2024-12-28 “Show Time” for Paul (born 1910)

Paul Charm took his place on the stool, center stage, at Tom Jenkins’s American Heritage Theater. The opening trailer was running, so he knew he had 3 minutes to look interesting. And think.

The days were counting down until the 2024… 2025 Brooklyn Moment of Time Travelers would see their first mission. It was, for them, too, show time.

The merging of memories had proceeded well, though some of them experienced some confusion and a little distress. The Agency assured him they would get used to it.

Paul wasn’t sure. He’d been in contact with The Agency since June, and he still wasn’t used to it.

The Agency relied on the subconscious for a lot of what they had planned. Principally, through dreams and memories. They communicated with Paul through dreams. Very vivid dreams.

The Mission team—Kent, Hannah, Merritt, and Emma—had access to their own memories, plus those of what would be the 1882 Manhattan Moment, the 1985 Off-line Brooklyn Moment, and the 1985 Virginia Moment.

Paul was ready for them to ask how the merging worked. He had a model. Starting with the model that Instants propagated through existence like riding waves, and Instants 8 years apart were linked, he’d go from there.

Instants rode atop the corresponding waves. Above the waves, like air over an ocean, Paul conceived the idea of the ether. 

At some point in history, the idea that radio waves needed a medium through which to propagate was common. Ether was that medium, but was later abandoned. Paul would appropriate it.

He’d explain that the subconscious—dreams and memories—of each Time Traveler in each Moment in each Instant was connected to the ether. Memories would, when they slept, rise into the ether to be later retrieved by their duplicates. And that all of the Time Travelers shared the same ether explained why they felt so close to each other. 

Paul was sure his model worked for what actually happened. It might not be exactly how The Agency did it, but it explained it very accurately.