It would happen at 04:32pm. It would happen at 04:38pm. Every day.
The unmistakable ping of a text message would sound at precisely thirty two minutes past four on a daily basis. After 17 years of messages, I never stopped to think that they were anything out of the ordinary. Until recently.
It started when I was 8, obviously they didn’t quite take a text message form in 1993, but badly spelt words and sentences that were not quite strung together correctly would appear at the bottom of my homework, on the fridge where they were spelt out with magnetic letters, or even scribbled in the back of a book I was reading. I would be puzzled for a moment or two at first, wondering where they had come from, but then I grew to appreciate them for what they were.
I thanked whoever it was for the subtle little life hacks or reminders. The milk’s off would come through, at 04:32pm. In the old days I would have forgotten about the message and have gone to make a cup of tea. 04:38pm. Disgusting. The milk was off. The text was always followed by the prediction, with a six minute interval between the two.
It was the little things that improved my life dramatically.
I would be waiting at the bus stop and be instructed take a step back, a car would come speeding past and those standing closer to the curb would be soaked in dirty puddle water. Not me; muaha.
It wasn’t a while until I actually stopped to think. How is this happening? It must be from the future, I thought. It was the only thing that made sense, no matter how insane or irrational it sounded to others; not that I told anyone.
They were messages to me, from me. I guess the well known phrase “You have to look out for yourself first”, became quite literal in my sense. If they were from the future, why wouldn’t I prevent 9/11 or stop children being molested? Was future me that selfish? It was hard to grasp at first, I couldn’t stop questioning everything once I started.
At 04:32pm, I would do as I was told and await the consequence. The anticipation killed me. Those were the longest 6 minutes of the day. I tried so hard not to be the socially constructed drone that society wanted me to be, yet I allowed myself to be a slave to myself. I would lie awake most nights, letting my mind run wild. Maybe it was all just a conspiracy. The theories poured out of me, it consumed my life. I began to resent my future self for what it had done to my present self.
I remember it well, the day I changed the game. It was a Tuesday, the runt of the week. April 22nd, 2014. Although the texts did nothing but try and help, in the grand scheme of it all I felt trapped, run down and sleep deprived. I couldn’t do it anymore. That day, my phone stayed turned off.
It was blissful, I felt as free as I could possibly feel given the circumstances. I went throughout the day as normal, not knowing what could be different or what I could have prevented with the knowledge of my future self. They were only little things, afterall. Maybe I wouldn’t have dropped my biscuit into my tea or hole punched the paper on the wrong side.
Or maybe I wouldn’t be lying in hospital, writing this from my literal death bed because I stood too close to the road when I car was just going too fast. It is the little things. “Take a step back”.
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I got a little lazy writing this towards the end, thought I'd publish it anyway as I've been neglecting I couldn't even a lot. This piece stemmed from a writing prompt I found online. Feedback welcome. Expect more like it.
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