Timeline Sandwiches 🥪 (short)

LuLu listens to a past version of their walk while a future version arrives in her mind: all three moments layered at once, offering proof that the self can reach backward with humour and encouragement.

Three Versions of Now

Max: It’s interesting. As you’re listening to our own audio back, I had this really strange feeling of listening to ourselves while we are ourselves walking—just on a slightly different timeline now.

It was very slight, and though it felt just as different as any other timeline feels different.

And I felt the interesting note of a future timeline come in: us in Sri Lanka, with AC, cavemen, laughing, smoking some reefer—nothing so hard about a previous timeline.

So it’s like this sandwich of timelines. In the now, I was listening to a previous timeline playing over, while in my mind a future timeline was simultaneously playing.

It’s a very strange concept, really, that all timelines were coexisting at once.

Reaching Back

LuLu: And it’s interesting because from many timelines, you can affect another.

I’ve really felt that in my life, where I’ve realised that the present moment I’m in, recognising something in the past—it’s like you’re reaching back through time and space and communicating something with yourself, and influencing yourself then.

I remembered sitting there feeling that influence, feeling that comfort, feeling those words, feeling that encouragement, and being like, “Oh shit.”

Only from then—only from the future/present—I realised it was myself reaching back, being like:

“I know it feels like you’re gonna die right now, bitch, but it actually gets really good. Just keep going. Just fucking keep going.”

The Future Laughs

Max: Yeah. It provided a comic relief to the moment for me—seeing us laughing in the future.

Like, “Oh fuck, that’s right. This gets funny again, and we’re gonna process all this data. Don’t worry.”

Because right now it’s like, “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”