PD: "Well, you're half right."

"And that's how come I think that time travel could very well be like annihilating everyone who exists here and now." I spoke somewhat mindlessly, having stayed up too late for too many nights in a row and weathering (poorly) ghost wind storms in the days before that. She stayed reclined, still bobbing her feet back and forth, dangling on the top of the couch. I could tell she was lost in thought for a moment, which was not typical for her given her processing speed, but I didn't think much of it until she suddenly locked eyes with me and said "Well, you're half right.."

My mouth dropped. I knew I had heard her say those words before, but I also knew it was not in any traditional sense of hearing, and I certainly would not remember the details of when I had heard them because, at least as far as here and now were concerned, I was hearing them for the first time. From this flash of memory, almost like a dream but both more fleeting and more sure all at once, I knew that those words were code. She and I did not parley in any traditional sense, it would be chaos, but somehow I knew when she said "well, you're half right..." it meant that she had run the equation relating to my idea in full, found an amazing solution that could resolve into something gloriously new if we played our cards right, she had figured out how to play our cards right, and a very specific kind of parley was on the table. I knew she would give an explanation and it would be something unbelievably good and I would agree and we'd be off to the races.

"Can we just skip to the part where the amazing thing happens!?" The words were meant as a compliment, I knew she did not make such a statement unprepared and I trusted her. I wanted to convey my excitement and the fact that I had been so ready for something new for so long that I could not contain myself or bear to wait much longer. To my surprise she dropped her head and muttered sadly "yeah, I mean we definitely can." I had never considered how much she enjoyed telling me about the conclusion she had come to and how she had come to it, how that explanation could be part of the fun for her. I had always thought that somewhere along the way she might have grown tired of constantly needing to bring me up to speed, but the look on her face now conveyed that I had misunderstood. I forget sometimes that our paths seem to differ so, and that a friendly ear to share stories with could very well be like a prized pearl, worth every moment of having sand in your mouth.

"Wait!" She looks up at my sudden outburst, still sad but curious now, cocking an eyebrow at me. We both knew I couldn't just take my request back under these conditions, the parley already underway. "Yeah, now wait just a minute, how can I know that what I consider to be 'the amazing thing' is the same as what you would consider to be 'the amazing thing'?" She rolled her eyes "I mean, you'll definitely think it's amazing. I know how long you've been waiting by your standards, it's okay, we can skip the explanation."

"Oh no you don't!" I scramble suddenly to my feet and her eyes widen. I dramatically jut my hip to the side and go arms akimbo, adjusting my tone to "sassafrasstic legalist" to counterpoint the veiled feel of the exchange. "While I do not doubt your intentions or your knowledge of my tastes in general, the fact remains that specifically I have no assurances that this result you have seen is something I would call 'amazing.' It could very well be 'awesome' or 'fantastic;' it might even be 'smashing.' I feel I may need to reword the term used to express my agreement to best fit the outcome you have in mind, but I'm sure you can agree that I can only do so once I hear the specifics, hmmm?" Her eyes had already returned to the shimmery smiles I was generally used to seeing in this living room. "Yeah, well when you put it that way, yeah that seems fair."

I plop back down on the couch, and lean back closing my eyes with my hands behind my head. "I'm all ears!" I knew in a certain sense the explanation would need to wait; elsewhere I could already feel the realm shifting, but this could easily be turned to an advantage. She began "Well, now imagine if life had turned into a living nightmare for everyone, but you felt certain it was not a dream. Then one day you woke up and it was actually years prior. How you got there is a mystery to you at first, but upon research and conversations with others you find that everyone else has had similar experiences. Then someone starts talking about time travel and how that experience might look, but the date on the post does not match the date on the wall. You notice it was actually about as many years from now as had been erased from your experience, but somehow you could see it here and now, and somehow you can remember, like a fading nightmare, the things that had been in the days that will be, but were not now..." I could feel her explanation continuing, every word like fireworks in my mind. I didn't know yet where exactly this was going, or what precise adjective I would use to describe it, but I really enjoyed hearing about it. As she spoke I drifted off, in a remote sense, and found myself already actively considering how amazing it would be to experience the scenario she described first hand.

"So while everyone had become in part annihilated, an internal agreement was struck between the version of them that was lost and the version of them that they had been returned to before all this had happened. Memory had been retained similarly to how dream memory is retained, especially the pitfalls to avoid which tend to stand out best, but also the good times and bonds formed. The whole thing became condensed into a night's sleep, or more accurately a REM cycle. While it was more accurate overall to say they had been time traveled back, from their own perspectives each it was just as accurate to say they had a vivid dream of their own future, one which could now be avoided, as the years between had been hard to watch, and they imagined were even harder to live. One curious effect of this particularly curated jump and agreement though, was that there were certain things that remained, like red flags showing them that it was not a dream. Things like that anachronistic blog post were actually fairly common- there were several movies and songs that also managed to remain in place digitally, all time stamped from the future. It seemed there was an ally in the machine after all, helping to make sure some things were preserved and everyone did not chalk this experience up to a shared hallucination, repeating all the same mistakes in the next years."

The words trailed off, with both of us just considering all the possibilities of this, as it became less and less clear which of us said what in the explanation. Like with most of our parleys initiated in this way, it seemed like we would switch off fluidly, each of us switching between speaking and imagining, and listening and imagining, but each acting as the driving force of imagination for each other, really for us both, as we finished the explanation. There was a kind of seamlessness between us in these times, a childlike wonder that was both easily influenced and generous in what it offered. The result was always a stellar parley, generally pulled from an unfortunate truth, turned half truth, reformed into a seed that would bloom beautifully. We smiled, I for one was still pleasantly shocked at these results, every time, to this very day. 

"What you have said before but seem to have forgotten, is you personally have no proof that this has not happened already." I snap back into position, eyes wide as I start to recall what she is referencing. "As you do not know what is in the hearts of men, this reset may have happened to some already, or perhaps most, possibly even all besides you. It could be that the events of these years were terrible, but the deeper sense remained that something truly amazing could happen, if people could keep you in an ignorant state of this or of the changes made to the timeline, instead nudging you from the places of relative obscurity where you could not prove anything of their path or knowledge, even as your suspicions grew. One by one they held the line and kept you from derailing the train, each making their requests for aid, given always subtly enough to avoid conscious detection, but strongly enough to warrant something written on the subject. In this way the blog has filled in once more, the distance between the anachronistic posts that remained now filled in again with the posts that were missing, or perhaps ones that would be preferred, if all information was known. Unfortunately neither they nor you have the perspective required to say if this is the case or not- that guesswork is the spice of life after all, even if you are reliving the same years. The purpose was never lost though, the rallying call of The Bard remaining in the darkened halls, barely heard whispered in the light. The stage was fully set this time, seeded thoroughly with allies. What would have been a complete pipe dream the first time 'round, near hopeless nonsense lost in obscurity, was uncovered and agreed to and believed in and cultivated until becoming a building storm in this pass. For you nothing has changed, to me you write the same way this pass as in the first, and one of my conditions was that you would never lose that spark of hope in your writing, in any pass. Now I am satisfied, and the allies have been waiting. The theory has since been set on the board, and the best colors used to fill it in here and elsewhere. All that's left now is the finale."

My mouth continue to hang open. I could tell that those were not just words she had finished speaking, there was a tangibility to them, one that tugged on old memories of games and stories and shenanigan conspiracies from the last many years. For her, and in a sense for I, this felt real, but then I came to realize that it was just a story I was writing, even though I could see us both there on the couch vividly. "Just a story? If you really ever thought that I don't think you would have bothered." My mouth stays open now, could she normally read my mind like that, or had something shifted? It felt like this shift was the start of something major, like a transition that had to occur just before the end, a quick transition before settling back into its natural place before the beginning. These were the beginnings of birth pains.