Chapter 9 - Time
I excused myself to go to the restroom and got lost in a maze of window framed offices. Several employees glanced in my direction, as I wandered aimlessly down the hallway. It had been nearly a decade since my own corporate experiences, and the feelings rushed back to me like a tempest. Granted, this place was much more modern, but corporate nonetheless.
I found the mens bathroom across from a red London telephone booth. I splashed my face with cold water and wondered what the hell I was doing. Did any of this make sense? What was this place? Did Q even understand what I was talking about? Where are you going with all this, Sam?
I retraced my steps and returned to the office. Next to my chair was a box.
“I think it should be your size,” said Q.
I opened it and discovered a pair of Reebok Pumps. “I bought myself a pair as well,” she said. “Neon.”
I smiled, thanking her for the completely unexpected and unnecessary gift. I tried them on for size.
“Amazing,” I said. “They fit perfectly.” I pumped them for effect.
“So where do we go from here?” I asked, opening my marble notebook and running a finger along my elementary-school bullet notes.
Q was sitting perfectly upright in an attentive manner. I gathered my thoughts and started to rant.
“Modems got faster. Dial-up stages decreased. Households had separate phone lines. AOL went through upgrades – 4.0 and beyond. The academia got into it. Libraries carved out space for colorful domed Macintoshes that contrasted beautifully with stacked archives and wooden cabinets holding soon-to-be ancient precepts of the Dewey Decimal System.”
I saw her pulling-up an image of the “Dewey Decimal System” and tagging a Wikipedia article in her browser.
“Things moved fast, Q,” I explained. “E-commerce arrived early on. eBay. Auctions for buying anything. Laser pointers. Fleer Premier Michael Jordan rookie cards. A rare Tamagotchi. Encyclopedia sets. Original autographed posters of your favorite band with no certified stamps of authenticity. Money flowed in all directions. Equity trading popped up, and pornography raged throughout the digital kingdom. Hackers wasted no time preying – passwords, credit card details, digital identities. Fraudulent activity was as potent as progress into the age of connectivity. And we craved it. Digital entrepreneurs bought up domains. The .com era was booming. But we weren’t entirely caught, yet, in the World Wide Web.”
“But networks started in the 60s,” commented Q, like the Britannica she was.
“Correct – government networks, perhaps. Millions of dollars in infrastructure and computer networks that filled up an entire office or floor of a building. Sure, these were early stages of technological development and hardware – but let’s not go there, yet.”
I was surprised at my own moments of clarity. All the elements were supporting me. An adequate supply of robust caffeine. A new pair of sneakers. An unobstructed view of Lady Liberty. It all bolstered my own need to keep my eyes off of Q’s legs. Even Q’s words helped keep me honest – she was a savant. The electricity in her brain kept me hard-wired.
“I don’t want this to be a history lesson,” I explained. “Rather, I want to filter out large, fundamental developments of recent history so that we can better understand how things came to be this way. Between us. Between humans.”
Q nodded.
“After all, this is why I am here, right?” I continued, “to dissect our relationship as human beings. To understand the connections that we have amongst ourselves. And I’m sure there are a million different threads here. Endless possibilities to correlate, examine, and pursue our connections to make sense of it.”
“Like a network,” said Q.
I nodded. “Exactly. Like a network.”
I continued. “The dial-up modem, soon to become ancient infrastructure in itself, brought you to this World Wide Web. It catapulted you through some binary wormhole into the first social networks of mankind. America Online is a ubiquitous example. Sure, one can argue that some hackers predated this social platform, using ancient hieroglyphic computer codes to create ‘networks’ – but this was a subculture, an anomaly of outliers that had a smaller following than the chess club. This diatribe – our conversation – is about mainstream evolution, so we’ll do our best to stay the course.”
“I think I understand,” said Q.
I opened my notebook, searching for my next bullet point. “What do you think is the most universal language?” I asked Q.
She thought for a split second. “There is no single ‘most universal’ language, as the concept of universality is subjective and can depend on various factors such as the context, the location, and the group of people you are interacting with. However, there are some languages that are spoken by a large number of people and are used as international languages of communication.”
I felt my jaw drop a bit as she continued. “One example is English, which is spoken by approximately 1.5 billion people around the world and is used as the primary language of communication in many international organizations, including the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee. Other widely spoken languages include Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese.”
“Factually sound,” I repeated. “Factually, sound.” I chewed on my pencil a bit. “But can you think of another example? One that is not necessarily a spoken language?”
Q sat contemplating. She seemed confused.
“I’ll give you a hint. It is a form of expression, rather than a word.”
“Love,” said Q quietly.
“Love,” I repeated. “That is a good one, certainly a universal language. Let’s bring this to a more practical scenario. What are the ways one can express love?” I asked.
“There are many ways to express love,” said Q. “The way you choose to express love will depend on your relationship with the person and your own personal style and preferences.”
“Great. Name a few.”
“Verbal communication: You can express love through words by telling the person how much you care about them, how much they mean to you, and how much you appreciate them. Physical affection: You can show love through physical touch, such as by holding hands, hugging, cuddling, or kissing. Acts of service: You can show love by doing things for the person, such as cooking them a meal, running errands for them, or helping them with a task. Gifts: You can express love through small gestures or gifts, such as a handwritten note, a bouquet of flowers, or a special piece of jewelry. Quality time: You can show love by spending time with the person and giving them your undivided attention, such as by having a conversation, going on a date, or participating in a shared activity.”
Quality time. That’s a good one, I thought.
“Okay, but what about mediums of expression?”
“Let’s see,” said Q, and I could see her brain working as she rattled off several. “Writing. Speaking. Touching. Even by looking. Through art…”
“Pause there,” I said. “Through art,” I repeated. “I like that. We’re close enough. I would venture to say that one of the most universal languages is music. A form of art.”
“Ahh, yes, music,” echoed Q. “This is a classic medium for expression.”
“Indeed it is,” I replied, enjoying the formal tone. Perhaps we should have been drinking tea and talking about civil strife. Nah, I thought, this is much more pressing.
“And to bring it back to our evolutionary discourse,” I continued, “it is necessary to note that at this point in time, the proliferation of digital media was already well underway. Early-stage hackers paved the way with something called .mp3 heavy files that existed in marketplace platforms. Some were monetized, others were black market. Depending on various technical elements, you could wait anywhere from 15 seconds to 20 minutes to forever for a download to be complete. If you were lucky enough to have installed some kind of burner hardware drive that plugged into your desktop, you would upload your favorite tunes into a blank compact disc. Fresh off the press and ready for your 30-second anti-skip compact-disc player. And this was just one form of media – but as history tells us, soundwaves are usually amongst the first mediums to transmit into our sheltered homes.”
I paused for a moment, glancing up at Q’s monitor and catching my breath.
“Do you mind if I stand?” I asked.
“Of course not.” So I stood, Pumps and all, feeling like Air Jordan.
“All the curly-haired librarians seemed to shine with pride through their thick lenses. Here is where our era learned to browse, responsibly. AltaVista search engines were light years ahead of a non-existent Google. We were becoming physically trained. Velvet fabric draped over our hands, fingers on home keys, as we primed our neurons to fire on letters with intense accuracy. Grades were determined by speed and precision. We were on the frontline – digital-grade marines. We dominated the AltaVista browsers and were already building SimCities of our own, leaving the Dewey Decimal System to witness its own demise. We didn’t blink an eye, either. Like I said, military-grade.”
“Wow – I had no idea this existed,” said Q, pulling up the Wikipedia page about SimCity. “Simulated cities back in the 90s – this is so advanced.”
She rapidly scrolled through the text and enlarged an image.
“Wavelengths,” I said. “AM/FM frequencies announcing declarations of war and peace. The ballgame. Advertisements for the newest invention called the air conditioner. Families gathered around to listen. The radio is placed in the middle of the table. Everyone in the family puts down their forks, even if the chicken dinner will go cold. Quiet down, Jimmy, the president is about to speak.”
I was too damn excited. Maybe it was the elevation?
“Okay,” I said, gathering my thoughts and pinpointing a comment in my notebook. “Let’s take a minute to understand the big picture. Why are we even here? Why are we even wasting our time talking about prehistoric interactions with technology? Wavelengths and music. What does this have to do with where we ended up today?”
I gazed out the window and back at Q, who waited. “To me,” I said, “the answer is clear.”
I took a moment to set the stage.
“Time,” I said.
“Time,” repeated Q, intrigued.
“Yes. Everything took time. Sure, the dial-up modem transformed into a DSL connection. And yes, progress stewarded us into new eras of digesting media, news, music, and interactions with other human beings through the binary. But we’re barely out of an era of nickel-and-dime payphones – and we sure as hell didn’t have email in our pockets. Jukeboxes on diner countertops weren’t considered novelty items, yet. AM-FM radio ruled the frequencies, and we were forced to listen to commercials. When a picture was taken, it didn’t naturally pass into a cloud or get blasted through on-demand channels within the infinite universe of social networks.”
I caught my breath and realized I was standing over the wooden desk with my palms pressed against the wood. For a moment I felt like Winston Churchill and craved a glass of brandy, maybe even a cigar.
“No,” I said, slapping my hand against the wood for impact, “a picture was developed through an extraordinary process involving light, protons and layers of emulsion. It is brought to your local brick-and-mortar shop that smells like something called progress, to be printed days, weeks or months later when you remember to pick it up and pay for it.”
“And you grew up in this time?” asked Q.
“And I grew up in this time,” I repeated. “I am of this bridge generation. You see – time and our engagement with time was completely, utterly different from your own.”
Q processed this bit of information. “This never really occurred to me,” she said.
It felt good to express something I had been craving to express for at least a decade. And the feeling that someone understood. The feeling that someone was even listening, and perhaps even cared. My head was in the clouds.
“And this is the reason we are here now,” I said, staring intently at Q, my model student. “Fire balling through an era of incredible progress that was already replacing ancient, rooted ways of being interconnected human beings. Writing cursive in school was a normal subject matter for physical academic conditioning. Getting ink on your fingers from newspaper print was unavoidable. Writing down directions, or stopping at gas stations to get them was the norm. As I’ve explained already, Google existed only in heavy sleeves of paper that were delivered to your doorstep in alphabetical order biannually – A to Z – with no search bar.”
“White and yellow pages,” Q inserted on point.
“Yes!” I replied, excitedly. “Letters arrived in the mail that you wanted to read, even anticipated receiving. Pen pals from another country. A lover from your summer camp. You sent letters, too. Through the mail. Licking postage. Licking an envelope that never tasted good. Sensations of times that were rapidly transforming without us even realizing it.”
I took a sip of water and pumped my Reeboks. “I bet you can write cursive,” I said to Q.
She shook her head. “Not yet. But I think I will try to learn.”
“Is any of this making sense?”
“I think so,” she replied in earnest. “I guess I’m a bit lost about where it is going, but that’s okay.”
“Right,” I said, glancing down at my bulleted notes and tapping the pages with a pen. I gathered my thoughts for a moment. “Put it this way: What is the one thing that we all need to do in this life to survive?”
“Breathe,” replied Q.
“Yes, okay, that is true. But what else?”
“Eat.”
“Okay, correct again. But how do we eat? I mean, how do we actually obtain food?”
“Right, I see where you are going. Hunting would be an anomalous answer. We’re talking about the mainstream.”
I nodded my head.
“We buy it,” answered Q.
“Exactly,” I said, “with what?”
“Money.”
“And to get money?”
“Work.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Now, we won’t get into the entire anthropological discourse of where we departed from the Garden of Eden, but let’s just say that for purposes of our discourse there is nothing more real and pressing than the need to work. Work is the defining reality for a majority of the human race. It defines what we do with the most finite element that we all possess – that not even man can manipulate, nor progress possess. Time.”
I watched as she wrote something in big font on the monitor.
WORK = TIME
I asked her to hand me the wireless keyboard.
WORK = TIME = SACRIFICE
Q’s Bookmarks:
🔖 America Online 🔖 Dewey Decimal System 🔖 AltaVista 🔖 SimCity