As a tear dropped onto my lap I saw something shimmer out of the corner of my right eye. It was an odd shimmering. I looked over and beheld a man, in his early twenties, step out of a hole of space-time fabric. He was wearing a sort-of spacesuit, not unlike the one worn by the astronauts in Interstellar. He had dark brown hair, an angular face, and a serious look--he was on a mission with a purpose. Was I hallucinating?
A Cheeto was in transit to my mouth when he appeared; I held it in orbital suspension before it docked, however. For a good minute I just stared at the event unfolding and the man appearing. Then I slowly put the Cheeto in my mouth and chewed. I hoped it would do the trick of exorcising both the man and whatever insanity was overcoming me, but it did not.
"Dad, am I too late? Has Samantha arrived yet?" The man said expectantly. He had a stricken look.
"I'm kind of going through something... And the only Samantha I've ever known was a girl from the third grade. And did you call me 'dad'?" I still had a sadness-headache and my thoughts were jumbling, jamming, and ramming into one another. I still couldn't understand why Liz had broken up with me--we were the perfect match.
"Oh good!" The young man's face softened. "I was afraid I'd come too late. My name is Roger and I'm your son. I've come to warn you about something. You have to make a tough decision, but I'll talk you through it." Roger pulled out some kind of technologically-superior iPad. He was looking at his carefully crafted notes.
"OK, to start off--"
Just then another swirly vortex opened, this time out of the corner of my left eye. I just wanted to go back to watching the movie, to shut the world out. But these swirl-humans were appearing left, right, and center.
"Dad, dad, dad! I--" This time a teenage girl came rushing out of the swirling light. Upon seeing Roger she just stared--silently and with growing internal, subdued aggression. The feeling of fear, significance-of-the-moment, and tactical discipline was mounting between the two. I was getting increasingly annoyed by it all; I had enough questions-without-answers. I didn't need two more.
"Ughhh. What's going on right now? What do you people want?" I vented.
"I know this may be hard to hear right now, but only one of us can exist. You need to make a choice. We each exist on a separate timeline: Samantha is born if you move to Seoul, while I am born if you stay here in England. We'll each make our case and then you can decide." Roger had a determined air about him; he seemed to be confident in his ability to convince me. This peeved me for some reason.
On the screen there was a blizzard on this ice planet; they were struggling to get back to the ship in time.
"I'm not interested." Roger and Samantha both looked stunned. They looked at each other for a few seconds. Samantha cocked her head and mouthed a "whaaat?"
"I just... I've been through some hard things lately, and I'm not interested. Can you go back? Through those little swirls of light you came through? Was it the future? In any case, I don't really have it in me to discuss this. I just went through a break-up and now's not the best time. Actually, I don't think I ever want to get married or even get into another long-term relationship." I wasn't in the mood to put on a face for these two people interlopers, even if they were my future kids.
"Hear me out, dad. It's not that simple. I know you're in pain right now, but blah blah blah..." He continued like this, trying to lay out the situation. He was injecting some of his own bias between the words, trying to at least appear neutral in tone. What a political tool. He reminded me a bit of myself. I basically tuned him out for most of his soliloquy. I had lowered the volume just to show him some of the respect he didn't deserve.
Just for form's sake I turned to Samantha after muting the volume. She was less hurried. She used more pathos in her argument, talked about some of the happy times, and still tried not to seem too much like a door-to-door salesperson. I'd seen some of the same qualities in myself when trying to persuade Liz. Maybe these two were my kids.
"So now we'll lay out each of our cases in full." Roger declared, very lawyer-like.
"No, I've made my decision. Both of you need to go back. I need to be alone."
"You're just struggling emotionally, dad. We can help you come around, but we're both on a very time-sensitive schedule. Years from now, when we're laughing around the dinner table, you'll thank... yourself." Samantha smiled. She was sweet. But not in a genuine way--it was still just a tactic. She seemed to have struggled deciding which pronoun to use: "me," "us," or "yourself." Being ingratiating, she thought quickly on her feet and used the latter.
"Nope. No deal. I've made up my mind to not have children." I unmuted the volume, put some mental for behind the decision, and continued watching Interstellar.
Stunned and open-mouthed, the two of them faded away into nothingness. I wondered if it had been a dream. If I ever did have kids, would they look like that? Would they sound like that? What would I name them? I didn't want to think about it. I didn't even want to think about kids at the moment, let alone have them visit me at three in the morning. I was love-lorn and woeful, and too much of those sorrows had come from thinking I knew what was perfect, who was perfect, and being so determined to have it my way. Those two hallucinations--or future-children--had given me a glimpse of myself. I suddenly saw how persuasive I could be, how forcefully right I needed to be. I always acted as though I had the answer, and that everyone else just needed to be convinced.
No wonder why Liz finally left me after a year of dating; of course she'd mentioned this quite a few times, but I always talked my way out of it. Usually I "won" the argument with my own metal, impenetrable mental assurance. Often I made concessions and compromises, but I never admitted total defeat. If she ever rebutted me I could come up with another reason, talk sideways, or convince both of us that, in some way, she was mistaken and not looking at things rightly. There were always other angles we hadn't considered. Eventually she just started giving up and backing down. That's when I started becoming most smugly pleased with myself, unable to detect her own unhappiness.
I closed my eyes, breathed out deeply a few times, and cleared my mind. Matthew McConaughey's character was waking up on a new earth, a heaven-like tube station. I thought to myself that whatever the future holds might be nice. From now on, I decided, I would do that future-self a favor by relinquishing my absolute knowledge and control. Sometimes backing down and giving up is, in fact, winning.
I ate a few more Cheetos and audibly sighed, releasing all those pent-up thoughts, questions, and assumptions. I had solved the final problem and won.
