We walked for days across the land, the horizon line remained at the horizon. Our feet ached and we met water.
Not lines.
“Is there any way across?” I asked.
“We'll have to walk,” he said.
But all I could see was water.
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The bridge looked real. It was.
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A woman with a printed lanyard around her neck greeted us with a cold face and a warm voice. She asked for our money and she received it.
“Which period would you like to see?”
The bridge was the Museum of the Entirety of History.
We stepped back to discuss. The curator busied herself by moving papers from one place to another on the main desk. “If the bridge is a line perpendicular to the horizon, and time is linear, then to get across the water we need to see all of history.”
We stepped forward.
“A little bit of everything, if you wouldn't mind.”
But of course, the curator minded.
“The problem is,” she explained, “we just can't seem to pinpoint the earliest exhibit – the exhibit on the first moment of time. We have weekly meetings to discuss the issue; we even applied for a grant to bring in experts, but not even the experts agree. Some say our earliest exhibit can be found paying tribute to a moment 15 billion years ago, others argue that the earliest exhibit is on a moment just four days before the “Adam and Eve” exhibit, which we have labeled as occurring (if it ever occurred) around 4,000 B.C.E.
Others say, there is no earliest exhibit.”
The museum staff was also several cycles behind schedule for organizing the later exhibits. The latest exhibit was constantly being shifted for the outgoing present moment.
A passing staff member agreed.
“We're having a bit of trouble with the ends. We are still looking for the earliest exhibit, and every second we get a new one.”
It was, needless to say, terribly disorganized.
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We stepped back once more and discovered a mutual desire to see the dark ages. We asked the curator to show us some exhibit from the 14th century.
She brought us to a moment in late afternoon of late September of late 1966.
The warm voice apologetic, “It's that, to be very frank, we really can't guarantee accuracy beyond a millennia.”
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As it happens, the constant flux of the Museum of the Entirety of History led to an overworked staff, management problems, and a complete disordering of what had hitherto been linear time.
We we're puzzled as to how we would get across.
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The end
January 26, 2011
