Read Online Telemachus Rising by Pierce Youatt - Free Book Online Page A

or walk around on clouds or anything.  I think bad people just die.”
    “No hell?”
    “Not existing is bad enough.  Besides, I don't really believe in the devil.  I don't think people need a supernatural excuse to make bad decisions.”
    I nodded, and a few more miles of pavement passed beneath us before I spoke again.
    “I don't know if I believe it, but there is an idea I've been kicking around lately.”
    “Let's hear it.”
    “Time is relative, right?  So right now, today, is no more or less real than tomorrow or yesterday.  It's just a matter of perspective.  If that's true, then why does today seem so much more important than tomorrow, and why does tomorrow seem so much more important than yesterday?  Yesterday feels like it's dead and gone, but tomorrow is still full of promise.  Our perception of time is all messed up.  Sometimes it feels like time flies, and other times it feels like it drags.  And when you're really familiar with something, whether it's driving a usual route home, or cooking a meal, or hitting a baseball, you magically have more time to think while you're doing it than before you knew what you were doing.  I barely have time to blink when a major league pitcher throws the ball, but a professional ballplayer has time to see it leave the pitcher's hand, judge how fast it's going, predict where it will cross the plate, start a swing, and adjust that swing to intercept the path of the ball.  Their eyes don't see any faster than mine do.  Light doesn't travel any faster for them than it does for me.”
    “You totally lost me.”
    “Sorry.  What I'm trying to say is, time itself is different from the way we perceive it.  Maybe our brains are limited.  We can only take in so much information all at once, so time moves at a certain speed.  When we're really familiar with something, we can filter and use the information better, so time slows down.  Same thing if we're really bored and our brains don't have much information to process.  Time slows down.  We have extra processing power left over to notice other things.  If we're more than just our bodies, then dying would set us free from our brains' limitations.  We'd be able to experience time the way it really is, not the way we perceive it now, as human beings.”
    “Um...wow.”
    “It makes sense in my head, I'm just not explaining it very well.”
    “No, I think I see what you're getting at, it just sounds kind of unnecessarily complicated.'
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Honestly?  It sounds like you picked a conclusion and then found a way to justify it.”
    “Fair enough.  I don't even know if I believe it, it's just something I've been thinking about.  I guess I kind of like it.”
    “At least it's something different.”
    We both went quiet again and let the radio fill the silence.  I continued trying to organize my thoughts so I could explain myself more clearly, but I kept getting tangled up in the reasoning.  Maybe she was right about me starting with the conclusion and working my way backward.  It didn't really matter, though.  I didn't know what the right answer was, and neither did anybody else.
    “You know -”
    I looked over when she didn't seem to respond.  Her head was resting against the window.  I must've been thinking to myself longer than I'd realized.  It was well past midnight and she was sound asleep.  I'd miss the conversation, but good for her.  It was nice having her asleep next to me.  She looked pretty, half curled up in the seat the way she was.  She didn't wake up when we reached the bridge, even though it was all lit up.
    The Mackinac Bridge is long – one of the longest suspension bridges in the world.  There's an open grate section in the middle.  During the day, you can see the water underneath you.  It makes it easier to imagine going over the edge.  In fact, they offer a service for people who are too nervous to drive across – they'll drive your car over the