The Time Traveler :: Creative Writing Essays

The Time Traveler If you think about it, it's kind of funny for an atheist to have the power of God. It's also funny that I'm one sentence into this narrative, and I'm already way ahead of myself. I guess I'd better forget everything I've learned about reality layers, chronotons, and hyperbubbles and try to remember the basics of chronological storytelling. I am, after all, an historian. Oh, maybe not by choice, to be sure -- I always wanted to be a Vigilante. Never really had the stomach for the new pulverizers, though. Maybe I was brainwashed. I'll tell you who wasn't afraid of the pulverizers, though: the Patrolmen. Hardly a day went by when you didn't read about some poor fool who had challenged the Patrolmen by committing an offence within the gun's range. Of course, what passes for an "offence" nowadays is enough to make an historian laugh -- we who remember vividly the days when saying "God damn it!" would earn you a demerit in Sister Winters's moral values class instead of sending your pieces to hell in about fourteen different handbaskets. That's where it all started for me, actually, in Sister Winters's class. Arthur was there, too... "God damn it! That hurts!" We were 13, Arthur and I, and still he hadn't learned not to take the Lord's name in vain in front of a hardcore nun like Sister Winters. The phrase "tough-as-nails" didn't even begin to describe her. Once, she punched poor Shelly Hurston in the throat because she saw what she described as "a suspiciously sinful-looking bruise" there. Sister Winters's Amazing Hickey Cure is what we called it; in fact, it was just a sixty-three-year-old-woman's-fist-sized bruise smashed on top of the first one. That was when we were 11, and Shelly still couldn't turn her head too far to the left on this day. But what was she going to do about it? Her parents had called in political favors all the way up to the Archdeacon of Schools, and they weren't about to raise a fuss and risk losing the scholarship they had weaseled out of the system for her. But, anyway, Arthur had felt responsible for Shelly ever since, mainly because he had been the generous provider of the "sinful-looking bruise." Shelly had never tattled on him, either, which, in those days, was grounds enough for us to consider them a couple. The Time Traveler :: Creative Writing Essays The Time Traveler If you think about it, it's kind of funny for an atheist to have the power of God. It's also funny that I'm one sentence into this narrative, and I'm already way ahead of myself. I guess I'd better forget everything I've learned about reality layers, chronotons, and hyperbubbles and try to remember the basics of chronological storytelling. I am, after all, an historian. Oh, maybe not by choice, to be sure -- I always wanted to be a Vigilante. Never really had the stomach for the new pulverizers, though. Maybe I was brainwashed. I'll tell you who wasn't afraid of the pulverizers, though: the Patrolmen. Hardly a day went by when you didn't read about some poor fool who had challenged the Patrolmen by committing an offence within the gun's range. Of course, what passes for an "offence" nowadays is enough to make an historian laugh -- we who remember vividly the days when saying "God damn it!" would earn you a demerit in Sister Winters's moral values class instead of sending your pieces to hell in about fourteen different handbaskets. That's where it all started for me, actually, in Sister Winters's class. Arthur was there, too... "God damn it! That hurts!" We were 13, Arthur and I, and still he hadn't learned not to take the Lord's name in vain in front of a hardcore nun like Sister Winters. The phrase "tough-as-nails" didn't even begin to describe her. Once, she punched poor Shelly Hurston in the throat because she saw what she described as "a suspiciously sinful-looking bruise" there. Sister Winters's Amazing Hickey Cure is what we called it; in fact, it was just a sixty-three-year-old-woman's-fist-sized bruise smashed on top of the first one. That was when we were 11, and Shelly still couldn't turn her head too far to the left on this day. But what was she going to do about it? Her parents had called in political favors all the way up to the Archdeacon of Schools, and they weren't about to raise a fuss and risk losing the scholarship they had weaseled out of the system for her. But, anyway, Arthur had felt responsible for Shelly ever since, mainly because he had been the generous provider of the "sinful-looking bruise." Shelly had never tattled on him, either, which, in those days, was grounds enough for us to consider them a couple.