Back downtown on Wedesday, to walk, and look, and cross the street, and not walk in anyone's trail . . . and feel normal. It was warm and sunny. It felt like the end of the beginning of the middle of the middle.
No one at the office. But there was a janitor - with a mask, of course - wandering around with a watering can, taking care of the few plants.
The garbage bins were in the main hallway now. They've been moved. At the start of all this, they put small garbage bags in the hallway of the bathroom.
They appeared one day without explanation, and none was needed: you would open the door with a tissued hand, enter the passageway to the main hall, open that door with a tissued hand, then turn and toss the contaminated tissue.
“Boy, wonder how long we’ll have to do this! Ha ha”
“Oh, two weeks.”
“Think it’ll be over then?”
“No, we’ll be banned from working anywhere but home.”
“Ha! That sounds okay, I could use some chill time working in my sweats.”
“Trust me, ‘chills’ and ‘sweats’ are things you will not want.”
“Why do you know this? Are you from the future?”
“Yep.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“You ever see 2010, where the apparition of Dave Bowman appears on a TV set and says something’s going to happen, and his ex-wife, well, his widow, says ‘what?’”
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t it seem strange now to look at that movie and they’re all using cathode-ray tube TVs? Nevermind how they got the whole ‘USSR is still a thing’ wrong.”
“Yeah, right, okay, what’s going to happen?”
“So Dave Bowman smiles and says ‘something wonderful.’”
“Right, now I remember.”
“Well, this is going to be your 180-degree, not-Dave-Bowman-reassurance type situation. Although to be honest I didn’t think the whole two-suns thing was necessarily wonderful. Maybe Dave Bowman isn’t the expert here either way.”
“So how does the future turn out?”
“I don’t know, I’m in the middle of it.”
“What? What the hell is the point of coming from the future in the middle of the crapstorm? You couldn’t wait and come back with some advice and reassurances?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. How about I come back again, but yesterday, when it’s all done?”
“No, I already know you didn’t come back yesterday. Come back tomorrow. No, wait - why don’t you go away now then come back right away? No reason I have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll be up all night worrying that if you don’t come back tomorrow it’ll mean no one survived.”
“Or, I just forgot.”
“Can you set a reminder or something on your phone?”
“Yeah, I suppose I could.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes, then.”
(Poof)
(A minute passes)
(Time traveller reappears, with long hair and a paunch)
“I don’t have much time, I have some stuff to do. Totally forgot I was going to do this until I got the reminder. Here.”
(Hands over a roll of toilet paper, vanishes.)
(poof)
(seven seconds pass)
(Time traveller reappears, with longer hair, now gaunt)
“Sorry”
(Time traveller takes back the roll of toilet paper)
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