Chapter 10e
Such a simple thing to be nagging at me. Even then, in the face of fate itself, I could not shake my own simple questions about measurable time as part of something eternal and infinite. The answer is what I've been told, each moment is every moment, and it makes sense to me yet it simultaneously doesn't. I can't explain how that adds up to anything because I know it doesn't. I can't even explain what I mean to say.
I know that time goes on forever. It, by nature, cannot stop. Each moment, then, as part of a frame of time that large, is infinitely small and can't exist. It is indistinguishable from any other moment and so it is every other moment.
No, that's wrong. It's a year. Somewhere there is a year. The year is at least 1988, possibly much later. I turn to ask Paul again but he's not there. I've gone home and I am alone. I hate it but I have to ponder the answer myself for now. I sit and put my head in my hands and as I think it begins to rain.
If it is after 1988, then why did my mind go to that year? There was something, wasn't there? Something must have stopped us there. No, something must have stopped me there. If the year is later than that then I have not progressed along with it and have been left behind.
Why am I even wasting my time on a question like this? Time is too short, I thought. Outside, the rain was still coming down, even though I'd abandoned that thought for the moment, hoping another might come along. I had half of the thought but time is funny, you can't narrow down your spot in time by saying something came before or after. The distance is still infinite.
Outside, the rain was still pouring down. The waters were starting to rise and the streets were starting to flood. And when I have an answer, what then? There is no answer, not to that last question. There is no 'what then.' I can feel it. I'm looking forward to when the rain stops and I can step outside but it won't stop and there won't be an outside to step into.
Is that the consequence of a year? I don't really think so. I think the year is just a clue to the consequence. Maybe it's not even that much, maybe it's a red herring put down to distract me from the world collapsing.