December 4th

Awakened from a deep slumber, he felt a strong sense of foreboding. The unease in his gut was so powerful that he was unable to fall back asleep so he lay in bed, paralyzed by dread. But what had woken him up? Was it a noise? He couldn’t recall. Was it possible that his own concern had woken up? Was he scared before he woke up or did he only become consumed by fear once he had woken up?

The following morning was awful. He’d slept only a few hours. And while one can get some rest simply from the act of laying in bed, there is no restorative power to do so with a troubled mind. He was more tired than before he’d slept. Bleary-eyed, he arose to shower, brush his teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast - standard morning fare. Then he was off to research mimeography.

Many people asked him what he did for a living. He told them he was a researcher, tried to keep it vague if he could. It was hard to explain that his job wasn’t really “researcher” and the reason he was spending years researching mimeography. It was somewhat convoluted and he didn’t fully believe in the work, but a job was a job and, for some reason, they wanted him. The aim was, once he had mastered the use of a mimeograph, he would be sent back in time to when mimeographs were still in use to make a copy of a letter written in that time. He had not been given many details about the letter he would be copying. One step at a time, they told him.

The most bizarre part of the job is that they didn’t get him an old mimeograph to use or build him one so he could actually practice using one a few times to make sure he was prepared for the task. Instead, they had him reading about mimeographs and how they worked, learning all he could so he would be able to use one when he was sent back in time. He didn’t complain because he was being paid and, as noted earlier, he didn’t much care about the end goal of this project.

He was about six months away from the projected date when his employers felt confident he could be trusted to go back and make a copy of the letter. He was feeling like he’d learned everything he possibly could about mimeographs and was beginning to get frustrated he couldn’t get his hands on one to actually do a test run so he could know he was ready. Hypothetically, he wasn’t barred from tracking down a mimeograph and practice, but his employer wasn’t going to get it for him so that would be money out of his own pocket. And, ultimately, he didn’t care if he somehow did fail to make a copy of the letter - the mysterious letter.

It must have been an important letter considering how much money they were spending preparing him. He sometimes wondered why they didn’t simply do it themselves; they wouldn’t need to pay themselves to research the mimeograph. But he put those thoughts into the part of his brain where he his thoughts about why he wasn’t getting hands on practice got locked away. Ultimately, if they wanted to pay for him to do things this way, it wasn’t his job to point out that it wasn’t the most effective or affordable way for their task to be done.

Once he arrived at work, he pulled out the Big Book of Mimeographs to look at some photos of the machines (again) and Baby’s First Mimeograph because he had noticed his boss always seemed particularly happy to see that he had a book “on deck” to look at next. All the books were provided and on a shelf a few feet away from where he read them so it was ridiculous to think having a second one ready to read meant much, but his boss seemed excited that he appeared to care about the task so much to plan ahead on with a follow-up book. He had no intent to read Baby’s First Mimeograph (again) for reasons that should be obvious from the title along with the reality that he was unlikely to do much research looking at the photographs in the Big Book of Mimeographs. At this point, he’d look at all the books so many times, it was impossible for him to read them again. He just looked at the photos as art, appreciating the composition and such. He was surprised his bosses were having him research for multiple years considering that they had only provided about a dozen books for him to use for research. But, once again, that thought got locked away in the back of his mind. Money is money.

While they had been somewhat secretive about the letter he would be copying, they had been extremely nonchalant when he’d asked about the time-travel. He’d almost felt stupid for having asked with the way they’d responded. But there response had worked because, despite being bored to tears by the books, he didn’t actually spend much time thinking about how being sent back in time would work.

Suddenly his boss burst into the library, if you could call a room with a dozen books in it that. He was startled out of his daydream and tried to push Baby’s First Mimeograph forward on the table a little so it would be noticed. But his boss wasn’t paying attention to what books were out.

“Today’s the day!”

“What?”

“The board has discussed it and you’ve researched enough. You are ready!”

“The board? What bo- today?! I might be ready, but surely I should get a little bit more notice that I am about to be sent back in time. I mean, don’t you think?”

“If we had warned you, you would have told the people in your life. And we can’t have any loose ends.”

“But I’ve been coming here for years now. I know I signed a confidentiality form, but I’ve definitely let a few things slip to a person or two in that time.”

“Yes, but you didn’t let it slip that today is when you are leaving. Because you didn’t know… until right now.”

“I mean, it’s suddenly sounding like you don’t trust me. If you don’t even trust me, why did you hire me out of all the people in the world to do th-”

“You just admitted that you’ve told people about this project a moment ago.”

“Yeah, I might have said one or two things, but I kept it vague.”

“Perfect. So anyway, follow me to the room.”

“Come on. What if I have some things I need to get sorted out before I go back in time? What if I have affairs to resolve? I mean, we’ve never discussed this before, but how long am I going back in time for?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long am I going to be gone on this trip for?”

“It’s not really a trip. You’ll travel through time to get there, but I wouldn’t call it a ‘trip.’”

“I feel like you’re being ominous…”

“Well, I mean, you’re asking things like ‘how long’ and you are worried about making sure things are all sorted out in your life like it matters if your life is a mess when you go back in time and never return again.”

“What?!”

“We don’t have technology to send you forward in time. And even if we did, they wouldn’t have that technology back in the time we are sending you and it is so far back that you can’t just live in that time until it is invented because you would die of old age - I mean, you will die of old age waiting for it. You will go back in time and when you are back there, you will continue aging until you die and the technology will not be invented before that happens.”

“But - you are asking me to copy a letter for you on a mimeograph. How am I going to get you the copy of that letter if I don’t come back?”

“Well, haven’t you seen movies where someone back a long time ago hides something somewhere and it is preserved over the years until someone in the present finds it?”

“No, I don’t think so…”

“I’m not sure if I have either, but I don’t know how else I would be able to come up with that concept unless I saw it in a movie. That doesn’t matter. Just hypothetically, we have that concept if we were having you copy a letter for us and while it might seem like a slow way to get ahold of a copy of the letter from your perspective as you age through the years, from our perspective, it would instantly be in the agreed upon spot the moment you went back in time assuming that you were successful in your task - yes, I must have seen this in a movie at some point. But we aren’t actually having you copy a letter on a mimeograph.”

“Then what are you having me do?”

“Go back in time.”

“But then why did you have me studying mimeography for years?!”

“Well, we needed to keep you busy while we build the time travel machine.”

“Why didn’t you just wait until you had built the machine and then hired someone?”

“Well, we also wanted you to feel like you were a part of the process so you would care and be gung-ho about getting sent back in time.”

“But I wouldn’t have felt like a part of the process as soon as I found out you were having me do busy work for years because the research doesn’t matter.”

“Well…hmm, you do have a point. Either way, what’s done is done and now we need to get you sent back in time.”

“But why?”

“We want to see if our time travel machine works.”

“But how will you know if it worked?”

“You are starting to feel like you are stalling, but you are also raising some decent points. I guess maybe it would be best to have you make a copy of a letter on a mimeograph to leave it somewhere for us to find so we know that you did go back in time. See? All your research did serve a purpose.”

“What letter would you even want a copy of?”

“Well, that is a difficult question. We’d need to be positive that you left it, of course. I guess maybe you should write us a letter and leave it for us to find…”

“And you want me to copy the letter I write on a mimeograph?”

“Well, no. I guess there would be no point in making a copy when you could just leave us the original. Anyway, quit asking so many questions and stalling. It’s time to send you back in time.”