The Big Bang, My Doppelganger, and a Night at the Supermarket

by

tommy (2006)

The Big Bang, My Doppelganger, and a Night at the Supermarket

This story is a work of fiction, and everything it contains is entirely true and can be verified by numerous reliable sources.

By Chevalier

Listen, because this story is important. 

Late last night (or early this morning if you prefer) I was standing on line at the supermarket, minding my own business, casually perusing the impulse rack for the latest ill-advised evidence of alien abduction, or perhaps a good deal on bubblegum, shifting the weight of a gallon of whole milk from one arm to the other and shifting my eyes between the impulse reading material and the other maladjusted weirdoes that do their shopping in the wee hours.  Their arms are full of shopping bags, their faces full of bags under their eyes.  The reasons that I needed the milk were threefold:  First, I had a bottle of Kahlua and another of Grey Goose vanilla vodka that were begging to be made into White Russians, eager to soothe me to sleep, or at least make me stop caring that I was still awake.  True, a White Russian should be made with half & half, but when you’re trying to kill two birds with one stone, whole milk is an acceptable substitute.  The other bird that I was trying to kill was number two on the list of reasons that I needed the milk - breakfast with the Cap'n.  Actually, I had considered skipping the breakfast and drinking myself to sleep with a bottle of rum, which had led me to (briefly) muse over who would win in a fight - Captain Morgan or Cap'n Crunch?  I decided that Captain Morgan would definitely win, on account of his spicy fists.  However, the thought of those spicy fists pounding my stomach from the inside while I was trying to sleep put me off of that idea, and put the Cap'n in first place running for sharing my breakfast.  Peanut Butter Crunch was on the menu.  I can't remember the third reason that I needed the milk... maybe I was going to bake something?  It doesn’t matter.

            The octogenarian in sweat pants buying Ben Gay and Soap Opera Digest (but, regrettably, no soap) bagged her groceries and disappeared into the night.  The tweaker in front of me was up, buying a bottle of Clorox and an aerosol of insect poison.  I continued to hold the increasingly heavy gallon - I had a fantasy that if I put it on the conveyor, even with the bar to separate it from his ingredients, the purchase would be mixed up and I would have to fight him.  The armed security guard would rush on to the scene and put ten rounds in my head (in my head).  Better avoid that.  Another customer steps up behind me.  This is where the night gets weird.

            I should mention that I was wearing black Levis silvertab jeans, a white t-shirt, a red flannel shirt, and a blue denim jacket.  Also, hiking boots.  On this night I was wearing a cap, a rare occurrence since I was working on phasing the cap out based on arbitrary conjecture that girls would rather see me without it and going capless would thereby improve my chances (then again, you multiply zero by zero, and all you get is a headache).

            The newcomer to the line was probably twice my age (placing him in the early 40s), with a slightly graying and slightly more receding hairline, prominently displayed courtesy of his decision to go capless on this night (or maybe he lost it somewhere).  He also wore black jeans, Levis but not silvertabs, but in my opinion good jeans nonetheless.  White t-shirt, red flannel shirt, and a blue denim jacket (his was bare, mine had an American flag patch on the left sleeve and a patch with my last name over the left breast pocket).  Also, hiking boots.  I liked his style. 

            We accidentally made eye contact and both of us averted, as strangers typically do.  This is when I noticed that he also had blue eyes, and was pretty much the same height as me.  Neither one of us said anything.  I was starting to get nervous.  He set his gallon of whole milk on the conveyor with a pack of bubblegum and started reading the latest alien abduction story.  The tweaker in front of me was having trouble with his debit card.  Declined.  Probably hadn't kept up with his finances, out of money honey, after all how could a tweaker stay on top of his checking account, like there's any money in it anyway?  Or maybe he's not even a tweaker, I might have been a little too quick to rush to judgment, I should have given him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe there was fraud on his checking account and thats why his card was declined, through no fault of his own.  And the bleach and insect poison, well maybe it's laundry day and he's got ants.  

            There is only one explanation for the similarities between myself and the man behind me.  He's my future self.  I'll have access to a time machine. The man standing next to me was me.  Why was he here?  Or, to add a slightly deeper level of meaning to that question, why am I here?  Have I come back on a mission, is there something important that I am tasked with, and this foray into the late-night world of grocery-getters is a stepping stone to a bigger objective, an objective big enough to displace (or maybe the term is distime or distempor or is that a disease dogs get? no, thats distemper) a man?  Mechanical magic misplacing myriad minutes?  Anachronistic alchemy arriving at antiquity? Yet, yearly yearning yields yesteryear.  Bothersome beliefs burdening bewildered boys? Eccentric, eclectic, energetic, erratic, emphatic.  Maybe.  Or maybe thats all bullshit and he or I or us or we, came back to tell me something important.  But can you really change the future?  He seems to think so.  I'm not sure.

            You know, if all the matter and energy in the universe was contained in a singularity and then the big bang happened, and every particle exploded outward to be governed by the laws of the-way-shit-works, then that means that every particle has a path and has had a path since the beginning of time and that path can't be altered because anything that can possibly interact with it is another particle on another path and they're all governed by the same laws.  So some electrons zing around the universe for a few hundred billion years, being pulled this direction and that by the gravity of other electrons, until they end up in my brain as an electric thought pattern, but those electrons are still just being bounced around by the environment around them, so am I even really thinking if thought is just some electrons from the big bang bouncing inside my head?  And all those other particles are just following their path too, pulled around by gravity or whatever, so when I step into a time machine in twenty years, I'm not deciding to, thats just where the particles are taking me, because their path has configured them into that decision.  So nobody ever decides to do anything, it just happens.  You know what I mean?  And you cant change it, even though some subatomic matter has configured itself into a pattern that makes you self-aware enough to believe that you can.

I thought about the irony of the situation and wondered whether he appreciated the irony, or maybe he knew it was ironic, like he was being ironic because that was his sense of humor.  The irony is that it would then be my sense of humor, and being ironic isn't funny anymore.  Unless maybe the fact that he was being unfunny ironic was in fact irony in itself, which would then either be twice as funny or twice as gay, I don't know, I'm all confused now.  My dad would say, When in doubt, assume that its gay.  My head hurts. 

The tweaker produces cash and vanishes. 

            My future self has to know what I know because I know it and he is me.  And, knowing what one knows about subatomic particle physics and applying it to assumptions about the linear nature of time, one can estimate/extrapolate that he also knows something that I don't know, or else he would have just thought about the big bang and called the whole thing off.  Why isn't he telling me?

            Is it really any of my business?  Of course it is, I decide.  If it's his business then its my business too.  Unless it's not.  Why would I come back in time?  I can think of a few reasons.  Keep myself from ruining things with Allison.  Or any of the other ones that came after her, their names hardly important.  No.  Why am I even thinking that?  Can't possibly be it.  I'd have to go back much further for that to work.  But what else is there?  Must be something else.  Good news then.  It looks like maybe I'll be getting over that whole Allison thing after all, otherwise I'd be shelling out the secrets to myself right now.  Bad news for the Captain.  I no longer felt the need to share breakfast with him. 

            My doppelganger is probably here on a mission, some kind of national security thing that doesn't concern me.  But if it doesn't concern me, then what are the odds of us intersecting with each other at this place and time?  Way too many coincidences here to discount the possibility that I'm involved in this.  No, that doesn't make any sense. Anything important enough to send a man back in time over would surely require immediate action.  If he was here concerning me, he'd speak up, damn it.  Unless his mission forbids him from making contact with me, or otherwise deviating from his objective.  He's probably desperate to tell me everything he knows, but he can't.  This national security emergency that I'm supposed to stop in twenty years or twenty minutes, whether or not that alien is really shaking hands with the president, how I can keep from fucking things up with Allison, shit.  It's got to be killing him inside to have all that useful knowledge and not be able to share it with the person who needs it the most.  After all, I'm a compassionate guy.

            I pay and leave.  I never asked him to tell me the truth, because that's just the way it goes.  I couldn't say to Allison what needed to be said, I couldn't ask this guy, my own future self for his version of the story, and apparently, in twenty-something years, I still wont be able to come up with the words when I need them.

I felt sorry for him.  But, truth be told, the fact is that I was really just feeling sorry for myself. 

Someone call the Captain.  Breakfast is back on.

_______

 “The Big Bang, my Doppelganger, and a Night at the Supermarket” was originally published on August 24, 2006. © Tommy McLaughlin. All Rights Reserved. Duplication elsewhere is explicitly prohibited without the express written consent of the author. *Chevalier is a pen name