In general, my blog posts tend to cluster around several themes or foci. But rather than look back at a pulp-era tale, the focus today is on a contemporary story penned as a creepypasta. This post continues my evaluation of time travel tales by exploring and, hopefully, answering an extremely pertinent question raised in my earlier examination of another time travel tale by Stephen King: “The Jaunt.” Namely: When one is trapped between the ticking of one second and the next, just how long can eternity last?
“No matter what happens, I’m grateful that I had you here with me. I couldn’t have been here alone. This place is Hell, but it would’ve been so much worse without you.”
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“Time travel is not what you think it's like” is a creepypasta story written by C.M.(Flard) and released on Reddit/NoSleep on 04 February 2019.
From Wikipedia, a creepypasta is . . .
. . . a catch-all term for horror content posted onto the internet. The subject matter of creepypasta varies widely and can include topics such as ghosts, murder, zombies, and haunted television shows and video games. Creepypastas range in length from a single paragraph to lengthy, multi-part series that can span across multiple media types.
Reddit is a massive collection of forums (i.e. subreddits). And, Nosleep is a subreddit that . . .
. . . allows authors to post their own realistic, scary stories, to be enjoyed by a community of readers who often engage with the stories as if they really happened.
I have been unable to locate any biographical information regarding the author of this tale. I have no idea what his / her actual name even is. I only know the author’s screen name—C.M. (Flard).
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Briefly, this creepypasta tale uses a common story trope to furnish the instigating action. A poor undergrad, Clark, is asked to participate in a weird, super secret experiment.
Needing the money, he agrees. Joining two other poor undergrads, Emma and Ryan, they all proceed to the experiment site in the north Georgia mountains.
Once there, a Doctor Olsen welcomed them, guiding them into the “house”—a one-room structure with a single large window. Olsen then explained that the experiment they were going to be participating in was: time travel! The three were to be the first human trials of the time machine. The experiment's objective is to send them three hours into the future. Before leaving, Olsen warned them not to leave the house until he returned for them. It could be very bad if they did.
Following this admonition, Olsen left them to initiate the experiment. Nervously, the three test subjects chat. Then, noticing a light outside, they all stare out the window. Clark turns and looks at Emma’s eyes. At that very instant, there is a bright flash. Then the outside is black, not dark, but utterly black. The three understand that that flash was the activation of the time machine.
Very quickly, they also come to realize that their hearts have stopped and they have no pulse! In addition, they do not get tired, grow hungry, use the bathroom or even need to breathe! Ryan says that this is so, because not even one second has even passed.
Time seemed to drag on, though really they had no idea. Especially when, as Ryan alludes, they are stuck between the seconds. The three struggle with crippling boredom and depression. At some point Ryan stares out the window. Clark and Emma pay him no mind. After some more time passes (Who knows how long?), Ryan announces that he is going outside. Emma and Clark don’t even care enough to try to stop him.
With no way to gauge the passage of time—more time passes—weeks, months, maybe years. The remaining two struggle to stay sane. Something catches Clark’s attention outside the window and he glances at it, thinking he sees something out in the darkness. Next thing he knows, he is slapped hard in the face! He turns to see Emma crying and near hysterical! She tells him that he had been staring out the window for days. Yet for Clark, it seemed that only seconds had passed.
And, still more time passes.
Eventually, Emma makes the connection—rightly or wrongly—that if they both look out of the window into the darkness, time might lose its hold over them. Whether a few more minutes or a billion, billion years—it would all be the same to them. And when the experiment finally ended, they would awaken. Or, they might go mad as Ryan did.
Both sat facing the window. Clark turned to glance at Emma’s face—just as he did before. Then, they both looked out the window into the darkness. Clark found himself floating alone in the universe, seeing random and forgotten memories pass in front of him.
All at once, pop! Clark was back!
He was standing (not sitting!), not facing the window but facing Emma. Ryan stood right behind her. Both were looking out the window, just as at the start of the experiment; as if no time had passed. Suddenly, Ryan screamed and, with a piece of broken glass, stabbed himself, and died (smiling). Through all of this, Emma never moved. Even when the Doctor returned after the experiment was concluded.
The project was subsequently shut down.
Regretfully, Emma never returned to herself.
Clark sincerely prayed that Emma was not still trapped in that room.
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A Complement to Stephen King’s “The Jaunt”
This post not only discusses a time travel story but, more interestingly, how this creepypasta enhances (or complements understanding) a completely different and unrelated tale—a tale discussed on Old Sins Cast Long Shadows in a previous post: Thinking about “The Jaunt” by Stephen King.
And, this is where “The Jaunt” comes in.
To recap, “The Jaunt” is a sci-fi/horror short written by Stephen King — initially published in the June 1981 issue of The Twilight Zone Magazine. A father attempts to calm his wife and two kids before their first “jaunt” or teleportation trip. Telling the story of its history and development, he explains the “one catch” to jaunt technology; that the traveler has to be unconscious in order to jaunt. Otherwise, the traveler goes utterly and completely insane.
His oldest, a son (and a bit of a daredevil) fakes taking the knockout drug and is awake and conscious throughout the jaunt. The teleportation process was nearly instant. Yet for the boy, an eternity had been endured. He repeated over and over: “Longer than you think, Dad!”
King has the father describe his son, following the misguided jaunt, as “a creature older than time” and “the thing that had been his son” and “eyes which were incredibly ancient.” What did King mean by these descriptions? What torments did the boy experience in that eternity between seconds?
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“Time travel is not what you think it's like” was not written to be an enhancement or complement to “The Jaunt;” it is its own quite excellent stand-alone story. To me, that it is a complement to “The Jaunt” is a happy quirk of my convoluted way of thinking.
In “The Jaunt,” the reader experiences the horror through the eyes of a father. It is the son who actually goes through the horror of enduring an eternity in a single moment. The father only sees what effect this has on his boy. The reader must imagine just what the horror was like for the boy to live through.
In “Time travel is not what you think it’s like,” there is no imagining the horror. It’s right there. The reader shares the experience with the characters in the story. Consider, in “The Jaunt,” teleportation is an instantaneous process—as long as the traveler is unconscious; jaunting while conscious equals insanity. “Time travel is not what you think it's like” explores in grim detail what it was like to jaunt while conscious . . . from the inside.
Throughout the tale, the characters discover that they are trapped between moments in time. While so trapped, they do not age, do not starve. They never need air or water. Unfortunately, they are fully conscious and therefore need to address boredom, isolation and other mental health concerns. The agency of evil in both of these tales is time itself. The monster is the human mind turned in upon itself. The situation presented in both tales is analogous to a prisoner left in solitary confinement.
Furthermore, in “The Jaunt,” the travelers are made to sleep, i.e. rendered unconscious, in order to circumvent the jaunt madness. In the tale here, the three young travelers are wide-awake. In the course of “Time travel is not what you think it's like,” the characters come to discover that by staring out of the window, they could enter a trance-like state. This apparent mesmeric effect rendered the viewer effectively unconscious for all practical purposes. Thus, the individual was able to endure the eternity of time travel with sanity intact. Hence, Clark and Emma survived the experience.
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Finally, I would offer an observation on “Time travel is not what you think it's like” that I had touched on earlier in passing. In the story, as the time travel experiment commenced, the three characters' positions relative to each other were noted.
*They were all standing
*Ryan and Emma were staring out the window.
*Clark was looking at Emma’s face, noticing her eyes.
Prior to the experiment’s conclusion, Clark and Emma decided the only way to survive was for the both of them to stare out the window. So, they sat on the floor next to each other and faced the window.
After some immensely indeterminate non-passage of time, the experiment ended. All at once . . . POP!
*They were all standing
*Ryan and Emma were staring out the window.
*Clark was looking at Emma’s face, noticing her eyes.
The three were, as Clark states: “. . . just as we were before . . .”
Wait!
Hadn’t Ryan run away some time previous? And, now he’s back?
Weren’t Emma and Clark sitting next to each other just a moment before? And, now they are standing?
It is as if the creepypasta’s author was leading the reader to the conclusion that this entire experience took place in their minds only.
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I can sincerely recommend the creepypasta “Time travel is not what you think it's like.” It captivates with its sense of impending insanity, growing feelings of hopelessness, and the despair of living one instant for eternity.
Yet, when one couples this with the tale’s strong association to Stephen King’s “The Jaunt” by exploring what the challenges an eternity spent utterly alone can be like, a hidden depth is revealed which I found deeply satisfying.
All of these factors combined to present a superb tale of existential horror.
Good night.
References
Print Resources
Digital Resources
Flard. “Time travel is not what you think it's like.” Reddit NoSleep. Reddit, 04 February
2019, Web. Accessed 30 November 2020. https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/an0s3x/time_travel_is_not_what_you_think_its_like/
Online Resources
Dodgson, Lindsay. “Reddit's r/NoSleep is a special 'horror bubble' for internet writers that has born book deals and even a Steven Spielberg adaptation.” Insider. Insider Intelligence. 25 June 2020. Web. 05 December 2020. https://www.insider.com/history-of-reddit-creepypasta-horror-sub-nosleep-2020-6
Romano, Aja. “The definitive guide to creepypasta—the Internet’s urban legends.” Culture. Daily Dot. 03 March 2020. Web. 02 December 2020. https://www.dailydot.com/culture/definitive-guide-creepypasta-slender-man/
Strik3r2k8. “Steven King's ‘The Jaunt’,
what do you think the ‘limbo’ between the Jaunt portals is?” Reddit, 14 November 2014, Web. Accessed 01
November 2020. https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/2mcqrn/steven_kings_the_jaunt_what_do_you_think_the/
Wikipedia contributors. "Creepypasta." Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 07 November 2020.
Web. 30 November 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepypasta
Wikipedia contributors. "The NoSleep Podcast." Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 15 November 2020.
Web. 11 August 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NoSleep_Podcast
