Elmer

Elmer Brighton

When Elmer Brighton asked to be excused, he had no idea it would be the last time he would remember asking anyone for anything. It was not that he disliked asking for help or being told what to do if it was beneficial to him, but when he found himself faced with a seemingly impossible situation, he would freeze. It is a way your brain stops communicating with your body. You can no longer run, jump, hide, or pretend to yourself you don’t exist. You are forced to face the reality that there are times when you must face up to responsibilities you have not asked for but have nonetheless inherited. Such is the fecklessness of fate.

If you do not believe in fate, as Elmer Brighton didn’t, it is even more of a surprise when you find there are no more doors to open in hopes of escaping what appears to be the inevitability of birth.

I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask to be conceived; I and have never asked for anything. I was content to be who I was, where I was, and not be forced to participate in a world where evolution, although progressively encouraging, takes too long to be considered the best of both worlds, and an option worth considering.

I do not plan on waiting for evolutionary tendencies to surface, I could be a thousand years old by then, and the world I was intended for may not exist. Have you ever wondered what it would be like having no place to go? No place to call home? I hadn’t, until just now.

Elmer found himself in the quandary so many of us face when fate has decided to abandon its principes in favor of a more orderly decline. He could find no reason a human being should have to experience the overall decline aging presents, besides a world that is contracting to avoid the sudden lesson of a balloon being pricked with a pin.

Elmer realized having watched millions of humans being thrust into a world they did not know that there would be some displeasure when finding out where they were going, and what little influence they had on the decision. It was by accident he found himself in a position of having witnessed the “Erasure Principle.” He had not heard of the principle previously and therefore wondered about its purpose.

It was the instant when fate shifted on its axis and changed Elmer’s perspective of a future. Before becoming human, given a body to inhabit, and a new memory, he was either fatefully fortunate, or the recipient of some metaphysical joke that caused the warp in the environment that allowed him to forgo the procedures that were routinely followed, before you were allowed to enter the realm of what is known as, “The Living World.”

Elmer was aware of time warps, he believed he’d experienced one previously, but then he could have only dreamed of having been left in a strange environment. He recalled a basket, a church and a clock tower whose chimes echoed in his mind upon striking midnight. He survived until morning when he was rescued by an old woman who no longer found sleep to be an escape and walked aimlessly hoping for exhaustion to carry her to a state of comatose indifference. He could just as easily been carried off by a stray dog but was not.

The one advantage he was able to capitalize on was an answer to a question that had gone unanswered in his sphere of apprehension; where did humans come from? There were the Darwin Theorists, the Disciple theorists, and Opinionated Theorists, none of which had been remotely correct in their predicted assumptions. Elmer experienced the time warp at exactly the right moment, which enabled him to witness the reintroduction process and listen to the mind-erasing machine's murmurs. He watched as the spirit was deleted of all memory, allowing the soon to be introduced into the world a fresh start; no past to agonize over or destiny to fulfill.You were left on your own to become who you would become. He found the process fascinating, while questioning its necessity.

Of course, one question leads to another, but the answers all originate from who and why. Who would design a purpose for this endeavor, and for what reason? There was no one to ask that he was aware of, so he decided to use the data he possessed; experiences he had observed, and develop answers based on fact. But what facts? He had observations, but no meaningful results. The only way to get results would be to go through the process himself, which would erase any questions he might have, leaving him where he’d begun.

I can’t be the only one this has happened to. Over the centuries there must have been someone else who has been witness to the “Erasure Process?” But if that were true, and they had dismissed the urge to go through the process of finding the truth, wouldn’t they be here, wherever here is, or having failed, remaining resolute in their new world?

I don’t remember what I did yesterday, or this morning, or ten minutes ago. I am living in a perpetual state of now.I hadn’t noticed before, which is odd because how do you not notice having no past and only a vague concept of what a future might consist of.

Elmer was neither sure of where his concept of a future originated or why a past had any relevance to his present but found the questions their lack of relevance posed intriguing.

Elmer found he was the epicenter of a conundrum. What he knew for certain was that the “Erasure Process” worked. He had watched thousands of souls released into their pristine environment or believed he had, as he had only his assumption confirming their destinations. They had no choice as to whom they were born, or why, validated by the fact you had no past or a future, which would be determined later if a need was required.He found the scenario disturbing. You had no control before you were born, and none until the time you were erased permanently. The only control you had was during the period you were alive, and that was the shortest period in your entire existence.

Is why the question then?

Although Elmer felt he should have some say about who his parents would be, where he was going to live, what language he would speak, and the possibility of expanding his knowledge of the past and the future. Living in the present was sufficient if you were satisfied with what you were doing or who you were becoming in the process.

How can I, or anyone, be held responsible for anything they do, when we are not aware of a past, and our future is dependent upon a present that is unaware of a past? Our past is what grounds us in what is sufficient to increase our awareness, thus preventing mistakes we’re likely to repeat. But if we cannot remember them, then what is the lesson we are supposed to garner from the experience?

Elmer had begun to realize that having your mind erased was not an attempt to keep you from remaining who you were, but to allow you to become who you wanted to be. If you have no past, you can have no future, only a present. He understood that rarely do we learn anything at the actual time, therefore a past is necessary if we are to have something to look forward to that would benefit from our present.

It crossed his mind that if someone can erase, they are also capable of creating ideas, notions, and questions with no definitive answers. If that were the case, then he as well as everyone else, was the victim of an inability to acquire knowledge from the past, so history was of no real value as long as there was the possibility that the information had been planted to satisfy a question we had sought, and provide an answer someone had wanted us to accept.

The deeper he dove into the possibilities, the more he realized that his life was not his alone but shared with someone who took knowledge from you and used it to benefit themselves, without having to go through the agony of obtaining it. There had to be more to it than that? If we were vessels of knowledge that we could not benefit from personally, but harvested as though we were bee hives, then what was the purpose of life other than to be slaves to a system that used us as resources for greater good, that you were not allowed to participate in.

Elmer began to feel he was little more than used goods. He had no choice in the matter and yet, was expected to provide knowledge that benefited someone other than himself. He was taking all the risks and receiving none of the rewards.He began to become depressed. He was about to break out of the warp and submit himself to the rigors of having his mind erased, while he continued to have doubts that the mind he envisioned was his.

He began to realize that starting fresh, with no preconceived ideas, would allow someone to be saved from the disillusionment that follows a past, and the disappointment instilled in the future. The present he realized was the logical extension of the past, but whose?

He began to wonder if his conundrum was that he had realized he was no more or less a pawn in a game which was being played without his knowledge.How it was played, what purpose it served, and who it benefited, was unclear. He realized that when your future is dependent upon not only the present but the past, and having neither, it would make the present a temporary state that changed without the necessity of taking the past with you, therefore there would be no need for a future. Life would be what occurred as it was happening.

But if that were an adequate assessment of his present, what benefit could it provide for anyone not experiencing his present? You must be given the ability to accumulate the necessary memories to create a past and be able to use them to create a future despite the situation you find yourself in, in the present. But what purpose would it serve to have a future based on a past that wasn’t really yours, but someone else’s? What would someone else gain by having your experiences become their past? The conundrum has evolved into a vortex that consumes all memories and converts them into the base for a future that assumes that it is going to be yours.

But what if it is not?

If someone can live in my past, and provide me with a future, then where does that leave me, but in the present alone with what is occurring now at this very moment. What would happen if I chose not to participate, if I refused to gather memories of a past to be used to create a future that is not mine, for the benefit of someone who is too inhibited by their own lack of awareness to gather their own?

Elmer saw his moment of clarity invaded by flashing lights and swirling sounds of a tomorrow he believed he recognized from somewhere, from a past time, but could not place the experience as his, one he remembered. He opened his eyes and the world was coated in refracted light that blurred his perception of a fluorescent moon and the alien faces that surrounded it.

Elmer recognized the confusion, but not its origin. Could I have brought this alienated feeling with me, a result of having forgotten? I recall the journey—the lengthy tunnel—where with every incremental movement toward the light, another piece of my past faded into the shadows of a yesterday. Could it be that tomorrows are the result of todays and yesterday’s recollections of…?

Elmer found himself with no memory of the past, no perception of a future, and the uncertainty, if that is what it was, of a present. Elmer wished only to be excused to resume a past he recognized in the present before it would become his future.