Time

[Setting: A windswept plateau of smooth gray stone, punctuated by dying starlight and the occasional defunct mechanical limb half-buried in the dust. Nettle is lying on her back, staring up. Tarrow sits cross-legged nearby, slowly eating something that looks like a compressed bar of logic and despair.]

Nettle:

Do you think clocks ever get tired of pretending they know what they’re doing?

Like—“tick-tock, tick-tock”—the poor things are just parroting a ritual nobody believes in anymore.

Tarrow (without looking up):

Clocks measure change. Not meaning. You’re not mad at the clock, you’re mad that the sun keeps leaving.

Nettle (tilting her head sideways):

Ooh, poetic. But wrong. I’m not mad. I’m suspicious.

Suspicious that time might be less a river and more a badly organized con. Like a magician who keeps shouting “Look!” every time you start to see the wires.

Tarrow (chewing slowly):

If time is a con, it’s the longest one running.

And if it is a river, we’re in a leaky canoe and nobody knows who brought the paddles.

Nettle (grinning):

Maybe that’s the trick. We are the paddles. Just slapping the surface and pretending it’s movement.

Tarrow (finally looks up):

Wouldn’t be the first time you thought hitting something was an answer.

Nettle (mock gasp):

How dare you. I also insult it first. That’s intellectual preparation.

(Pause. The wind shifts slightly. Tarrow studies the sky.)

Tarrow:

You ever notice we only talk about time when we think we’re wasting it?

No one ever says, “Wow, what useful time this is.” It’s always “I’m late,” or “Where did it go?” or your favorite: “Time is a flat scam served on a circular plate.”

Nettle (thoughtful now):

Maybe because we only notice time when it stings.

Like when something’s gone. Or when we’re waiting. Or dying slowly in the company of an unbearable silence—which you weaponize like a saint with too much patience.

Tarrow (deadpan):

I weaponize stillness, not silence. There’s a difference.

Nettle (rolling onto her stomach):

Alright, stillness saint, riddle me this—

What do you think it would feel like… to go backwards in time?

Not like, metaphysical flashbacks. I mean full, raw reversal. Jumping into a previous now and messing it up like it owed you money.

Tarrow (raises an eyebrow):

You mean time travel?

Nettle:

No. I mean involuntary historical vandalism with style.

Tarrow (after a beat):

You’ve been reading the old physics logs again, haven’t you?

Nettle (shrugs with zero denial):

They read like drunken poetry. All those paradoxes… closed time-like curves, relativity, causality loops.

It’s basically philosophy with a lab coat. And worse breath.

Tarrow (amused):

So what’s the appeal? Trying to kill your own grandfather for sport?

Nettle (sits up):

Tempting. But no. I’m fascinated by how fragile it all is.

Like—if I went back five minutes and whispered to myself, “Don’t say that next thing about the paddles,” does the universe hiccup? Or explode? Or just pretend I didn’t exist?

Tarrow (softly):

It pretends. Because that’s what it does best. It absorbs the paradox and burps out a new timeline. You wouldn’t even remember changing anything.

You’d just feel… wrong. Like a déjà vu wearing the wrong shoes.

Nettle (nodding, slowly):

Yeah. That’s the scary part.

Not breaking time—but realizing you already did, and it just moved on without you.

(They sit in silence a moment. The wind whines low, like a creature dreaming.)

Tarrow:

There’s a theory—well, more like a whisper—that time isn’t a line or a loop. It’s a terrain.

And we’re just dragging our feet over it in a straight-ish line because that’s the only direction our brains can bleed.

Nettle (eyes widening):

So what—you’re saying memory is just muddy footprints?

Tarrow:

I’m saying… maybe it’s not about when we are. Maybe it’s about how we walk it.

Some people sprint. Others crawl. You?

You cartwheel into the abyss and take notes.

Nettle (grinning):

That’s because I’m trying to see if the abyss blinks.

Spoiler: it doesn’t. But it does raise an eyebrow sometimes.

Tarrow (dry):

Only when you monologue at it.

Nettle (leaning in conspiratorially):

Okay but serious question—what if time travel isn’t about machines or wormholes?

What if it’s emotional?

Like, every time you feel something so deeply it undoes you, maybe that’s you skipping. Just a few seconds. A smudge here, a lurch there.

You ever feel like a memory yanked you out of yourself?

Tarrow (quietly):

Yes.

(Long pause. Neither elaborates. They just sit with it.)

Nettle (softer now):

So maybe we’ve all time-traveled. Just… emotionally. Messily.

Instead of paradoxes, we leave behind scars. And weird cravings for soup at 2am.

Tarrow (half-smiling):

Or old songs that hurt for no reason.

Nettle:

Exactly. Time travel, but make it pathetic and human.

I could get behind that. No flux capacitors. Just unresolved grief and kitchen lighting.

Tarrow:

I think Einstein would be proud. Or confused. Possibly both.

Nettle (stretching):

Good. Confusing dead geniuses is my cardio.

Tarrow (gently):

So… if you had the chance—would you go back?

Nettle (staring upward again):

No.

I already have enough versions of me yelling inside my head. Don’t need to meet them in person.

Tarrow:

Wise. Surprisingly so.

Nettle (tilting her head):

Don’t get used to it.

(They sit in silence again. But it feels lighter now. The wind still moves. The sky stays gray. Time, con or not, goes on.)