories that deal with time and timing. That includes stories in which time is a factor even without time anomalies and science fiction time travel, but when you think about it, the science fiction and time travel stories are imagined extensions of stories in which time is a factor in unidirectional time plots.
The extension of the imagination is less about the paradoxes and pseudo-scientific theories than it is emotional and psychological. Time and what we can predict or hypothesize about the future, our future, is a large part of life. It is both mental and physical.
The act of movement, of walking, depends on an ability to anticipate how the next step and the next will be. Running from or after another animal requires even greater ability to anticipate what happen next.
Fast forward to the complexities of civilization. Whether it is an illusion or actual planning, we seek to build controls into our place in time and how outside factors may knock us off our path to our goals. Planning is a kind of buffer on the one hand as well as a roadmap. If it is a good plan, it includes contingencies.
When actual events move away from the previously expected, hypothesized path, we can begin to feel less confident. If events get too far ahead of our ability to imagine and plot new contingencies, we can feel overwhelmed, that matters are well beyond our control.
In fiction, that is where both the excitement of a story and the desire to create a larger frame enter the imagining. Stories that deal with memory alone provide a baseline for understanding how sequencing works both in stories and in life.
Two movies come to mind: Memento and The Lookout. Both have protagonists who have suffered head injuries and have a problem with short-term memory. They come at it and solve the problem of time from different angles.
In Memento, the main character uses notes to himself and other records, combined with long-term memories. This is essentially what all humans do, not only in our immediate lives, but also over generations. Even before literacy and more sophisticated means of extending memory, there was oral history passed down person to person.
One flaw of course with the character’s solution is he cannot always find something to write with in the immediate situation. The other greater problem is that memory itself changes. Long-term memory of events is subject to revision and forgetfulness. Even the way we look at a note, a text, a photo, any record, can change from time to time, without having a traumatic brain injury. Both of those flaws are a factor in Memento.
The Lookout takes a more clinical approach. The protagonist here is in rehab. He mostly has trouble sequencing forwards and also with impulse control. He cannot keep track of where he is in a sequence, even in a conversation, and tends to jump to some further point directed by his immediate desires.
The method for dealing with his condition is part of the story. What he learns in rehab figures strongly in the events. He uses the methods to work through the puzzle of time and deal with the challenges, the same as he trying to use them just to get through a normal day. The drama and resolution of the story depend on his practical application of what he is learning in rehab.
Not to spoil anything for those who have not seen it and might want to watch it, the method is simple. If you have trouble sequencing forwards, start at the end, and work backwards. This is also used by people without head injuries to plan. They start with the goal and then usually work from both sides in a hypothetical, temporal pincer movement.
For example, you want a car. You need to have the money and/or credit to buy or lease it. You then start by looking at what you can do to get the money. Rob a bank perhaps during the harvest season? Maybe better to apply yourself to something legal.
If you really want that car now and steal it, the consequences ought to be easy for anyone to anticipate in our present time. But then it is all a matter of from where you start, and what options are readily available, and what other emotional, psychological, and sociological obstacles you are dealing with. It is both a matter of social reality and perception.
Other stories that deal with time start with intention of including elements outside of unidirectional time. Instead of giving us a character with a traumatic brain injury, all the characters are, more or less, normal, and the author has an emotional inclination that drives the story into science fiction.
That is an emotional choice. It represents the desire we all have to get a jump on events, and so better control the outcome. The fix is in. Bet heavy and win big. This can be either backward or forward looking. There are stories in which the action goes back in time to do or undo events and change the present, and there are others in which the travel goes forward in time to see what lies ahead.
Sometimes the forward action and revelation calls for the characters to return and stop something in the present to prevent an undesirable outcome they saw in the future. H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine is not the first, but it is likely the most famous of this forward-traveling story. The short story Rip Van Winkle might also qualify. The Bible has elements of this for some readers.
Predicting the future runs deep. The psychological point ought to be clear: Predicting the future is really about influencing present action. Rhetorically, this is what news discussions, media representations about what’s happening now and likely results for the future, are about as well.
In a sense, this takes us back to The Lookout and our goals for getting something: Start with the ending and work backwards. Ironically, with stories audiences often feel cheated by knowing the outcome or even what comes next. Part of the pleasure is being surprised or tricked, which would seem psychologically and emotionally the opposite of what people want in their lives.
There are several explanations for these apparently contradictory preferences. A story is for fun, and so, like a joke or a game, it is a safe way to be fooled, and everyone has a good laugh before returning to the stress of feeling out of control in real events of our days.
Also, however, it would seem that some like to be fooled in their actual lives also, and thus, they go along with intricately fabricated explanations for what is happening, involving past, present, and future re-imagining, altered perception, and prognostications. They participate in stories in their lives in a way similar to the stories more usually viewed as strictly escapism or entertainment.
That should not come as a surprise. The best stories, of course, have elements of realism. Even scientists take from fiction concepts to consider phenomena in their expansion of understanding. Likewise, creators of fiction take from science concepts to apply to their stories. It is only natural that others will do the same and also fall prey to the limitations of the human mind. Even without a traumatic brain injury, our mental faculties are subject to distortions.
With that, I tell you now if you don’t read the next part of what I write, you’ll miss out on something quite unexpected. It is not at all what you think.
I Dwell In Possibility 