Story #76 - Speed Dating on New Year's Eves
The last story of last year, delivered so late it's the first story of this one!
Had a crazy holiday marathon this year, including travel with a toddler, so here this is, later than I’ve ever delivered a story before! Hope it’s worth the wait. I will be back on my regular schedule from here forward, returning to your inbox with my first non-story post of the year this coming Sunday morning. Hope everyone had a happy and safe NYE!
Speed Dating New Year’s Eves
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the New Year’s Eve Time Travel Experience will begin in five minutes, please find your seats now, or remain seated until the Experience begins if you’ve already found yours.” The pleasant, female-coded A.I. voice came from speakers all around them.
Dustin was already in his seat, plugged into the neurostim. The glass of champagne in his hand was his third, but still his hands shook with excitement. His first New Year’s timesurf hadn’t gone well, and he’d been saving up all year for a second ticket and shot at redemption.
“Are you familiar with Schelling Points?” asked a male voice behind him, unmistakably flirting in tone. “They are answers to questions that two people will tend to converge on even when they can’t communicate.”
“I don’t get it,” said a younger female voice from the same direction. Her lack of desire to get it couldn’t have been clearer in her tone, but the original speaker didn’t seem to mind.
“Here, I’ll show you,” he said. “I’m writing down an answer on my phone. The question is, suppose you and I were both in New York, and we had to meet each other, but we couldn’t pick a time or place beforehand. If we successfully meet, we each get a million dollars. When and where would you try to find me?”
“Grand Central Station at noon,” came her thoughtless reply.
“Now look” Dustin didn’t turn to look, but could feel him showing her his phone. Then she gasped.
“How…”
The man laughed, but it was the last Dustin heard of their conversation, because at that moment, a beautifully androgynous man of about his own age stopped on the stairs beside his row, and examined the single seat next to Dustin.
“Is anyone sitting there?” His voice was mellow, diffident, open. It invited exchange without expectation. His close-cropped blond hair was coiffed with some shiny product that made it almost glow. He had a tiny ring in his nose, a larger one in his ear, and a golden chain of fine links dangling between the two.
“No, I’m here alone,” said Dustin without thinking. Three different ways that could be misinterpreted leaped into his mind at the same time, and he blushed, suddenly aware of his pale skin and messy brown hair and the hole in his sweater that he’d thought only earlier that evening might look cool and devil-may-care. “I mean, not alone, like, I’m just by myself. I came with friends last year but it was a total runaround trying to go to the same timelines with them, so I thought it would be more fun this year to come solo bolo.”
“I’m Styx,” said the blond man as he slid into the seat beside Dustin. “Solo bolo, huh? Me too, but it’s just ‘cause I’m not much for a crowd. Besides, you never know when you might meet a stammering stranger with nice eyes.”
Dustin’s heart pounded. He wasn’t out to his family. A few friends, sure, but only in the sanctity of bedrooms and diner booths, only in conversation. He’d never dated, just had a few sticky fumblings with other closeted boys when they thought themselves unwatched, none of it ever discussed afterwards.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Experience will begin in one minute. Remember that you will have exactly three minutes in each timeline, and you will need to key in your next desired timeline, otherwise when jump occurs you will be assigned to a random timeline.”
“Now that you’re solo bolo, will you choose your way through the timelines, or just take them at random?” Styx had somehow arranged his body to be oriented towards Dustin without actually turning towards him. The blonde man had prominent collarbones sticking out from the open collar of a glittery, silvery garment that could only be called a blouse. Dustin’s hands shook with the desire to touch them.
“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about it. Last time I started with a plan, but then… have you done it before?”
“First time,” said Styx in a mock singsong. “I’m a virgin. Be gentle, okay?”
“I, uh, I don’t…”
Styx laughed, in a much lower pitch that brought out his manliness and made those cheekbones almost vibrate.
“Thirty seconds, ladies and gentlemen,” came the voice of the A.I. host. “Your neurostims will begin calibrating shortly.”
“Where will you go?” Dustin asked hurriedly, trying to cover the awkwardness spreading from his stomach. “You don’t seem like a floater.”
“Oh I don’t, do I? Where does it seem like I’d go? Flapper party in 1924? Victorian orgy in 1880? Warehouse rave in 1998?”
“I don’t know, it just seems like you’d have a plan.”
“Maybe I’ll play against type? Portuguese Monastery in 1599? White House formal during the Nixon years?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Dustin. “I’m sorry I—“
“I’d ask you where you’re going and meet you there, except you were clear that you wanted to be ‘solo bolo’ for this occasion.” Styx raised his tone at the end, making it a hint of a question. Dustin’s stomach shed its awkwardness and leapt into his throat.
“Five seconds,” came the A.I. voice. “Remember, if you feel overwhelmed and want to return to the present year, that option is always available to you. In that case, however, you will exit the timeflow and be unable to rejoin. No refunds.”
“I’d love to go together,” he spat out. “I just didn’t want to coordinate with a big group, but one—“ he cut off as he realized his voice was no longer working, as the neurostim took over his bodily functions in the last few seconds before liftoff.
He could still see, enough to see Styx’s face fall in clear disappointment, and to see him mouth the words “where are you going first”. Dustin tried to think of where he should go, what he should say. But even as he tried to open his mouth to say something, anything, the world slid away and the blackness arrived as he jumped timelines.
*
His first three minutes happened to be in 1945, the year the war ended, at a swinging celebration in a downtown San Fran bar, sailors in uniform and liquored up, girls flirting til they sweated while trying to corral the mass of seething testosterone into some kind of chivalrous order. It was all a little turned up, almost an uncanny valley, the sweat too glisteningly even and the exposed bosom just slightly more ample than was believable.
Dustin also wore a uniform, which fit him perfectly and was grooved to his body despite never having touched his skin before. In each world, each arriver was clad appropriately in the instant before the journey between timelines.
Before he got two steps, a girl smiled at him from across the room. He turned to look for Styx, wondering if possibly, somehow, out of the more than five hundred timelines available for their arrival, the two of them had been placed randomly first in the same one. But no. A different boy smiled at him invitingly, just like the girl had, and if he hadn’t just met Styx he would have been tempted, but he had met Styx, and now he wasn’t interested in anybody else at all.
He could see other people from his cohort, and others he just knew were travelers by the way they moved and the speed of their advances and actions, the urgency with which they tried to make use of their three minutes here. The timeline natives all around them seemed taken aback by the influx of visitors, uncomprehending of what force had invaded their good time two hours before midnight.
Ninety seconds left. There was a small timer superimposed in the bottom right corner of his vision. A box next to it left open four digits that he could mentally fill in to pick his next destination, and a tab on the left would open with a thought to display the guide to what setting went with which year.
The thought that kept niggling him was that Styx wasn’t even going to try to find him. Why would he? They’d only met for a moment, one quick flirtation, not enough to prick the skin of someone as experienced and self-assured as Styx.
But what if he was? The moment that question presented himself, Dustin knew that he was going to look for him. There was no way he could possibly enjoy wandering through this experience with the question of what Styx might be doing. There were forty three-minute timeline visits before midnight, and if he didn’t at least try to search through a few of them, he was going to torture himself with the what ifs.
The thought did, of course, occur to him that he was going to see Styx when they woke up back in their home timeline. But he didn’t want to wait for that. Dustin was a superstitious person, and he just knew in his bones that if he waited until they got back, Styx wouldn’t be interested in him anymore, even if he was now. Something about his commitment to look for Styx rather than enjoying himself was going to make him deserve to make a real connection for the first time in his young, gay life.
Thirty seconds. What timeline would Styx go to if he was looking for Dustin? He thought back over their conversation, then keyed in 1924. Styx’s first suggestion as a meeting place on their first timeline leap made all the sense in the world.
He smiled around at the bar, taking it in for the space of ten breaths, all those beautiful young people, even the ones with missing limbs and ugly scars filled with vim and vigor and beatific light.
Blackness. Leap.
A marathon dance-off in a speakeasy sprung up before his eyes. Women in knee-length skirts and round hats that sat too low on their heads, like ceremonial military helmets. Men in tuxedos and top hats, like the very uncomfortable one that Dustin himself suddenly wore. A six-piece horn band was in full swing, and couples were throwing themselves around the dance floor with abandon.
Dustin ignored the scene, or rather scanned it like a painting, looking for one particular character who he hoped would be scanning the room with equal fervor, looking for him. He knew that if he actually spotted Styx, he was going to make a fool of himself by waving with too much enthusiasm when he should just try to play it cool, but that was baked in at this point, there was nothing he could do about it.
But he was spared the indignity; Styx was not on hand. Other timeline jumpers threw themselves into the crowd, laughing as they attempted terrible, unpracticed versions of the Charleston, much to the chagrin of the timeline natives who found themselves interrupted mid-dance by these interlopers. A dozen arguments ensued, but the jumpers all offered to buy drinks, knowing that by the time the bill arrived they would be gone, and all was well in moments.
Already Dustin was wondering what world he should jump to next. Ninety seconds to go and he wasn’t even enjoying this timeline. He was in all the other ones, willing his mind to recognize which one contained Styx, or better yet, which one would contain Styx next.
Styx’s second suggestion had been the Victorian orgy in 1880, and his third had been the warehouse rave in 1998. It seemed possible that Styx had thought along the same lines of following his own joking suggestions towards a meeting place, but that he had started in the second of those suggestions, since their first opportunity to meet was technically in the second timeline they visited, the first timeline being inescapably random. In that case, Styx would now be headed towards the warehouse rave, and Dustin’s best path would be to skip the orgy and meet him there.
It did, however, occur to Dustin that if Styx had gone directly to the orgy, but then realized that Dustin, if he was following the same progression, must have started with his first suggestion of the flapper party, then Styx might decide to wait at the orgy for an additional timeline jump, to see if Dustin continued the progression and arrived there. In that case, if Dustin skipped the orgy and went directly to the warehouse rave, he’d be skipping over Styx entirely, and they’d still be in the same position of neither knowing who should adjust and who should stay with their version of the progression.
He stood frozen, contemplating this choice, until the timer reached fifteen, and he had to make a choice or waste this guess on a random world. He decided that the worst possible outcome was skipping over Styx, and that the kismetic pain of that was so dreadful it was enough to make the decision on what was otherwise pretty much a coin flip. He keyed in 1880 and counted down the last five seconds until the horn section disappeared.
Blackness. Leap.
A mass of writhing, pale bodies. Mounds of pubic hair unimaginable in modern life. Not a condom in sight. He’d been distracted enough when making the decision about this world that it didn’t occur to him when he keyed in the year that he was signing up to look at a whole hell of a lot of genitalia, but there it was, all around him in its weird, multi-shaped glory, innies and outies and curvies and stiffies and really just an overwhelming amount of muff.
But no Styx. He either had started with his second suggestion and was now looking anxiously around the warehouse rave trying to spot the absent Dustin in the crowd, he had some other rubric entirely for world-picking in search of Dustin, or he (gulp) wasn’t trying to find Dustin at all.
In the first case, it seemed pretty clear that Dustin should continue to the warehouse rave in the next timeline jump, since Styx was sure to recognize the pattern at this point and, if they both recognized the pattern, it made much more sense to meet in his third suggestion than try for something else. There was some possibility that Styx could continue onto his fourth suggestion, that he would counter program in a Portuguese Monastery in 1599, but that seemed remote. Why jump to a different class of suggestion if staying in the same class was an equally live possibility?
Other possible rubrics did now, however, occur to Dustin. He realized that it made at least some sense to start at the first possible year, which Dustin’s guide tab indicated was Babylon’s celebration of the first New Year’s Eve ever in 2000 BC. In that case, Styx could either be holding in Babylon, waiting for Dustin to arrive, or he could be in either the second or third possible sequential year, and could be holding steady in either of those or proceeding to the fourth sequential year, hoping to project a consistent pattern and allow Dustin to track him.
These and other, less sensible but still remote rubrics floated across Dustin’s consciousness as three minutes raced off the countdown clock. The moans and grunts and cartoonish British accents of the era, the smell of perfumed oils and undeodoranted pits and boozy breath bore down upon him, and paralyzed his mind, such that he lost focus on the timer, and it reached zero with him not yet having made a choice and keyed in another year.
Blackness. Leap.
Times Square, 1907. The first time ever that the huge ball dropped to ring in the new year. Gibson Girl silhouettes with high shoulders and improbably tall hats, mustaches and slim suits with bowlers. He himself wore such attire, although he had not acquired the mustache. A man’s voice was yelling that the ball would start dropping in two minutes, and ripples of excitement tore through the gathered crowd.
No Styx, of course. In an instant, the variables of where Styx might be depending on what he thought the pattern was and where he should locate himself in it flitted through Dustin’s head, and he realized it was hopeless. There were so many options that picking one wasn’t going to be much better than a random timeline at this point. The proliferation of options that had ruined his time with the group last year had bit him once again. He couldn’t stop thinking about the possibilities and just get into the moment with where he was and what he was doing.
He knew the ball was about to start dropping, and it was amazing to get to see this. Twenty years before, when limited time travel hadn’t even been invented yet, this would have been magic. And yet now all he can think about is chasing down a boy. How quickly humans adjust to a rising standard and seek dissatisfactions anew.
But perhaps, he thought, this is the timeline in which it became suddenly obvious to both of them that predicting any previous pattern was impossible at this number of degrees of advancement. His own sudden realization of that, in such an emphatic way, made it seem likely that the impossibility was a feature of the advancing mathematical situation rather than some subjective feeling on his part, and such mathematical certainty would almost have to be working on Styx at the same time.
That meant this this was a natural moment for both of them to start over, and pick from among just the couple of original possibilities, namely Styx’s first suggestion, Styx’s second suggestion, or the first available year in ancient Babylon. A one out of three chance was actually quite good and worth taking a flyer on.
Within those three possibilities, both of Styx’s suggestions suffered the disadvantage that either he or Styx had almost certainly visited at least one of them before, since if they had both visited Babylon they would have met there. Also, Babylon just seemed like the remotest possibility for a first visit, given that it hadn’t even occurred to Dustin until his second decision point. Thus, proceeding under the assumption that, even if their primary purpose was now searching for each other, it was better all things considered that neither of them repeated a timeline, Babylon seemed the most likely starting choice.
He Keyes in 2000 BC. The ball began to drop. The crowd counted down. Dustin was already elsewhere in his mind.
Blackness. Leap.
*
A man in a finely-spun robe of purple, red, and gold was pulled to his knees in the center of a crowd. A high priest tore the robe from his shoulders, leaving him bare-chested. Opposite the kneeling man, a golden statue of the bust of a human-animal chimera rested on a pedestal, glaring down at him. The high priest slapped the kneeling King, who burst out crying, huge theatrical sobs and large wet tears dripping from his cheeks. The crowd roared. The high priest slapped the kneeling king once more, and the sobs redoubled, far out of proportion to the pain the slaps could possibly have caused.
Dustin wore a green and gold robe, and a scowl on his face. He knew the moment he arrived and looked around that Styx was not here. This was a popular timeline, so there were dozens if not hundreds of other travelers here with each jump, but Styx was not among them.
It was over. Dustin felt a fool, for ever having thought that Styx might be trying to find him in the first place. Obviously their flirtation had been a momentary thing that didn’t even stick in Styx’s mind, not to be taken seriously, and Dustin had made too much of it, like he always did with everything. A hot flush of shame ran up him, all the worse because even in his shame he could not stop his brain from racing to collect possibilities for another attempt. Perhaps if Styx had misread the pattern and thought that Babylon wasn’t the right restart point, he would have gone to his first suggestion, since that wasn’t where he was the first time through, and that would mean that now he would jump to—
No! He wouldn’t jump anywhere, because he wasn’t there. Dustin smacked himself on the head repeatedly, trying to banish the thought. In the center of the crowd, the humiliated king was now wailing abjectly, while the priest held him up and seemingly offered him to the god statue, asking some question in imploring tones. A single word sounded from the crowd, once, then twice, then from every throat like a flock of ducks converging on a fistful of bread.
The thought came that he’d ruined his night, ruined this experience again with his overthinking and his anxiety after spending the entire year saving up to have it again and redeem himself, but he refused to entertain the thought. He opened the guide tab in his vision and leafed through the worlds, looking for something interesting to try. Lighting of the first light bulb in 1879 looked interesting. Party to celebrate the founding of the East India Company in 1600 would certainly be decadent. The opening of the Guinness Brewery in 1759 beckoned.
But it all felt hollow. It felt like a silver medal. He might as well go—
Home. Home occurred to him. Because there was one place that did not change. It was part of no progression, no possible pattern. Nothing advanced to it nor from it. It made no sense to return to his home timeline, which meant that his night was over, and he forfeited the possibility of returning to the timeflow and seeing more timelines.
But that was exactly what made it the perfect Schelling Point for two people trying to find each other in all that randomness. By giving up what they’d paid so much for, by renouncing ownership of all other possibilities, each would announce the importance of finding the other as the only priority by simply going home.
On stage, the fallen King approached the god statue on his knees. His eyes were red with tears. His robes were torn. Angry red welts were rising on his olive skin where the high priest had slapped him. Wet streaks down his cheeks and onto his chest told the story of his journey. He stopped before the statue’s base and prostrated himself, begging for deliverance in a language Dustin did not understand, captivating the crowd with his flagellation.
Dustin also watched, spellbound, drawn in by the king’s singularity of purpose. For the first time that evening, he felt grounded and present, getting his money’s worth, and he realized he was going home. Whether he met Styx there or not, it was the ending he needed.
Blackness. Leap.
Dustin opened his eyes, and saw Styx’s smile light up. They were back in their seats. The seats around them were empty, with neurostim needles apparently unused, sticking out from the chairs as if waiting for customers. They were alone.
“You came,” said Styx, more surprised than Dustin expected he would be. “I felt like such an idiot. I was about to leave in another jump or two.”
“Have you been here long?” A smile twitched the corners of his own mouth as he spoke.
“I came straight back,” admitted Styx. “I considered going to one of my suggestions, but it seemed hopeless to pick the right one. I know we would have met back here after it was over, but something told me it wouldn’t have meant anything if I’d waited for that. It’s stupid, but I thought—“
“—that you had to sacrifice for it,” finished Dustin. “It’s not stupid. It’s the truth.”
“The when you didn’t come for a few jumps, I thought—“
“I’m anxious,” said Dustin. “I tend to overthink things, so I thought maybe I could find a pattern and we could jump to the same world. But yeah, this is much more romantic.”
Styx held up two glasses of champagne.
“I found these sitting around somewhere, want one?”
They sat in their seats and drank, while around them spirits flitted through timelines and had adventures they would never forget. There wasn’t even a television in the room to watch a countdown with, just a clock on their phones that told them when midnight was coming. They didn’t say much, just enjoyed each other’s presence as the hour approached.
Midnight came, and they both said ‘happy new year' at the same moment. Styx took Dustin’s chin in his fingers, and lifted his face to the proper angle, which set Dustin’s heart to pounding again. Their lips came together, and when they touched, losing all those other timelines didn’t feel like a sacrifice at all. They were a distraction, and this was real. This was home.
END
This story takes overthinking to a whole new level!
Love the ending, I wasn’t expecting it.
IRL rocks!