The
first time you jump, you think you’re going to die. And the thing is, you do die. First you die, and then everyone else dies,
and then the sun dies, and then everything dies. It all happens so fast that
you don’t even have time to remember how you died (for the record, and take it
from someone who’s seen it too many times to count: it’s always in a filthy bed
somewhere, and it’s always slow, and the people who are there are never the
people you want to be there) before it all starts over again, in reverse: the
universe is born, the sun ignites, life crawls out of the ocean, and all the
stupid monkeys fuck and fight their way through the centuries until you are
born, alien and screaming, and you watch yourself grow up--and then there you
are, in a new world, and it all happened in less than a second. If you don’t
take the time to watch it, it just looks like a light bulb turning off, and
then back on. Everything goes dark, and then explodes back into light.
But you should take the time, because time is what the spinner has to give. My
tenth jump, maybe, is when I finally slowed down and had a look about. All the
cool apocalyptic shit, I saw, and then I saw a new world being born, the
dinosaurs, the first men, Shakespeare, da Vinci,
whatever. Who cares? You can get that shit in a history book, and anyway, it
wasn’t the real Bill S. and Leo da V. (And yeah, I
know what Winter would say to that, but fuck him: my
world is the real world, and I think the physics back me up.) But what sticks
in my mind is this: I saw myself, around seventeen, on a football pitch,
kicking the ball around. It was raining. There was a car, an old VW, on the
edge of the pitch. Over the rain I could just barely hear MacGowan
singing “Fairytale of New York” on the VW’s tinny
speakers. Johanna was in the car, wearing her dad’s school tie. She had her
window down, and the rain got inside, misting up off the door into her face.
She was waiting for me to say something. “Fuck you,” I said. “Go to
I tell myself that wasn’t the real me. That wasn’t the real Johanna. I’m the
real me. I met Winter when I was nineteen, became a
Detective. That boy on the pitch was beaten and left for dead behind a
But every jump, no matter what else changes, that one night in Headford is always the same. I always say the same thing.
Johanna always leaves. Because it’s not the big things that
make up a life. It’s not your job or where you live or how you die or
who you married or who’s president or any of that shit. Those things are
different in every world, and it doesn’t matter. The little things stay the
same. You say the same horrible things to the people you love. You make the
same wrong decisions. You get that same hollow feeling in your head at five in
the morning, when Saturday’s already gone and Sunday’s not yet arrived. You
give in and give up, because that’s always easier.
Winter says that what we can do, creating the spinners and making the jumps, is
a gift. Sure. A gift is just the point at which your willingness to give meets
my willingness to accept. When those two waves meet, they collapse, and Boom!
It’s a fucking toaster. But Ma always said it was the thought that counts, and she was right: the toaster isn’t even real--what
matters is the giving, and the accepting. The taking.
The universe has given me something, and I’m taking it. All I can do is take it.
© 2003 Gardner Linn