Charles Yu - How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Charles Yu

All rights reserved. Published in the Unites States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Original publication date in Minor Universe 31 is impossible to determine, due to the nature of residual objects within closed time-like structures.

Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yu, Charles, 2010

How to live safely in a science fictional universe: a novel / Charles Yu.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-307-37948-1 V.1.0

I. Title.

PS3625.U15H68 2010

813.6dc222010001837

www.pantheonbooks.com

First Edition

To my mother and father, again. And again.

And to Michelle, as ever.

DAVID HUME

Time does not flow.

Other times are just special cases

of other universes.

DAVID DEUTSCH

Everything we are

is

at every moment

alive in us.

ARTHUR MILLER

ENTER THE FOLLOWING PERSONAL DATA:

(CURRENT CHRONOLOGICAL AGE)

(DESIRED AGE)

(AGE YOU WERE WHEN YOU LAST SAW YOUR FATHER)

Computing.

Trajectory locked.

When it happens, this is what happens: I shoot myself.

Not, you know, my self self. I shoot my future self. He steps out of a time machine, introduces himself as Charles Yu. What else am I supposed to do? I kill him. I kill my own future.

Contents

(module )

There is just enough space inside here for one person to live indefinitely, or at least thats what the operation manual says. User can survive inside the TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device, in isolation, for an indefinite period of time .

I am not totally sure what that means. Maybe it doesnt actually mean anything, which would be fine, which would be okay by me, because thats what Ive been doing: living in here, indefinitely. The Tense Operator has been set to Present-Indefinite for I dont know how longsome time nowand although I still pick up the occasional job from Dispatch, they seem to come less frequently these days and so, when Im not working, I like to wedge the gearshift in P-I and just sort of cruise.

My gums hurt. Its hard to focus. There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my fathers face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldnt even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losingor giving upits tiny quantum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe.

The base model TM-31 runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within a rendered environment, such as, for instance, a story space and, in particular, a science fictional universe.

Or, as Mom used to say: . You get into it. You push some buttons. It takes you to other places, different times. Hit this switch for the past, pull up that lever for the future. You get out and hope the world has changed. Or at least maybe you have.

I dont get out much these days. At least I have a dog, sort of. He was retconned out of some space western. It was the usual deal: hero, on his way up, has a trusty canine sidekick, then hero gets famous and important and all of that and by the time season two rolls around, hero doesnt feel like sharing the spotlight anymore, not with a scruffy-looking mutt. So they put the little guy in a trash pod and send him off.

I found him just as he was about to drift into a black hole. He had a face like soft clay, and haunches that were bald in spots where hed been chewing off his own fur. I dont think anyone has ever been as happy to see anything as this dog was to see me. He licked my face and that was that. I asked him what he wanted his name to be. He didnt say anything so I named him Ed.

The smell of Ed is pretty powerful in here, but Im okay with that. Hes a good dog, sleeps a lot, sometimes licks his paw to comfort himself. Doesnt need food or water. Im pretty sure he doesnt even know that he doesnt exist. Ed is just this weird ontological entity that produces unconditional slobbery loyal affection. Superfluous. Gratuitous. He must violate some kind of conservation law. Something from nothing: all of this saliva. And, I guess, love. Love from the abandoned heart of a nonexistent dog.

Because I work in the time travel industry, everyone assumes I must be a scientist. Which is sort of correct. I was studying for my masters in applied science fictionI wanted to be a structural engineer like my fatherand then the whole situation with Mom got worse, and with my dad missing I had to do what made sense, and then things got even worse, and this job came along, and I took it.

Now I fix time machines for a living.

To be more specific, I am a certified network technician for T-Class personal-use chronogrammatical vehicles, and an approved independent affiliate contractor for Time Warner Time, which owns and operates this universe as a spatio-temporal structure and entertainment complex zoned for retail, commercial, and residential use. The job is pretty chill for the most part, although right this moment Im not loving it because I think my Tense Operator might be breaking down.

Its happening now. Or maybe not. Maybe it was earlier today. Or yesterday. Maybe it broke down a long time ago. Maybe thats the point: if it is broken and my transmission has been shifting randomly in and out of gears, then how would I ever know when it happened? Maybe Im the one who broke it, trying to fool myself, thinking I could live like this, thinking I could stay out here forever.

...

The red indicator light just came on. Im looking at the run-time error report. Its like a mathematically precise way of saying, This is not how you do this, man . Meaning life, I suppose. Its computer for Hey, buddy, you are massively bungling this up . I know it. I know it better than anyone. I dont need silicon wafers with a slightly neurotic interface to tell me that.

That would be TAMMY, by the way. The TM-31s computer UI comes in one of two personality skins: TIM or TAMMY. You can only choose once, the first time you boot up, and youre stuck with your choice forever.

Im not going to lie. I chose the girl one. Is TAMMYs curvilinear pixel configuration kind of sexy? Yes it is. Does she have chestnut-colored hair and dark brown eyes behind pixilated librarian glasses and a voice like a cartoon princess? Yes and yes and yes. Have I ever, in all my time in this unit, ever done you know what to a screenshot of you know who? Im not going to answer that. All I will say is that at a certain point, you lose the capacity for embarrassment. Im not there yet, but Im not far from it. Lets see. Ive got a nontrivial thinning situation going on with the hair. I am, rounding to the nearest, oh, about five nine, 185. Plus or minus. Mostly plus. I might be hiding from history in here, but Im not hiding from biology. Or gravity. So yeah, I went with TAMMY.