7/28/16

Time
By Dave Ludford


Brannigan lay back on his bunk and

Brannigan lies back on his bunk and will

Brannigan once lay back on his bunk and staring at the ceiling

And thought, thinking:

There may be delays

There are delays

There were delays

There may be delays

Between then, now and the future, whenever that was. The MX2 android had confused…is confusing…or will confuse, at some point in the future, every tense and perception of time we will become familiar with. It had gone, or may well go, completely berserk. Or maybe it will become sane and I will once become was mad, he thinks. He may well look across at the digital time display on the wall of his room which once tells the time at whichever point you were, are, or wished to ever be. The MX2 had shown, or will show, ideas above its station, and progresses to become an interferer with time instead of a menial robot which will carry out menial domestic serving tasks. Perhaps it will show frustration and anger when its work has been criticized, or had been criticized, or would be commented on in a negative way at some point in the past. Brannigan will become unsure, but knew for certain that the MX2 was unstable, or would become so.

It will upset the guests arriving for the Meridian Conference that will, if it hasn’t already, re-drawn the boundaries of Xarac 9 (or Earth 6 as it will become colloquially known.) But perhaps the planet with so many Earth-like qualities hasn’t been discovered yet, and may well never be.

Damn it, Brannigan may well think, I’m here now, so it must have been discovered. And how will MX2 upset the delegates? It has developed a belief that it will be created to perform more than mere domestic drudgery. Serving meals may well be, at some point in the future, beyond it. Only time will tell. It has rebelled and may well interfere with our former perceptions of time.

Brannigan feels tired, and closing his eyes he once fell asleep, exhausted.


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Dave Ludford is a short story writer and poet from Nuneaton, England. His short fiction has appeared in Fever Dreams and Schlock! magazines and is upcoming in Sirens Call.